In ancient and indigenous cultures across the world, the concept of people being "at one" with nature is common.
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Records show that this is often related to shamanism, ceremonies and festivals.
While many ancient civilisations found plant medicine induced altered states that evoked spiritual concepts, Buddhist cultures - for example - showed these same states can be experienced through practices such as meditation and chanting.
Many cultures - including American Indians and pagans - also used dancing and drumming to connect them to nature and notions of the divine.
The Australian Aboriginal people have their own version of these beliefs and ideas, which informs their culture, philosophy and dreamtime stories of creation.
Dr Paul Hodge, a senior lecturer in geography and environmental studies at the University of Newcastle, said the Aboriginal people see no difference between themselves and the land.
"Essentially they are the land - they are country," Dr Hodge said.
"There's no distinction at all between Mother Earth and them. To care for country is to care for themselves.
"As [Aboriginal elder] Uncle Lex always says, when you're healing country, you're healing yourself. That's the thing that's missed in the Western world."
When humans connect to nature, "it's a bond that moves beyond that human-centric, human exceptionalism that's been normalised".
Dr Hodge said his own Celtic and Germanic ancestral connections "go back to the same kind of creation stories in western Europe, Ireland and England".
He said the Industrial Revolution, modernisation and consumerism had "taken us away from those connections where we see ourselves as different and apart from nature".
Healing the Land
Dr Hodge and his students work with an Aboriginal group called the Yanama Budyari Gumada Collective, which just won the inaugural Aboriginal Heritage category in the 2020 National Trust Heritage Awards.
The project involves activities and rituals that foster "caring for country" in the Yellomundee Regional Park in the Blue Mountains.
The collective is guided by Indigenous Darug custodians Uncle Lex Dadd and Aunty Corina Norman-Dadd.
Dr Hodge said Uncle Lex speaks of "coming back home" and "reconnecting with ancestral creation stories".
"This is where Indigenous and First Nation folks can teach us so much," he said.
The collective holds camps in which invasive maple trees are used to make "clapsticks".
These Aboriginal instruments are used in ceremonies, along with circles in which people yarn to each other and share knowledge.
As participants make the instruments, they learn "patience and humility".
There's also dancing circles in which participants "reconnect back to the ancestors" and heal the land in a "highly colonised space" once used for farming.
Cultural burns are used to rid the land of invasive plants like lantana to help rejuvenate native plants, grasses and animals.
Participants learn how to sign into nature. Or, in Aboriginal parlance, sign into country.
This is done with white ochre handprints placed on trees such as casuarinas. Part of this ritual involves starting a relationship with the land and a reciprocal obligation to look after it.
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