 and thanks for joining us. My name is Christabel Darcy. I'm co-convener of the Northern Territory Branch of the Australian Evaluation Society, along with Alison Reedy, who is also here today. Give a wave, Alison. As we get settled in, please introduce yourself in the chat, include your name and the indigenous country that you're calling from. I know for some people, this is your first Australian Evaluation Society event, so welcome. And it's great to see some old friends and colleagues here too. All right, so let's see if we can start the chat. I'll get us started. Lovely, starting to see them come through now. Thank you. Great. Lots of people from Larakia country. That's good to see. Ah, now we're getting from other parts of Australia. Fantastic. Nunga. Lovely. Welcome. It's really good. We've got people from all over Australia today, so thank you. It's really good to get a feel for who is here today. So in terms of housekeeping, I'd like to let you know that this session is being recorded today. So can I please ask that you keep your video off or microphone off unless you're a host or presenter? And as we go along, please put any questions that you have in the chat and I'll facilitate questions at the end. So I'd like to start today by acknowledging that I'm hosting this call from Larakia country. I acknowledge the Larakia people as the traditional owners of the Darwin region and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging of the many countries that people are calling from today. And I particularly want to acknowledge the people of vintage country for sharing their story today. And today we're talking about the benefits and the challenges associated with community-based evaluations. And we're joined by John Gunther and Robin Ober. And if technology allows, we'll be joined by some community researchers, Dean and Conrad too. So John Gunther is an evaluator and researcher with 20 years experience working in the Northern Territory. He's a non-indigenous outsider in most of the evaluations that he works on and is currently the research leader for education and training with Bachelor Institute. Robin Ober is a marble durable woman from Far North Queensland and she has worked extensively in Indigenous education for over 30 years and currently works as an Indigenous Research Fellow at Bachelor Institute. Robin has been and is currently involved in a number of projects on Indigenous education, leadership, language and linguistics including evaluation reviews. And with that, I'll hand over to John and Robin. Thank you. Robin, if you want to take it over for a couple of slides, that'd be great. Thanks. Yeah, sure. Hello, everyone. Thank you for that introduction, Christabel. We are, like we said, we are on Larakia Country doing this presentation. So again, I give my thanks and my respect as is our cultural protocol that we are meeting on Larakia Country and I pay my respects to our elders, past, present and emerging. I also recognise and acknowledge any of our Indigenous researchers, scholars, academics who are joining us today as well as our non-Indigenous colleagues and pay my respects to your countries and nations that you represent today. And I want to give special acknowledgement to our Benning people who are from Western Arnhem Land and from, you know, these are the people we've worked with and I give my respect and pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. This is a map of just the communities that we've worked in over the past few years and this is what we will be focusing on today and we'll be hearing more from Conrad and Dean about the Evaluation Review of Nahuatikan. But I'll just ask John to show on the map, Gubble-Wannamu, Manmoy and Mamadawiri. So these are the three homeland centres that we've worked closely with in the past three to four years on this review and worked closely with our Benning researchers, our community researchers, without them. This would not have happened. Our community researchers have been so valuable and their knowledge base extensive and deep. So like John said at the beginning, we were really the facilitators and they really took the lead and control of this with us supporting throughout. So we've also got an ABC News Story link there that we will pass on to the team for you to look at in your own time. We won't look at it now because of time constraints but it is really something special to look at and that'll give you like grassroots stories from local Benning people about education. Thanks, John. So back in 2018, I think it was, I was asked by somebody to have a cup of coffee here at CDU and to talk about the possibilities of doing some evaluative work with Neuartic and Academy. At the time, Neuartic and Academy was a fairly new, independent school that had an MOU working with Gumbalanya School just starting out really on a long journey and they decided that they wanted to build evaluation into the development of their school. And so Robert and I went on a journey with the school and in particular, our community research team, you can see Dean there in the photo and you can see Tara as well who was working with us to learn from and to help the Academy learn from and develop its governance, academic and community engagement processes and to determine what the outcomes and values of its work are. That was really what we were setting out to do. And we set this up as a largely qualitative and participatory action research process that ended up running over three years and just one step at a time, doing that planning, reflecting, then implementing some things and then gathering some data and then going back to the cycle over that period of time, drawing on Indigenous standpoints, particularly from the community researcher side of things. And wherever possible, we were working in language, in Gunwinku language. The report itself is a nice looking document and you can download that on the link when you get the PowerPoint to have a look at with some great pictures in it but also some really useful information about what we did in the evaluation of Neuartic Academy and how we worked with community-based researchers to make that happen or how, yeah, they were the ones that were leading the process. Basically, we were there sort of working in the background to make some other things happen. So I want to give, I'll start with Dean giving him an opportunity to share from your perspective, Dean. Some of the things that you learned during this process of going through an evaluation and what it meant to you, you've been involved with community research for years and years and years, I know, going back to the ArpNet days, but I'm thinking here about this particular piece of work that we did. What are your thoughts and reflections on it, Dean? Thank you, John. Look, I have been involved with research network for many years. My first research network was a Commonwealth program, part of the community engagement programs that regards to education process of indigenous people. These practices of our community researchers brought us, brought me into something that never thought about it before, about community researchers, but time-to-time I've gone through this process and I first set it up with a groups within Charles Darwin University. It's what we all call Aboriginal Practitioners Network. Because of research, looking at the education process, I think it's important to be aware of this process looking at the education process. My mind started to look into where we had external researchers coming in and collecting information about education, not only just education, but other things as well. But this process with our education, we first started to think about setting up our own independent school within these remote areas, especially the three new schools that now will make it happen. Our involvement is to teach young ones and let the elder people know what it's meant about the research. We delivered research in our own language. We told our elders that this is a research, is we are developing that, we are collecting all information. Indigenous, how do we see a education process has been going for the last decades. A lot of the information that we gather, it's a voice of the people. What do they want? How they wanna see? How they wanna be involved? What area that need to be seen is important where the education is in place. We talked about Indigenous education. What is Indigenous education? And we're trying to compare with Western educations. Our Indigenous education that need to be brought it out to the mainstream. What we're doing now is gathering external information the way it should be done. But a lot of the information that we gather, it's a people's voice, people's opportunities that they wanna see that education processing in place, not only just in a growth areas, such as Medingrida, such as Guambalanya, or such criminal college or universities where our children are being participated and studying and learning. Why our research is being taught is to deliver this education information to our people and get their voices, what do they want? People really, really appreciate it how we collect information. People really said, this is a story that our stories need to be shown in many areas, especially our education department, also especially our community education programs. It's about the fact that we're getting this information. It's a people's want to see how this research needs to be taken place. Of course, when we're talking to our own people, we get so much feedback from our people because it's an opportunity, but a lot of the time external researchers would come in and take a note, and a lot of the time people don't tell them about what really they want because they're seeing their researchers coming from elsewhere rather than seeing their researchers from in our own land, such as our own people, indigenous people doing this research network. And they can give us a lot of information that they needed. One of the three main school that we wanted to see that education happen in a homeland was back in the 80s, all the homeland education was pulled down through the main growth areas. Even though there was some small communities that education process was still carrying on, even though that they had had the system has changed from the community, a homeless community schools where previously, not long ago, people was receiving education two days a week. And that's not enough. People wanted five, seven days, five days a week, educations. And that's what driven our people within our plateau, those three main school, people really, really want to see that five days education need to be taken place rather than two days education. People that teach it would flow in into homeland. Normally, they used to teach two days and they would go back and leaving homeland without our teachers. Actually, they had a teaching ice at the, but they haven't been supported as well. Now that we have this unique three school, our communities, our children are very, very happy because this is very important because our wedge catch is based in the bush rather than based in the community. Because our children can get a benefit seeing the views of their families are working within a land management space or seeing their families working within the education space in the homeland. So the child is getting those learning, learning, but from that time period when it's going through the school to able to grow up being 17, 18, that would get a proper jobs and continue sharing and learning with other children as well and other adults. Every elders now they came forward and talking about this education process. It took us a long, long time to convince our government to able to see the education space within a homeland because it is very, very important. People still living in a homeland without even our teachers. People now, our experience now is being extended to other communities such as Maningira because they're seeing a value of how the school is what is happening. Also being a researcher, our own people getting collecting all the information in the homelands what do they know about the schools? A lot of the elders when we talk to them about education, what was they education in the past? So there was a great likes of information was getting that and getting our people to explore the benefit of education within our homelands. That's fantastic, Dean. It looks like Conrad has just joined us. Hey Conrad, can you hear me? Hey Conrad, can you hear me? Hello. Thank you for joining us and Dean has just shared I don't know whether you've been online or not but Dean has just shared a little bit about his experience and the importance of having community researchers in the context of homelands schooling. I'm just wondering if you would just like to share a few thoughts about your involvement over the years as doing research or evaluation and how that has made a difference to the places that you work and live in. How's it made a difference to Mamadowari and the school there? Conrad, can you reflect a little bit on your role? First year when this started, I mean, when Papa Warnamiel started independent school in Papa Warnamiel, it was pretty small. And then us at Mamadowari and Manmoy had no one to go with schools. And at that time, it was Conrad Warnians held that involvement with our station schools. And then we wanted five days, they tried their best to give us five days but they only gave us two days. And then my experience when we turned that thing over having independent with Papa Warnamiel and having two other schools, Manmoy and Mamadowari, it pretty much changed. Everything changed. The whole school education changed. We've got facilities, we've got teachers, you know, teachers staying there at homeland where they continue teaching during Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and Friday. And sometimes teachers get involved with weekends, fishing, hunting and then as more we see that it's still like education because with all of us, all being people, we were educated through bush, hunting, fishing and animals and seasons. And that's the role we were willing to commit with our kids and that basically giving us 50, 50 on our terms of education and it's doing very well now. And we've got kids now traveling other communities, other countries and in a process of learning different culture. And with this experience, kids really enjoying and us adults, you know, we see that very positive things coming in for our kids' education. As Dean was explaining how he sees and how I see it and our valuations keeps that very close to our small, you know, our homelands because that value in our communities where our kids, you know, value themselves, who they are and what their representation to their homelands. Yeah, that's great. Great, thanks Conrad. Olga, I see you just sort of popped your face on the screen there. I just want to ask you just briefly as effectively the principal of the three schools reflect a little bit on the evaluation and the impact that it's had on the school? Yeah, thanks, John. And look, Dean and Conrad very well spoken and there was one word that kind of stood out for me that both Dean and Conrad used quite extensively and that's value. You know, where do we place value on what education looks like? And I think the greatest thing about the evaluation is not only did it give us a guide in terms of our strategic planning but also, you know, we were able to get a clear understanding of what community, parents and students value in terms of what their education looks like. And I mean, Conrad and Dean have already spoken, you know, quite extensively about that but what that's meant is that with our planning we can hand on heart say that, you know, we've got this amazing document, this evaluation document now that, you know, is guiding us and we're going to use that over the next few years to be able to make sure that, you know, that that value is where it's supposed to be. So that involved, I guess, redefining kind of what success looks like. A lot of the time education success is very much or what it looks like is driven from non-indigenous cultures and, you know, accessing university courses and perhaps sometimes there's, you know, a mismatch or not a strong link between what success on community and what indigenous people value of success looks like and what's on the ground. And the biggest thing about value we've found is, you know, there's also a really big push to make sure that, you know, there's higher attendance rates, you know, and there's always this talk about attendance and what value has done, you know, putting the value in the right places and putting resources into where people's values lies means that we get engagement. And engagement, you get attendance, you get families and communities and students who want to be in that space because what's in that space is valuable and engaging to them. That's a great point, Olga, thank you. And often evaluations are focused on outcomes and as you said, there are things like attendance and grades and whatever else. But this evaluation very quickly morphed into a focus on values and what was important for bidding people in their communities and having Dean Conrad, Tara and a few others on board as researchers, we were able to get to the heart of what values people wanted to see in their school and their education. Dean Conrad, you got any comment about that? We value this education process, we're seeing a two ways process should be taught in this sort of space, traditional educations and Western educations. We know, I know when I look at the community side, such as Manning Ritter or Montelli, children sometimes don't have an access, access of moving out in a bush and looking at or learning of some traditional cultural practices. We're seeing a family talking to their children as well because what they're seeing is what's happening within our three main schools because our children are very, very happy, children are more taught in both world, traditional practices and Western practices. For us as researchers, we value ourselves because we are there for them. We're getting information, we're collecting those information and we're delivering this information and documenting so that in the future we can follow or future for our children can see those documents have been written and for them to able to use those information, seeing that importance of education should be placed in a home plan as well. Great, thank you. I'm just gonna move on a little bit now as I'm conscious of time and I'll bring Dean and Conrad back into the story in a moment, but I just wanted to sort of think about this kind of evaluative work from a few different perspectives and one is an ethical perspective. And anyone that's worked in a university or an institute like Bachelor knows what the word ethics means. But sometimes it means getting an approval from an ethics committee. But in a broader sense, what we've been able to learn I guess is that that piece of paper that comes and says, Tic, you can go out and do research because you've got clearance is really not the same as working ethically and the importance I think of using binning speaking Gunwinku language on their country to engage with community members is an ethical process in itself outside of or alongside of the ethical clearance process that happens through a committee. And it's important to work this way because those of us who are outsiders, myself and even Robin in this case, we don't know what the protocols are. We don't know what the values are that people cherish in their community. We don't know the kinship connections and we don't know a lot about the history of the place but our community researchers do. And it gives them, I think as Dean and Conrad have said a space for binning to voice their opinions in a safe way. But for those of us who are outsiders, it takes a bit of getting used to the, I guess the uncertainty that comes along with working in these spaces, uncertainty for us as outsiders. Sometimes you just don't know what's going to happen. You don't even know whether or not you're going to get to where you're going to go to collect the data. And especially during the COVID period, there were times where things were always up in the air. Robin, I don't know whether you can tell the story about the time we went out to go over one of you when COVID was on. Yeah, definitely. I think I talked earlier with John that being okay with uncertainty and when we got ready for trips, we would do like this loose plan, I'd call it planning loosely because it was pretty hard to really put down concrete things that we were going to do because you just don't know what's around the corner. You don't know what's happening. And so in the case of COVID, I remember the pilot flying in, we kind of got little pings up in the air that something had happened in Darwin. But we kind of, okay, we're almost here. We're ready to land at Gava Wanamu. We landed and soon as we landed, we had the Ranger, the Darla Ranger coming in the Troopy and just had her hands up, parked away from us and said, stop. There's been a COVID case up in Darwin. You have to jump back on the plane and go back home and we can't risk you coming here. John and I had just come from Darwin and I think one of the other researchers was with us on that plane. And so that was, we had to go back to corner square one and start again and think about how we're going to do our data collection. But you just plan loosely and often we get there, we plan from A to B. This is what we wanna achieve at the end of this visit. And we usually get there, but sometimes it's a little bit stop and start. It's down the detour, up the hill, round the corner and then we'll get there eventually. But that's the beauty of it. And I love working with our binning researchers and I mainly work with the woman. John would work with the men, but it was also just learning as we go along. And so even the issue with the relationships and kinships, it wasn't as straightforward as I used to think, oh, okay, we can all just talk together. But I remember a time when we had to wait for a certain person to come and set up the meeting and set up the yarning around the, around the weaving circle. The women were doing some weaving and it wasn't just anybody, it had to be the right person. So I had to learn along the way. I had to be that continual learner, even though I've worked out in Western Arnhem Land previously, but it was really, you know, you're continually learning and I've learned so much from our people out there. Fantastic. One of the beautiful things that I find when we are out, as Robin has just said, the learning that goes on, the learning that goes on for us as outsiders, but you can see the learning that goes on among the community researchers as well as they sink through some of the issues from their own perspective. But the good thing about working with community people is that it's not just an exercise of gathering information for a report. There's a whole lot of skill development and relationship building that goes on and opportunities for sharing the stories that come out of the work that you do and opportunities for writing, opportunities for analysis, interpretation and language work. It's rich when you have a team that's made up of people like Dean and Conrad and a few of the others and Rosemary's in there in a picture there with Robin. Very, very rich kind of work. Conrad, I just wonder if you can reflect on your experience either at Wipsey or in South Africa when you went on to the conference there, you might need to unmute yourself. Well, maybe Dean, if you, oh, I don't count Conrad, you're right. Yeah, yeah. Since Adelaide, I think in then South Africa and then I think I went to Canada. That's right. For the name of that Canada thing. My experience with Canada, there's a whole lot of people talking about climate change and all that other stuff. And then we produce what we do in Australia, what our goals and achievements and having that over there talking about how we work and how, and learning from them, that's whole new experience level of experience learning about climate change. And then when I was in Africa, a lot of countrymen out there in Africa, which is, they still, education, it's really hard. But at Canada, education, it's more open. And then when I was in Adelaide, having that Wipsey, the whole indigenous programs are, it's showing how we can make this possible for us, some indigenous people in Northern Territory and in Adelaide and other countries. You know, cause I'll call it, and first of all, as mob, the way we live in our countries and how we recognize it. And then that makes us look better if we work with other educational programs, like having schools there, learning about English. And some kids do want to learn other languages, like, you know, some kids might want to learn Italian or other languages. Cause I heard some kids can speak other languages. They are trying to learn what language I'm not good at. Anyway, these other languages, it's really hard for me to decide. And only kids know it. And they always, you know, give us a story about what languages they're talking about. I've got my nephew, he studies Chinese sometimes, and then he's trying to learn Chinese. You know, this whole experience, we're indicating ourselves where we want to be and we know, learn about. And that's all a lot of things. Yeah, yeah, brilliant. Thanks, Conrad. I guess the thing about these experiences that you've had in Adelaide, Africa, Canada, and Dean, you've been to Ecuador as well, that they do cost. And you've got a plan to do these things. They're really valuable exercises. But, you know, if you're putting together a budget for an evaluation, and you want to do this stuff, you have to put it into the plan at the beginning of the process. And we were pretty fortunate with this, with the evaluation that Robert and I and the team were involved with for Neuartica is that we had the opportunity to put our wish list into the budget at the beginning. And because it was funded through philanthropy, we didn't get the same pushback from a government tender that you would sometimes get if you were doing this sort of more commercially. And they allowed us the freedom to be able to say, yes, we want to build in three conferences, one overseas, one and two Australian ones. And we did that. They allowed for us to make a nice looking report and to create videos and all sorts of things. And it comes about as a result of just planning to do things in the right way the first time at the beginning. And I'd encourage anyone that sort of thinking about doing an evaluation in communities is to put those things into the budget and then push back against those that say, do we really need that? Because we do need that in order to get the best out of the evaluation. It's not just a report. The evaluation is an opportunity to make a difference and to change the way that we work and to change the structures that we work in. But there are cost and resource implications for that. The other thing I'd say too is that we had incredible support from the school. And in particular, I just want to acknowledge Olga's contribution, the way that nothing was too hard for Olga. It was like, we're gonna make this happen one way or another. And that sort of partnership that you can have with a client is just beautiful because it's no longer just a client anymore. There's a relationship that's been built up over several years that you become partners in a process. And I guess you can't really plan for that, but it's a beautiful way of being able to work when you've got that sort of strength of the relationships. I just want to finish with this last slide here. And Robin, I'm just wondering again, another story from Gauvalonamu. A little bit about risks. Can you sort of tell the story about sitting at the airport at Gauvalonamu? Right, okay. So the COVID one was one story. And I think that photo, there's us actually jumping back on the plane to go back to Darwin. But when you're traveling and a lot of you probably know this already is, you know, sometimes there's heaps of stuff happening in community life. And so one of the risks is making sure that there's somebody to pick you up out there. And so the last trip we went out, we was, nobody was there to meet us at Gauvalonamu. And so John walked up to the community, which was about an hour's walk up. And I sat at the airstrip here and the pilot eventually flew up again and just let, you know, try to fly down the lane to let them know that nobody had picked us up. But they're the kind of things you don't plan for. They're the things that you just gotta take it as it comes and you don't panic, you don't get, you know, I've learnt not to get anxious now and just take it in my stride. The other thing was, that was one issue. And the other thing with planes was they forgot to pick us up. So we were left out of a community and we had to stay there for another night, which kind of worked out fine because we got some more interviews and yarns done with some young, young fellows there. But it was like, oh, we didn't book use for a return flight. So we stayed at, I think it was... Manmoy. Manmoy, yeah, for the night. So that's, you know, those things that you take into consideration, that's what I'm talking about, that planning loosely, going with the flow, gauging, putting your feelers out, knowing when to move forward, knowing when to stand back and distance yourself and that and learning, being a continual learner all the time. And from that experience, that prepares you for the next visit or the next chapter or season in indigenous research. So very exciting times. Exciting times, yes. And I guess the point of this is just to say that there are risks with this kind of work. It's not... Sometimes it's the things that you don't even think about, like the plane doesn't pick you up or there's no one to pick you up from the airport. Or as I experienced in Manangrida, a dog attacking you and sending you to the hospital, you know, I had no idea that that could possibly happen to me, you know. And there are these things that you just don't think about when you're doing this kind of work, particularly as an outsider. And you have to be mindful of all of that. I do want to leave some time for questions. So I'm just going to... I think, Alison, I think you've been sort of monitoring the chat. If there are any questions that people might want to ask, then either of us or Conrad and Dean. Lovely. I've got cut off. I've got cut off. I'm back on again. Oh, good. Welcome back. Welcome back. You're dumb luck. So thank you. Yes, you go ahead, Alison. Sorry, Christabel. Yeah, we do have a comment and a question from Akshi. So the comment is it's interesting work and an initiative to make sure our work is relevant, efficient and effective, especially the community lead, community-based approach. And the question is, I'm curious about the journey of the community engagement process. Was it challenging to involve people in the first place? If it was, what strategies were employed to foster meaningful community engagement in the research evaluation initiative? Robin, do you want to comment? Yeah, this is probably a question for Conrad and Dean. But I don't think... I think when... I think the beauty of this and the value of this, we've been talking about value, is that the very fact that we took a step back, John and I, and was able to create the space for our local community-based and bidding researchers to take the lead on this, that's a win, you know? That's like a no-brainer because, like Dean said at the beginning, it's bidding people, talking to bidding people. They have the relationships, they have the connections, they have the knowledge. To me, people were very engaging. I can, you know, speak for the Daluk, the woman who I work with. There was such a great effort that went out and we went to people's places and sitting around the campfire and things like that. There was no hesitation. And you know why? Because education is very important to the people on the homelands because of the hardship they've been through, because of the fight, over 20 years' fight. This was something that was close to their heart. And so from me as an outsider, coming in and looking in, I didn't see that as an issue. People wanted to talk, they wanted to engage, they wanted to give their stories. But with this way of working, it was actually talking to their own family, relatives, bidding people. And so I think from the start, if you can start like that and work from a strength-based approach. So not external people coming in and saying, this is how you do it, this is the right way to go. No, no, we work from what we have there, the strengths and the knowledge-based that we have on the ground. And I think that that set the tone for the whole evaluation. So I didn't see it as a big, big issue because it was bidding people, working with bidding people. I mean, for my perspective, being as a researcher, I've learned a lot, communicating both sides, non-indigenous people and our own people, just to getting a message across and identifying the best practices, best way to communicate with our people. Being a researcher of doing a research as well, not just on any, in a growth area. We're seeing, what I'm being seen that research, you gotta start thinking of moving that research where people are in homelands. In this way, you get a better understanding how people live, what they do every day in their life, how children are being educated. We stay at school for our children to continue education process in five days education. So in my understanding, the best practices being a researcher, there's two things that we need to understand. It's a people, why you wanna lead, do you wanna have that in a community, talking to the people in a community and getting information or taking those information outside of the community, out in a homelands. Many, many times research network has been done in the community base, especially in larger communities, growth areas. Nothing is ever done out in a homelands. So what happened now that we're seeing that this task as a research and being a researcher, because there's more information, you get out in the bush then in a growth areas. People needs that education, especially homelands. One other thing that I was really, really impressed is elder people ask me, can you help me to bring education school for our children in the future? Well, that was my work to follow up and to chase it. And I did a lot of hard bargaining and getting education processes happening in our community. But Dean, there's a question in the chat window which I think you're answering actually without even having a look at it. The question is a great example of engagement being done the right way, supporting local ownership and control. Well, hang on, sorry. No, that was a comment. Can you share a bit more about how you share the findings of the evaluation with people who are part of the interviews? And I think you've just answered that question from Melanie that you see it as your job to do that. You're the one that's actually doing the sharing back into a community. Am I right, Dean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, for my people to see me as being a researcher, they're quite happy because I can talk in language. I can relate to their understanding as well for education process. So there's no, no, we don't see, or people don't see that problem because they know we have been talking to each other. But what we wanna see the education for the future of our children. So that's how that when we do research with our own people, we don't necessarily see a bad things. And it's a good thing because we're getting that voice directly. But also we have a vote, a cultural avoidance. We know that cultural affiliation that we talk to the right people. We know there's rules that we need to talk to the right people in education. Sometimes we leave a room for our ladies to work with the ladies. And there's a room for a binning room, spice. So both sides are not being seen as a bad idea. This is a really good idea because the protocols is there that we always follow rules who we talked with. Dean and Conrad, I'd love to have a follow-up question here. We've got a question from Emily around balancing the Western and indigenous ways. And I noted that came through in the report as well around balancing the two worlds or the vintage and balanda ways. I really love your thoughts on how to bring those two worlds together. We have to stand on our two freedom, feed that information to cross borders. I mean, it's, you know, being a researcher is on both sides, you know, able to understand what I'm delivering, you know. And making sure that families who I'm talking to has an answer to, you know, has an answer to give us and so it can be documented and put it in the book. Because they're also worried about this education for a long, long time. They want to get their facts straight by talking to us, this is what we want. So I don't see any problems with, you know, or people don't see any problems talking to them and getting that information because they want to deliver that information to us so it can be recorded. Are you able to talk? Or I think you're muted, but not muted. We can't hear you. I think we've lost the audio link there. Yeah, our shame. But I think, I mean, I guess from my perspective, Conrad, people like Conrad and Dean are very comfortable and competent sort of working in those both ways, more than I am. And, you know, having those sets of skills that I don't have is just fantastic. It's gold. Very, very valuable. I still can't hear Conrad though. Can't hear you, Conrad. No, I still can't hear you. For us, we carry two worlds. One world is... Hello. Oh, you're back, Conrad. It's my earphones. That's where the mood was active. Anyway, I was going to say two things. Yeah. Very first questions that was raised before these questions. And the comment was, you know, there's personal acknowledgement. Acknowledgement is everything that we do in our culture and in our beliefs that other countrymen share their knowledge by immigration. Having that knowledge in marriage and second of all, you know, having this two-way education, it's something, you know, sometimes I get inspired myself. You know, I... You know, it's... Like, when I've learned English, it was really hard for me to learn it, but I have to learn my language first because I had that access when I was reading by my own language and pronounced my own language. That was so easy. So I've learned my language, bilingual language studies. And soon as I went to English, it took me two years to learn English very quick and fast. And when I got English and learned Gunwingu and English at the same time, and when I got it, got that both together, it made sense. And, you know, now I see what's in terms of what I'm asking in my language and then when I want to interpret what it means, some Gunwingu doesn't really fit with English, but one word of Gunwingu might say different other things. In English, it's very simple and it's easy. There's all kinds of things that doesn't really fit in with Gunwingu, but they do have that same sense of explanation. And, yeah. Thanks Conrad. I think we're just about out of time. We are. Any closing comments before we wrap it up? I just want to acknowledge, particularly Dean, Dean is about to become acknowledged as a doctor through Charles Darwin University. So people can give a round of applause for that achievement. It's just, I mean, you both of you have always been professors as long as I've known you, but I think it's just a great acknowledgement from CDU that you will be acknowledged with a doctorate. I think next month is it, Dean? Yeah, next month. Yeah. Well done. I was really proud. It took me a long time, but at least, you know, I've got what I've wanted. Yes. And continuance are worth very important on. Fantastic. Yeah. I think on behalf of everybody on this call today, I would just like to say thank you to all of our presenters today. John, Robin, Dean and Conrad Olga. Thank you for your contributions as well. It's been fantastic to hear from your yourselves about the journey that you've been on. And there's lots of messages coming up in the chat. Your presentation today has been really appreciated. So thank you very much for making the time today. Really appreciate it.