Jack Davis has a particularly complex relationship with the landscape. It is based on his connection with the land as traditionally understood by his people: a connection Davis had to rediscover as a young man, after his family had been relocated to Perth from northern Western Australia. In addition, his years as a stockman in the north have broadened his view of the land as a resource. That is, he also sees the land as someone who has earned a living from it (in the European sense), and has survived in some of Australia’s harshest terrain, both as someone trained in Aboriginal ways of using and living on the land, and as an employee of white pastoralists.
This gives him a unique insight into European agricultural uses of the land, and into the attitudes of the white stockmen with whom he worked. European concepts of living on (or rather, off) the land are strikingly different to the values of Aboriginal communities, with which Davis has a political affinity. Although both are linked to the concept of the land as a resource, this is understood in very different ways.
Jack Davis has seen the destruction of the land by the farmers and foresters, and has also felt the belonging that he tries to explain in some of his early poems.
This is perhaps best seen in ‘Day Flight’ (6), which illustrates his ways of seeing the country to which he belongs. It describes his flight in a plane over the land, giving him a chance to see his country from above. Instead of looking out of the window, he closes his eyes and describes the land as he sees it within him. He is able to perceive the whole country, from the sky to sea to rivers to lakes to desert, with his eyes closed.
His descriptions are of a land that is valued as his mother, that protects him, that is his home:
And most I longed for, there as I dreamed,
A square of the desert, stark and red,
To mould a pillow for a sleepy head
And a cloak to cover me
Davis acknowledges that the desert can be difficult and harsh, but does not see it (as white writers often do) as hostile and inhospitable. In fact, he seems uncomfortable at being out of touch with the land, hundreds of metres above it. This is exactly the view of the land conveyed by the artists of several Western Desert and Kimberley communities, although this ‘satellite’ visual map of the country is a form which preceded the ability to view the ground from the air by many centuries.
In several other poems, Davis attempts to explain this sense of belonging, and to sing the praises of his country. In ‘Land’ (7), he clearly asks:
oh white man
how can I make you understand
this love of land?
How indeed? He does his best. Through the use of both emotive language and simple rhetoric, he describes his love of land as a relationship which is like that of a mother and her child:
It has the touch of a child’s fingertips
to a mother's lips.
The land as a source is here given a much more fundamental meaning: that of the source of the people, parent of all who live within and relate to her as (dependent) children. It is also described in almost clichéd terms as a beloved one (“her loveliness is summer red”). The land is an almost human force, in particular, a womanly force, who is ever present, day and night, and dwells even in the stars as the mother of “a black nation’s dreamtime”.
This vision is also explored in ‘Soul’ (8), in which the land is described again as a woman, a lover, a healer, a provider, and as a contradictory combination of all things. Above all, she is an essential part of the poet, and his romantic poetry:
She is my soul, this land of mine.
The belonging is a two-way process; each belongs to, and is part of, the other, and is sustained by the relationship. This relationship, in turn, sustains both country and people in their experience of the European invasion.
In poems such as ‘The Executioner’ (9) and ‘Red Gum and I’ (10), Davis illustrates his empathic relationship with the land and its native flora and fauna, in the face of destruction. In ‘The Executioner’, he expresses a sense of solidarity with the felled tree, in clipped, sharp tones that reflect both the speed with which thousands of years of growth can be wiped out, and also the short-sightedness of the exploiters:
Material might
Kills—mauls ...
While tree and I
Together bleed.
He is also contrasting the European view of the land as an economic resource, the tree as income, while the poet (an Aboriginal persona) sees the tree as part of a more complex system, linked with his own survival and exploitation. In ‘The Red Gum and I’, Davis goes even further, into the private world of the earth, escaping from the “dirty white…glib tongues…fears and promises…platitudes and Hells”.
In contrast to the promises of Christian salvation offered by white missionaries (now acknowledged as a source of a great deal of intentional cultural colonisation), Davis suggests that real sanctuary can only be found in unspoiled nature. The imagery is often quite violent, tormented, as he pleas for salvation which contrasts to the
Fears and promises like worms
That twist and churn within my mind,
Enter my brain, then out again.
The imagery here reflects the violence being done to the tree, to the country, and to its people. Davis uses the tree to symbolise the centuries-old traditions he sees being destroyed by the onslaught of a homogeneous European culture, as well as the actual physical violence committed against his people.
It is partly imagery derived from Christianity’s own culture (hell is hardly a pleasant concept) and use of suffering and physical pain as symbols of spiritual life before salvation. But the “promises” are seen as threats, compared to the deep-rooted traditions of life-long belonging which continue beyond physical death.
Davis has been the subject of mixed critical reaction, and has never achieved the widespread popularity of Oodgeroo, although he is perhaps better known in his home state, and better known as a playwright than a poet. But the integration of his lives as a writer, as a spokesperson for his community, and as a patron of the rapidly developing Aboriginal arts sector in Western Australia, ought not to be under-estimated. In particular, although famous for his works in English, he initiated the reconstruction of his endangered language, Bibbulmum, a symbolic part of the rebuilding of linguistic and cultural traditions amongst Aboriginal people in Western Australia.
Like many other modern Aboriginal poets, his work as a poet is inseparable from his other political and cultural work. The sense of land and the politics of landscape are inherent and potent in his poetry.