BELLINGEN, Australia — A coastal breeze can be felt through the rustling eucalyptus leaves of blackbutt, ironbark and tallowwood trees in the old-growth native forest now known as Newry on the coast of the state of New South Wales, in present-day Australia. A faint, melodic creaking sound is audible from a twisted grey gum tree […]

As Greenwood expresses, many First Nations peoples in Australia feel an intimate and deeply profound, seemingly genetic connection, to their ancestral lands, often simply called “Country.”

For most non-Indigenous Australians and people living in global industrial hubs who are no longer rooted to a land, the value of land tends to be that of a marketable asset.

Through performing traditional ceremonies on Country, the life force of the land keeps going and the Earth becomes stronger, Jarrett explains.

Not all people in First Nations groups in Australia maintain this same connection to Country.

For these Indigenous Australians, they don’t own the land; the land owns them.

Alongside the Indigenous-led protest camp in Newry Forest, Jarrett applied for an injunction on Aug. 22 in the Land and Environment Court to stop logging amid alleged breaches of cultural heritage laws, and the proximity of logging to sacred cultural sites.

During the protests, Indigenous people and allies alike chained themselves to logging trucks, delayed logging, began a ceremonial sacred fire and were subsequently arrested by police.