Flooding, burning, drying, mining, damming, polluting, massacring, displacing. We recognise that flooding, burning and drying are not necessarily damaging or violent and can indeed... Flooding, burning, drying, mining, damming, polluting, massacring, displacing. We recognise that flooding, burning and drying are not necessarily damaging or violent and can indeed be healing at times; however, in the context of the changing climate, the impacts of these phenomena are increasingly harmful. Our relations with Country are imbued with the realities of colonisation as deliberate, violent destruction of Country (Whyte, 2021). Mitchell and Todd (2016, no page number) frame this as Earth violence: “the role of foundational violence in the Anthropocene, and the distinctively colonial violence enacted through the forces reshaping the Earth and the discourses arising to describe them”. Earth violence, as “genocidal settler colonial, white supremacist, capitalist violence” (Hernández et al., 2021, p. 841), is ever-present. Our stories identified desecrations of Country through extractive interventions of dams and mines, the pollution of water, the proliferation of weeds, and spray-paint on forbidden sites (“I want to scrub the desecration away”). We expressed our pain about damage to Country caused by climate change: a manifestation of colonisation that affects places, bodies, the atmosphere, and biosphere (Neimanis, 2019). Several members discussed bushfires that “wreaked havoc” on thousands of hectares of Country with “water bomber helicopters” and the loss of wildlife and homes. Another described Country as “drought-cracked Earth”. Two members shared their grief over the loss of special places on rivers due to flooding: Up further from the bridge, there used to be a big rock (rusty stone, maroon) that could fit many cousins – sunbaking, playing, or climbing. Nan would bring us down there to wash and swim ::: This used to be the best spot. The big rock (which was always much bigger in my memory) would heat up on a sunny day and you could lay on your towel and get warm after the swim. Over the years, the floods would bring more and more sand and eventually the big rock was covered up. Only the tip of it poked out from the layers and layers of sand ::: I always had hope after a flood that this time the sand would be swept away and not pile up – I wanted to see my big red rock again. This never happened. Only more sand. The floods ripped away the river banks because of all the trees being taken out. Those that were left were ripped out and acted as battering rams, taking out swathes of trees. Our river looks nothing like when I was a kid. There is grief there, because those places we went to and played at are gone. Forever changed. And I worry where we’re going as things worsen. Across the world, Indigenous worldviews expound the interconnectedness between humans and nature (Redvers et al., 2022): that we (humans) are Country (Gay’wu Group of Women, 2019). Reflecting this, our stories shared how Earth violence has been, and continues to be, perpetrated against Country through her people. Violent acts have occurred and continue to occur in our precious places: the displacement of Aboriginal peoples; the removal of Aboriginal children; the death of an Aboriginal mother during childbirth; the deliberate lack of consultation with Aboriginal peoples in white archival research; and the stark lack of basic amenities such as power and water for Aboriginal peoples living “on the reserve”. Our grief for family members who have passed was also located in place. We each expressed anger, hurt, pain, grief, and loss as “affective dimensions of destruction”. One collective member identified, “We all have great concern about the destruction of our Country”, and we all nodded when another asserted, “I’m so angry about everything”. Several members shared how we feel desecration and destruction of Country in our bodies, an ongoing experience of loss over time. Through yarning, this embodiment enabled solidarity with each other’s losses, pain and trauma, and we sat (virtually) together in collective sorrow. Importantly, one member stressed our individual and collective agency in the context of Earth violence: “We are all complicit now”. At the core of our losses are “obligation and responsibility” that demand from us a commitment to find ways of collectively caring with and for Country. Storying together can nurture, spread and enliven this care. Read more