Seeing, feeling, and hearing the world:

A regenerative worldview: rinyi, pirlirr and liyan

with guest contributors Kankawa Nagarra Olive Knight, Anne Poelina and Sandra Wooltorton

In this post, our guest contributors take us into Western Australian Indigenous language and worldviews to help us reach toward a regenerative worldview. Indigenous words such as rinyi, pirlirr, and liyan explored in this post point us in a direction unfamiliar to English speakers, to Land and Country as living and responsive. The authors point out that it is very difficult to describe these terms in English, because English is not a relational language. It just doesn’t have the words. We can hope this is changing, as various Indigenous and place-based groups publish their messages to the world.

Kankawa: I am a Gooniyandi, Walmatjarri and Bunuba woman, of the West Kimberley region in Western Australia. I am an Elder who has cultural lived experience and who is committed to preserving and celebrating this knowledge for our future generations; and those who wish to maintain cultural values and strengths. I am a musician.

Anne: I am a Nyikina woman who belongs to the Martuwarra Fitzroy River in the West Kimberley region in Western Australia. I am an advocate for human rights and earth justice, who honours the sacred relationship between humans and the natural world. I want to remind everyone that together we can ‘Wake Up the Snake’ – to revive the collective consciousness and work harmoniously with nature to restore the planet in this critical decade.

Sandra: I am a multigenerational Australian woman of mainly Anglo-Celtic ancestry who grew up in Noongar Country, in the southwest of Western Australia. I advocate for Indigenous and place-based philosophies, to create cultures that live the change we want to see. I feel the love and care of Country and River; and celebrate the collaborations in place across the world which model and sing out the lyrics of life.

We – Kankawa, Anne and Sandra – recognise that the ways we see, feel, and hear the world is associated with how we relate to and respond to our places. If we see the ground we walk on and the places we live in as animate, responsive, and relational, we are highly likely to care for Country with love, gentleness of spirit and fullness of heart. We are all able to hear and participate in the music, the soundscape of our places – to honour and celebrate the lyrics of life.

When we use the terms Country (capital C), Land (capital L) or River (capital R) we refer to a broader, stronger, Indigenous use of the English language concepts of country, land, and river. Country (Capital C) is increasingly used in mainstream Australia by caring people, as is Land and River. These terms refer to places as relational, animate socio-ecosystems that are living and responsive. Country, Land and River include people as participants in a kin-centred ecology of being.

Martuwarra: photo Lachie Carracher

Of course, the opposite is also true: if we see Country as inert, passive, and lifeless we might as well quarry or frack our places, creating the lyrics of doom and gloom, the lyrics of death. Why would anyone do this, leaving unbearable costs to our more-than-human relations and our descendants? This leads us to be concerned for what a true regenerative worldview would entail.

Not to care for one’s relations – being people, trees, River, barramundi fish or kangaroo – can be a sign of narcissism. (Narcissists need to be in command, blasé when harming others). Change agents look towards solutions, from the point of view of love of place. This little article is for change agents, who create and use the lyrics of life.

Kankawa. We need to participate in the storied soundscape of Country

Indigenous people have knowledge for regeneration, because we have been living in relationship with Country since the dawn of time. Our culture functions as a kincentric ecology, which means that all species within our cultural places are related to us. From this viewpoint, we see with clear eyes the crawling, destructive illness that is climate change. We need to listen to the stories and soundscape of Country. The Walmatjarri word for these meanings is rinyi.  We hear rinyi from Country and rinyi is explained by Elders. There is no equivalent everyday word for rinyi in English, so we refer to it as a ‘mystery language’. Rinyi is a language of place, and language is integral to culture. We need to restore relationships with each other (of all species), to heal and regenerate the living, vibrant spirit of people, places, and planet.

We listen for rinyi with our ears, and we hear it with the ears of our hearts. To revitalise rinyi is to regenerate Country because they are intrinsic to each other. When we were young, our Elders told us stories that convey the depth of perception of rinyi. We didn’t understand it at first, so they repeated it until we learned it as we grew up. Rinyi is a deep meaning – Country’s meaning. Rinyi might refer to communications such as bird calls, or wind curls, or maybe a message from crickets. The smallest creatures – perhaps a bush cockroach, or perhaps an ant – has a story and uses rinyi. In this way, we see that climate change is rinyi, because it is a message that conveys Country is sick. As humans, it is imperative that we relearn rinyi, for the sake of the planet. Losing one’s human spirit causes the inability to comprehend and understand rinyi, and this is damaging the planet.

Regeneration means to refresh knowledge systems and strengthen or renew earth-based cultures and celebrate these again. Country needs healing too. We know this because of climate change, and because the seasons no longer attune with species-kin as they have for millennia. For example, in recent years in my area of the Martuwarra River Country and its surrounds, a beetle that as a child I collected, cooked, and ate as a dietary supplement is slowly disappearing. I feel very sad about the loss of the beetle (murrutitjin).  What happened? Was it the drying out, and the climatic conditions where it burrowed itself? What happens to other species that are interdependent with murrutitjin?

Rinyi implies a dimension of being, or ‘another world’ that holds the soundscape where the birds and animals communicate with each other.

Rinyi means we must listen very carefully to the sounds around us. Rinyi is a mysterious language, the language of places and species, which requires us to pay deep attention to the world around us. Rinyi implies a dimension of being, or ‘another world’ that holds the soundscape of meaning. In this sense, rinyi is also the dimension of the soundscape, and the communication medium within which meaning is derived. Everyone can learn to do this – we need to perceive with all five senses together. We are ‘sensing’ and feeling all the time and watching every step.

We need to grow up hearing and understanding these sounds. For instance, cricket may warn us about imminent danger with a lengthy trill. Indigenous children learn from a very young age to watch, feel and hear sounds near us, that might be meant as message for us. Rinyi, or the sound the cricket makes, can mean ‘warning’. It means there are linkages we need to revitalise emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

Country is communicative and responsive, within the dimension of rinyi. In my Walmatjarri language, the spirit of Country is pirlirr; people have pirlirr too, and pirlirr is the actual spirit. We can think of pirlirr as the ears of the heart. This is the basis of a communicative bond with Country that we must recognise and honour. It is how we maintain a strong relationship with Country, by which I mean all the species and creatures I relate to. As an example, when I shelter from the sun underneath a cool paperbark tree by the creek, I feel and hear many stories from that tree.

Because I am a poet, I will create some poetry for the paperbark tree. For example, I hear the leaves making a certain swishing noise. I understand its message, to settle and be calm. I diligently attend to things I hear, feel, and see around me. I breathe with intent to relax and heal.

Country can lose its pirlirr perhaps by mining or removing its original landscape. An Indigenous person who is a traditional owner can lose his or her pirlirr too, perhaps by giving permission to mine – even if permission is forced. He or she can die because they are just an empty shell if their pirlirr has left them.

Perhaps English language has a word for pirlirr, that recognises the depth of human relationship with Country, by which I mean spirits and species that are interrelated with Country in a place. Is this term: ‘sixth sense’?

Because of its communicative nature, we relate with Country with deep respect through our pirlirr. For example, barramundi fish is a kin relation to me, a mother, so I am obliged to care for, protect and defend the barramundi with the same energy I would a mother. I can eat a little, but I must ensure it is treated with care, and its habitat is safe. Indigenous people never take more to eat than we need. We don’t store it for long because we don’t need to. Our environments are plentiful in season – our food is everywhere at the right time because we look after our places through our pirlirr. This is the problem of the sickness that is climate change. As humans, we need to heal our relationships.

As I sit to tell you this account, the Kimberley bauhinia tree and several other species are flowering several months before the seasonal pattern they have followed for aeons. Many species depend upon these annual flowering events, such as native bees and butterflies. If they arrive at the time they normally do, they will miss their food supply because the tree will have finished flowering. To me, Country is saying ‘please stop doing that’. Country says, ‘I will look after you and you must look after me’. My message is to hear the music of life, and feel the soundscapes of place, to practice participating in rinyi. Use the lyrics of life and sing them wherever you go. All our relations of all species want to hear this.

Anne. We show our children, and they watch us

In my Nyikina language, pirlirr translates to liyan. It translates into many Indigenous languages in Western Australia, and perhaps this is the case everywhere. Everything is related – all beings are kin for us in our Kimberley home. My liyan acts as my moral compass. I feel with my liyan, my feelings or spiritual reactions are always through my liyan. It is my intuition. Sometimes when I get back from a long trip and I feel exhausted on the inside, I need to go to my homeland on the bank of the Martuwarra Fitzroy River and lie flat down, to reconnect and restore my spirit, to revitalise my soul or my liyan. When I do this, I feel my strength, my commitment, and the vibration of the Earth. Country energises my body to return to the purpose of why I need to recharge my ‘liyan’; to resume the tasks I need to work towards.

Senior Nyikina elder Paddy Roe, my uncle, taught me ‘to send the Dream out’ and to work hard with others to create change. To create hope, I sing out to Martuwarra again with a full spirit, and I know ‘E’ will respond to me and care for me [Editor’s note: ‘E’ is an Indigenous English word for ungendered he/she]. Everyone in the Kimberley knows that when you care for Country, Country will care for you through its living nature. This reciprocity is age-old, and our children learn it as they grow. They watch us, and we show them. We show them how to sing out to Country, and we know that they will do this as they grow up. They know this before they can talk. Kimberley people offer this gift to everyone – and once you know it, we hope you will practice it wherever you go. It is a way to help us heal ourselves and heal climate. We offer this to schoolteachers and parents to teach their children, and to know that it means we care for Country by treating all species reverently and with love.

Sandra: We all have capacity to reconnect with the world’s being

I sing out to Country too, and to River, particularly the Collie River and its beautiful estuary. I’ve been doing this since I was young. In Noongar Country, I was also taught about respect for Country and care of Country as a child. I’m adopted into this Country, being a multigenerational Australian of eight or nine generations on our mum’s side, with an English dad. It was our dad who taught my siblings and I to sit and listen to the sounds of place. When I was very young, Dad built a little wooden boat, and he took me (I was the eldest child) out in the boat to go fishing in the Peel Estuary before its riparian zones were overcrowded by houses. Of course, later Dad took my siblings in the boat too. He taught us to watch, feel and listen – and not to talk loudly in the boat; just sit quietly and pay attention.

When I was a young woman, I was taught Noongar language by Noongar Elders, giving me knowledge about people being part of Country. Noongar people use the word wirrin which translates into liyan and pirlirr. Wirrin helps guide people safely through Country and culture, recognising that Country needs people who care. Wirrin is spirit that links people and place, River, the breath, the energy, the being of things.[i]

Kankawa and I met over forty years ago when I was a young schoolteacher and Kankawa was a young parent, in the Kimberley town of Derby, which is in Nyikina Country. She had a significant influence on me then, as she does now. I met Anne ten years ago, when I started working at the Nulungu Research Institute, and I continually learn with her. I’ve been made very welcome in the Kimberley, my second home. When we learn-with Indigenous people, comprehend Indigenous wisdom and participate in Indigenous ceremonies and festivals, it is natural to feel one’s Indigenous roots, to understand how to hear and feel knowledge of Country; and experience the mysterious language shared and perceived by all of us who know we share in the community of life. This language of rinyi is particularly noticeable in the world’s daily ceremony of sunset when the wind slows, the sky colours with radiant red hues and in good weather, the waves comply with the dusky mood. As both Kankawa and Anne often say, we all have indigeneity, or capacity to reconnect with the world’s being. We might need to un-bury or rediscover those capacities in ourselves. This is who we are as humans.

Kimberley boab while the Martuwarra Fitzroy River was in flood: photo Lachie Carracher

How rinyi, pirlirr and liyan, lead to a regenerative worldview

Whilst there doesn’t seem to be an everyday English word for rinyi, there is a similar concept in Western philosophy: ontopoetics. Freya Mathews describes the ontopoetic dimension as a ‘world hidden within the world’.[ii] She says, ‘to experience the world from within… is to experience it as a sphere of communicative meaning’. Ontopoetics, in this sense, is ‘the study of the poetic order’; the ‘poetic meanings that structure the core of things’.[iii]

Our point is that there are knowledge sets and ways of knowing that Indigenous people have practiced for millennia. Western philosophers are also recognising, experiencing, and writing about the dimension Walmatjarri philosophers call rinyi, for whom rinyi is also the language. Mathews calls it the ‘poetic language of things as opposed to the conceptual language of words’.[iv]

Anne and Sandra have used the notion of ontopoetics before, which they described as part of a participative way of knowing that is relational with Country. With colleagues, they wrote:

We propose a practice for people new to this participation; of ‘becoming family with place’. It integrates four ways of knowing, to celebrate an ontopoetic for Country that is experiential, creative, propositional and participative – a post-conceptual knowing for human flourishing. It is for coming home to Country and is for learning and educational purposes.[v]

It is this concept and way of knowing that we need in everyday English now, so that people can acquire the know-how for living differently. We need to ‘wake up the snake’, wake up the collective consciousness of the people for place-engagement and communication. This is an element of a regenerative worldview – to learn how to communicate and relate within the community of life.

From our perspective, a regenerative worldview is to see, experience and participate with the world’s capacity to heal, to renew, to revitalise and to return its vigorous, life-giving capacities. Our places and our bodies get ‘hammered’, so to speak, by extractivist, competitive and individualist actions – by ourselves and others. A regenerative worldview is generous, generative, embodied, and creative. It recognises that humans are more than heads! We feel, experience, create and have ability to care. Regeneration is to renew a relationship with place as kin, to recognise and honour species of place who have the same right to flourish as humans do.

A regenerative worldview is based on feeling, hearing, and healing Country. It encourages intergenerational cultural transfer, mentoring and caring for our children and young people so they have strength and confidence in the core of their being – their pirlirr, liyan, wirrin, ears of the heart, or sixth sense. It leads us to hear and engage with the more-than-human in the communicative existential sphere – call it rinyi, ontopoetics, or the mysterious living language of place that is always present; or indeed, in the Western philosophical language, some call it ‘the invisible work’. With a regenerative worldview, we use the lyrics of flourishing, the lyrics of life, to support educators, colleagues, friends, board members, publics, corporations; and we sing this know-how out to the world.

Affiliations

Kankawa Nagarra Olive Knight is a member of the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council. Anne Poelina and Sandra Wooltorton are professors at Nulungu Research Institute, The University of Notre Dame Australia (Broome Campus).

Acknowledgement

This research is part of a consortium of the University of Notre Dame Australia, Edith Cowan University, Millennium Kids, Pandanus Park Community, the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council, Madjulla Inc, the Western Australian Museum and the Water Corporation of Western Australia. It is financially supported (partially) by the following organisations: the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects funding scheme [project LP210301390]; the Water Corporation’s Research and Development Program; Millennium Kids Enviro Fund; and the Western Australian Museum.

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[i] Poelina, A., Wooltorton, S., Harben, S., Collard, L., Horwitz, P., & Palmer, D. (2020). Feeling and hearing Country. PAN: Philosophy Activism Nature(15), 6-15. http://panjournal.net/issues/15

[ii] Mathews, F. (2009). The World Hidden within the World: A Conversation on Ontopoetics. Ibid.(6), 97-109.

[iii]Ibid.

[iv] Ibid. (p. 11)

[v] Poelina, A., Wooltorton, S., Harben, S., Collard, L., Horwitz, P., & Palmer, D. (2020). Feeling and hearing Country. Ibid.(15), 6-15. http://panjournal.net/issues/15