"Mary Graham has declared that one of the most taken–for–granted assumptions of Aboriginal thought is that spirit is real; another is that land is all there is (Graham 1992). That is to say, spirit has a status, in Aboriginal thought, as incontestable as that of energy and matter; and, since there is no heaven and hell, and since theories and ideas, however dazzling, are not real, land is ultimately the only thing that exists. If 'land' is expanded to encompass the concrete given – all that is actual in a physical sense – then I think that the attitude of letting be follows from these twin premises: spirit animates the given rather than existing in the realm of the abstract, so we connect with spirit by engaging – and not unnecessarily interfering – with the given. By embracing the given even in its most adulterated forms, we reinhabit our own contemporary, mundane reality in the same kind of profound way that traditional Aboriginal peoples inhabited their reality, the still edenic land. Graham, Mary 1992, interviewed on Aboriginal Perspectives, Caroline Jones and Stephen Godley, ABC Religious Program"
(Freya Mathews, Australian Humanities Review)
Mathews, F. (2004). "Letting the World Do the Doing." Australian Humanities Review August – October 2004(33).
[Issues surrounding land and its relationship to spirituality are central to an indigenous Australian world view. The belief that land is something that can’t be contained or controlled stands in stark contrast to the Western belief that sees land as a commodity that can be owned by individuals and sold for personal gain.]
