Speaker 1: Quae Cast Unite our voices. This podcast is brought to
Speaker 1: you by on Track Studio. Welcome to Yannier, the podcast
Speaker 1: that showcases First Nations stories and conversations to help us
Speaker 1: learn and unlearn Australia's history to work towards a better future.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, proud barber woman and founder of Blackwattel
Speaker 1: Coaching and Consulting, Caroline cow We acknowledge the Runderi people
Speaker 1: and elders where this podcast is taped, but we also
Speaker 1: acknowledge the lands that you are listening in from today.
Speaker 1: It always was and always will be unseated aboriginal and
Speaker 1: tourist Red Islander Land. Well, I'm super grateful for today's guest.
Speaker 1: I had the privilege of connecting with Allah Noah Bancraft
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago at a retreat and I
Speaker 1: just left feeling so inspired by their gentle but fierce
Speaker 1: honesty in how you know they see the world and
Speaker 1: challenge us to think about our places in the world.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, it's an incredible honor and privilege today
Speaker 1: to be sitting down with Alan Noah Bancroft. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being here, my sis, and welcome to yarning.
Speaker 2: Up dingy lasses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as we always do on this show. It's beautiful
Speaker 1: to just sort of check in and ground ourselves with
Speaker 1: person and place. So I'm wondering if you could introduce
Speaker 1: yourself how you'd like to be introduced?
Speaker 2: Sure, elegaate. My name is Ella.
Speaker 3: I'm a proud andreline woman from the northern New South
Speaker 3: Wales region and also have ties to Scotland and Poland
Speaker 3: on my maternal line. Currently run an indigenous charity here
Speaker 3: on country and privilege to work and play and live
Speaker 3: on my ancestral lands.
Speaker 1: Beautiful and beautiful country there, Bundolong country as well.
Speaker 4: You're so lucky.
Speaker 3: I'm a bit biased, you know. I always think it's paradise.
Speaker 1: Fat No, it really is so lovely up there, and
Speaker 1: I imagine that, you know, the country there would sort
Speaker 1: of like shape, you know, really deeply. Yeah, some of
Speaker 1: the places and spaces that you are because you're just
Speaker 1: surrounded by lush and green and moving with the seasons,
Speaker 1: I imagine there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And Bungelin is also you know where the five rivers.
Speaker 3: We've got five major rivers that run through. It's where freshwater, meat, saltwater,
Speaker 3: and also first light it's the most easily point of Australia.
Speaker 3: So like literally the sun Yelgin hits that part of
Speaker 3: Joggon Country first and foremost, but we're with anywhere else
Speaker 3: on the continent.
Speaker 1: Wow. So what time is the sun rising there for
Speaker 1: you follows.
Speaker 2: It's around six ish. Yeah. Yeah, we've got some long days.
Speaker 3: I mean, because we're quite close up to the Queensland border,
Speaker 3: we've definitely got longer days.
Speaker 2: But I feel like they're longer and now.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, I think that's just because the seasons are
Speaker 1: very abrupt here and everyone's just working their holes. Also,
Speaker 1: everything feels long and drawn out and gray.
Speaker 2: Good lays.
Speaker 1: So you're born and raised on your country, on your homelands.
Speaker 3: I was actually born in Gadagall Country and my mom
Speaker 3: and my dad moved there in the early eighties and
Speaker 3: mum had a home birth with me and my brother
Speaker 3: because you know, in our family line, hospitals have never
Speaker 3: been a safe place to birth. I'm not let alone
Speaker 3: a safe place for our family, so she birthed us
Speaker 3: there and both our placentas are buried somewhere in the
Speaker 3: inner West of Syday. But when I was about just
Speaker 3: before I turned five, we moved back up to country
Speaker 3: and then you know, had a lot of like my
Speaker 3: primary school life being raised here, and we've always been
Speaker 3: deeply connected and come home all the time my whole life.
Speaker 1: Well, how special and how special to hear that you
Speaker 1: were brought into this world in a home birth. I
Speaker 1: think that's just so beautiful and so special. So born
Speaker 1: on Gadigall. Your placenter's there in the Inner West. I'm
Speaker 1: actually pregnant at the moment, and I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: what i want to do with my placenter, and I
Speaker 1: think I'm still deciding, but I think I'm going to
Speaker 1: put it in some capsules and eat it back in
Speaker 1: my body.
Speaker 4: I hear, that's really good for you.
Speaker 3: My younger sister, we drove we actually kept her pleasenter
Speaker 3: in the freezer for like ten months and then drove
Speaker 3: it up in an eski from Sydney.
Speaker 2: To Banjoe and buried it on our ancestral land.
Speaker 1: How special, Oh my goodness, the legacies continue.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 1: Well, you know you you carry the stories as you
Speaker 1: save many bloodlines. Bundelung woman Scottish Polish. I mean I'm
Speaker 1: keen to sort of understand a bit more about Yeah,
Speaker 1: your personal story and you know what it was like
Speaker 1: for you growing up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess as a mixed raced woman. But living
Speaker 3: in Australia and growing up with my community both on Gatigol,
Speaker 3: I was always around a big Indigenous community there when
Speaker 3: I was growing up, and also on Bunjelung. I've always
Speaker 3: identified a lot with my indigenous side. But as I
Speaker 3: got older, I started to realize that, like if I
Speaker 3: wanted other people to not claim the colony and the
Speaker 3: immature culture we called Australia, I also needed to re
Speaker 3: establish a relationship with my ancestors on that Polish and
Speaker 3: Scottish side. And as I actually dive deeper into understanding
Speaker 3: some research, I've actually became like, I'm really proud of
Speaker 3: my Scottish side. I feel like the Scots were really
Speaker 3: fierce in not only fighting colonization and their indigenous people
Speaker 3: were called the Pinks.
Speaker 2: But they feel like real.
Speaker 3: Warriors and like tied in with my Bungelung ancestors. I
Speaker 3: feel like that's what gives me the kind of fire
Speaker 3: to walk through the world that I do. I do
Speaker 3: hope one day to do some kind of pilgrimage with
Speaker 3: my mum and my sister back to that place, and
Speaker 3: I always kind of tend to go more with my
Speaker 3: maternal sign.
Speaker 2: Because it feels, it just feels the truest.
Speaker 3: For me to be claiming that those ancestral lines. But
Speaker 3: that's just for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so beautiful to hear that and hear about Yeah,
Speaker 1: your early experiences. Yeah, it's interesting I sort of share
Speaker 1: a similar sort of Definitely, it's very resonant. I grew
Speaker 1: up with an aboriginal mom, single mom, and didn't really
Speaker 1: know my dad and way up until later in life,
Speaker 1: until I was, you know, my late twenties, and my
Speaker 1: mom's aboriginal. My dad is yes, Scottish English, And yeah,
Speaker 1: similarly went on like a path after he passed away,
Speaker 1: just being like, what is this white side of me?
Speaker 1: And how do I reconcile my whiteness? I guess or
Speaker 1: try to understand that and how it's located and defined?
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was really painful because we came across
Speaker 1: like all these links between colonizers of course and our mob.
Speaker 1: But then also yeah, kind of similarly saw that they
Speaker 1: were fierce anti colonial warriors fighting the resistance, and so
Speaker 1: sometimes I'm like, oh, is this my white side, it's
Speaker 1: my black side, who knows. But there's this real strong
Speaker 1: sense of fight and justice and resolve on both of
Speaker 1: our sides, and it's yeah, it's nice to sort of
Speaker 1: make space for them all in some ways.
Speaker 4: Hey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And also like I think I hope to inspire
Speaker 3: or encourage other people to do their own ancestual work.
Speaker 3: Like I feel like, as indigenous people in this country,
Speaker 3: every day we get up and we research more about
Speaker 3: our families and our culture because it was almost taken
Speaker 3: from us, you know, So every day we're relearning or
Speaker 3: learning or getting given the knowledge systems passed down to us.
Speaker 3: But it's not just like that all just came to us.
Speaker 3: And so I feel like other people should step into
Speaker 3: that space too and reclaim the ancestors. I recently found
Speaker 3: that that we carry fourteen generations in our body, which
Speaker 3: equates to sixty five plus thousand ancestors, like their cellular
Speaker 3: memory is carried within our body. And for me, I'm like,
Speaker 3: how could you just call yourself austrayan? It just seems
Speaker 3: like such an injustice.
Speaker 2: To all of those people who fought so hard to
Speaker 2: get you to this place, to be here right now.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if anybody knows my work, but
Speaker 3: I'm not the greatest fan of the colony too, And
Speaker 3: I think one of the ways that we can really
Speaker 3: resist it is by not identifying with it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, there's so much to sort of like
Speaker 1: unpack there. But I mean, firstly, sixty five thousand ancestors,
Speaker 1: doesn't that give you, like, when you're walking into a room,
Speaker 1: especially as a black follow that legitimacy of who you are,
Speaker 1: to know that you carry, that you carry those stories
Speaker 1: and that strength and that love and reciprocity and that fight.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you're so right, And I feel like that's
Speaker 1: really where we're at right now in terms of like
Speaker 1: what we're seeing here and global is that there is
Speaker 1: just countries forge in denial of who they are and
Speaker 1: how they've come to be, and that it's so people
Speaker 1: almost divorced of themselves. They're divorced of community, and they
Speaker 1: would much rather sit in this like very comfortable manufactured
Speaker 1: sense of nationalism't it, instead of really doing that inner
Speaker 1: work and thinking about themselves. And yeah, you're right, we
Speaker 1: sort of have to do that as well and honor that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, people are just so incredibly disconnected from all
Speaker 1: of those ancestors and their stories and then and it's
Speaker 1: quite sad in some ways. Hey, like as much as
Speaker 1: it really puts it, you get real wild at it.
Speaker 1: There's a part of me that just bes like these
Speaker 1: more be hurting, you.
Speaker 2: Know for sure.
Speaker 3: And also you know, it's something in the like, how
Speaker 3: do we retrace the unified story that the colony or
Speaker 3: colonization and capitalism doesn't actually benefit us, not just mob
Speaker 3: but us as a society. You know, For me, I
Speaker 3: feel like until we peel back those layers and find
Speaker 3: that unifying story of serious disconnect which you know, the
Speaker 3: doctrine of discovery is one of the seed letters for
Speaker 3: colonization and how they took over so many indigenous lands
Speaker 3: across the globe. But this was happening back in Europe too,
Speaker 3: when they brought in the commons and they started taking
Speaker 3: and discolocating people from their lands. So when we reclaim
Speaker 3: that and our ancestry, we say a big fuck you too,
Speaker 3: or I don't.
Speaker 4: Know if I can say that, but yeah, you can.
Speaker 2: You the money, because.
Speaker 3: This isn't just our story, but we are touched by
Speaker 3: it because it's much closer to home, because we sit
Speaker 3: at the table with our NaN's and our aunties and
Speaker 3: our uncles and our brothers who are still impacted by
Speaker 3: colonization today.
Speaker 4: So so true.
Speaker 1: You know, building on that, I saw that you wrote
Speaker 1: a think tank recently around this topic, and it's something
Speaker 1: I sort of had the privilege of being us to
Speaker 1: sort of think about too. And yeah, it's interesting, like
Speaker 1: for for the first time in maybe a long time,
Speaker 1: and it's an awful it's an awful symptom of the
Speaker 1: colony and the centuries of harm across civilizations which we
Speaker 1: have seen that for the first time in a long time,
Speaker 1: it feels like indigenous like long standing issues of indigenous
Speaker 1: sovereignty and legitimacy are no longer just aboriginal issues indigenous
Speaker 1: issues anymore. And we're seeing it in climate action, in
Speaker 1: action crime, We're seeing it in like economic collapse, fossil
Speaker 1: fuel greed. We're seeing you know, this hyper individualization and
Speaker 1: relationship to imperialism affecting all people from all walks of life.
Speaker 1: And you're right, it's almost like we've been knocking on
Speaker 1: the doors and screaming into the abyss and all these
Speaker 1: things on looking at this from this holistic perspective, just
Speaker 1: so like the colony is making us all unwell and
Speaker 1: it kind of feels like they're is a growing momentum
Speaker 1: in this space.
Speaker 4: I'd love to sort of talk a little.
Speaker 1: Bit around you know, what has led you on this
Speaker 1: path to having these conversations about you know, decolonization and
Speaker 1: trying to reclaim and return back to our practices, you
Speaker 1: know where there's some moments in your journey that really
Speaker 1: led to that. And yeah, I guess these sort of
Speaker 1: conversations help with this bigger, growing, expansive movement which we're
Speaker 1: seeing right now as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think definitely the juxtaposition of being
Speaker 3: born in gadagl and I don't really remember that much,
Speaker 3: you know, of my younger childhood, but being back on
Speaker 3: country with my community and we live an hour and
Speaker 3: a half northwest of Grafton, where my ancestral lands by
Speaker 3: Jagama from and just being in that space of like,
Speaker 3: you know, we lived off grid before off grid was trendy,
Speaker 3: and we had our big washpool river that provided everything
Speaker 3: for us water, food, entertainment, play, and we got by
Speaker 3: that place all the time and we still do as
Speaker 3: a family. But actually having that lived experience of growing
Speaker 3: up really disconnected in a way from the dominant society
Speaker 3: and much more embedded in land based connection and community.
Speaker 3: And not to romanticize either, because you know, we also
Speaker 3: in northern New South Wales impacted here very heavily by
Speaker 3: massacres and the invaders coming through in the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 3: so it was still a mission that was created there.
Speaker 3: But you know the essence of just being with my
Speaker 3: family and just making a fire and swimming in the
Speaker 3: creek was so simple. And then when I kind of
Speaker 3: went back to Gadigul, I was like overwhelmed by the city,
Speaker 3: you know, and also just really this juxtaposition between Sydney
Speaker 3: and like couldn't get more remote and rule New South Wales.
Speaker 3: And I think that is probably like the first seed
Speaker 3: of when I started to realize the difference between these
Speaker 3: two very opposing cultures that were trying to coexist in
Speaker 3: the same continent. And then obviously growing up, like my
Speaker 3: mother is a very strong black artist and activist, and
Speaker 3: my whole life has always kind of you know, told
Speaker 3: us who we are and ensured that we've remained connected
Speaker 3: to our ancestral lands, our culture, and our family, because
Speaker 3: she didn't ever want us to just assimilate into what
Speaker 3: was the wider culture. And so I think I've always
Speaker 3: been really rebellious because of her in that way, and
Speaker 3: then finishing school, which, like you know, I was horrible
Speaker 3: at school. I had dyslexia. I was like put in
Speaker 3: special ed classes and I hated it. I hated the
Speaker 3: whole concept of the Western institution. And so when I
Speaker 3: finally broke free of that, I actually ended up at
Speaker 3: Sydney UNI, but I was just going there to socialize,
Speaker 3: like the little Geminiam. I got out of UNI there
Speaker 3: to work for my brother's organization AIM and again just
Speaker 3: you know, trying to support our younger people with an
Speaker 3: amazing model when he first started that, you know, really
Speaker 3: just going into schools and helping high school students. But
Speaker 3: again I just felt like this isn't the way for me.
Speaker 3: It's not the way to try and get our kids
Speaker 3: in those spaces.
Speaker 2: For me.
Speaker 3: I'm like, we need to actually make society realize how
Speaker 3: valuable our culture is and how valuable our cultural leaders are.
Speaker 3: And I guess I kind of disassociated for most of
Speaker 3: my twenties from Australia and didn't really want to be here. Actually,
Speaker 3: I found the culture quite repulsive in many ways and
Speaker 3: didn't feel like it had a lot of substance, especially
Speaker 3: coming from where I've come from. And I think travel
Speaker 3: really put a lot of things in perspective. I started
Speaker 3: just hitchhiking my way around the world and Mexico, Guatemala,
Speaker 3: ended up on the west coast of the States, and
Speaker 3: then met a really beautiful Native American brother and he
Speaker 3: actually introduced me to the concept of decolonizing, and that
Speaker 3: was kind of like maybe fifteen years back now, and
Speaker 3: I think he kind of planted that seed for me,
Speaker 3: and then I started to kind of investigate it, and
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: They were really progressive of there a lot.
Speaker 3: Of the native indigenous mob over there, so I was
Speaker 3: kind of sitting with them and seeing what they were
Speaker 3: talking about, and then come back home and then started
Speaker 3: exploring that through just recognizing, wow, this is such a juxtaposition,
Speaker 3: and actually if everyone returned to these more like earth
Speaker 3: based indigenous ways, we would not only be healthier, but
Speaker 3: country would be singing. You know, she would be in
Speaker 3: a day of joy again, because I really do think
Speaker 3: the colony is built on us being disconnected from not
Speaker 3: only the country, but ourselves and each other and it's
Speaker 3: also a culture that glorifies greed and status. And so
Speaker 3: this is what we communicate to our young people. We say,
Speaker 3: we see you when you are greedy and you hold
Speaker 3: and you accumulate wealth and you put yourself above others.
Speaker 3: And we also see you when you place yourself above
Speaker 3: another being and think you're better than And what I
Speaker 3: got taught with the law of the Land is like,
Speaker 3: you don't think you're better than anything, including the jari,
Speaker 3: the trees, you know, the animals that coexist with us.
Speaker 3: And I think this culture is just so dangerous because
Speaker 3: of these values and belief systems that are really embedded
Speaker 3: in such a young age to many of us, you know,
Speaker 3: especially if we went through the Western education system and
Speaker 3: didn't question it.
Speaker 1: Wow, gosh, so fascinating to hear that. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: you know, tracing back, so your early life was living
Speaker 1: on country, living in pretty humble, beautiful spiritual place in beginnings,
Speaker 1: and I guess how that sort of like transcends the
Speaker 1: lessons of your mom, understand Bronwan Bancruft, Your mom, Yeah, deadly,
Speaker 1: and just that sort of that early experience, like you say,
Speaker 1: living on country, off grid before it was kind of trending,
Speaker 1: and then I guess, yeah, interesting to hear that you
Speaker 1: had to abandon all that you sort of had learned
Speaker 1: in search for something that you didn't quite know you
Speaker 1: needed until you found it. And even even the language.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting decolonization in a way too, because
Speaker 1: it still does very much center the colony, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's still using that language. But so I imagine coming
Speaker 1: to this realization, meeting this beautiful person, but first and foremost,
Speaker 1: going on that real journey for yourself in naming your
Speaker 1: experience would be pretty pretty powerful. I want to just
Speaker 1: quickly ask about your mom. You know, what lessons do
Speaker 1: you think your mom sort of instilled in you in
Speaker 1: this sort of conversation as well?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, she's like everything.
Speaker 3: She's my greatest mentor my biggest teacher, my best friend,
Speaker 3: sometimes my daughter sometimes, you know, And.
Speaker 2: What a journey we've been on.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: My mom was also a single mom.
Speaker 3: She also had my sissy eleven years apart, so I
Speaker 3: was her birthing partner and I helped bring my sissy
Speaker 3: out of my mom and cut her in bilical cord.
Speaker 3: And we've just had such a life together, like She's
Speaker 3: taught me everything, and she is the reason I am
Speaker 3: the woman I am today.
Speaker 2: You know, I.
Speaker 3: Always say to people, I was raised by a proud Indigenous,
Speaker 3: independent single woman, and that's how I feel now that
Speaker 3: I'm an adult.
Speaker 2: My mom always to me, you never through action, not
Speaker 2: just through.
Speaker 3: Words, but you never value your worth in the gaze
Speaker 3: of whoever your partner is. You know, you don't look
Speaker 3: for somebody else to tell you what you are and
Speaker 3: who you are. You find that within yourself. She always
Speaker 3: taught me to be grassroots and never go too big.
Speaker 3: She always taught me, I never rise until I bring
Speaker 3: my community with me. And even just getting the privilege
Speaker 3: of being able to be raised around her storytelling through
Speaker 3: her visual artwork and the Indigenous community that welcomed u
Speaker 3: Song Gadigl and you know, made us family, was just.
Speaker 2: The best experience. Like, I'm so stoked that I picked
Speaker 2: ITR to be my mum.
Speaker 3: I really also only ever seen her work so hard.
Speaker 3: You know, she doesn't really take holidays, and not that
Speaker 3: I think that's a good thing, but her fight is
Speaker 3: for her people and know her stories and keeping our
Speaker 3: culture really strong and alive, even in the face of
Speaker 3: growing up in a small country town where there wasn't
Speaker 3: actually many other Indigenous families either, you know, So I
Speaker 3: just she's everything to me, and I don't know like
Speaker 3: other people who are listening. You know, when you have
Speaker 3: an Indigenous mother, it's like they are everything for you.
Speaker 3: In the colony, they tend to disregard their elders. But
Speaker 3: my mom is going to be by my side until
Speaker 3: the day she goes, and I will be looking after
Speaker 3: her the way she looked after me, because that is
Speaker 3: what the reciprocity of relationships look like.
Speaker 1: Well, she sounds like a pretty fierce and loving and
Speaker 1: staunt person and has instilled some beautiful values in you.
Speaker 1: And I'd love to sit around the campfire with someone
Speaker 1: like you and your mum one day, because yeah, I
Speaker 1: can only imagine the yarns and that sharing and reciprocity
Speaker 1: that shared. Yeah, and I think it's such a powerful
Speaker 1: act of resistance to raise strong black kids, our jar gems.
Speaker 1: You know, we are trying to seek love in a
Speaker 1: world that doesn't really love us that and so it's
Speaker 1: so powerful to to raise self assured and strong and
Speaker 1: loving black kids. So good on, your mum did a
Speaker 1: great job, and it's funny, my daughter's actually going to
Speaker 1: be a Gemini.
Speaker 4: So good ways.
Speaker 3: Because we got a bad rap, but it's just because
Speaker 3: we're mutable and we can flou in every single space.
Speaker 1: I heard and also really talkative I hear, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh god, I love ya. So my partner might I hear.
Speaker 1: My partner's really quiet, and so I was like, look, our.
Speaker 4: Little Gemini and me going to come and tear things up.
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, it's not really a segue, but
Speaker 1: more kind of you know, thinking about this concept of decolonization.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we've got a lot of listeners,
Speaker 1: a lot of people from international and also our mobs,
Speaker 1: you know, who really proudly champion this show and shout
Speaker 1: out to all of them listening, and we love your lots.
Speaker 1: But you know, I guess a lot of us are
Speaker 1: moving in spaces where people like the narratives or the
Speaker 1: ideology decolonization is ever evolving and shifting and how we
Speaker 1: think about it, particularly in light of what we are
Speaker 1: seeing right now, which is, you know, as we've touched
Speaker 1: on these global ills, and you know, our existence and
Speaker 1: our resistance and us and our stories and our knowledge
Speaker 1: is really helping to sort of reimagine and shape societies
Speaker 1: is so incredibly important right now. But you know, what
Speaker 1: does decolonizing things mean for you? Like, what does because
Speaker 1: I feel like you're actually my take is that you're
Speaker 1: walking the truth. You live this every day. You know,
Speaker 1: you're still living in communal living in a country. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a construct that feels out of reach for you,
Speaker 1: because it's something you've just always lived and known to
Speaker 1: be true. But for many, like urbanized black fellows, who
Speaker 1: are wanting to live in a decolonized way, there's this tension,
Speaker 1: I guess, between the opposing paradigms in which we sit.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, what does decolonization mean for you? And
Speaker 1: how does it sort of like shape your interactions and
Speaker 1: your relationships with the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting because you know, I think I was
Speaker 3: kind of talking about decolonization ten or something years ago
Speaker 3: in my writings. I've seen it pick up and have
Speaker 3: this momentum. And what normally happens with these kinds of
Speaker 3: movements is they get co opted, right, we see it
Speaker 3: all the time, and suddenly there's non indigenous people doing
Speaker 3: decolonial workshops and it kind of takes away the point
Speaker 3: of indigenous, lad, and I agree with you, it still
Speaker 3: centers the colony. I've been a bit more resistant actually
Speaker 3: to using it, and actually decided kind of last year
Speaker 3: to move into more like the word of like indigenized,
Speaker 3: like how do we indigenize, because again that centers that,
Speaker 3: but also it centers the people whose land you're on,
Speaker 3: who are the most oppressed by the system. They didn't
Speaker 3: have a choice of it. They didn't choose to go
Speaker 3: to a land. They stayed there and they were forcibly
Speaker 3: removed and their culture was attempted to be taken from them.
Speaker 3: So I feel like indigenizing, indigenizing our way of living
Speaker 3: is about like reclamation of our true purpose here.
Speaker 2: On this planet.
Speaker 3: And that is really like getting out of this mindset
Speaker 3: that capitalism and capitalistic views, which are intrinsically tied to
Speaker 3: the colony, are somehow what.
Speaker 2: We need to do in order to succeed.
Speaker 3: And so things like it's interestingly you say, like with
Speaker 3: the urban Blackfells, like there might be in a struggle,
Speaker 3: But I grew up with this family, the boss Stocks,
Speaker 3: and they grew they.
Speaker 2: Had a tiny little house in Tempe.
Speaker 3: You feed me your boss Stock with the matriarch, or
Speaker 3: when I was little, it was Nanny Bosstock, her mother,
Speaker 3: and they had five generations living in one tiny house,
Speaker 3: you know, and they still all live in that house
Speaker 3: and their cared for. Every matriarch is that matriarch passed
Speaker 3: away in the same room and we just barb and
Speaker 3: you feed me.
Speaker 2: A boss stock last year. But she passed away.
Speaker 3: In the same room that her My mother passed away
Speaker 3: with her daughters looking after her and her grannies around her,
Speaker 3: and they're still in that home. And for me, I'm like,
Speaker 3: that is indigenizing your way of being within the concept
Speaker 3: of the urban's landscape because it's a matriarchal household, one
Speaker 3: where the elders are cared for, many generations living under
Speaker 3: one roof which it actually is very indigenous because you're
Speaker 3: sharing and up against like this economic system which buckles
Speaker 3: our people. I think it's a way that we can
Speaker 3: get on top of things is actually to come back
Speaker 3: to this more intergenerational way of being or living really
Speaker 3: close to each other's sharing meals, encouraging each other to
Speaker 3: get out from behind the screens and go spend the
Speaker 3: weekend in the bush together and just sit by a fire,
Speaker 3: even if you can do it only once a fortnight.
Speaker 3: I mean when we move to Gadigul and every home
Speaker 3: my mum has ever had, the first thing that she
Speaker 3: does is go out the back and dig a huge
Speaker 3: fire pit into the ground.
Speaker 2: She always dug a ba via pit.
Speaker 3: And I think this like these small ways that we
Speaker 3: can divert our attention to the colonial capitalist system and
Speaker 3: consumerism and bring it back to our self, our community
Speaker 3: and you know, the natural world, which is a part
Speaker 3: of our community too, is a way that we can
Speaker 3: learn to indigenize. And that can happen in an urban
Speaker 3: landscape or a rural landscape here living closer the nature
Speaker 3: because there's less density of people and there's more nature
Speaker 3: around us, but it's not inaccessible.
Speaker 2: You know. And I think there are any.
Speaker 3: Way that we can is a fight to the colony.
Speaker 3: You know, our people we have to exist within this
Speaker 3: society otherwise were constantly oppressed. And we shouldn't beat ourselves
Speaker 3: up for having a walk in two worlds. It's a
Speaker 3: very complex narrative to try and exist within.
Speaker 2: And I think I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even walking through the world, just identifying as a
Speaker 3: black Palla and keeping your culture strong through that identification
Speaker 3: is a powerful resistance to the colony.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, I could. I could listen to you
Speaker 1: speak all day. Yeah. I think it's so beautiful to
Speaker 1: hear what you say, because I think what I'm hearing,
Speaker 1: or what I'm taking away from what you're saying, is
Speaker 1: that decolonization is often about that consciously shifting our perspectives
Speaker 1: and our actions and our relationships with ourselves community k in,
Speaker 1: mother and father, and like you say, to center that
Speaker 1: indigenous knowledge along the way, and that I think sometimes
Speaker 1: what we find or what I see, especially in like
Speaker 1: the organizing and abolition space where we're required to reimagine systems,
Speaker 1: is that we often yet definitely focus a lot on
Speaker 1: the perfect system and I guess the end and not
Speaker 1: the means, And that these small intentional shifts are just
Speaker 1: as critical for the overall movement as is abolishing and
Speaker 1: reb yielding, and you know, things like you're saying about
Speaker 1: prioritizing the kinship structure and having shared living and communal
Speaker 1: living and sharing the labor, sharing the cost, really embedding
Speaker 1: that reciprocity. I think the other thing that I sort
Speaker 1: of would take away from what you said is that
Speaker 1: just noticing you know where like being deliberately I guess
Speaker 1: reflective to interrogate our conditioning and that colonial narrative. You know,
Speaker 1: so much of what you said is like so embedded
Speaker 1: and conditioned from such a young age, like we learn scarcity,
Speaker 1: we learn to, you know, do things that take up
Speaker 1: our hours that don't bring us joy and connection and healing.
Speaker 1: Like with these all learned deeply programmed insidious things that
Speaker 1: we have to sort of start to notice, like where
Speaker 1: do our colonial ideas shape us and our thinking and
Speaker 1: our work and our interactions our relationships, you know. And
Speaker 1: I think it's it's also giving people a bit of
Speaker 1: confidence that as black fellows, we probably are inherently doing
Speaker 1: this every single day, but we might not be I
Speaker 1: guess as kind or giving ourselves as much grace because
Speaker 1: we're just constantly you know, in a racialized society with
Speaker 1: violence and harm and seeing how oppressive and violent structures
Speaker 1: are killing, subjugating, silence ever every day that it can
Speaker 1: be very hard to sort of like get that perspective
Speaker 1: that we are shifting all the time and that we
Speaker 1: are every day challenging these colonial narratives which is just
Speaker 1: seek to just diminish and erase us. So I think
Speaker 1: giving people confidence that it's these small intentional acts, these
Speaker 1: small efforts, is an active decolonization in and of itself,
Speaker 1: because the colony wants grandeur and you know, these twelve
Speaker 1: step programs and dah da da da da. But it's
Speaker 1: just like, you know, how do we prioritize ourselves and
Speaker 1: our joy and our rest and our healing. What are
Speaker 1: the small things getting out on country, returning back to
Speaker 1: you know, some that that's enough In this sort of
Speaker 1: we all start to think like that. You just think
Speaker 1: about the movement that could happen and what the potential is,
Speaker 1: and that in order to like imagine the system and
Speaker 1: abolish something, we have to celebrate these beautiful intentional moments
Speaker 1: along the way as well. So, yeah, thank you for
Speaker 1: sharing that. I think it's really important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, no one is the same, Like we've
Speaker 3: all been put here with a different story, a different purpose,
Speaker 3: and a different place to go. And I think anything
Speaker 3: that any blackfellow does within the colony, they should be
Speaker 3: celebrating it, even if it's just getting out of bed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, any any.
Speaker 3: Black velow that gets up and gets out of bed
Speaker 3: is is doing a testament to fighting the colony and
Speaker 3: a resistance. You know, I think we're in a time
Speaker 3: of information overload, and I've just noticed in the last
Speaker 3: few years there's really like so much information about how
Speaker 3: undervalued we are as three percent of the population, and
Speaker 3: also battling other people popping up in our societies who
Speaker 3: are just finding out that they might have an apical
Speaker 3: ancestor way back when, but aren't.
Speaker 2: Necessarily connected to communities.
Speaker 3: And then you know, faced with the challenges of that
Speaker 3: kind of identity complexicity where people are taking big grant
Speaker 3: money and it's complex. Like I say to people who
Speaker 3: are oh, I just found an apical ancestor, this indigenous,
Speaker 3: so good luck to you.
Speaker 2: Want to be a black father. It is the hardest work.
Speaker 2: It is the hardest identity to be in.
Speaker 1: This It's definitely about the struggle, there's no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: But I think it is also inherently about acknowledging the survival,
Speaker 1: about people to get up every day and to do
Speaker 1: these things. And you know, like you say, just sometimes
Speaker 1: just mustering up a shower through the grief and loss,
Speaker 1: or taking a phone call through all the rage and
Speaker 1: the violence that you might be experiencing, and that it's
Speaker 1: also about celebrating that survival. I just got off a
Speaker 1: call just actually before I came on here today with
Speaker 1: twelve titters from across so called Australia, and it's sort
Speaker 1: of this concept of leadership, but we're really rethinking it.
Speaker 1: We're challenging the Western paradigm of leadership. But it's all about,
Speaker 1: you know, sharing stories and sharing skills and sharing our
Speaker 1: time and being.
Speaker 4: A support network for each other.
Speaker 1: And I just feel in a world like right now
Speaker 1: where yeah, it's really hard and painful to be a
Speaker 1: black following Indigenous person and try to sit in the
Speaker 1: duality of our joy and our rage. You know, just
Speaker 1: like that in and of itself just feels like such
Speaker 1: a powerful active resistance to have spaces where we all
Speaker 1: of our experiences can be validated and heard and experience as.
Speaker 4: In its full human experience.
Speaker 1: And that I feel is an act of you know,
Speaker 1: the decolonization work and digitizing things is like just sometimes
Speaker 1: just providing those skills of support that time will be
Speaker 1: back you mob right after this short break.
Speaker 4: It's a beautiful question to have.
Speaker 1: And I think I don't know about you in your circles,
Speaker 1: but I imagine every time you have this yarm with
Speaker 1: people in your work that it looks so vastly different
Speaker 1: for everyone too.
Speaker 4: There's no one way to come at this.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which I want to talk about, I guess
Speaker 1: a space that you have really activated and built and nurtured.
Speaker 1: I guess which is the returning? Yeah, tell us about
Speaker 1: the returning. What's the vision? How did it come to be?
Speaker 1: What does the returning mean for you? Because I feel
Speaker 1: like that's also a beautiful active in digenizing and returning
Speaker 1: back to Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: The returning was seated out of a deep desire for
Speaker 3: me to see not only our people return back to
Speaker 3: country and have accessibility to Bungelin country, especially on the.
Speaker 2: Coast, which has been so grossly.
Speaker 3: Gentrified and is now pretty impossible for most of our
Speaker 3: people to actually live anywhere near their ancestral lands if
Speaker 3: they're close to the coast here, you know, I wanted
Speaker 3: to see a bridging of our people being in their
Speaker 3: access the holistic health and wellness services that you know
Speaker 3: are created here in the Northern Rivers and give them
Speaker 3: an opportunity to see that through a cultural lends. Because
Speaker 3: I'm a big believer that when we return back to country,
Speaker 3: our health.
Speaker 2: Will get better.
Speaker 3: You know, when we eat closer to the lander, our
Speaker 3: health will get better.
Speaker 2: When we sit in circle, our health will get better.
Speaker 3: That's just what I believe because I'm spiritual, but I
Speaker 3: also understand a little bit about quantum physics and energy,
Speaker 3: and you know, even things just like earthing ourselves with
Speaker 3: their feet in the ground can have like a dramatic
Speaker 3: impact on our orvous system.
Speaker 2: So I was like, how do we do this.
Speaker 3: How do we combat indigenous health issues by also keeping
Speaker 3: cultural protocols and teachings alive and make a kind of
Speaker 3: wellness situation around that. It started as a women's camp
Speaker 3: where we invited over eighty percent of our participants to
Speaker 3: come back to country on scholarship programs. It was firstly
Speaker 3: indigenous women making up mostly that, and then also single
Speaker 3: mums and a time for women to come and share
Speaker 3: all their ancestral knowledge. Is another point of call to
Speaker 3: invite people to stop culturally appropriating, which is really we've
Speaker 3: got a lot of people in this country on Bungelung
Speaker 3: who were cultural appropriators, and I wanted to start a
Speaker 3: women's gathering that wasn't defined.
Speaker 2: By that, but actually resisted it.
Speaker 3: By wanting women to come and reclaim what they could
Speaker 3: teach and share. We've always had over fifty percent Indigenous
Speaker 3: facilitators at that gathering and it runs over three days
Speaker 3: and two nights, and it's a place for women to
Speaker 3: come and share knowledge. Is so that we could be
Speaker 3: healthier and better together. I think there's a common story
Speaker 3: here that women can unite around the oppression that we
Speaker 3: felt through the patriarchy, and it's also another threat that
Speaker 3: I think when we have these unifying stories, we can
Speaker 3: come together. We can create empathy by sharing and learning
Speaker 3: and listening to one another, and we can rise.
Speaker 2: Together in that.
Speaker 3: And that was kind of like the seed of the charity,
Speaker 3: and then it just kind of snowballed, and in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one we became an official charity and now we're
Speaker 3: running nine programs across the region and charity starts at home.
Speaker 3: So we're all women team, mostly mothers, mostly Indigenous, and
Speaker 3: I wanted to create a decolonial workspace where ours were
Speaker 3: flexible for both mothers and mob because so much of
Speaker 3: the care economy is done on unpaid labor and the
Speaker 3: backs of women, you know, whether that's us raising our families,
Speaker 3: looking after the elderly, or just like looking after our
Speaker 3: entire community always.
Speaker 2: And I wanted to reframe business in.
Speaker 3: A way that we're able to actually pay those women
Speaker 3: for what they do and create programs that are centered
Speaker 3: around women centered societies and rebringing people back to the
Speaker 3: idea of like how much more.
Speaker 2: Beautiful it is when we raise our kids together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wanted to reintroduce this women centered societies and
Speaker 3: give women this embodied experience of what it's like to
Speaker 3: be out on country and have all your kids play together.
Speaker 3: And what we found is like, you know, the same
Speaker 3: as when I was little. When you get a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of little jargeans together, they're going to be looking
Speaker 3: after themselves.
Speaker 2: You're not going to see them for a whole day.
Speaker 2: They're playing at the river and the.
Speaker 3: Climbing trees and the big ones are carrying the babies,
Speaker 3: and that's how they grow and that's how they learn
Speaker 3: so much. And then it gives mothers and aunties and
Speaker 3: thens that break and that rest to just like gather
Speaker 3: and speak. And so I guess like that's the seed
Speaker 3: of where the charity came from. But now we're running
Speaker 3: anything from cultural camps that include language camps that we
Speaker 3: run just for mob and also cross cultural exchange programs
Speaker 3: with the Pacific Island Brothers and Sisters. We have youth
Speaker 3: programs for teenage girls to reconnect with ancestral plant food
Speaker 3: and medicine. We've got an arts and culture residency that
Speaker 3: runs for one year, Writers Residency partnered with the Barn
Speaker 3: Bay Writers Festival, a postpart and program that's supporting our
Speaker 3: First Nations mums with six weeks worth of home cook meals.
Speaker 3: It's all got native ingredients in it. An elder's healing
Speaker 3: program that takes twelve Indigenous matriarchs post the age of
Speaker 3: sixty through our one year healing space, which includes four
Speaker 3: retreats and one on one no tropathy care. All through that,
Speaker 3: we do community days in Lismore and Balana and it's
Speaker 3: just kind of taken on a life and I don't
Speaker 3: know how it's gotten like this, but you know, we
Speaker 3: we're just listening to what our community wants and we're
Speaker 3: trying to provide a service. I don't know if it's
Speaker 3: super sustainable to run this many programs with such a
Speaker 3: small team. You know, we're five Indigenous women who make
Speaker 3: up the team and two non Indigenous women who make
Speaker 3: up our accounts and grant writer. But somehow we're managing
Speaker 3: to get the work done, and we're working with so
Speaker 3: much of our beautiful community on a needs base. And
Speaker 3: you know, we're just doing this for this time until
Speaker 3: other people can step in and take over and run
Speaker 3: the programs too. You know, I've got no desire to monopolize,
Speaker 3: to grow, to get bigger than Bungelung. Like even if
Speaker 3: we end up in a couple of years just stripping
Speaker 3: back and only running a few programs, that's better for me.
Speaker 3: But I don't want to grow and expand and move
Speaker 3: into other people's country. But I do want to inspire
Speaker 3: other people to you know, potentially take on these models
Speaker 3: of care, to support our women to actually do that work.
Speaker 3: And look at how we can support other mob and
Speaker 3: different nations to bring about similar models as us, you know,
Speaker 3: and now's the time. You know, the not for profit
Speaker 3: space can be complex and we and like I said,
Speaker 3: like I'm not an academic person or a business woman.
Speaker 3: I don't know how I ended up running this charity.
Speaker 3: But Ban says, to bless me with a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of good relations that are supporting here on Bungelung and beyond,
Speaker 3: and so I just want to continue to be the
Speaker 3: bridge and redistribute the distribution of wealth. Last year we
Speaker 3: employed over eighty cultural workers, and that for me is
Speaker 3: a redefining of what the colony says the value system is,
Speaker 3: because it's really placing the money back in the hands
Speaker 3: of our people, who know country, who know the lay
Speaker 3: of the land, who know language, who know art, sustainable art,
Speaker 3: who know our ways of being, and to redefine that
Speaker 3: as like that is an appropriate and beautiful job for
Speaker 3: you to do, and I hope it inspires the next
Speaker 3: generation to know that they don't have to go and
Speaker 3: get a degree to be a well paid person under
Speaker 3: this economic system that always tells us that our culture
Speaker 3: is not value.
Speaker 1: I mean, like that just sounds so dead to hear that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from this vision of the women's centered society to the
Speaker 1: returning to now these nine very beautiful holistic programs, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I wish we had some stuff like that here and
Speaker 1: on our country. You know, I feel like we still
Speaker 1: have such a long ways to go in going back
Speaker 1: to some of these cultural practices. But yeah, I can
Speaker 1: definitely see why it's grown because of the grit and
Speaker 1: the love, and I think when you're moving with the
Speaker 1: spirit an ethos of community at your center and you're
Speaker 1: listening and you're adapting and you're providing, Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of easy for things to sort of like evolve and
Speaker 1: grow based off communities needs. So yeah, wow, I mean
Speaker 1: what are you seeing from some of the people, like
Speaker 1: some of the mob that come through some of these programs,
Speaker 1: like any sort of sentiments or things that are shared
Speaker 1: for how they experience these incredible programs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we just finished our last retreat for
Speaker 3: the Elder's program, which is one of my favorites. It's
Speaker 3: like so beautiful to take these twelve matriarchs on this
Speaker 3: journey of giving some of them the first facial they've
Speaker 3: ever had, giving them some of them the first massage
Speaker 3: they've even had. The introduced them to craniosecral therapies as well.
Speaker 3: They had one on one atropathy, which apparently through our
Speaker 3: data that we collected, magnesium seems to be the thing
Speaker 3: that can get heaps of our elders off numerous amounts
Speaker 3: of pharmaceuticals. So one of our elders was on twelve
Speaker 3: pharmaceuticals when she started the healing program. We put her
Speaker 3: on magnesium every night to help with the pain that
Speaker 3: she was feeling. So she got rid of her painkillers,
Speaker 3: which then indirectly got rid of her heart medicine because
Speaker 3: the painkillers were helping. That she's down to four pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 3: That's all she's taking. Anwo the elder started the program
Speaker 3: on a walker. She's now finished the program without a walker.
Speaker 3: And our oldest participant, who's almost eighty, you know her
Speaker 3: reflection piece. She's still living out on the mission Bugamart,
Speaker 3: which is really close to where I grew up. Annie Carroll.
Speaker 3: She also taught me in primary school, you know. And
Speaker 3: she was saying, like the best thing is coming actually together.
Speaker 3: So much of the healing was all these matriarchs from
Speaker 3: Tweed all the way down to near the border of
Speaker 3: Yaegel Gumbangy Country and all the way out the past Graft,
Speaker 3: and that all these women know each other's families and
Speaker 3: family lines, but some of them had never met, and
Speaker 3: they got to sit and repatriate all of.
Speaker 2: These stories that they knew about each.
Speaker 3: Other's families and everything that they had experienced, all the
Speaker 3: stories that were given to them, and even in that
Speaker 3: those meetings of just sitting around and having a youarn,
Speaker 3: so much can be healed, so much can be repatriated,
Speaker 3: having like us younger, younger women, you know, just show
Speaker 3: up in service to those beautiful old women who have
Speaker 3: carried the backs of so many of our people and
Speaker 3: still continued to who raised our jajams, who still care
Speaker 3: for their granny and everyone else. It's such a privilege,
Speaker 3: It really is.
Speaker 2: Such an honor.
Speaker 3: Like brings tears to my eyes, because this is what
Speaker 3: our culture is about, you know, It's about looking after
Speaker 3: the most disadvantage and the most undervalued in society. And
Speaker 3: I think this society is like disgusting to their elder women,
Speaker 3: you know. And I've heard a lot of elder women
Speaker 3: not even indigenous. If you're indigenous, it's like a whole
Speaker 3: other situation. But you know how invisibilized they become in
Speaker 3: the patriarchy once they go through their initiation into menopausem
Speaker 3: beyond where in our culture, that is the wisest woman,
Speaker 3: that is the most respected woman, you know, and it
Speaker 3: is for us to take that back and look after
Speaker 3: those ladies with such great care, and that gives them
Speaker 3: so much worse.
Speaker 2: And if we're able to just fill.
Speaker 3: Them with one year of like loving them up, connecting
Speaker 3: them in and supporting them. My hope is that a
Speaker 3: lot of those elder women who I was deep relationship
Speaker 3: with prior to because a lot of them come from
Speaker 3: you know, Bungelung, so I know them or their families.
Speaker 3: But my hope is that we somehow can help embed
Speaker 3: them into our programs and provide spaces where elders can
Speaker 3: just be paid to come and be in the program.
Speaker 3: They don't actually have to show up and do anything anymore.
Speaker 3: They've done it. And this is how we change business
Speaker 3: from inside the colonial couple system. Is like, we build
Speaker 3: elders fees into our brands, and we make them valuable
Speaker 3: and we make sure that they can come and they
Speaker 3: can be paid to just rest.
Speaker 2: I'm a big believer in rest is the revolution, but
Speaker 2: all types of rest.
Speaker 3: You know, environmental rest, community rest, rest around culture. This
Speaker 3: allows us the time and space to really find our
Speaker 3: way home. I think that program is probably my favorite,
Speaker 3: but you know, I'm a bit biased, I guess, but
Speaker 3: all of the programs are amazing. I mean, the post
Speaker 3: Partner program runs all year round, servicing Indigenous women all
Speaker 3: over Bungee Country and we drive the meals out there.
Speaker 3: Curly Dawn, who was also you know, a big support
Speaker 3: during the floods and right by my side at Carey
Speaker 3: Mail alongside all the other deadly mob naming Mimran and
Speaker 3: Wayne King and Annie Jackulari, you know, she runs that
Speaker 3: program and she's a deadly.
Speaker 2: Indigenous schooler who's been a birth worker for.
Speaker 3: A long time and she's really passionate about educating our
Speaker 3: women and our names and our aunie so that we
Speaker 3: can be in the birthpace advocating for our women and
Speaker 3: not just letting these Western institutions coerce us into doing
Speaker 3: things that may not be best for us, you know,
Speaker 3: and just also providing things like Kangaroo Tales do curried
Speaker 3: sausages but with all organic ingredients. And we worked with
Speaker 3: Mindy Woods, who's an amazing, visible, viable chef from banjelannxhos
Speaker 3: or Master Chef, and she's come out with your love this.
Speaker 3: She come up with the Keynes curry, but it's using
Speaker 3: all our native spices and are tastes.
Speaker 2: Exactly the same, and it's so deadly like this kind
Speaker 2: of stuff is like ground.
Speaker 3: You know what Nan used to make you and when
Speaker 3: you're in your postpartum you have to be eating these
Speaker 3: kind of rich, dense protein foods. I mean, you can
Speaker 3: eat other foods if your vegetarian or vegan, but you
Speaker 3: know this way, but having that kind of courage sausage
Speaker 3: for so many people is so nostalgic. They just said, like,
Speaker 3: I can't believe this food is like getting delivered to
Speaker 3: our door.
Speaker 1: And it's just like NaN's, oh my god. Well, this
Speaker 1: is the power of indigenity and indigenizing what we do,
Speaker 1: right Like you're feeling and experiencing that every day. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean I think there's no there's really no
Speaker 1: like English word to like summarize what you said. But
Speaker 1: there's one thing that I think that I want to highlight,
Speaker 1: which is that program you were yearning about with our elders,
Speaker 1: you know, because they were such in enslaved in servitude
Speaker 1: to give back to them in that way for them
Speaker 1: to have that sense of community at the stages of
Speaker 1: their life when they when they are, you know, because
Speaker 1: so much of their lives is around care responsibilities, unpaid labor,
Speaker 1: how special and native food for postpartum. These are all
Speaker 1: things that I'm constantly thinking about as I start my
Speaker 1: birth journey and you know, really wanting to think about
Speaker 1: how I can protect my indigenoity through that process in
Speaker 1: a hospital system which is really violent. So wow, you're
Speaker 1: doing amazing, powerful work. You should be so proud of
Speaker 1: what you've been able to co create with a mob
Speaker 1: down there. I guess my kind of last.
Speaker 4: Question, and I could speak to you all day obviously.
Speaker 1: But I mean, what are you you know, if we
Speaker 1: were to sit here in ten years, you know time,
Speaker 1: and have this yarn about the work you're doing and
Speaker 1: the work that other communities are doing around this conversation
Speaker 1: around indigenizing our practices and returning back to you know
Speaker 1: what do you hope that we'd be celebrating?
Speaker 4: What sort of changes would you like to see over
Speaker 4: that time?
Speaker 3: I mean a massive return to women's centered societies, which
Speaker 3: means like the eradication.
Speaker 2: Of these nine to five confinements.
Speaker 3: I think that not only steal our sunlight or our
Speaker 3: time and relationship with the sunlight, but allowing mothers and women.
Speaker 2: To have more flexible hours, to be able to get paid.
Speaker 3: On their bleed days, to see the return of younger
Speaker 3: women or men being paid to look after their elders.
Speaker 3: I think food systems are critical in this time, Like
Speaker 3: in ten years, I'd love to see community gardens and
Speaker 3: gardens kind of like in the urban space especially, but
Speaker 3: take over that place because I think capitalism's co opted
Speaker 3: our food systems. And in ten years time, if we
Speaker 3: can do real reclamation not only with our food, but
Speaker 3: you know, our medicines here on country too, and see
Speaker 3: First Nations people leading those businesses not being left behind,
Speaker 3: which does happen in the native food industry a lot,
Speaker 3: you know, I think it's like ninety seven percent non
Speaker 3: Indigenous owned in the native foods. Is that like, if
Speaker 3: we want to see real change, it requires us to
Speaker 3: see women and Indigenous people lead. And I really believe
Speaker 3: that because for too long it's it's not been the way.
Speaker 3: We've been behind. We haven't been leading, and we haven't
Speaker 3: been given the respect that we deserve, and everybody suffers.
Speaker 3: Everybody suffers if a woman or a mother is not
Speaker 3: at her greatest health. If our vision is to raise
Speaker 3: the next generation strong and healthy, then we need to
Speaker 3: be looking after our women.
Speaker 2: We need to ensure that they have very good access
Speaker 2: to food.
Speaker 3: And it's dire in this country and I know that
Speaker 3: the food systems is it's a place of privilege, and
Speaker 3: it's disgusting that people got to pay what they pay
Speaker 3: in some rural communities for even just three or four
Speaker 3: grocery items. I think all of us should be championing
Speaker 3: and campaigning that we bring our food back and we
Speaker 3: able to do what we do best because it's what
Speaker 3: we consume the most of you know. So, I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess that's my vision in ten years. I hope
Speaker 3: like the rivers are restored to good health. We got
Speaker 3: five major river systems, But the difference it would make
Speaker 3: in some of these small community towns, like There's more
Speaker 3: and a Wallumbar, if they had rivers that were swimmable
Speaker 3: and people and our young people could like return back
Speaker 3: to the rivers and play, then that would be my
Speaker 3: greatest dream and I would happily go if I could
Speaker 3: see that.
Speaker 1: It's kind of nice to think about what that might
Speaker 1: look like. And I think it's these conversations are going
Speaker 1: to be prolific and guided by people like you and
Speaker 1: our next generation, guided by our elders who've opened these doors.
Speaker 1: But it absolutely requires solidarity in these movements and collectivism
Speaker 1: right now and for you know, Migloo's and non indigenous
Speaker 1: folks to really listen and learn and reckon with their
Speaker 1: own stories, their own histories to really help us, because
Speaker 1: indigenous knowledge does have the power to.
Speaker 4: Help us all.
Speaker 1: And you've got to sort of hold on to hope
Speaker 1: that we can get their hope and a lot of fight,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. Oh, my sis, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I'm going to put all of Allah's details in our
Speaker 1: show notes her instagram, the returning the programs we can
Speaker 1: back and support issues and causes and get behind the work.
Speaker 4: That you're doing on Bundelung Country.
Speaker 1: From the bottom of my heart, I just want to
Speaker 1: say thank you so much for being here today and
Speaker 1: sharing your wisdom.
Speaker 4: And you've certainly given me.
Speaker 1: A lot to think about, but you probably reaffirmed so
Speaker 1: much of what many blackfellows are grappling with right now
Speaker 1: in a much eloquent term. But yeah, thank you so
Speaker 1: so much for being here and sharing your time and
Speaker 1: your knowledges and your labor given what you're doing in
Speaker 1: building women's centered society.
Speaker 4: So thank you.
Speaker 1: Massis guber where Sis, thank you, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening. You mob if you're vibing this season of
Speaker 1: yarning up. Then please head over to Apple, Spotify, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts from to show us some love, rate,
Speaker 1: and review. Alternatively, you can get in contact and give
Speaker 1: us some feedback by visiting www. Dot Caroline Cool, dot
Speaker 1: com dot au