Gamil means no: don't be quiet while mining threatens our collective future
There is a tree on my country that is sacred. Of course, there are many sacred trees there – it is sacred ground, after all – but the tree I am thinking of is sacred to me. It is large. Very, very large, with a section cut out where an ancestor of mine had made a shield or a small canoe. But the wound – for it was cut with care – has long since healed over.
Now, owing to the sheer size of the tree, the wound more resembles a door; sometimes I wonder if the canoe is on the other side, river and all. The tree is large in other ways too; it has big spirit, or energy. Big dhui. This is something that cannot be explained, not really. It can only be felt.
My ancestors felt this. This tree was my pop’s tree, and his pop before him. They cared for it, protected it and were protected by it. In this way, this tree and my connection to it are pre-colonial. I often wonder what other things this tree has witnessed and people it has met. What about my poppy’s poppy’s poppy’s pop? Or how about when the banks of our rivers flowed with life? I wonder when it first heard English? If trees could speak, I wonder if it is like my grandparents in their love of Gamilaraay; English, for them, was a language spoken only begrudgingly. Which is to say, they spoke it only because they had to.
But this is all just fantasy, of course. I lied: there is no tree like this on my country. There is no tree because in 2015, for the expansion of the Whitehaven coal mine, it was cut down.
I have cried many times for this loss but I have also laughed. The irony is just too rich: a living tree was felled so that long-dead and compressed trees, which is to say coal, could be dug up and burnt. And why? So you have power to run air-con in the sweltering summer that is getting hotter because you need coal dug up for your air-con for the sweltering summer. Clearly, I am bitter. But you must understand why: unlike the wound on my tree, the one you have inflicted will not heal.
But do not be mistaken: I have not given this story in order to organise my very own pity party. If that is why you’re reading, then it’s time to take your drinks and get gone. The story of the felling of my tree was shared instead with purpose – now, with Santos and its gas project on our doorstep, we have more pressing issues. Now, we need to protect an entire forest. But here lies the puzzle: in a 2018 study led by Dr Sven Teske, it was found that on 4% of the land, more electricity may be produced, creating three times as many long-term jobs with zero water usage, if instead wind and solar are pursued.
Which is to say, we shouldn’t have to protect the Pilliga, a vital habitat for threatened species, even on long-term economic grounds.
Teske, a renewables expert, went so far as to say: “I have modelled renewable energy scenarios all around the world and the potential in Narrabri is exciting. Renewable energy markets are leaping ahead. If this district chooses to use its natural advantages, it could generate 500 permanent skilled local jobs by 2030, on a fraction of the land area that the proposed coal seam gas field would occupy.”
So why did the Santos Coal Seam Gas project get the go-ahead? The answer is simple: wind and solar will require larger short-term investments. But the advantages of these investments, according to the same 2018 study, will outweigh the costs. Which is to say, we find ourselves needing to protect this forest and the vast amounts of water beneath, simply because of sheer short-sightedness; the same short-sightedness that threatens every generation to come. The bushfires of last summer are, to my mind, all the warning we need.
I do not, I’m afraid, have a solution to all this. Indeed, because of it, many nights I have lost sleep.
I do, however, have one small gift: gamil. It is the word, as in many east coast First Nations, that my mob take our namesake from: gamil means no. Otherwise put, the word we use to describe ourselves – Gamilaraay – teaches others how we decline to give consent. It also, to my mind, teaches others how to do the same: you too can say gamil.
So the next time our land, our waters and therefore our collective future is threatened, please do not be quiet. Instead, with your words and your actions, accept this gift. Instead, firmly and with certainty say gamil. Gamil means no.
• Jared Field is a Gomeroi man from Moree way but grew up on Darug land, and is a McKenzie Fellow at the University of Melbourne in the School of Mathematics and Statistics. @JM_Field5 @GamilaraayNG