00:00:00.400Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today I'm speaking with Ella Noah Bancroft.
00:00:08.820I think this is why localization is so important because we've moved into this global community where people come and go so quickly that they use the landscape as if it is like a backdrop to their life and they don't understand the real importance that it plays.
00:00:26.720ella noah bancroft is a bunjalung woman based in the northern new south wales australia
00:00:34.920ella identifies as a mixed heritage indigenous gay woman she grew up living in both worlds her
00:00:42.700indigenous world and the mainstream australian world both challenged her identity in different
00:00:47.520ways she is an australian born artist storyteller mentor and the founder of the returning and we
00:00:54.640Collective. She runs Sensuality Weekends and Workshops, works one-on-one with women,0.83
00:01:00.060and also has a podcast and book both called It Takes Courage to Tell the Truth.
00:01:05.780Well, Ella, thank you so much for joining us today. And to Orient listeners, I wonder if you
00:01:12.340could introduce yourself and share a bit about your upbringing and how its polarity has shaped
00:01:18.480the course of your life. Jingila, my name is Ella. I am a Banjulang Dubai from Banjulang Jogun.
00:01:26.980I also have English and Scottish ancestry and honor all my ancestors from across the land.
00:01:34.560I'd also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge Indigenous people from all around
00:01:41.100the world and pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and also honor those who
00:01:50.000live in harmony and understanding of kinship and connection to nature. I guess for me, my story
00:01:58.120started at birth, like most of us, perhaps even before that in the womb, but coming from a mixed
00:02:05.120heritage family upbringing I was thrust back into culture at the age of five when my mom
00:02:12.880decided to take me and my older brother back to country that was 11 hours north of where I was
00:02:20.320born and at that time it was 1993 off-grid living wasn't as trending as it is now but we moved on
00:02:33.640to what was off-grid, essentially a house with no electricity
00:02:42.300And being like a young child in these very formative years
00:02:46.840of my belief systems and understanding, living so close to nature
00:02:51.960and with my Indigenous family out in community really impacted me.
00:02:57.640And I don't think I understand how much it did until I kind of stepped into adulthood and saw the way that I walked through the world a little bit differently.
00:03:10.120I lived there for some time and then moved back to the city and kind of had my foot in, yeah, both spaces, both me and my older brother.
00:03:18.560you know transitioning from a mission which for those who are in America is the same as a
00:03:26.880reservation it's basically a place where the missionaries came over during colonization
00:03:32.760and they grouped indigenous people together took them off their land and and Christianized them
00:03:38.500essentially but what we moved on to was kind of like the fractured missionary because it was one
00:03:44.920where all the missionaries had left, but the mission was still standing.
00:03:49.560So this kind of, you know, dislocated culture.
00:03:53.200I was brought up in one where we were living close to the land,0.71
00:03:57.260eating, you know, a lot of native bush tucker and animals
00:04:01.920purely because we were an hour away from town.
00:04:05.420But also that was really true for a lot of my family to just be like that,
00:04:09.780to bathe in the river to to have this kind of deep kinship and relationship with nature without
00:04:16.240even naming that and I think having that time yeah my belief system about the way that I wanted to
00:04:24.680work in the world was very much ingrained in custodianship and wanting to ally for nature
00:04:32.520and also for my Indigenous community here in Australia.
00:04:37.340It's an interesting time that I have been brought up in
00:04:42.400with a lot of big kind of cathartic moments
00:04:46.480for Indigenous people happening here on this continent,
00:19:29.980Yeah, I want to stay on this thread of commodification
00:19:59.800just a bit longer because it's reminding me of a previous conversation I had with Bronte
00:20:06.220Velez who guided us to think about extending our understanding of pleasure into the realm
00:20:12.160of accountability because I think there has somewhat or been somewhat of a lotus-eating
00:20:17.820phenomenon where we actively deny the reality that so much of our pleasure or what we think
00:20:25.240of as pleasure is derived at the expense of earth and just to speak really plainly i mean
00:20:31.680look at how much or how many of us enter into sexual exploration using toys that are literally
00:20:39.340derived from fossil fuels and i think at first blush that statement you know could sort of
00:20:44.960trigger eye rolling but as someone who is acutely aware of the tremendous amount of waste we're
00:20:51.240generating I wonder if I can ask you how do we need to query our connection to our bodies and
00:20:59.020what does pleasure and sexuality that is accountable to earth look like to you
00:21:04.540because you know dildos in a landfill isn't it yeah this is an interesting space to go into the
00:21:15.580sex toys um also how it makes people feel as well you know there are many people that that feel0.97
00:21:23.120really comfortable in that space using sex toys and having that as a matter like a like a material
00:21:31.200representation of the way that they're feeling but I guess I've never been so into sex toys um
00:21:39.120I never really enjoyed them. And I never really felt that I needed them for any of my sexual
00:21:47.080relating. In fact, the more that I kind of spent time interlacing my spirituality with my sexual
00:21:54.660practice, the more I understood the deep intelligence of my body, and the deep intensity
00:22:01.280of energy when it is human to human contact. And what I would often find is that plastic
00:22:08.940or even crystal, which I just want to point out, you know, a lot of those crystal dildos,
00:22:14.180their mind, we're still looking at mining in that space. And it would cut something from me
00:22:21.260with my relationship or with my relating in that moment with that person, because it's like
00:22:29.120putting a piece of plastic in between two electrical lines, the electricity is halted.
00:22:35.600that's my own personal experience of it. So I've never really moved towards them so much. In fact,
00:22:42.520I think most of the time I've moved towards them. It's just been novelty with a partner.
00:22:48.320What can we buy sort of thing and really falling back into the consumerist mindset. But when we
00:22:54.740start to understand the incredible power of not only our mind and body and stepping into these0.99
00:23:02.640places of having energetic sex and maybe that looks like having an energetic dick even if you're0.93
00:23:08.780in the body of a woman or so forth we can reach cathartic moments here and and and and and really0.93
00:23:18.600understanding the energy that extends beyond the body also you know that that there's a good half
00:23:27.620meter, I would say, depending on how much you're focusing your attention on replenishing that
00:23:34.420energy that you can connect with people without even touching them. I think we've forgotten a lot
00:23:41.580about subtle nuances and subtle ways of being in this world, so much so that we think that
00:23:49.700we have to have all of this like extremity, you know, like intensity, but sometimes the most
00:23:57.380beautiful moments shared are ones that are so soft and feel like barely even being touched for me
00:24:04.240anyway I definitely don't look to sex toys as being a way to connect with the person that I
00:24:13.960I want to share with I yeah I in fact you know like I said find it more of a disconnect for me
00:24:21.780because regardless of who is in the space of using it there is there is an element that you can't
00:24:29.140feel when you are using something that's plastic or or even crystal and I think we have to come
00:24:36.420back to this space and and that deep knowing and belief system that in this constant extraction
00:24:43.600that we're doing with the planet for our own pleasure it's so selfish it's so misguided
00:24:52.740and that there are so many other ways that we can experience pleasure not at the expense of
00:24:59.500another person or animal or our natural environment and I think that's something that
00:25:05.560it's going to take a long time to settle in people's bones and it is a big journey to get
00:25:13.900back to that space to understand how much this world holds us and how much we take from it
00:25:20.520yeah the point around softness is something I'm personally really working with this practice of
00:25:29.840being soft and nuanced, even with myself and gazing and extremely soft touch and feeling
00:25:38.840the energy of just a tickle. And I think for so many of us, we are feeling the intensity
00:25:49.400of what's happening. And we're also feeling desensitized by it. And so it makes sense that
00:25:55.400that numbness desensitization and overwhelm would bleed over into our sexuality into the way we
00:26:06.220relate to our bodies and we relate to others um and it's a really interesting question
00:26:12.560an inquiry to sit in with someone else I really appreciate being able to talk about this because
00:26:20.500I know it's something that, you know, many of us feel shy maybe to go there.
00:26:29.000And I think, too, there's been so much judgment around sexuality and just the whole puritanical shame around it that it can make it challenging just to be like, can we analyze this for a minute and realize we're all in it together?
00:27:31.060grow your organic garden and your orgasms oh gosh that was wonderful0.91
00:27:42.780well that brings a whole new meaning to um to gardens now so hopefully we're all in the mindset0.83
00:27:55.420of what we're going to be growing this next year for all the things we may need but um yeah this
00:28:01.840conversation it also brings up another topic you write about which is truth telling and authenticity
00:28:09.340and transparency amidst a paradigm of fake identities and a culture of lies, be it in
00:28:15.760our media or our own curated identities.
00:28:19.860And I think it's incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to find liberation when we're
00:28:26.140constantly lying to each other, lying to ourselves and to Earth.
00:28:30.980And one thing that comes to mind is that we are really telling ourselves a lie when we
00:28:38.520suggest that misogyny isn't alive and well in almost all that we do. And I think about so many
00:28:44.800spaces where women and femmes and gender non-conforming and trans folks are perceived to
00:28:51.420have power and agency when the reality is we're all still required to portray ourselves in a very
00:28:58.120specific way if we want to be taken seriously. And truthfully, I really see this in a lot of
00:29:05.480progressive spaces, where we're constantly policing each other in terms of what you need
00:29:10.660to look like to be considered radical, to be considered powerful, or to be considered
00:29:15.920nurturing. So can you talk about why you think it is that we are still quick to police one another
00:29:23.220in terms of our identities? You know, if we look at the root cause of why there is so much
00:29:30.540inauthenticity around us is is really got to do with the culture in which we're brought up in
00:29:36.540and for me if you look at this americanization well you know australia is very americanized in
00:29:43.800our culture but our culture is essentially pop culture you know when you look at other countries
00:29:49.580around the world they have culture embedded in thousands and thousands of years of being
00:29:54.380and living and existing on the planet and we have created this god-like mentality for
00:30:03.220celebrityism actors and pop stars and this is essentially a inauthentic industry that is
00:30:11.920teaching our young people how to be in the world not only that it is seen as for many people in
00:30:19.540the mainstream the pinnacle of success to reach that place of fame and I do think and I talk about
00:30:26.180this quite a lot with my mentor that this over policing this idea that we have to attack each
00:30:33.120other is coming from a deep desire and need to be heard and seen in a world where we can be drowning
00:30:42.380in amongst the crowds again it's kind of you know for me I see the solution is in returning to
00:30:51.380smaller communities and returning to places where you may know everybody in that community for me
00:30:58.900when I moved back to living on in a small little coastal town and I started to really
00:31:05.760spend a lot of time working in my community and doing everything I could. I felt this sense of
00:31:13.280what I imagine it is to be famous almost, you know, you go to the farmer's market and you
00:31:18.840saying hello to all these people and they know you and they're your friends and they're your
00:31:22.340community. And what we've done with the industrial revolution and the kind of dismantling of the
00:31:29.140village is that we've lost that and that is our our one sense of again back to belonging and
00:31:37.660connection our two truths that we need to thrive on this planet from have been fractured when we
00:31:44.500move into these bigger cities when we're starving to be seen when we're starving to be different
00:31:50.860because we want to be seen and so for me I think a big antidote is is dismantling massive communities
00:31:58.400and working smaller scale to that i think also it's um looking at you know the the belief system
00:32:06.920once again that runs through us that is the need to to be the person in charge to be the
00:32:13.000teacher and we see it a lot nowadays with i think the influx of information on social media
00:32:20.580especially but suddenly everybody is you know a teacher and it doesn't matter if you're 15 or
00:32:27.100you're 50 I always look at that as so tricky to digest because for me in my culture anyway
00:32:36.020you have to go through a lived experience you know and in my family you don't become a teacher
00:32:42.660or an elder until you're beyond 50 and I think it's important when we're in these spaces of
00:32:50.940trying to craft out our identity and our voices is how much of it is our truth and how much of it
00:32:57.760is the echoing trends of pop culture and how can we try to find what is our authentic expression
00:33:05.200and also silence ourselves enough to allow our elders to be able to take up space as well
00:33:13.180I always fundamentally go to the women in my life who are older than 60 to ask them if I'm doing it right, if this is what I should be sharing.
00:33:25.800And I think that's a good reminder for us that it's important to ask those who've come before us.
00:33:31.220It's also really important to acknowledge those that have come before us because, you know, in 2021, this current paradigm, there's no new ideas.
00:33:40.680everything has been taught and done and we are walking behind the people that have done that
00:33:48.180before us and to acknowledge that is really powerful because it just acknowledges we're
00:33:52.660a step in a lineage but we are not the the ultimate creator of that lineage if that makes sense
00:33:59.240yeah absolutely that's a really important point and I've heard you speak about the reality that
00:34:08.220the feminist movement, as it unfurled in Western societies, particularly in the U.S., is actually
00:34:16.040really detrimental to the work we are trying to do now because it shifted women away from the care
00:34:21.820economy, away from the community, and away from family in the name of equality. Before we talk
00:34:28.600about the returning, can you preface why women need to sort of examine what has transpired in
00:34:33.720the name of equality and if these so-called strides are compatible as we prepare for moments0.88
00:34:38.860of collapse. Yeah, this one is an interesting space to maneuver from. You know, my whole life
00:34:46.500I've felt like I've been a fierce feminist and that definition has changed as I've gotten older
00:34:52.940for sure. But I definitely started to realize through deep investigation, not only with my
00:35:00.020spiritual practice in my 20s but also just the feminist movements how it it was underpinned by
00:35:07.820the fact that women had to rise to meet male standards and for me that is so lacking that
00:35:16.580that we couldn't be seen as our most powerful selves for what we contributed to our community
00:35:23.900as the healers as the mothers as the bearers of life and creation that that has somehow in our
00:35:32.500mainstream culture fallen to be the lesser one thing that I'm constantly striving to do is to
00:35:39.480change the belief system that motherhood and mothers is actually one of the most significantly
00:35:46.940significantly important roles that we need in our community and that those people need to be
00:35:52.940lifted up and told how important they are. Because in this current space, a CEO of a bank is seen to
00:36:01.200have much more credibility and status than a mother of three. And for me, I can't comprehend
00:36:06.680that. I think the feminist movement, as much as they have done so much good for us as women in
00:36:14.460terms of our ability to make choices and think freely and be in a place of strong embodiment
00:36:21.380it has also told us that we are only successful unless we put those pants on and get into that
00:36:27.720office and you know I think breast milk formula actually came out of a lot of mothers returning
00:36:37.360to the workplace and then not being a space for them to breastfeed and I'm not saying we don't0.98
00:36:43.400need women in the workplace. But I'm saying if women are mothers, we need more creches in the1.00
00:36:48.760business spaces. We need more businesses to bend so that we can rear and raise good, healthy1.00
00:36:55.640children with strong mothers who are able to do what is biologically beneficial for that child.
00:37:04.600And that's where I struggle sometimes in the space because for me, I look at so many of my
00:37:12.160family members and you know the mother is a lot of the time the the predominant carer but in in
00:37:20.780that is also responsible for you know the health of the whole family and she is the the alchemist
00:37:28.900you know it's not just preparing dinner and lunch and breakfast it's about preparing medicine and I
00:37:36.000I feel like we've lost that somehow along the way that our role, our crucial role as women and stepping into also motherhood, if we do choose that, is to really look at the health of our children and how we're growing them up and how we can actually make so much change in one generation if a collective of women all chose to do things a little bit differently.
00:38:06.000I like what you were saying about making medicine.
00:38:10.120And yeah, I just got a really beautiful visual as you were speaking.
00:38:16.240And now I want to talk about the returning.
00:41:44.080I just want to reinstate to my community and the women that attend this event sharing and how powerful sharing can be.
00:41:53.100And it really, it is, it's Indigenous ways of being.
00:41:57.700It is removing this Western mindset of hoarding and scarcity to see that when we share and when we are there as a collective, how much we can do.
00:42:08.880And it's been such a big growing time for me to put this event on.
00:42:17.620I've done seven now and I can hope to continue it for the rest of my life.
00:42:26.220Yeah, the way it works is really the most circular gathering I could imagine1.00
00:42:33.680because the 35 tickets that we do sell enable all 100 women to eat and be and live on land and1.00
00:42:44.160you know I'm also very fortunate to do it at a location that's completely off grid so we just0.69
00:42:50.880had like our carbon emission calculation done and I think 20 plants over the full two-day event
00:42:59.860need to be planted to bring us back to a equilibrium of not creating any emissions,
00:43:05.200which is also really powerful. And a big part of my work is also trying to create events or
00:43:11.160gatherings that are not taking and extracting. You know, we have gathered on this land for
00:43:18.120thousands and thousands of years and given back to it in those gatherings. And I think
00:43:23.120it's a time to remember that and remember that we can come together without it having to be
00:43:29.840at the expense of each other in the earth yeah i'm with you there well i'd like to expand our
00:43:39.740conversation on whiteness identity and belonging a bit in the united states historically at least
00:43:46.260those who were physically in closer proximity to whiteness regardless of ancestry often took
00:43:53.140the opportunity to distance themselves from their ancestry in the name of social mobility
00:43:57.680but now I think we're also witnessing the desire of folks to actually try and distance themselves
00:44:04.240from their whiteness because of shame and comparatively you talk about how the Australian
00:44:10.260government desperately attempted to breed out black skin so as someone with mixed ancestry
00:44:17.440the act of acknowledging your indigenous relations is pivotal can you share about what proximity to
00:44:24.660whiteness means in Australia and how that molds your views on embodiment for those who have
00:44:30.900inherited the legacy of being, as some describe, colonized and colonizer, which is something that
00:44:37.460I think more and more people are going to have to navigate through. I mean, my whole life, this has
00:44:43.940been such a big topic for me, being a fair-skinned Indigenous woman, but I grew up with a mother who
00:44:54.140was fiercely passionate about owning her indigeneity because of the implications that
00:45:02.540had occurred to my grandfather because of his black skin you know there was um a rebellious
00:45:10.780child in my mother for sure that went against the grain even when her family persuaded and told her
00:45:19.540that they shouldn't talk about their aboriginality you have to also remember in the context of
00:45:24.940of our country it wasn't until 1967 that indigenous people were even seen as human
00:45:33.820beings in their own country before that we were considered flora and fauna this current stage
00:45:41.440with three percent of the population and in the many different policies that the european
00:45:48.700government which has colonized this country has put in has all been about disconnecting culture0.96
00:45:55.420and breeding out the black or assimilating we're still seeing a lot of these policies today and
00:46:01.920and the way that our government is trying to kind of make aboriginal people invisible and i think
00:46:10.940that runs deep through every indigenous person that has indigenous blood and lineage is that
00:46:17.900we must identify because we're fighting for our lineage we're fighting for our ancestors we're
00:46:25.520fighting for our family who were unable to talk out loud about their culture and if we stop
00:46:35.100claiming our identity then they've won the policies have done what they are meant to do
00:46:41.680they have successfully removed us from our truth and I grew up with a mother who painted uh you
00:46:50.940know landscapes and indigenous artwork all all over my house her studio was our lounge room and
00:46:58.440I was just always brought up knowing I was aboriginal but it wasn't until I started kind
00:47:05.040of stepping out into the world and and claiming that that I was rebutted with oh you don't look
00:47:10.480aboriginal or how aboriginal are you and i think sometimes we can forget how offensive these
00:47:17.740questionings of people identity are you know you wouldn't walk up to somebody who is queer and say
00:47:24.480like oh you don't look queer or how queer are you you know and and we just take that that current
00:47:32.200moment and don't look at the context of bigger picture um which i think is slowly creeping into
00:47:38.860our society especially with things like ancestral trauma and epigenetics epigenetics but um yeah it's
00:47:47.380a confronting place to be in because I also recognize my white privilege being a fair-skinned
00:47:52.360woman but I can stand in my family and most of my cousins are you know very much black identifying0.51
00:48:01.620and and looking and so you know how do we create this kind of like separation of black and white
00:48:08.580it's just the continual divide you know that we're trying to I feel like society is like0.63
00:48:16.900permanent permeating this continual divide you know and I think for me a good way to look at
00:48:24.980white guilt or even to assist people who are dealing with those spaces is recognizing what
00:48:31.560is your ancestral story and where was it in your line that you got displaced from living close to
00:48:39.900the land because we can continue the black and white polarities but until we start to actually
00:48:44.860understand that we've all been colonized and some have been colonized you know earlier than others
00:48:52.060until then how can we re-return to a place where we feel like we belong to this earth so a big part
00:49:01.540of also the returning is is is really encouraging women to refine their story through their
00:49:08.240ancestry refinding that person deep deep in their line who may have been taken away from
00:49:15.380perhaps her herbalism practices perhaps her you know like um potion practices there is somebody
00:49:23.620in our line and i like to remind all women that somewhere we've had a witch you know witches are
00:49:30.440a global unifying identity that every culture around the world has encompassed in one time
00:49:39.740or another we are from this earth all of us
00:50:00.440Vengo aquà de la montaña, muy debajo de la montaña.
00:50:09.440Vengo aquà de la montaña, muy debajo de la montaña.
00:50:18.720La montaña rebanada que me alimenta, la sabia nena morena panadera.
00:50:27.240Están ahà los muchachitos nerviositos. Están ahà los nuestros metidos intiltraditos.
00:50:37.120in the spheres of wellness and ceremony and festival culture so much of what makes up these
00:50:54.480spaces and what binds people together has been birthed out of extraction but it's an extraction
00:51:01.280that takes place under the guise of appreciation and knowledge. But if we say we care about earth
00:51:09.040and we care about community, then I think it's our responsibility as well to really explore the
00:51:14.740legacy and impacts. So I'd like us to sort of explore and challenge this notion that wisdom
00:51:21.340can be extracted from so-called other places without ramifications. How does this legacy
00:51:28.280continue and how can we make reparations for the long lasting effects of spiritual tourism
00:51:34.260as well as any reflections you might have on this or how localization and
00:51:39.460learning locally without appropriation can fit into this conversation
00:51:43.840yeah i mean again um this ties back into what i was saying about finding out your own story
00:51:52.920and really diving deep into your ancestry to understand what in your lineage you want to
00:52:00.680continue and pass forward and I think we see this a lot in especially the spiritual communities
00:52:08.060is a real it's just a real disregard for those who have the blood connection to the teachings
00:52:19.760and those that have merely done a course or training in this space.
00:52:25.160I think in order for us to move forward,
00:52:28.220we have to start recognizing what our own story is in this place
00:52:33.580and teach from our own lineage and our own stories
00:52:37.000because any other thing is just colonization, again, continually.
00:52:46.220not just in the festival ceremony space,
00:52:49.480But even on Instagram, it's like you can get all of this information so freely given to you without any form of initiation.
00:52:58.100And suddenly you believe yourself to be the teacher.
00:53:01.960And this is very dangerous, you know, like with reference again to what I was saying about elders is that it takes time.
00:53:10.340It takes time and life to be embodied in teachings to share with other people.
00:53:15.900and we live in this very fast-paced society that sees you know quickness as a level of success
00:53:24.360and so therefore you know if you're trained in something you did it for one month right go out
00:53:29.580and teach it we've forgotten the full embodiment of what that means to walk through the world with
00:53:35.660that living inside of us how can we walk through the world living like I studied tantra for seven
00:53:42.380years it's not my modality but I studied it because I was trying to find my way back to
00:53:50.360my cultural understanding I also spent time in Central America studying my culture because again
00:53:56.900I was trying to piece together these parts of indigeneity that ran all around the world which
00:54:02.540was basically the same theme which was living close to nature connecting with oneself and
00:54:09.540our other animals that occupy the planet so yeah I just I feel like there is so much more awareness
00:54:18.180than there's ever been right now about stepping on the toes of other people and their teachings
00:54:24.180but in saying that it's not to say that we can't be our own individual spiritual teacher you know
00:54:33.120if you are learning strong meditations and Vedic meditations or you're learning yogic practices and
00:54:41.040you want to do them in your life then of course do them wake up do your practice meditate I think
00:54:46.900it's once we step into the teacher role and then also the commercialization of these things that
00:54:53.600there starts to be an imbalance especially in a world that sees money linked to power
00:54:58.780and the continual oppression of black, brown voices in this space,0.83
00:55:04.560I think that's where it can start to be dangerous.1.00
00:55:06.840And we need to return to ourselves first.
00:55:11.140We need to return to our strong spiritual practices first
00:55:14.500and encourage other people for sure to do it.
00:55:17.880But perhaps we can start to move from a place that doesn't look like
00:55:21.280gaining capital over these traditions that for so many thousands of years
00:55:28.140never had a monetary exchange involved in them. When I think about what you're speaking to
00:55:36.380this non-capital way of relating, I know it can be hard for so many of us to imagine what a world
00:55:43.240could look like beyond capitalism. But if we don't practice it, we're not going to get there.
00:55:49.040And so I think the practice that you're in is important, not only for your own community,
00:55:54.280but also to inspire others that people are doing it.
00:55:58.380And the more we do it, probably more space in our hearts and our mind will open
00:56:04.780to how we can continue down that path.
00:56:07.360So I really appreciate hearing your experience.
00:56:12.020And you've used the term big picture activism.
00:56:15.920And something that really struck me in preparing for our conversation
00:56:19.500is the way you talk about big system change and how settlers can support this in terms of addressing
00:56:25.840contemporary colonization of indigenous people through dominant understandings of success.
00:56:32.260Now, similarly to Australia, here in the States, settlers think that celebrating the BIPOC
00:56:38.120community in positions of power, you know, any sort of power is equivalent to the writings of
00:56:44.200historical wrongs, but you push us to interrogate this further. So can you speak to this facet of
00:56:52.160big picture activism? Yeah, big picture activism. I'd firstly like to acknowledge my mentor,
00:57:00.200Helen and Albert Hodge, who has been in the localization movement and the forefront of it
00:57:06.560for a very long time and introduced me to this idea that a lot of the times we're all fighting
00:57:16.700these little fights but the little fights are all got to do with something that's much larger and if
00:57:24.700we just zoom out a little bit we understand big picture activism as pulling down a structure
00:57:31.980that has created oppression and by that I mean the colonial capitalist structure which I try to
00:57:40.820explain to people is like a pyramid scheme if you can see that everything is going up and being
00:57:45.680funneled from the masses down the bottom all the way up to the top rather than implementing another
00:57:51.680kind of system or structure which may look like a circular reciprocity something that is working
00:57:58.840in conjunction where you're giving and taking now the problem I'm finding especially in today's
00:58:07.420day and age is that we're just replacing one puppet with the next and somehow thinking that
00:58:14.100that is going to be the solution and you know I'm talking about politics mostly in this space
00:58:20.020because the politicians are just oiling the big machine-like system that controls all of us.0.99
00:58:29.260So I don't see us having change by having an indigenous prime minister who is operating under the crown,0.97
00:58:39.520the colonial crown, which created and destroyed this land.1.00
00:58:44.680I don't see that as being able to make change.
00:58:47.900what I see being able to make change is to pull down the entire structure and this system, which
00:58:54.060is embedded in exploitation and extraction. And if we can look at anything that it has done in the
00:59:02.280last, you know, for us 200 so years is destroy and desertify our beautiful continent that is
00:59:11.020Australia. So I don't understand how just jumping into this structure and trying to make change
00:59:19.140is going to occur. We need to pull it all down. I am so fiercely passionate about the big picture
00:59:27.700activism because I think we, we get lost in the little fights and, you know, we can forget
00:59:35.620sometimes that we're all trying to fight for the same thing which is essentially freedom
00:59:40.840the essential need to be free in this world which is our birthright really our birthright to be able
00:59:49.620to be close to nature to understand intrinsically what it means to be on this planet to belong to
00:59:56.720connect and all of this this machine like uh intense technological future that we're moving
01:00:06.460into is only going to perpetuate more harm i can see that happening so close like it's like uh the
01:00:17.200veil is lifted and i'm like oh right okay it doesn't make sense to move into a technological
01:00:22.400future where most of our sustainable renewable energy is also being mined if we're still using
01:00:29.080the same for-profit structures and we're trying to be green it's just greenwashing it's just
01:00:36.520again feeding something that is ultimately destroying our right as human beings to be in
01:00:44.680our most healthiest version of ourselves on our healthiest planet that we can be
01:00:50.500yeah thank you for bringing up the mining of renewables that um even though i know so many
01:00:59.020of us just want that solution we want the quick fix or just a fix in general uh but
01:01:07.580that's not it and it never will be and so yeah we really need to um truth tell about that to
01:01:16.300each other so we don't put so much energy and hope and creativity into the technological future
01:01:24.540but instead one that is grounded in realness um and it's all it's all there you know like our
01:01:34.340history it's all there like we have the ways to be able to live symbiotically with nature we have
01:01:41.580the answers you know they they are the answers that will actually make the majority of people
01:01:47.760come from a place of being able to benefit but that's not the system that we're under right now
01:01:53.360and until people like lift that veil and understanding that we're all working in this
01:01:59.200system that is not beneficial for us it's most certainly not beneficial for the next generation
01:02:03.880is beneficial for a small amount of people who is so fiercely disconnected from what is their truth
01:02:09.200you know as they continue to work for this like again I say it's a machine-like structure because
01:02:15.300I do believe that human beings have the utmost wanting to to be the best that they can but our
01:02:23.720belief system is wrong you know our belief system is embedded in an economic structure rather than
01:02:31.560an environmental one and and that's something that we need to look at how do we shift that
01:02:36.780core fundamental belief system so that we're fighting for the thing that really needs us
01:02:41.940to be fighting for, which is the earth. Yes. Yes, absolutely. I wanted to read this quote of yours
01:02:50.900and it reads, I acknowledge the lower system that has been in place on this country for thousands
01:02:57.780of years, way before a law system that breeds a society to live in fear. I acknowledge the
01:03:04.940original custodians, our wisdom speakers, the water keepers, the land protectors, and the
01:03:11.020relations for our other more than human beings. I recognize that sovereignty was never ceded,
01:03:18.300the land was never given. I won't let my power go, but I will start a journey of forgiving.
01:03:24.560My power is deep inside of me, not embedded in currency. My power is our power. In my language,
01:03:31.440the bark of the tree means the same as the skin on my body, end quote.
01:03:38.480And as we come to a close, I'd like to discuss lore and law and just how you see these as
01:03:46.200incompatible, but more so how you understand lore's role in fostering a relinquishment of power
01:03:54.120and getting us out of competition with our relations.
01:03:57.340yeah this is so fundamental to the way that I walk through the world and um really embodying
01:04:08.560my culture the best that I can and my cultural practices and learning language has been one of
01:04:15.240the most powerful things for me to actually understand because I think language speaks
01:04:21.900volumes to the culture and when i've been learning bunjalung and and understanding what all the words
01:04:29.100mean everything is first of all connected for we as human beings have the same names and
01:04:36.960traditionally in my culture you would be given a name of an animal or a name of a rock or a mountain
01:04:44.460that represented you or your collective and this is to understand that there is no separation even
01:04:53.620when you look at indigenous dance it is an embodied form of empathy where we get to embody the kangaroo
01:04:59.300where we get to move into the eagle and we get to really on a cellular level understand how they
01:05:05.020walk through the world the law and the lore of this country are so fundamentally opposed
01:05:12.740One is about extracting and creating a belief system that states we are removed from nature, we are somehow above nature. And the law system and cultural system of my ancestry is that we are so interconnected and intertwined, that if one thing in our environment is suffering, we all are suffering.
01:05:40.000You know, we've been sold this lie through capitalism, this individualistic lie that states that we're somehow single cell organisms that don't have an impact on each other, which is just so incorrect.
01:05:54.260You know, the interconnectedness of this entire planet is so vast and they talk a lot of, you can see the butterfly effect, you know, something happens on the other side of the world can affect the other side of the world.
01:06:07.280This is constantly a state in which we can bring balance back to the earth by creating balance within ourselves, by being able to understand that kinship goes beyond humans.
01:06:24.800The kinship is to that tree that you spent every day with for four years and meditated under and provided you with berries and allowed you shelter.
01:06:35.180You know, the difference is that we no longer live in a natural world where nature is always like our biggest protector.
01:06:47.060You know, we've created these structures and we've moved away from it, even though all of these structures are embedded in natural materials in some form in their original place.
01:06:56.800But we've dislocated ourselves from this.
01:06:59.980and I think until you start to re-establish a relationship with nature you can't fully
01:07:07.260understand it and so I beg people to go out and embody the experience of what it is like to
01:07:14.920build a relationship with a rock you know a rock that may have been on this planet for
01:07:20.680thousands and thousands and thousands of years you know and carries a spirit as well
01:07:25.780And to not see the natural world as something that is there for us to use, but to see it as our actual family, that it has a living spirit inside of it, that we can move from a place of magic and discover great magic when we fall into subtle relationship with nature.
01:07:52.020And for me, it's been a big journey of trying to slow down, unpack my very fast moving mind to sit in a space with one thing, maybe for an hour, maybe for two, you know, that could be a plant, that could be a flower, that could be an animal, you know, but to really start to reestablish a strong connection.
01:08:20.800And I think this is why localization is so important, because we've moved into this global community where people come and go so quickly that they use the landscape as if it is like a backdrop to their life.
01:08:35.180And they don't understand the real importance that it plays with us.
01:08:40.100And when we localize, we spend time in the same place.