Interview with Terraglossia author Debra Dank

Debra Dank is passionate about the environment, especially as her Country, on the Beetaloo Basin, is under threat of being fracked.

What does the word ‘terraglossia’ mean, and how does it help challenge old ideas like ‘terra nullius’?

Terraglossia is a word that acknowledges the many voices that exist within a geographic landscape as understood and heard by Gudanji and possibly other Aboriginal Australians. It disrupts the uninformed Western claiming of an empty land to populate what appears to be that empty geographic space with a multiplicity of life forms who are all living in that space. It elevates the non-human to be present and to be as significant as the human and it is expressly inclusive of the interconnections, interdependence and the entangled relationships between the human and the non-human.

How can the idea of terraglossia help more people understand and respect Indigenous knowledge and culture?

Terraglossia should help transect conversations that are binary which gives us a ‘them’ and ‘us’ thinking to become more inclusive through a broader way of knowing. We have to stop thinking about the natural world being different to our world, we must stop thinking about that world as the wilderness because those ideas support a separation that does not benefit that world or us as humans in need apparently of occupying a ‘civilised’ space.

What can we expect from the festival sessions Ways We Communicate, Water: Our Life, and Indigenous Knowledges?

I hope to chat about and broaden our ideas about water, about its significance, and about the way we currently engage with water. I hope we can see that this is one of the absolute non-negotiables we must all be dedicated to protecting – it is vital to our survival as well as every other lifeform.

• Explore Debra Dank’s sessions at www.byronwritersfestival.com.