DR MEGAN JACEGLAV is an academic, an activist and nature advocate. She will always speak for the birds, the bees and the trees.

ON the night of September 11, only 50 metres from where this leafy elder stood watch, just two white men spoke.

Amidst the din of city chambers it was councillors Ben Lawver and Adin Lang who spoke for this tree. 

You know the tree. 

The grand old Moreton Bay fig. 

She knows you. She knows your mothers, your fathers, your grand and great grandparents. And more. 

She was brought as a seedling from another land, and nestled her roots into the sandy soil, some 140 years ago. 

And there she made home. 

How she grew, how she endured.

There were at times, others around her, of her own kind, leafy others. 

Slowly

Slowly and surely the axes and saws, the greed, and ignorance tore them down. 

Her roots shivered often and dug deeper into the soil. 

She watched, bold and kind, as this, her coastal plain was carved and sliced, stripping the red flowering gum, the candlestick banksia, the elegant tea tree from her view. 

As bitumen started to suffocate her peripheral veins she dug her roots deeper, spreading her canopy still, with trust and hope. 

Life scuttled amidst her limbs; butterfly, raven, magpie and wagtail rested on her outstretched branches, singing to the sky. 

Her parasol of green valiantly shaded the passerby. 

Oh how they passed by. 

Once the horses, the wharfers, the musicians, squatting for hours, the Noongar people gathering close, they knew her roots. 

The winters she endured, the parching sun, the gentle spring, the joyous celebrations and the mournful processions.

She watched. 

Recently uncommon crowds have gathered under her, around her. 

Some embracing her hearty trunk, patting, reassuring, loving. 

There have been speeches, cameras, politicians. 

She is not sure why, perhaps it is because she is after all, so significant. 

It was not clear to her and is impossible to comprehend that eight public officials were later gathered, not to celebrate her, not to give honour and thanks but to decide for her, for all the life she has sheltered, if she was in fact significant. 

It would never occur to her that of these eight officials, councillor Sullivan, who had been shaded by her canopy many times, councillor Wong, a young woman, who has yet to see or know much of life, and councillor Archibald who lives not so far from where her roots nestle deep, would declare that she is not. 

On this Spring evening, they did not speak for this tree.

They were, however, emphatic about how hard they had thought about the issue; how it was a difficult decision to vote against her significance. 

Councillor Archibald insisted it was not that she doesn’t like trees, no, but she must stay consistent with her prior thoughts on this matter.  

And Councillor Wong intimated that her decision not to offer this 140-year-old tree local protection, aligned with her commitments to protecting ecological heritage. 

Councillor Sullivan suggested that its significance, or lack thereof, should be considered in another phase, when the developers come along. 

Caring

 And then there were the two older white men, councillors, who did not admit to caring, thinking about or otherwise considering our ecological kin. 

Rather it was non-pragmatic and a flat waste of their time to be asked to do so. 

There is a theory, a thought world perhaps, in ecological and earth protection circles of late, it speaks of epistemic violence, epistemic injustice. 

It is coupled often with reflections on positionality, intersectionality and reflexivity. 

What this all means is that as a being, as a winged being, a long leafed elder, a crawling numbat or a soaring Ngoolark, you have self-hood, you have knowing, you have inherent value, that if ignored, sublimated or otherwise disregarded is an act of violence. 

Occasionally, as was the occasion on September 11 in the City of Fremantle, there is a moment of symbolic potency, a chance to correct the course of the darkened river, to not act in violence. 

This, like turning points of great beauty or great sorrow, brings the perhaps naive yearning and hope of the community to the surface, the willingness to trust in the ‘humanity’ of these people gathered at the table. 

That night this choice by five of the eight present, was not made. 

Rather in declaring that this leafy bastion of grace, generosity and beauty is somehow not significant they struck the executioners axe on 140 years of storied life. 

To those who tried otherwise, to the two white men, to Ben and Adin, who spoke for her, to Doug, who raised his hand in support, thank you. 

We the community speak for her too, and will together grieve, as a part of our worlds, our hope, our stories die when her mighty limbs come crashing down.