dis-combob-ulat-ed....

...is how you feel when, suddenly, you get 'home' unexpectedly, dip your toes in the Indian Ocean at sundown and then suddenly, with no prior planning, dunk your head in the Pacific at sunrise.

After feeling homesick for a number of weeks and a little bit disorientated and, both perturbed and disturbed! by my experiences in Native Title I came home to be with my family on hearing the news of my uncle's passing. It was a strange feeling. After pining for 'home' for quite some time I got back to Wollongong only to feel like something had irrevocably altered and that the grounding in people and place (thought to be a necessary pre-requisite for homesickness) had evaporated. Gone. Illusion. It was, well, discombobulating (to use a simple word).

The tinglings about the desert, native title work and the people and places I have had the privilege of experiencing and meeting over the last few weeks started on the plane. As excited as I was to fly over a lush green south coast landscape, absolutely drowned in water after seeing nothing but browns, reds, yellows and salty dams for days on end and as I felt that familiar feeling of moisture and abundance wash over my skin and soothe my eyes (I get this after a day in Canberra) there was a niggling yearning inside me to turn back and once again scuff my bootheels in the red dust of outback WA.

As you have done nothing but hear me complain about native title work on this blog maybe it's time to explain some of the good things and the reason for a kind of infectiousness that I feel about doing work with a native title rep body.

It's humbling to work alongside people from whom there is so much to learn about life. Groups that conduct business according to relationship building and mutual benefit rather than at an arm's length. That it really does make a difference getting people all the way to remote places at time and cost to discuss a mining tenement for five minutes rather than by email or phone. It can demonstrate who's committed to treating traditional owners with respect and who is not.

Working alongside people that recognise what they have capacity to fight for and walk away from what they do not ... and who know this limit! this comes from age and experience struggling in circumstances often far more onerous than anything I have likely encountered in my life. And who defend the personal and communal right to be self-determinate with all they have, smelling bullshit and patronising attitudes from miles and miles away.

Working with people who under the most trying and offensive of circumstances will often respond with humour, good grace and a hell of a biting wit.

Plotting in my head that this is just a stage on the way to self-determination and treaty and that I am not just another white lawyer benefiting from the 'Native title industry'.

Knowing that it is a privilege to work alongside these groups and that while I bring some skills to the bargaining table that the traditional owners can be bringing so much more that sometimes they are willing to share. The most important thing I think I can learn is how to build relationships based on respect. This appears to be the singularly most important aspect of working in indigenous communities and while it goes both ways, I still think this white-middle-of-the-road-young-law girl has an incredibly lot more to learn. There's a job going in Perth, maybe it's time to pick up 'home' and move.