‘We are kangaroo, we have the owl’: Linguistic and emotional clues of the meanings of the bush in changing Wiradjuri being and relatedness

Abstract

This article is an examination of the changing ways Bogan River Wiradjuri people from Peak Hill, central west New South Wales, speak about and emotionally relate to the bush, within the broader framework of Wiradjuri morality and kin relatedness. In this article I use emotional states of being, the way people feel when they visit and talk about the bush, to understand the complexity of meanings inherent in older and younger Wiradjuri inter‐subjectivities of human and non‐human relatedness. Shared emotional states of being are a language for the Wiradjuri self and the moral framework that governs local social life. I focus on the social and emotional orders of relatedness to argue that Wiradjuri ways of ‘being’ in the bush have changed from older to younger people in light of broader historical changes, subsequently affecting the relationships people have with the bush and the ancestral kin and spiritual beings contained within it.