Introduction

This chapter configures the “double helix” narratives of deserts in the Global North with the Great Victoria Desert in the southern Australia that acts “as genetic cartography” linking and foregrounding issues of embodiment via colonial and gendered desertscapes. The Anthropocene condition complicates the idea of “home” or “oikos.” It undertakes an analysis of two films by the First Nations director, Ivan Sen, namely Mystery Road which highlights the post-1788 pastoral traditions of sheep-meat, beef and grain production and Goldstone which depicts the pressure that mining companies have put on Australia's oldest extant environments. The chapter demonstrates how the narratives of the palai landscape in the Sangam literature can be experienced even today in certain desolate landscapes of Tamil Nadu. The complexity of the Anthropocene contributes to this ongoing human project of mindfully dwelling in desert/desertifying scapes.