Find the first bar: Money

When I first started thinking seriously about decolonising my life, I was living in a rental property in the suburbs. I'd been doing a lot of reading, particularly Daniel Quinn, and one day I just wanted to light a fire outside in my backyard, so I did. But, then I became really conscious of the smoke. My neighbours were right there. I was completely surrounded by houses. I remember thinking, this isn't okay. How am I supposed to live? We're not actually supposed to live this close together. I just wanted to sit outside by a fire.

I started imagining what it would be like to live in a hut somewhere. With neighbours close enough that there was still community, but far enough away that I had privacy. Somewhere I could light a fire without worrying the smoke was going through someone else's window. I just wanted space. And then I realised I was renting someone else's property. If I wanted that space, under the system I was living in, I needed to own the land.

That didn't sit right with me. Why should I have to buy land? From my perspective as a Palawa woman, that doesn't make sense. But I also understood the structures imposed around me. Whether I agreed with them or not, if I wanted to live the way I was imagining, I was going to have to buy land. Which meant I needed money. And there it was.

The first bar.

Once I saw it, I started seeing how much of my life depended on money. I needed money to buy the land. To get the money, I needed a job. To save enough meant years of working. But it wasn't just the land…

How was I going to clothe myself? I didn't know how to make clothes, so I had to buy them. How was I going to feed myself? I didn't really know how. I struggled with the veggie garden, and veggies weren't going to be enough anyway. I also needed meat. Living in a rental, I was reliant on the supermarket.

And then there was medical care. I've continued to use Western medicine. That meant money too. The more I looked, the worse it got! Everything I needed to live seemed to require money, and because I needed money, I had to work. That realisation felt terrible. I realised how deep I was in it. I was so reliant on the system that, for a while, it felt like there was no hope of ever getting out.

I couldn't just decide I didn't believe in it anymore and walk away. I still needed to eat. I still needed clothes. I still needed somewhere to live. I still needed medical care, and I didn't have the skills to provide most of those things for myself. But eventually, I realised I didn't have to get out all at once. I didn't need to suddenly buy a block of land, disappear into the bush and magically know how to do everything. I could just learn one skill, then another.

I didn't need to become a master at any of them. I didn't need to become an expert. Just enough. And importantly, I could start doing that while I was still in a rental. That changed something for me. I was still participating in the monetary system. I still had a job, I still paid rent, still went to the supermarket, but in my spare time, I could start learning. Instead of spending all that time watching TV or just doing some of the things we're told we need to do, I could use some of it to build skills, bit by bit. Every skill that I learned was one less thing completely dependent on money.

And something unexpected happened - As my reliance on money decreased, I was able to save more of it. That meant the thing that I was trying to escape my reliance on could actually help me get closer to buying the land that would give me the space to reduce that reliance even further.

There's a contradiction in that. I'm not pretending there isn't. I'm trying to decolonise my life while still living inside the structures I'm trying to dismantle. I don't think I can simply step outside it. What I can do is start identifying where I'm dependent on it and slowly build alternatives.

Money was the first bar I could see clearly.

But once I started pulling at it, I realised it wasn't standing there by itself. Money was connected to my job. My job was connected to my time. Money was connected to how I got my food. And my lack of skills was keeping me dependent on all of it.

The cage was starting to take shape.

I wasn't getting out yet, but at least now I could see the bars.