The wide brown land for me?

Even though they found themselves in an environment strikingly different to what they were used to, the British settlers would in the main have had no doubts about this. The country to which they came was in their minds terra nullius. They brought with them, as they thought, a vastly superior culture, spiritual truth, and advanced technology. There was no expectation that any natives encountered would have anything whatsoever to contribute in any of these three areas.

I have the impression that gradually – very gradually – we are assimilating aspects of Aboriginal culture and spirituality, a process that could be encouraged and accelerated. Although we may have difficulty verbalizing it, we do feel a degree of oneness with the land. This is most likely to be felt in bush or outback areas, because it's mainly here that we have the chance to see sizable domains of nature unadorned by human artifice. It's a kind of return to Eden, with maybe a sense of prelapsarian innocence. It feels like having front-row seats at the Creation, before the addition of Coke cans and plastic wrappers. The mind is gradually cleared of the clutter and urgency we normally load into it. The blazing night sky can make the finer points of sectarian theology seem totally inconsequential.

Identifying with Australia is made easier by virtue of it being an island. Even though I am Sydney born and bred, I feel the land which owns me stretching to the tip of Cape York, and to the edge of the cliffs along the Great Australian Bight. (Tasmania presents a small problem. What if it seceded?) French people and Americans may have difficulty with this concept, since their nations have arbitrary borders which have been varied in relatively recent times. Our land is an ancient entity.

I'm sure that for some, a respect for the culture of the Aboriginal people who have lived in this land for thousands of generations can provide an inkling of what it means for us to be owned by the land rather than the other way around. And what a land it is that owns us!

To my mind, this growing respect for the validity of Aboriginal ways provides an argument in favour of a treaty (Makarrata), which could do much, quite apart from the potential benefits to Aboriginal people, to establish legitimacy for our relationship with indigenous people, and hence our right to feel "at home". There is surely a sense in which we cannot reasonably claim to be at home in Australia until such a treaty exists.

I am reminded of an incident a few years ago when I took a group of Aboriginal people from Broome who were visiting Sydney for the first time for a drive to Sydney's North Head. We walked from the car park to the lookout along a formed path through the dense native vegetation. The sign in the car park advised us of the penalties for breaking any of the numerous local rules, including the prohibition on removal of any flowers or vegetation. My "visitors" didn't read the sign, and, as they walked, plucked a few liberal sprigs from some of the shrubs and examined them closely. I felt awkward, but sensed how ludicrous it would have been for me to tell them that this was against the law! I was conscious that relative to them, I was not at home.

Encounters with indigenous people who maintain a traditional relationship with the land are always inspiring. A visit to the remarkable Dalhousie Springs in the north of South Australia a couple of years ago was made memorable by the opportunity to chat at some length with the Aboriginal custodian, who was much more concerned to preserve the springs from the insensitivities of visitors than to collect the park fees.

Of course, some would agree with David Tacey: "We have not only stolen Aboriginal land, destroyed the tribal culture, raped the women and the environment, but we now ask for their spirituality as well." (Edge of the Sacred, HarperCollins, 1995, pp. 132-3) But given that the events of the last two centuries are not going to be reversed, surely the best option is to look for a path of mutual appreciation and drawing closer together. Assimilation of aspects of Aboriginal culture and spirituality by non-indigenous Australians does not deprive or disadvantage Aborigines any more than my becoming a Hindu would deprive or disadvantage existing Hindus. Rather, it is an acknowledgement of the worth of the culture of the first Australians.