Videos
Outback Tom yarns with mob about being a good ally to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
Yorta Yorta man Tom Forrest aka Outback Tom yarns with First Nations folks about how allies can actively participate in reconciliation and be there for mob.
True tracks: create a culture of innovation with Indigenous knowledge
Terri Janke weaves her own personal story in with her reasons for ethical collaborations between Indigenous communities and researchers.
The myth of Aboriginal stories being myths
The strong understanding of the land, gathered across more than 50,000 years, was passed down through thousands of generations. Who holds this knowledge today and is it respected in Australian society? Jacinta Koolmatrie explores these questions and connects them to her own experiences as an Adnyamathanha person.
Books
The dreaming path: Indigenous thinking to change your life
The Dreaming Path has always been there, but in the modern-day world, it can be hard to find. There are so many demands on us – family, health, bills, a mortgage, a career – that
Country: future fire, future farming
For millennia, Indigenous Australians harvested this continent in ways that offers contemporary environmental & economic solutions. Gammage & Pascoe demonstrate how Aboriginal people cultivated the land through manipulation of water flows, vegetation & firestick practice.
Tell me why: the story of my life and my music
A powerful memoir of a true Australian legend: stolen child, musical and lyrical genius, and leader. A stunning account of resilience and the strength of spirit – and of a great love story.
Living on stolen land
A prose-styled book that pulls apart the myths at the heart of our nationhood, & challenges Australia to come to terms with its own past and its place within and on ‘Indigenous Countries’.
Our home, our heartbeat
Adapted from Briggs’ celebrated song ‘The Children Came Back‘, Our Home, Our Heartbeatis a celebration of past and present Indigenous legends, as well as emerging generations, and at its heart honours the oldest continuous culture on earth.
Songlines: the power and promise
Weaving deeply personal storytelling with extensive research on mnemonics, this book offers unique insights into Indigenous traditional knowledges, how they apply today and how they could help all peoples thrive into the future.
Astronomy: sky country
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people are the oldest scientists in human history. This book explores the connections between Aboriginal environmental & cultural practices and the behaviour of the stars.
Design: building on country
Aboriginal design is of a distinctly cultural nature, based in the Dreaming and in ancient practices grounded in Country. This book shows how Indigenous design principles are now being applied to contemporary practices.
Essential Aboriginal insights
With this book, Jolleen Hicks aims to empower the relationships between Aboriginal Communities and those responsible for achieving positive outcomes for Aboriginal people.
Loving country
Discover Australia through an Indigenous narrative. Learn to see the country as herself, know her whole & old story, & find the way to fall in love with her, our home.
Welcome to country
A curated guidebook to Indigenous Australia and the Torres Strait Islands, with insights into Indigenous languages and customs, history, native title, art and dance, storytelling, and cultural awareness and etiquette for visitors.
Plants: past, present & future
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples have always known that plants are the foundation of life on Earth. Could engaging with the cultural significance of plants be the key to a healthier, more sustainable future?
Quotes
We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home.
Racism is a disease in society. We’re all equal. I don’t care what their color is, or religion. Just as long as they’re human beings they’re my buddies.
The land is my mother. Like a human mother, the land gives us protection, enjoyment and provides our needs – economic, social and religious. We have a human relationship with the land: Mother, daughter, son. When the land is taken from us or destroyed, we feel hurt because we belong to the land and we are part of it.
This earth, I never damage. I look after. Fire is nothing, just clean up. When you burn, new grass coming up. That means good animal soon, Might be goanna, possum, wallaby. Burn him off, new grass coming up, new life all over.
We cultivated our land, but in a way different from the white man. We endeavored to live with the land; they seemed to live off it. I was taught to preserve, never to destroy.
And now I’m trying to do the little things, to get me through the day. I don’t know who I can tell, or how to talk about the ways, I’m not okay. Is that okay to say?
This is your lifestyle, you can be what you wanna be, you can do what you wanna do, feel that cool breeze on your face again, feel the rain on your hair, running back to you.
Like the lines on your face, the answer is here, and the light in your eyes, don’t hide it away, like the dots on the shells, they shine.
So I get my mental straight, write my problems til the pencil breaks, therapeutic, if it puts me in a better place I gotta do it, instead of losing myself I found music.
If you don’t learn about each other, you do not understand each other, and you don’t hide warts and all, both sides, then you’re forever going to repeat history.
Guilt is like any other energy: you can’t accumulate it or keep it because it makes you sick and disrupts the system you live in – you have to let it go. Face the truth, make amends and let it go.
If people are laughing, they are learning. True learning is a joy because it is an act of creation.
So I take this word reconciliation and I use it to reconcile people back to Mother Earth, so they can walk this land together and heal one another because she’s the one that gives birth to everything we see around us, everything we need to survive.
At the Sunrise Ceremony, I meditate and ask the Great Spirit for direction. My hands fill with electricity. I touch you and you feel it, too. I heal people this way. My Grandmother did that, too. I learned all about that when I was a young fellow… We learn to respect the elders who hand on the Law. The elders guard the Law and the Law guards the people. This is the Law that comes from the mountain. The mountain teaches the dreaming.
The more you know, the less you need.
To us, health is about so much more than simply not being sick. It’s about getting a balance between physical, mental, emotional, cultural and spiritual health. Health and healing are interwoven, which means that one can’t be separated from the other.
Our spirituality is a oneness and an interconnectedness with all that lives and breathes, even with all that does not live or breathe.