Welcome to My Country

A wonderfully engaging and heartening account of a successful Aboriginal community based at a beautiful beach site in Arnhem Land. Bawaka Country refers to the diverse land, water, animals, plants, rocks, thoughts, and songs that make up their Indigenous homeland of Bawaka. Theirs is a story of lives entwined and of new places of being and belonging. Welcome to My Country is also a collaborative narrative of unexpected transformations, embedded families, and the spirituality and agency of non-human elements in and of the landscape.

Laklak Burarrwanga, Sarah Wright, Sandie Suchet-Pearson, and Kate Lloyd are an Indigenous and non-Indigenous research collective. Laklak and her sisters are elders and caretakers for Bawaka Country in northeast Arnhem Land. Sarah, Sandie, and Kate are three non-Indigenous academics from Newcastle and Macquarie universities who have been adopted into the family as granddaughter, sister and daughter. The group have worked together as a research collective since 2006, and have written two books and several academic and popular articles together. Laklak is a Datiwuy Elder, Caretaker for Gumatj, and eldest sister. As a teacher in the community at Bawaka, she has spent decades sharing her knowledge with the children of her community. She also writes and translates books for the Yirrkala Community School. Seven years ago she helped to establish her family-owned tourism business Bawaka Cultural Experiences (BCE) and through this business, as well as through being a member of the Yothu Yindi Garma Foundation, she has shared her knowledge with tourists, including government staff in cross-cultural programs.