Nadine Murray
I
the song
I walk here
According to the Aborigines
of Australia each person at birth inherits a verse of a song as his private
property - “it is that place on the earth where he most belongs, and his
essence, his deepest self, is indistinguishable from that terrain.” (Abram
167) The song in itself is a tale of their ancestors’ adventures
and the things they encountered along the way. Each descendant inherits
a lyrical map to guide them through the country and serve as a bond with
other members of the tribe in distant territories. The Aborigines
see themselves as the song personified, and everything encountered on the
journey, told through the song, are actually their experiences. Though
he himself may not have traveled past the borders of his compound, through
songs repeated first by the ancestors, and now by neighboring and distant
tribesmen, he has journeyed further than he may physically wander in his
life.
These indigenous people,
unspoiled by modern technologies, and very much attuned to their natural
habitat, view their surroundings as an extension of themselves or sister/brother
souls, and as such treat it with the utmost respect. When preparing
for a hunt, the hunted animal’s name is never spoken lest the animal hears
and is offended. After the hunt the carcass is disposed of with reverence
to ensure successful hunts in the future. “I the song I walk here”,
in the leaves of the trees, carried on the wind over the seas, in the red,
fiery sunsets and to the birds, I am everywhere and I am in everything.
(A fragment
from Rights of Passage)
But today I recapture
the islands’
bright beaches: blue
mist from the ocean
rolling into the
fishermen’s houses.
By these shores I
was born: sound of the sea
came in at
my window,.....
Since then I have
traveled: moved far from the beaches:
sojourned in stoniest
cities, walking the lands of the north
in sharp slanting
sleet and the hail
Edward Brathwaite
I grew up in Trinidad, West
Indies but have since emigrated to the United States. The Caribbean
islands have such an interesting ecology which I can only now appreciate
since I am removed from them. Volcanoes; tar pits; waterfalls; caves
with stalagmites and stalactites; white coral beaches; lushly vegetated
mountains, and the occasional hurricane. What a wealth of research
material. As I tried to decide what to write it occurred to me, why
is West Indian folklore teeming with humans changing into animal form and
what, if any, is the connection? Why not remain in human form but
with super powers. There is Papa Bois, who is the protector of the
forests and the animals that dwell there, who either confuses hunters so
they get lost in the forest or he breaks their neck for trespassing.
Talk about getting your point across.
I thought of conducting
research incorporating West Indian folklore as it relates to the natural
environment in the early 1900’s, and the divorce and subsequent alienation
of the land and its inhabitants by humans in the latter half of the 1900’s
in Trinidad. My research would be funded by the Caribbean Forestry
Division, the Asa Wright Nature Center and other private sector or public
entities either in Trinidad or other West Indian islands that would benefit
from this research as a means of preserving their natural environments.
