Crow Country: Chapter 15 Summary & Analysis

Ellie is worried about Sadie, who has been a bit out of sorts the past week at school and at home. Meanwhile, Sadie keeps thinking of the crow’s words: “When the Law is broken there must be punishment!” She keeps dreaming that she is looking for something and running. At school, she’s been noticing crows following her everywhere. Still, Sadie tells her mother that she wants to go to the school’s art show that night. David and Walter will be there, as Walter has a piece in the show. Ellie tells her that David helped coach the boys’ footy practice last night.

At the art show, Ellie, Sadie, and David look at Walter’s painting. Ellie and Sadie are very impressed—the painting is of Auntie Lily, Walter’s relative. As she looks at the painting, Sadie notices a crow in it. When she asks David about it, he says it is Auntie Lily’s totem. Just then, they are interrupted by Craig Mortlock. He’s very happy with the way David coached the boys the previous night and tells David that maybe he will have a permanent position as coach, though David insists he only wants to give a hand to the team.

Sadie and Ellie end up in David and Walter’s kitchen for dinner. The conversation turns to the totems that Walter mentioned earlier, and Ellie asks him about them again. Walter says that some of what he is about to tell them is secret. But he assumes that they know about the Dreaming—the time, long ago, when ancestral spirits walked across the land and created it and its inhabitants. Walter says that in the area of Boort, “everything belongs to Bunjil the Eaglehawk or Waa the Crow.” David mentions that one of the creeks in the area used to be called Crow Creek, but now it is known as Cross Creek. He tells Sadie that “whitefellas” changed the name because they thought crows were unlucky. Ellie adds that there’s a church there now, and perhaps the name changed when the whites built a church there.

Walter says that his people have lived “in this country for forty thousand years, maybe more.” And they survived because they “knew how to live with the land, not fight it.” Walter adds that his people are still surviving, despite the arrival of the white men. David wonders whether Bunjil and Waa are still surviving, and Sadie cries out they are. Ellie and David laugh at her, but Walter only looks at her intently.