Clip description
Tom E Lewis introduces the concept of five seasons over footage of an overflowing Rose River – the land inundated with water, followed by a montage of a dry riverbed. Lewis describes the wet season over images of Indigenous men hunting birds, fish and a turtle. Lewis tells us that the people sing songs to the land, rivers and sea. They sing to the spirits of the animals that are hunted. ‘Everything has a cycle, and we are guided by this cycle’, says Lewis.
Curator’s notes
We are introduced to the ancient Indigenous philosophy of land management, whereby the people are responsible to and for the land with human social structure determined by the land and its cycles. Indigenous philosophy and its relationship with land are very different to western ideology for Indigenous people acknowledge that the land is alive, an entity and a being that requires respect.