ABSTRACT

This chapter provides an ethnographic account of the cultural significance of the Darling River which flows through Wilcannia in far western New South Wales (NSW), Australia. It explores the ways in which Barkindji Aboriginal ways of knowing and experiencing the River intersect with, and vary from, those of Australian settler society and what this means for Aboriginal cultural health, cultural identity and wellbeing. Both Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal people in Wilcannia have their own ideas of what constitutes belonging, wellbeing and a sense of place. In order to understand the effects that the white denial of Barkindji culture has on the wellbeing of Barkindji people, knowledge of the Aboriginal concepts of country' and the Dreamtime' or Dreaming' is necessary. The Darling River which runs through Wilcannia was, according to many of the Aboriginal inhabitants, created by Ngatji, the ancestral Rainbow Serpent.