I begin by acknowledging the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the custodians of the land upon which I live and work, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
I also acknowledge the Aeta, the indigenous people within whose ancestral domain my own Kapampangan Nation emerged.
The first of my family to be born in Australia, I was born on Durramuragal Country, and grew up on Bidgigal and Burramattagal Country. Unlike many parts of the Darug Nation, the area where we lived had not been used by Europeans for agriculture before subdivision, but was cleared for housing from native forest, making us and our neighbours the first non-Aboriginal community to live there, and making our debt to the Bidgigal and Burramattagal and their Country much more immediate.
The architects of our neighbourhood were part of a generation of Sydney architects who turned away from the International Style of the early twentieth century and sought instead to design housing that was integrated with the landscape, in other words, the first generation of European architects on Darug land to attempt to design with Country. This intention took on special meaning in our neighbourhood where architects were responding not to a pastoral landscape created by European hands, but directly to Country as maintained by Bidgigal and Burramattagal knowledge for millennia. The design response that resulted, the architecture of our home, its relationship to its Country, the geography of the Country itself—all inspired me to become both an architect and a geographer, and the type of architect and geographer I aim to be. That is—one who always works with Country, and never simply upon it.
And so I acknowledge the Gadigal, Durramuragal, Bidgigal, Burramattagal, Aeta, and all other indigenous custodians of the lands upon which I live and work, not simply for their custodianship of Country, but also for the example they set, inspiring and guiding the work of the architects, geographers and all other place makers, indigenous and non-indigenous, who follow them in Dreaming.
Kerwin Datu
October 2022