Far more than a poetic writing workshop, Maya’s method of ‘co-becoming’ offers deep and participatory access to nature, the body, and the animate world. Through somatic meditations and writing processes that unleash creativity, we come into conversation with the more-than-human realms. These powerful techniques open doors in surprising ways to a world that is wildly alive, aware, expansive and loving.
Influenced by her doctoral research in embodiment and meditation practices, and Western, Eastern and Indigenous philosophies, Maya’s courses are also fundraisers for a Yolgnu community, to support their capacity to keep their songspirals sung and handed down through the generations.
Her workshops include an exploration of the historic and somatic basis of co-becoming, spending time in nature contemplation, writing, and sharing words. You will leave with a toolkit of techniques you can use to continue deepening your creative, expressive and spiritual practices aligned with ecological wisdom.
Dr Maya Ward is an independent artist, designer and researcher, collaborating with Melbourne University on addressing climate anxiety through nature contemplation, and with the Gay’wu group of women on the cross-cultural experience of speaking with the world. Maya’s intimate communion with the intelligence of life is profoundly influenced by her longstanding dance and embodiment practices, and practices of earth celebration, communion, and repair – co-creating community rituals, teaching, food growing, tree planting and activism.
‘Maya Ward is responding to those who seek to come back into the spirit of place in rigorous and respectful ways that are not in extractive relation, not overstepping or appropriating.
~ Tyson Yunkaporta ~
As a person of settler descent, I have created this workshop for those who wish to respond more deeply to the work that First Nations people have asked us to do – Acknowledge Country. I have done so with the support and encouragement of Aboriginal people. They have asked settlers to share the emotional burden that Aboriginal people have been forced to carry, and do the work of sitting with the discomfort of our history.
This work suggests ways to come into right relationship with First Nations people and with Country through honesty, care and deep listening. Only by resting on ethical foundations can spiritual depths be revealed, and co-creative flourishing unfurl.
In this workshop, Maya artfully curates a welcoming space to explore a fraught and often poorly felt topic. Drawing from a breadth and depth of traditions, I was invited into vivid and visceral co-becoming with Country. — Yin Paradies, Wakaya man, Professor in Race Relations at Deakin University.
~ Sean Kavanagh
~Laurel Freeland
Deep connection with ourselves, our bodies, our earth and our communities is the heart of poetics and the hope of any politics we might evolve. Experiencing the aliveness of this world and our kinship with all beings is medicine, balm for disconnection, the profound gift of the journey of reconciliation.
Over the past 35 years I have sought to deepen belonging and connection to place — in collaboration with an alive world and in community — through writing, walking, dancing, designing, planting and teaching. In this exploration I acknowledge the teaching and guidance of the Country I have always lived within. My life has flowed alongside the water systems of Birrarung (Yarra River) and Neerim/Narm Narm (Port Phillip Bay), the great Songline of Wurundjeri lands that opens into the vast circle bay that laps upon Bunurong Country.
I honour my family, friends, teachers and students as ongoing participants in this exploration. I recognise the deep influence of my activist parents, whose passion and commitment remain an inspiration, the children whom I co-parent, whose joy and energy are food and medicine, and the many friends, known and unknown, whose dedication to birthing another world nests my efforts into a beautiful tree of meaning. And I acknowledge the mysterious and beautiful agency of an alive world in guiding these efforts.
My PhD in Creative Writing explored the embodied experience of the alive world, otherwise known as the archetypal or imaginal realm. This research ranged across neuroscience, somatics, poetics, psychology, Western philosophy, Indigenous knowledge systems and shamanistic metaphysics.
I have studied internationally with Jungian psychologists Arnold and Amy Mindell, writers David Abram and Bill Plotkin, animist scholar Josh Schrei, and I am a longtime student of deep ecology, bioregionalism, and permaculture. I am profoundly grateful to have learned from Indigenous elders over the past 25 years, including Dulumunmun (Uncle Max Harrison) and Uncle Ian Hunter. I acknowledge Martin Prechtel, Ursula le Guin and Alan Garner as my greatest influences.
My memoir The Comfort of Water: A River Pilgrimage, published by Transit Lounge, is an account of my 21-day journey from the sea to the source of the Yarra River, following the length of a Wurundjeri Songline. This book has been on the curriculum in universities around Australia, and was shortlisted by the State Library for the 2012 Year of Reading Award. My writing has also been featured in a variety of publications, including a chapter in the book series Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations, edited by Robin Wall Kimmerer and others.
I have a Masters in Education (Social Ecology) with undergraduate studies in Architecture and Landscape Architecture. I’ve worked as an urban designer, permaculture teacher, bushland revegetator and as the founding placemaker at Village Well, one of Australia’s leading placemaking firms. Work in the community arts sector has included initiating the Collingwood Children’s Farm winter solstice bonfire, founding the CERES Harvest Festival, and twenty years devoted to interweaving Wurundjeri and activist stories into the Return of the Sacred Kingfisher Festival.
Currently I live in community on the banks of the Birrarung in the mountain village of Warburton. In this place I continue my learning as a pilgrim, walking the forest and river paths, and negotiating with the birds for a share of the food forest I plant and tend.
The Acknowledging Country Writing Workshop aims to facilitate opportunities for profound connection to place and history with which to ground your words, enrich your understanding, and to grow your ongoing connections to Country.
The focus is an exploration of the new Australian ritual of Acknowledging Country that for the last decade has taken place at the start of public gatherings. This ritual has emerged at a vital cultural moment, with the growing awareness and acceptance of Australia’s violent conquest history, and greater understanding of the ongoing impacts of colonial culture on both Aboriginal and settler cultures.
“Country” is an Aboriginal English word meaning both the visible and invisible world around us; people, plants, animals, landforms, weather systems, the animate spirit that infuses us all, the stories and the web of relationships between us. To acknowledge Country, then, is to acknowledge an alive, sensing world. The implications of this are enormous, with the potential to disrupt the de-animated worldview that underpins the colonial paradigm. How might we fruitfully and respectfully engage with this other way of knowing, and learn the responsibilities and connections of deep belonging?
This work is grounded in learning from Aboriginal and Indigenous people, including inspiration and encouragement from Tyson Yunkaporta, Yin Paradies, Jack Mitchell, Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann, Ian Hunter, Joy Murphy Wandin and Dave Wandin.
This course pays the rent.
The workshop in more detail:
This workshop has emerged after a long slow percolation of two things said to me, more than once, by Aboriginal people. The first, a question – what happened to you that you would do this to us? The second, a statement – we’re ok, it’s you lot that have the problems – go and work on yourselves.
I have felt the importance and truth of these words, and have sought to create a space where we can, in groups, sincerely and deeply investigate them. We do this through the help and guidance of the eldership of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous thinkers whose work I have collated.
This work is not instead of, or meaning to supplant, the wisdom and guidance of local Aboriginal people – that is an irreplaceable and essential part of our learning, and a gift to honour. My work is offered in the hope that, through deepening our historical and contextual understanding and emotionally processing the grief of our history, we have more space to allow new learning. That we may better understand the greatness of the gift that is a Welcome to Country, so as to offer a more heartfelt Acknowledgement of the gift.
What, also, does it mean to feel we have a deep spiritual connection with land that has been stolen? How do we reconcile with this moral confusion? These are some of the questions that we let ourselves be guided by, on the way to a more just and compassionate Australian culture.
We cover:
Returning to the Roots: The European tradition: including Goethe, Jung, and the deep and hidden history of faerie, otherwise known as nature connection.
Re-enchantment: tradition and the power of the spoken word.
Rooting in Ancient Earth: The Aboriginal tradition. The Gift, the meaning of Country, Dreaming and Dadirri, (Deep Listening).
Speaking your words: a whole group sharing of experiences and acknowledgements.
This course was first developed for the Jung Society of Melbourne, and so the thinking of Carl Jung underpins the approach. As both therapist and cultural agent Jung held space for difficult questions and saw the deeply personal as necessary for cultural and political transformation. He brought awareness of the archetypal realm (pattern thinking) and of Anima Mundi – the soulfulness and animacy of earth.
In the spirit of Jungian processes, the investigation will take a depth psychological approach to researching and creating your own Acknowledgement of Country. We will be using a tool Jung developed, Active Imagination, to sense and dialogue with the idea of Country. You will be invited to deeply, personally, and somatically engage in the practice of Acknowledging Country through invocation – speaking aloud to animate Country, and listening for words that feel true and real.