“No English words are good enough to give a sense of the links between
an Aboriginal group and its homeland. Our word ‘home’, as warm and suggestive though it be, does not match the Aboriginal word that may
mean ‘camp’, ‘hearth’, ‘country’, ‘everlasting home’, ‘totem place’, ‘life source’, ‘spirit centre’ and much else all in one. Our word ‘land’ is too spare and meagre. We can now scarcely use it except with economic overtones unless we happen to be poets. The Aboriginal would speak of earth and use it in a rich symbolic way to mean his ‘shoulder’ or his ‘side’. I have seen an Aboriginal embrace the earth he walked on. To put our words ‘home’ and ‘land’ together into ‘homeland’ is a little better but not much. A different tradition leaves us tongueless and earless towards this other world of meaning and significance.”
WEH Stanner ‘After the Dreaming’ in Stanner.