Psyche’s Nest: Coming Home to Roost

Stories that matter, reflecting on place, kinship, identity and purpose.

Greetings Substack friends! I am so delighted to land here. I am not a digital native so its been a bit of a stretch, and I know there’s a lot more to go, but the warmth of the Substack world has given me all the encouragement I need.

My first post tells the story of being on a field trip with university students to Narrabri, Western New South Wales here in Australia. Its Gamilaraay Country, unceded, a place of great beauty and cultural traditions which stretch back 60,000 years or more. Gamilaraay culture is strong here, nurtured and protected by its network of elders and commuities who hold their knowledge and traditions with a fierce, wise and loving commitment Our group visited forests, farmlands and small towns. We were not so welcome however at the coal mines or proposed fracking sites which have brought money and conflict into this area. These tensions and changes were what the students were here to explore for their research projects. We had some terrific conversations with local people on all sides of the fences and forests, but the most moving experiences, we all agreed, came from sitting with Gamilaraay elders and teachers ‘on Country.’ Here is the story of one of these experiences which gives the background to why I have called this Newsletter Psyche’s Nest.

I am sitting on Gamilaraay Country in the Deriah Aboriginal Area with Steven Booby, the Chair of the Management Committee and a group of university students and lecturers. Steve has just guided us through a smoking ceremony, in which we asked us to think about what’s good in our world and what matters most to us. Now we are in a picnic area which hosts a large sculpture of an egg-filled brush turkey’s nest surrounded by a family of brush turkeys. Steve has brought us here for a teaching story.

There are many layers embedded in this story of the brush turkey, as there always are in any First Nations story. What Steve tells us today is for this audience of young media and humanities students. His story is not only about brush turkeys and how they nest, but also about Steve, his community, and some of how and what he has been taught by his elders. His generous sharing is down to earth, suffused with warmth, wit and wisdom. The young people are fully absorbed as Steve skillfully draws out our responses to his questions: what is yours to take on? what are your roles and responsibilities? what legacy do you want to leave the world?  The cooling bush-scented breeze spiced plays over and around us while we ponder these probing questions about who we are and what matters most in life. As Steve talks about the creation and protection of the nest, I am held in his call to nurture and protect what is most precious in life. Time drops away, each word and moment resonates with connections; the aliveness of Country, of kinship with all beings, of belonging to this time and place and the opportunities and responsibilities this brings.   

When Steve talks about the nest building ways of brush turkeys, he tells a story not only of the instinct to protect and nurture life but also of commitment and love for Mother Earth. Coming home to roost in his story means connecting to and caring for place and community as kin. Listening to Steve, I feel grateful for where I am and what I can do in my own life.

Australian Brush-turkey: Paul Asman and Jill Lenoble/creative commons

Later I think about what the saying ‘chickens coming home to roost’ means in Western culture, with its connotations of being confronted by your bad deeds. I muse on how the instinct for nesting, connection and belonging is held as a nurturing teaching story in Gamilaraay culture, while in the Western framing it warns of karmic returns interlaced with guilt and threat. It might seem there is some poetic justice in this narrative of karmic returns when applied to the contemporary fouling of our planetary nest. The ecological consequences of Western culture’s disconnection from the natural world are rocketing home to roost. However, the roost to which so many ecological misdeeds are returning to is a planetary one. The cultures and communities least involved in ecologically destructive enterprises are the ones paying the highest costs.

While Indigenous Earth-honouring cultures have been losing their lives, their families and communities, and their lands for centuries as a consequence of colonisation, global heating is intensifying these losses. Biodiversity, rivers, predictable seasons are all disappearing. Meantime affluent industrialised nations, which have had the most material gain from pumping out emissions, are only just beginning to be seriously impacted by climate disruptions. Nevertheless, what has already come home to roost in many wealthy societies are social and mental health crises driven by materialistic and individualistic values creating what Sally Weintrobe labels a “culture of uncare”. [i]

Cultural stories matter. Mother and daughter Jill and Gladys Milroy are Palyku women from the Pilbara region in Western Australia. They write:  

It is the birthright of all Aboriginal children to be born into the right story. Indeed, it is the birthright and greatest gift we can give all children. The right story connects us intimately to our country, giving us our place and our identity. The right story embeds us deeply in nature, connected to the living spirit. [ii]

This is the kind of story Steve tells us about the brush turkey and its nesting ways. Without these traditional stories of connection to place and life-preserving teachings, we lack guidance about how to ground ourselves in community, place and identity. Nor do we know how to recognise the ecosystems that birth us.

The Milroys describe colonising peoples as “story nomads” who:

often come too late to understand what the story is about, starting in the middle of a story but claiming it is the beginning. They may leave before the end, so they don't have to face the consequences of broken stories. They are the perpetual travellers of the story world because they have ‘disremembered’ their own stories, consigning them to myth, mysticism, religion, allegory, metaphor or narrative: the ‘not quite true’ category

---

This analysis rings true to me. I am the descendent of generations of colonisers who have moved from Scotland to Ireland to Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia chasing resources and a “better life”. My English, Scottish, Irish and Jewish ancestors milled native forests, built bridges, farmed the cleared land and set up businesses to trade in the spoils. They found  meaning and identity through colonising stories about progress, not questioning or perhaps even noticing the dispossession and despoiling of First Nations’ lands. Absorbed by the pursuit of material gain and unmoored by multiple displacements, they, like most, settlers lost connection to their own ancestral stories of respect for and kinship with the living world.

Without Earth-honouring stories, young people cannot access their birthright of belonging and purpose in life. The majority of young people today fear the future that lies ahead of them because of climate upheavals. The stories they grapple with are of abuse and neglect of living systems, political betrayals and increasing hardships. They, like so many of us, hunger for life-preserving stories where people recognise themselves as part of the living fabric of Earth, nested within interwoven relationships that care for all.

When chickens actually do come home to their roost, they are embedded in place and community. Sitting on Country with Steve in a group of people from diverse cultural backgrounds, listening to his stories helps us identify the values, communities and places that matter most to us. His questions encourage us to weave threads between what nurtures us and what we can nurture in life. Judging by the absorption on the young people’ faces, these questions with their underlying worldview meets a deep need.

View from Deriah Aboriginal area

Steve’s cultural stories are not ours for the taking. But what he offers us is the encouragement to incubate our own stories which nest us within our living world and communities. His invitation returns psyche to the nest of creation, not to meet punishment and shame, but to find meaning and purpose in taking up roles and responsibilities for Earth care. We do not need to carry guilt for the wrong doings of our ancestral past, he says, but instead work with others to tell the truth of what has happened, and is still happening, through colonisation, to respect and learn from traditional and Indigenous stories, and to recover and birth our own stories of belonging and caring here on Earth.

Those of us not born and raised within Indigenous cultures can be informed and inspired by the metaphors of kinship and belonging that lie at the root of all ancient human cultures. Increasingly contemporary science is finding common ground with Indigenous science as ecological crises, New Physics and complexity theory reveal the dazzling array of life’s interconnections. Whatever way this might come to your awareness, the underlying story is the same: for humans to thrive, individually and collectively, we must reclaim identity and purpose nested within the web of life. For those of us conditioned by Western culture, this requires discarding the false story of a disconnected self occupying a mechanistic body and planet. Shedding this alienating skin, we can come to know the feeling of being held within a network of communities, alive with purpose energised by love and care.

[1] Weintrobe, S. (2021). Psychological roots of the climate crisis: Neoliberal exceptionalism and the culture of uncare. New York. NY: Bloomsbury.

[ii] Milroy, G.I. & Milroy, J. (2008). Different ways of knowing: Trees are our families too, in S. Morgan, T. Mia & B. Kwaymullina (eds.) Heartsick for Country: Stories of Love, Spirit and Creation. Fremantle, Australia: Fremantle Press.

I would love to hear if this story resonates with you. Please leave me a comment and/or restack with a note so we can keep this conversation alive with shared experiences and feelings. And of course, as I just am starting out on Substack, I would be thrilled by your likes and follows.