 My mother, she grew up in the bush with my grandparents, they were one of the last Aboriginal people to come out. Getting their water from the well, there was no electricity, they were hunting all their traditional foods and they would do so if with the seasons. Obviously met my mother, I guess growing up as a child I never really realised how fortunate and how lucky we were, we were really spoiled, we were eating kangaroo, eating emu, blue bone gropa, abalone off the rocks, fresh crab with the seasonal change, wallabies and so on. And so it was a very interesting life growing up, family, an Aboriginal family on my mother's side, there's about 600 people and out of those 600 people, about 250 of those still practice the traditional ways, the language, the culture, the customs. When I was 17 I left my little coastal town and went straight up into the Kimberleys to a place called Kananara, one of the hottest places in Australia. Some days I had the thermometer in there, when I was working it was up to 50 degrees, most days were 40. I guess when I got up into those areas I realised it was such a culture shock to go around because I could see some of the community still dealing with those issues of dispossession and assimilation and so that made me realise and think and once my grandfather passed away, I rest in peace, my sister got married, my mother was sick, it was time to come home. When I come back home we opened a family cultural centre at Injunup, 40 acres on the coast walking distance to the beach, beautiful. And the day before we opened the doors to the new centre, our grandfather, he had already passed and it was important that we wanted to continue and carry his legacies on and so we began doing cultural activities on country, sharing knowledge, experiences, foraging for foods with a six-seasonal change and really a wonderful lifestyle to pass down and continue on through the families. As I worked there for a few years I decided there was a need for more and it was burning inside of me that there was a passion burning, I needed to create something for our visitors to the area to really get a better perspective and awareness and aboriginal culture for the south-west of Western Australia. Our mother's family, we are Wadandi people so Wadandi means forest people by the sea, salt water people. So I left the cultural centre, trained up a few staff and created Kumo Dreaming. Kumo was my aboriginal name, given to me by the elders and dreaming is a part of our dreaming and our spirituality, a little bit about Kumo Dreaming. We run aboriginal cultural experiences on country, we forage for all our ingredients, we catch all our own food, we have a farm property, we run cattle but in saying that kangaroos and emus and wallabies all come onto there so they become on the dinner table as well. We run leadership programs, we were working in education as well, lecturing, doing a bit of horticulture, we wanted to give something back to a lot of the aboriginal kids that weren't so fortunate to grow up being surrounded by influential aboriginal people such as myself and that connection to country and identity and sense of belonging. So that's why we run aboriginal leadership programs as well and provide opportunities for local aboriginal people. Local awareness is a big thing. When visitors come into Australia and into the south west area it's really important for them to get a really clear perspective of what we're about, who we are and the different experiences that connect people to that Pacific area, connects them to country and then to have a true experience of Australian culture. Welcome to countries, we at all events just like this, we do welcome to countries usually done by an elder or cultural custodian. Traditional music, song, dance, so some of the music that I play there is usually a welcome song, we have a dance group called the Wadante Dreaming Dancers and we do a lot of the local events and festivals in the area. Arts and crafts, my mothers are quite a distinguished artist, I'm also an artist I love to paint and I love to share the stories and the stories in the paintings connect people back to the area, to the land, to the animals. Community engagement, we're constantly working with community building relationships and partnerships because it enhances what we're currently doing and in a lot of areas down south to establish good business we need to be able to build those relationships with local government, businesses and so on. Bush foods, plants and medicines, as you walked in you would have seen something on your chair. Now in the small container one of those there is what we call borna, it's bush onion, bush chilli, it's not as hot or spicy or as strong as we would usually make it. In the tea it's got peppermint leaves which are called the peppetry we call wanang and now wanang is a peppermint tree but it's more than a peppermint tree because we use the leaves, we use the bark, we use the roots, they're very flexible, we use them for building shelters and my mires, we do survival camps with universities, we show them how to live off the land with nothing, lighting a fire with your fire stick, building your own shelters, collecting your food, the traditional ways. So what that is, it's a borna and it grows in the south-west, doesn't grow anywhere else in the world, contains natural chemical and we believe that it's a blood purifier, it's good for your liver, it's good for, it's very high in antioxidants, some people take it because it's good for abnormal cell growth and it also has anti-tumor properties. It's a strong medicine and it's really important that we respect that medicine as well because it is a food source, the old fellas used to roll around the ashes of the fire and tell the stories and eat it. And our family is quite a strong family and that's one of the medicines that we take, I guess, weekly, fortnightly and must be doing something because we never get sick. The other one in the container is what we call kula and that's emu plum. Now it only flowers around March and we call it the kula, the emu plum is because when the emu is nesting it gets in the middle of this huge big bush, stomps down the middle of it, lays down and lays the eggs in the middle of this emu plum bush. So you can imagine an emu sticking out of this long, spiky grass with his head. So when they lay the eggs, they would actually, the female emu would take off and leave the male emu to sit on the eggs. And he would sit on those eggs and keep them warm until they're hatched and when he needed to feed, he would tiptoe 50 meters away from the nest, go off and feed and tiptoe back in so he wouldn't let other animals see his tracks to the nest. When they hatch, you get these beautiful little emu, baby emus, which we call weightch. And he would show them all the waterholes are, all the sacred places and as they got bigger throughout the season, the old man emu, the old male emu, he'd just lay on the ground and pretend to die, just lay there. And when you spend enough time in the bush and you look at the behavior of these animals, you know, as a food source but also as the behavior and their pattern that is quite unique, the emus would try to wake up the old male emu, eventually they take off back to the food sources, back to the waterholes and become self-sufficient. He just wakes up, heads off in the other direction, meets up with the female emu and continues on his path and does the same thing in the following year. So that's a little story about the emu, the weightch. It's a beautiful bird and it has many different uses and I'll share a story a little bit later about that Pacific bird. Kumbaudramian cultural experiences, we have a range of different meeting places on country, upon the river, it's all very hands-on, interactive. Some of our experiences, such as food experiences, we take people overnight on location, forage, all our ingredients, we're using things like kangaroo, wallaby, marsupial animal, fish, crabs, crustaceans, octopuses, squid, birds, ducks, geese, emus, flocked animals and lots of different types of bush fruits and vegetables that are seasonal. So depending on the season is depending on the foods that we're gathering from those areas. Here we have an example of teaching traditional fire lighting on one of our meeting places. We also make traditional hunting tools very similar to the same type of hunting tools that were made by our ancestors. We haven't changed anything about it. When we do light the fire, we use the marmiti. So if we say belga marmiti kala, it's a fire stick from the grass tree to light the fire. And so the language that we speak is a traditional language which is only ever spoken throughout our area for 50,000 years. We have lots of caves in our region, so roughly about 300 caves between the Cape to Cape region. From Cape Naturalist or Kerriginning up all the way down to Cape Lewin is a limestone granite ridge. And these caves are up to 500,000 to 800,000 years old. And they all run into the ocean. The significance of the caves is their pathways to the dreaming. So when the old fellas pass away, we take their spirit, their body down to these areas, their spirit travels through the caves, through the grottoes, out to the horizon of the ocean and back to their dreaming. So they're considered sacred to the local people. We have a range of different foraging locations and trails where we select all our ingredients. Like I said, they are seasonal. Right here you can see the tea that you drank with the peppermint leaf with the peppermint tree in front of us there. And it's a unique plant, wonderful flavor. The peppermint leaves were actually used for traditional breath freshener. So a small piece of charcoal, clean your teeth, wash your mouth out with fresh water, chew on those leaves and that was a way of brushing your teeth. Whereas, we're dandy country. So the southwest area of Western Australia, right down the bottom, we got the southern ocean, we've got the Indian ocean and where they meet is the beginning. So we've got beautiful rainforests, bushland, beautiful coastal areas, very untouched, very pristine, lots of animals, lots of food sources. So we still have that opportunity to live the lifestyle, contemporary traditional lifestyle, being able to gather our foods, our medicines and to be able to live off the land. The two oceans are very different from each other. You've got the southern ocean, the Indian ocean and we catch different species of shellfish, fishing itself. We don't really touch the fish when they're spawning, when they're carrying the young or it's mating season. Aboriginal people were some of the first foragers environmental farmers using sustainable techniques to be able to live and survive off the land by farming the native plants and animals that were already there. They would burn the bush in autumn, circle burning techniques, would fertilize the soil, disperse seeds from native plants and create regrowth. A lot of bush plants and fruits and flowers were not re-fruit or flower. If they're not burnt, certain times of the year. So fire is really important. It's more than just a tool to cook your food. It represents life, family and kinship. The six seasonal change. Every two months in our area the season changes and this is pretty much what dictates the foods that we collect and this is how Aboriginal people survived in our area for 50,000 years. They saw changes upon the land that no one else has ever seen before. Our six seasons are Burak, Bunaroo, Jilbar, Cambrang, Makaroo and Jurran. And every two months they change due to the changing of the plants, the animals and of course the weather. So the food sources that we're collecting are really important that we collect them within the right seasons because Aboriginal people never wanted to jeopardize the following season's food supplies. So it was really important that we abided by these laws and seasonal changes because it was important for our survival. Foraging for food. Now it's no surprise that Australia and bush foods are plentiful. Certain times of the season it's really important that we gather the foods that come from the land but also do it in a sustainable way. So by harvesting the fruits the vegetables you know in this picture here you can see the emu plum which is the one you just tasted down the bottom right hand side. The purple one. Now we also call it the emu plum is because when the emu comes along it will actually swallow the whole fruit and the seed. They walk 150-200 meters, goes through the body, fertilized back into the ground, germinates, sprouts and grows another bush. And also to get those re-fruiting year-round you have to use different elements by trimming, cutting, smoking or burning. In the santa we have a barter grub or a widget grub and they usually love to bury themselves in amongst the waddle trees, the golden waddle, sandalwood near the kondong trees or the belga, the grass tree. Now some of the plants that we use are actually poisonous plants and Aboriginal people who had the techniques of being able to filter these plants. There were some records of some of the first settlers coming over and they saw these big fruits, the zambia fruits, the dirji, the zarchads from the prehistoric time so they've been around since dinosaurs. So as Aboriginal people would gather these foods they would have them in the camp and the settlers they came they saw the emu eating this fruit and they also saw the Aboriginal people harvesting these foods but what they didn't know is Aboriginal people were filtering them in the river, drying them out in the sun, burning them in the fire and then grinding them up to make flour to make traditional bread. This is what we call bayonuts. Waddle seed, woolly grass seed, bayonut, ground up together, sea salt, water, you make traditional bread in the ashes of the fire, burning shiok or peppermint or wanang. We also use the belga tree which we collect the fire stick which we call a marmite. This is the big flower that comes from the top of the grass tree and as we hollow it out and cut it back this is how we create fire and it gives you appreciation for those simple things. Throughout Australia the fire lighting is very different but on our experiences on country it's important that we light the fire with the traditional fire stick, we harvest the foods from the area in season and that creates the whole experience which is usually an overnight experience as camping on country in isolated areas, exclusive access. Bush cherries, waddle seeds, bush tomatoes, sea figs, salt, bush, sea celery, just to name a few. These are all different elements that enhance our product and our foods and like I said we really do want to be able to look after these plants that we're foraging for. So what we did is we looked at different ways we could make it more sustainable. Catching local produce, like I said we catch our traditional food in season so food always tastes better in season. We've got some fresh water mussel, you've got some abalone, different abalone to the southern ocean in the Indian Ocean. This time of year now back home, beautiful big bay of underlap is full of crab but we'll leave them alone next month because I'll start to have eggs. The different fish that we use, some of them are migrating fish, some of them are very territorial. This is an interesting one because still in Australia there's still a lot of families that can't bring themselves to eat the kangaroo and the emu, our coat of arms, our national emblem. As a child I grew up eating kangaroo and emu so I don't see any any difference. To me it's just as cute and cuddly as a piglet or a lamb and surprisingly enough as well because in the early days when Australia was settled, colonised about 223 years ago in the Swan River valley towards Perth, kangaroo stew was one of their main food sources so it's not a surprise that, I mean it is a surprise that we're not utilising it as much as we should. It's very low in fat, it's very lean, it's very good for you and it's actually been proven to be one of the best red meats. Emu is a little bit different, it's full of oil. The oil is actually really good for your heart, your liver and your blood so it's important that we utilised that, it's good medicine. We hear the stories of my grandmother resting piece who's placed at our cultural centre now. She would do these cooking techniques as a child I would be amazed because I'd never said anything like it growing up. She would actually, we would actually catch the kangaroo and she'd want the intestines and the organs and she'd sit by the river and she'd clean the intestine out slowly as she does. She'd chop up the liver, the kidney, some wild herbs and bush spices and she'd stuff it back into the kangaroo and intestine and she would actually steam that on some volcanic basalt rock that was collected locally and using some hot coals, jarra, shiok or banksia. And some of those old cooking techniques was amazing and now with the sort of work that we're doing on country we really want to bring those old recipes and those old foods utilising all these ingredients. Here we have the picture of the borona which we had in the tea which is the red one in the middle. The tea is to the left, the shiok on the far right is a small shiok tree, the gully gully. Now that's a sacred Aboriginal woman's tree in our area and when you burn it it burns down to a white-powdered ash. It's got many different uses. The shiok pinnacles were used, the root systems were used, but the ash was really important because it was used for ceremony. So when the Aboriginal woman would have a baby she would actually use the hot ash to stop the bleeding of the umbilical cord once it was cut and also use it for ceremony. So if we do take from this from this specific plant it's important that we respect the laws and customs behind these plants as well. Traditional dance, our dance group is the Wodani Dreaming Dancers and the dances that we do most of the time is about the hunt for the animal. So when you return back to the camp at night time traditionally it wouldn't be just like oh I caught a kangaroo love. Well here's an emu there I caught some fish, yep. It would be more appreciated so that start to do the dance which would reenact the animal and tell the story and through a lot of the songs and the stories and the dancing is how a lot of information and knowledge was passed through Aboriginal culture. This handsome young fella is my son, he's only six and he's already started to immerse himself within his own culture and we're really seeing a real change in Australia with Aboriginal kids because they've been exposed to culture from a young age. As you know it's no surprise that Aboriginal people and culture had to go through lots of trials and tribulations to become where we are now and for 50,000 years the biggest thing that happened Aboriginal people was colonisation because right there and then Aboriginal people had to learn the change and adapt to become more diverse in the movement of time. So that's why a lot of traditional groups we still maintain our five sets of laws, customs, spirituality, beliefs and dreaming but also being able to have a balance between traditional and contemporary lifestyle. We created the community land care nursery because we're foraging our ingredients we have a lot of seed. The seeds would go back into the nursery which is a volunteer nursery three days a week we'd have volunteers come in we germinate the seeds we sprout them we plant them back on country where we're harvesting and once again we're creating a sustainable food source. The volunteers mostly elderly but we also use the community nursery as an educational tool as well to create people more aware. If we're foraging for foods on country it's important that we do it in a sustainable way environmentally friendly and caring for country. At our cultural centre we have huge areas meeting areas where we explain to guests the importance of caring for country it's a sense of identity. So cultural awareness is really important because it just it really implements the fact that Aboriginal people would care to the point where they would actually go out of their way to make sure that food and laws and customs were abide and we do this by sharing and creating cultural awareness programs. Education in our group in the coastal area we do a lot of educational programs with kids because from a young age we want these kids to understand and have that connection back to the country. Not necessarily Aboriginal kids non-Aboriginal kids as well so it's really important that we continue and share Aboriginal knowledge about the land so that these kids can grow up being more aware of the surroundings of the plants of the animals and of course the culture and the people. Every time you go to a sacred place every time you eat traditional food every time you interact you immerse yourself within Aboriginal culture which makes it a part of who you are as an Australian it's part of our past and present. Here's a group from the Wodandi Leadership Program. Now these kids were taken from the city hadn't had the opportunity to be a part of the interesting opportunities the interesting initiatives that we've created so we take them down for three days we go through a whole leadership program first day's cultural second day's recreational third day these guys are getting involved hands-on cooking using the ingredients helping skin the kangaroo helping make the dampers helping light the fire and then when they leave we do a follow-up program to see how this is impacted and how this has influenced them and their life choices that they make from there on. We have three interesting characters here all very passionate all very determined people the reason why I put this this in the slide here is because we're sharing knowledge and sharing knowledge Aboriginal people have been some of the most patient people in the world and sharing knowledge and information is really important and we don't want to hold it back even though some Aboriginal culture has been exploited in the past it's important that we share and we create respect opportunities agreements relationships and continue on on our path Carla like I said Carla is fire and it's more than just fire it's life it's family it's kinship caring for country is the most important and also for me spiritually and culturally it's important we maintain and look after our areas so every winter we plant over 250,000 different types of bush medicine bush tucker plants native trees from the land care nursery with the Aboriginal students and kids from the area back on the country in different locations and that really does I guess it feels better within yourself to be able to do that it's taken this time now to get to a point where we can actually start to give a lot back and this is what makes food sustainable it makes our areas I guess it looks after the areas we don't exploit the area we re-re-re-re-vegetate rehabilitate rivers and waterways in our area there's a big problem with bushfires very hot during the summertime even the slightest spark bang bushfire would burn thousands of hectares of native bushland fruits and flowers and also more importantly animals I'm just going to share a little story before I finish and this story is from my old uncle and it really does implement the fact of how Aboriginal people perceive their roles and responsibilities about caring for country and land and animals before everything was physical like me and you everything was in spirit form and all the spirits they circled around the sky but the earth the Nalabuja the red soil the giver of life it was very cold it was very dark and there was no life one day seeds fell from the stars and they land in the Nalabuja the red soil the giver of life followed by a downpour of rain and sunshine and up come all the beautiful paper bark trees all the shea oak trees and all the beautiful wildflower and bush tucker and bush medicine plants and as all these big old tall trees stood there as they swayed in the breeze they wondered they said who's going to look after us who's going to look after all the beautiful bush tucker and bush medicine plants who's going to look after all these generations of rainforests the big old carry tree he stood there as his leaves swayed in the breeze he said I can't be the carer I can't be the custodian because my root systems are stuck in the ground I can grow to a very old age but I can only remain in one place there's no possible way we could look after all the beautiful rainforests and bush medicine plants next to rise up out of the Nalabuja the mother earth the red soil the giver of life were all the animals there was the younger the kangaroo the emu the wache the kerter the goanna and the echidna the ninyaran and over time all these animals also turned to each other and they also wondered they said who's going to look after us who's going to look after all the beautiful generations of animals who's going to look after all the beautiful rainforests and bush medicine and bush tucker plants who is going to be the carer and the custodian for all these wonderful things or the first animal to speak was the echidna the ninyaran and he turned to the other animals he said I can't be the boss I can't be the carer because these thorns on my back I might cause harm to others and I can only defend myself so he quickly scarred off in his direction with the ants along the river gone next animal was the goanna the kerter and he crawled long on his legs and he stood up on his back legs and he turned to younger the kangaroo and emu the wache he said I can't be the carer either he said I've thought about it there's no possible way because my belly is so low to the ground and I can only scavenge across the floor of this earth but what I'll do is I look after all the dead things every now and then you'll see the carcass of an animal you'll see the goanna come along and try to clean it up just like a shovel no shark or a sting around the ocean the goanna plays the same role and responsibility on the floor of the earth next animal was the emu the wache and he stood up he said look at my beautiful emu feathers look how fast I can run and he run up to all the other animals and said pick me I can look after all of us pick me I can be the carer and the custodian pick me I can look after us for future generations and while the emu was running up to all the other animals the younger the kangaroo he stood in the distance and he shook his head he said look at that emu look at that wache he is kartwara he is crazy it is not possible to understand we cannot be the carers of this earth me younger the kangaroo I can jump higher than anybody else but fur covers most of my body and I've only got these small kangaroo hands to care with there's no possible way we could be the carers the paper bark forest it's got together the shiok forest the kari forests and they made a big cocoon and they're born up out of the nalabuja of the mother earth the red soil the giver of life first man and first woman in our area they're known as nyunga and jundul jundul she had beautiful long white hair that flowed down to the ground and nyunga had locks that flowed up to the sky and they had large hands the human being hands us human beings future generations ancestors that have passed nyunga and jundul at the time and as time passed all the animals turned to us human beings and they said it's up to you humans it's up to you humans to look after all the beautiful bush tukra bush medicine plants it's up to you humans to look after all the generations of animals it's up to you human beings to be the carer and the custodians for all these wonderful things and right there and then our younger the kangaroo he made a pledge to nyunga and jundul he said you can have my kangaroo fur for warmth and those cold winter nights you can have my kangaroo meat for food when you get hungry you can have my kangaroo bones for your spear tips and barbs and yes you can have my kangaroo spirit for future generations and with that the kangaroo took off along the river the emu he stood up on his back legs and he turned to nyunga and jundul and he also made a pledge he said you can have my emu meat for food when you get hungry you can have my emu feathers for your dancing costumes you can have my emu oil for your arthritis and your sore joints and yes you can have my emu bones for your spear tips and barbs but please don't use me until there's nothing left and the last animal that was there was the kerda the goanna because your kid and her had already left and he stood up and he turned to nyunga the kangaroo he knew the weight and he said I'm considered a delicacy to you people so don't eat too much of me because I too have responsibilities I have to look after all the dead things so there it was decided the human beings us human beings future generations ancestors that have passed would have to be the carer and the custodian for all these wonderful things to try and hand what we have here to the next generation conditions that we received it if not better and remembering the land the nalabuja the red soil the giver of life was here before we came and it'll be here a long time after I better wrap it up before I go there's a little something I brought over from home and that's for rena so you can practice that fire lighting thank you very much