 Hi everyone. Welcome to the Australian High Commission webinar series on Aboriginal Eldest Wisdom. My name is Yvette Smith and I'm a proud Bungalow woman and I work for the Australian High Commission. We're on it to date and very privileged to have Aunty Biliwara Lee with us who'll be sharing her wisdom and knowledge of Aboriginal culture and protocols. But let me begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of country. In this spirit of reconciliation the Australian High Commission Singapore acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and the connection to land, sea and community. I would like to pay my respect to the elders past, present and emerging and extend the respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. Aunty Biliwara Lee, a highly respected senior elder of Larakia Nation and Larakia Academic and Residents at Charles Darwin University. She's also the recipient of the NAIDOC Female Elder of the Year Award in 2021. Aunty B is also an internationally published author of two books Star Dreaming and Healing from the Dilly Bag. She is also an expert speaker on ASUS Specialist's podcast hosted by Menzies Full of Health Research. This is a specific podcast for health professionals who work with Aboriginal patients. Our program for this afternoon will proceed as follows. I will hand over the session shortly to the Australian Deputy High Commissioner Angela Robinson and Aunty Biliwara Lee and once to finish we have around 15 minutes for Q&A. During a session please feel free to write your questions in the Q&A section in Zoom. If you're on Facebook and have any questions to ask please register in our Zoom webinar. The session will be recorded and we'll be sharing this recording on the High Commission official website and Facebook page. Let me hand over the session now to to Angela Robinson. Well hello everyone and a very warm welcome from us here in Singapore. Thank you so much Avet. My name is Angela Robinson as Avet just said and I'm the Acting High Commissioner of Australia to Singapore. Welcome to everyone watching us online. This is our first time actually experimenting with Facebook live so we very much welcome your feedback afterwards and of course a special warm welcome to Aunty B, our speaker today. Like Avet please let me start by saying in the spirit of reconciliation the Australian High Commission here in Singapore acknowledges the traditional custodians of country and today especially the Larakia Nation throughout Australia and their connection to land, sea and community. I would like to pay my respects to their elders past presence and emerging and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with us today. It's a great pleasure for the Australian High Commission to welcome you all. We have people tuning in from Singapore across Southeast Asia and of course throughout Australia and as we're live on Facebook welcome if you're joining us from even further field. Before I introduce Aunty B a few words about the importance of today's event for us here at the High Commission. A few months ago some of you will know Australia launched its first Indigenous diplomacy agenda. We want to harness Australia's foreign trade, economic development and domestic policies for maximum impact for Indigenous peoples in Australia and internationally. We were inspired by this here at the Australian High Commission and have launched our own strategy covering our work in foreign policy, trade and economic policy including to maximize opportunities here for Indigenous people in development policy and our corporate policy. An important part of that is to make us a more culturally competent organization and this is where this first series of Aboriginal elder wisdom seminars comes in. We know how important it is for us to listen and to learn and I'd like to thank Aunty B very much for joining us today to share your wisdom on Aboriginal culture and protocols but you're not here to listen to me so maybe I could hand over to Aunty B in the first instance to share her background and her story with us. Aunty B over to you. So everyone's there. Dharondara Midli Mabachua. Good day everyone and it's really good to be here with you today. We're connected over the technology song line. My name is Aunty Bilawarra Lee. I'm happy for people to call me Aunty B and I'm a senior elder of the Larakian Nation of Darwin Northern Territory Australia. Just a little bit about myself. I'm the Larakian academic and residence at Charles Darwin University. I'm acknowledged and respected as a healer and a teacher of the ancient wisdoms of Aboriginal spirituality and healing. I've published two books internationally, Star Dreaming and Healing from the Dilly Bag which gives a lot of information about particularly the healing from the Dilly Bag about some of the things I'll talk about today. I'm an Australian representative. I'm the Australian representative on an International Indigenous Grandmothers Council and we are recognised as the wisdom keepers of the world of ancient sacred knowledge. I'm one of the specialists on a very multi-award-winning award-winning podcast series called Answer Specialists. It's all about cross-cultural communication, particularly in the health sector. I'm this year's NAIDOC female elder of the year and I was a finalist in last night's anti-seniors Australian of the Year Awards. I didn't win, though Lady did, it was absolutely brilliant but it was really great to be a finalist out of quite like 50 nominations I think. So it was really good. Congratulations for that, Aunty Bee and you're a winner to us, absolutely. Maybe we'll then move on to the substantive part. Thank you so much for the introduction. You've prepared for us a fantastic list of culture and protocols to take us through. Can I invite you to start on, I think you're going to start by telling us the what the importance is of those cultural protocols. Over to you Aunty Bee. Okay, now one of the important things is that if you're going to meet and have a relationship with Aboriginal or First Nations people and I think this is relevant around the world because I am part of the 33 grandmothers and we come from all over the world is that you usually introduce yourself. This was an issue that we have in the medical system where they just go, what's your name, where you're from, blah, blah, blah, instead of saying, g'day, my name is Dr Pete. You know, I'm a kid's doctor or something like that. So you always introduce yourself when you're meeting First Nation peoples. It's respectful and it establishes your relationship. Here in amongst, you know, Aboriginal people will usually say, g'day, how you going? My name is Aunty Bill Whirly and I'll be like, I'm Larakia Elder from Darwin. Where are you from? Who's your mom? And we do the hand gestures and we do physical gestures too. And so then you can establish your relationship, you know, then you can work out whether you're related, you know, how you continue on from there. So I introduced myself a bit, which was great. But the most important things about me, my name, Bill Whirra, means the red-tailed black cockatoo. It is an ancestral spirit being that brings about change. It is my totem and my dreaming. I carry the spirit of that, my dreaming wherever I go. So my role in life is to bring about change and even doing this webinar is bringing about change to people's lives. I'm a mother of three, grandmother of nine, and the ancestors had a sense of humour. They blessed me with nine brothers and five sisters. So I'm a member of a very, of the very large local Cabillo family, which is well known here in Darwin. And what I share with you today, you know, I'll share some wisdoms and knowledge about cultural protocols and other topics on Aboriginal culture. But I speak to you from a Larrakea perspective. And I don't represent any other First Nation whose law may be different. We are not one big homogenous group. We are different countries with different languages, laws, LAW and LRE, rituals and ceremony. I mean, many neighbouring countries, we may share some stories and some song lines, but we are quite different just like in Europe. You have different countries, different cultures, different languages. And this is the same with us in Australia. So importance of cultural protocols. It's really important to get to know some basic ones so you can avoid offending the other person. You know, something you might think is quite normal. We may find quite disrespectful. And if you are wanting to set up and establish a relationship, you know, you're planning a project of doing something, you know, this is really critical because you could be seen in a very negative light and disrespectful and can have a really big impact on your future negotiations. And I teach these things to researchers, particularly those that want to go out and to remote communities and set up a relationship so they can continue doing their research. But if they don't get it right, they just don't get things off the ground. So you establish a really good foundation for future relationships and conversations. You know, and protocols can include language. In the podcast, we talk about the dominant western language in hospitals which gives the medical person dominance on the actual conversation. So language is important. The way you dress is extremely important with, particularly with First Nation Peoples in Australia. We are very much into being modest. And people go, oh, yeah, but in the old days you didn't wear clothes. Well, yeah, but we had strict rules and protocols around how we behaved. But you put westerners into the mix and that just goes out the door. So we like to be quite modest. There are protocols around touching, eye contact and eye contact and gender issues. But that's another big long conversation. So I just say that it's quite intricate and it can be quite difficult. But I think if you just come from a base of I want to be respectful, you know, I'm not going to bring my western dominated protocols in with me and insist that that be the dominant way we're going to do things. People will understand when you make mistakes and they'll make allowances. And if they're gentle, they'll try and inform you that, hey, what you just did wasn't good. So just remember to don't take your own biases with you. Be open minded. And I think the next thing I was going to talk about was welcome to countries. Why are they done? They are done. It's multi layered. When people ask us to do a welcome to country, they are showing us respect and our ancestors. For us to do a welcome to country is very important because it's like if you had a house and you were going to have people come visit your house, they don't just stroll in and do what they like. You've got to welcome them in. And it's like if you go to another country, you know, because we do live mind, body, spirit, it's safe to be welcomed on to our country. It's done to introduce you to the ancestors and to our mother, the earth, so that when you live and work on our country, you are kept safe. And for me, I welcome to countries about acknowledging the past and looking to the future. Spiritually, I'm honouring the presence of my ancestors, whose spiritual ancient energy flows through all creation. And I want to introduce you to that when I do the welcome. And generally, we like an elder to do the welcome, but nowadays it's as long as they are a traditional custodian of that country that they're on, they're the only ones that can do the welcome to country. Many a time I've come across people trying to make another Aboriginal person do a welcome to country, like somebody from Ngunnawal country or from you know, Jawan country here in Darwin. And they're like, just get up and do a welcome and go, no, no, no, no. We can't do that. So that's the difference between a welcome to country and acknowledgement of country. And for me today, when I do a welcome to country, it often allows me, depending on where I do it in my area, I'm also singing the song line for that piece of where I'm standing. Now, an acknowledgement to country can be done by anyone else. And it's showing respect to the traditional custodians of the land that you're on. And I will often do this when I go out of Larakia country. And I haven't, I've been spending a long time reviving the Larakia language. Unfortunately, they chose to make my country the capital city of the Northern Territory and got smacked out of us. Well, I know I was smacked as a kid if I spoke my language, but we're getting it back. And wherever I go, I always even if I go over to England, or to America, I will acknowledge whoever's country it's on. And I go to California a lot. And when I first went and I said an acknowledgement to the people of that land, they're really shocked. But now they love it. And they do it too. So anyone, anyone can do an acknowledgement to country. And generally, you just pay your respects to none all people, Larakia people will manage and people whoever, you know, and pay your respects to the elders past, present and future. So and then an elder from a Larakia perspective is usually somebody over 60, who is a grandparent, and has shown a lifetime of dedication to law, both LAW and LRE. And they work to support the community. And generally, they will tell you go through a little ceremony, you go through a ceremony to become an elder. However, in today's communities, a lot of Aboriginal people, and I've seen them as young as 35, stand up and declare themselves an elder. Yeah, well, no, not in the traditional way then not. And even an old person is not recognised as an elder. If they are not upholding the law, or they have some sort of master mastery, a Yiriki master did redo master or a storyteller or a hunter gatherer. And they're usually somebody that really understands their law. I'm a communicator. I'm probably what you would classify as a storyteller. And yeah, the Larakia Nation had a big gathering, walked me to the front and declared me an elder. So I knew then that I was safe in stepping forward. Because there are implications if you stand up and declare yourself an elder. Usually it's done for the wrong reasons. And eventually, you know, things don't go so well for you. So do you want me to just keep talking and then people can ask questions later? Because I have to warn you, because I can talk underwater with a mouth full of marbles for two days. That's my talent, communication. Auntie Bee, it's fantastic to hear from you. And we have you down until quarter two to keep talking before we'll offer the questions. So please keep going. It's fascinating. I was going to touch on a couple of rituals that have become extremely popular with the wider community. And the first one is the smoking ceremony. And, you know, all cultures use smoke as a spirit cleanser. Water is a physical cleanser. So when you have a shower, you know, you get rid of all the sweat and the nasties on the body. And prayer and meditation is a mind or soul cleanser. But smoke is absolutely used as a spirit cleanser, because everybody has a mind, body and spirit. It also is the first ritual that we do from all important events. I'm a married celebrant, and many people ask me to do the smoking. And what it does, it cleanses the body of all negativity. And I can usually, as a as a healer, I can see when people's shoulders are all slumped and weighed down, I can actually see it's like a sticky, inky, massive smoke. And that's negativity. And so the more you have on me, the more you attract. So doing a smoking ceremony actually dissolves all that, gets rid of it, makes you feel lighter and not so weighed down, allows you to stand up and do what you have to do. We use smoke to cleanse the environment of negativity. And here a modern adaptation is that if there is a house that's had a death, or they've sold drugs there, or there's been a lot of domestic violence, all that negativity sticks to the walls, will all go in with maybe a couple of my brothers, and we will smoke the house out. They can scrub it as much as they like, repaint the walls and everything, but that negativity is still there till we cleanse it out with smoke. And if they don't cleanse it with smoke, it attracts more negative people into that house. So any negative people will end up in there and it just gets worse and worse. So we do that. Smoke is also what I use. People stick tentacles on you, loved ones, colleagues, friends, children, parents, and they can push and pull you around through the tentacles. So the smoke will sever those tentacles so that you can stand up and be responsible for your own actions and make decisions for your, what you have to in life. And smoke will also help protect you from, and I live in a world with Aboriginal people, we are very strong believers in psychic attacks. As a healer, when I have a patient come to me who's experiencing all sorts of stuff, whether it's physical manifestation of a spiritual reason, I will do the smoking ceremony to protect them and get rid of all that negative energy. So that's why we do the smoking. It is critically important and I always smoke in the full moon. I will go out. My neighbours are used to me now. They just say that's only me doing nothing. I go out and I just smoke. And we use special leaves. I use a shell because I am a saltwater woman and the feathers of my black cockatoo. So that is a very big and we do it for big groups too as well as individuals. The saltwater ceremony because I am a Larrikey woman and we are known as saltwater people, we will take visitors that have come onto our land who are either going to live here or work here and we get them to go, we take them into the saltwater in the sea. We get them to wash their sweat off their face and under their arms and wash it in the saltwater. And what that does, it allows the ancestors and our Mother of the Earth, the country, to smell and taste you and then they know you. And I know whenever my children or grandchildren or family have been away for a while, I was away for five weeks. First thing I did was go down the beach and put my sweat in the water and go on back so they know I'm back. And for visitors, when you introduce them to the land and the ancestors, they know you and they won't harm you if you do things that are not quite right. So it's also important. There are many other ceremonies but I'm just going to touch on those two today. Now there was the images and voice recordings of somebody who has passed. Traditionally, we would, if somebody passed, we would not say their name because we have a belief that when somebody passes, their spirit is still hanging around and if you hear them say their name, it gets their attention and they'll come and go, yes, you said her name. And often they can be quite mysterious because you might not have been 100% wonderful and nice to them. So they'll come back and take a little bit of revenge on you. So it's really, really important and people get scared when they talk about spirit. So like if your name was Paul and Uncle Paul died, well, you would immediately change your name to something else. And we all understand that. But today, having been in charge of the arts in the territory, it became a really big issue because so many of our people are now very famous artists, performers, musicians. And we'd had some of the elders record video recordings for us at Men's School of Health Research and CDU and it cost a lot of money. And we were like, oh my goodness, what are we going to do? So the elders all got together. And what we found is that if you can get permission from the person's immediate family, maybe a wife or a husband or a son or daughter or mother or father to be allowed to say their name and to continue to use the film or the recording, can you imagine trying to stop Youthy Indy's music on radio or whatever when Wawa passed away? It's impossible. And you've got famous pieces of arts and performances. So what happens now seems to be working is that if we were to play the video, we would then just have a hashtag or a tag at the end that says we have full permission from, you know, so-and-so's wife or family to use this image or recording. And that seems to be going okay. And I guess we just had to adapt, you know, because that's the world has changed. Okay, the next thing was dream time versus dreaming. People get quite confused about these two things. They are not the same thing. They are very different. The dream time was at the beginning of time when all things were formed, when I have great spirit ancestors walked across the world and created, you know, the shape of the earth and all the creatures on the land. So that's the dream time. The dreaming is a continuation of the dream time. It is the environment we live in today. And it still exists all around us. Just as I said, my name is my dreaming because I embody that energy of change. So I hope people can understand that dream time is back then. Dreaming is a continual journey with us. The dream time is past. So we get dream time stories and things like that and that's fine. But we tell it now in the dreaming that we're going through. I hope people gets that. Now the big one, and I don't know what my timing is. I hope I'm not going over too long. You're doing very well. You have another 15 minutes. Okay, so this is the big one. Our connection to country. In my book, I explain it in details. That's my other book. I just had to show you that. I'm going to read this because I put a lot of effort into getting this right. And it's quite connected to this year's national NADOC theme, which is Hill Country. Australian Aboriginal culture is the oldest continuous surviving civilization on earth. And I say civilization because we were a civilization. We had doctors and researchers and astronomers. We weren't just a culture. People sitting around doing rituals and ceremony. So you can see that's a little bit of a passion of mine. And the land is my mother. And my mother is the land. The land is the starting point to where it all began. Our land is our home, our supermarket, our pharmacy, our school, library, our entertainment center, and our spiritual center. It is where we live, love, raise their families, and one day we'll go back to our mother, the earth. There is no such place as wilderness in Australia. Wilderness in the dictionary means uninhabited land, empty or barren. But I tell everyone what you call wilderness, we call home. Aboriginal people will always change themselves in their lifestyle to live in harmony with their environment. Whereas non-Aboriginal people will change their environment, even destroy it to suit their way of life, even if it means destroying all that is natural. Aboriginal law of life originates in and is governed by land. Mother earth is an essential part of our library. She holds not only material evidence of our ancestors' lifestyles, influenced by ice age, isolation, climate change, and eventual colonisation. But it is a spiritual connection to country and identity of place and spiritual belonging. The destructions of sites and nature is like ripping pages out of our library book. It's like cutting out the heart of our people. For me, culture, nature, and the land and seas are all profoundly linked. And I always ask people to walk with us and carry from Mother Earth. To us, land or country is more than a place. When we talk about country, it's like talking about a person. Country is family, kin, law, LAW and law, L-O-R-E, ceremony, traditions, and language. For Aboriginal people, it has been this way since the dawn of time. Through our language and songs, we speak to country. Through our ceremonies and traditions, we sing to and celebrate country. And country speaks to us. And we're fighting for our right to protect country and culture because that is just so fundamental to us. The destruction and desecration of our sacred lands, songlines, ancient sites, and some of the oldest human occupation sites on the planet is such an enormous loss for both our nation and the world. I know I actively, even though I'm quite a modern woman with a degree and I work at university, you know, I continue to sing of the songlines on my country. And songlines and singing songlines is another thing I'll have to talk about in another webinar because that's a big one. And it is something we have never stopped doing here in the territory anyhow. So that was the end of the list for this webinar. And maybe we can open it up for questions. That's fantastic. Thank you so much, Aunty Bee, and how wonderful to finish on you reading part of your book, which is incredibly moving. Thank you so much for that. I think we have a couple of questions that have already come in. So I might hand over to Evette to facilitate the Q&A part. Thank you. Thank you, Aunty Bee. So we have a few questions. So I'll just kick off with the first one. Hi, Aunty Bee. I do occasional work with Australian University students interested in your views on how the current and future younger generations can be allies to the Indigenous communities and businesses. Can be what to? Can be allies to the Indigenous community? Oh, allies. Yes. I've been talking to a lot of people and as a healer, I have a theory that the problems that we have today with a lot of the youth comes back to not only intergenerational trauma, but to the flow in their DNA, but also our youth have sat for generations and watched our elders get completely ignored or disrespected. And honestly, they've lost hope. It's like, how are we going to make a difference? How can we be the future leaders and elders if we're treated in the same way? So I guess in business, well, if they go into a job, they don't like being isolated. So just don't have one Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person. Try and have a cluster. If that's not possible, make sure that they have one person in the business or the company who they can identify as like a mentor. Somebody, if they're not sure about something, they can go to and say, you know, I don't understand this. What can I do about this? They do not want to look like they don't want to have shame job. They don't want to be embarrassed or ashamed because they haven't understood something or they don't know what to do. But if they have got a safe person they can go to, they'll hang around. And they may be more interested in. And I do a lot of work with some businesses and down where we've developed an Indigenous employment strategy and a recruitment strategy. And so you've got to really work at having in place, you know, policy or procedure within your company that will facilitate attracting and retaining First Nations people. I don't know if that helps, but that works for us here. Yeah. Thank you. That's really, really useful advice. I'm following on that. We actually have a sort of a follow up question from Naveen Rajagopal. And he basically sent his congratulations to you as being basically selected as the finalist for the senior elder of the year. He has a question asked, how can we promote traditional knowledge and custom among young people? That is a very big issue in remote communities here in the Northern Territory because they've all got television and they're all into that American gangster style. With the Larakia, we're a big family and we had difficulties. It wasn't until we had the NAIDOC theme, our language matters. And some of them said, why don't we have our language? And I had to tell them the history of colonization and how it was basically beaten out of us. And that's when I thought, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. Basically beaten out of us. And that's when I thought, no, I'm going to do something about it. Now, since we've started reviving the language and teaching the kids and taking the time out of our busy schedules to make our cultural maintenance a priority, not a tag on, that the kids have really come around. Now, I think we have to look, for me, it's two problems. One, I suspect a lot of the kids have got medical issues, whether it is alcohol field syndrome or whether they've got ADD or whether it's generations of eating crap food and additives that has come out and making them behave in a way, but Western culture has interfered. If you're in traditional society and you did the wrong thing, well, you got a flogging or you got punished in some way. But now, you can't hit your kids, you can't do this, you can't do that. So Western society has basically crippled parents and grandparents from any sort of discipline. I don't know what the answer is because we have to live in society today, but in my family and I am the matriarch, we are extremely disciplined with our kids. I'll give you an example. I had a niece that got to puberty and just thought she was God's gift to the world and could do anything she want, whenever she want, however she wanted. And her mother tried to stop her and she had to go with her mum in quite a horrible way. So she told us and then when my young niece came home, she walked through the front door and almost had a fit. The dining room table had been set up and six of her big uncles were sitting there. Some of the aunties were on the side. So she had to front the panel of us. And we basically said, you stop doing what you're doing, you start being respectful or we were going to send it to one of the strictest boarding schools in Australia, way out in the desert where she couldn't run away. And I think she realised she'd overstepped boundaries. And I think she realised that if she got cut off from her family, it would have been devastating. But we do have some youngins that have got their autistic for different reasons and we have to deal with it in a different way. We are an extended family. We are not a little mum, dad, and two kids. So we can call on other family members to help us. I mean, if there was one of the boys is really misbehaving gets taken out bush and he has to stay out there until he wakes up to himself. We can't do that with all kids. So I'm not sure how we can talk to our education system. It's a big issue that needs to be worked on. So we don't end up with places like Dondale where we can, through the education system around the legal system, start maybe allowing Aboriginal parents to raise their children. I keep saying let's look back for the future. Let's look back at how we did it for the future. It's a huge question. I don't know if I've answered it. No, you've answered it really well. Thank you for sharing that because it's actually really helpful sharing your grandmother's knowledge and that's really key. I have a next question which it's from anonymous attendee. She wants to know if celebrating Australia Day okay, are there any sensitivities that we need to be aware of when celebrating Australia Day? I've read different views about this day and was wondering how to be supported and yet respectful when talking about this day. You know what, people just get so anal about some of the things. I don't have an issue with Australia Day. People talk about changing the day. Okay, change the day. What, same activities. The chair of the Australia Day Council for the Northern Territory is a senior Larakia man. I always go and attend. The only thing I supported and encouraged here in Darwin is that you start the day properly with an Aboriginal ceremony of the traditional owners of that country. Here in Darwin the Larakia people will do a big smoking ceremony and a welcome to country. I'm a pretty cheeky woman. I would usually say we were the first people here. It's a shame. Captain Cook didn't ask us if he had permission to come on our country. And then, you know, you other Westerners came here and didn't ask us anything. You just took over. But if I think in Sydney now they do the big ceremony with the smoking and the people call it did-re-do in my language, the ma millima, or for the Yunga people, you're the yiriki and the welcome. And then you go into the Australia Day activities, I think. For me, that's fine. We've got to learn to live together. We've got to learn to adapt and change. Thank you so much for that. Next question I have is, do you have any suggestions on how we can hear at the High Commission can continue to promote the excellence of Indigenous Australia to the world? Oh, yeah. I'm hoping you guys are going to have a whole series of events in Singapore of visual art, performing arts, workshops. And I keep saying, oh, come on over there and do healing circles. This is the stuff I travel the world doing. Talk about these things. And then you've got visitors in Singapore, but you can invite First Nation peoples from around the world. You know, just have these series of events and, you know, maybe think tanks around the questions that you're talking about. I can tell you now the youth, First Nations youth across this planet are going through the same things. The grandmas, we're grandmas from very big traditional backgrounds. We love Zoom, FaceTime. We talk about the issues of drug, alcohol, suicide, the movement away from traditional learnings to the point where in the territory, we are getting young non-Aboriginal people coming and saying, Auntie, I really want to learn. I've got two young Australians. No, one New Zealander, one Australian who have moved lock, stock and barrel to Darwin, and I'm going to be teaching them. I am fortunate that I have a daughter and a granddaughter who's carrying my law, but if they want to come and sit and learn about how we did and how we do, I'm more than happy. And I have my spirit brother, who's an Aboriginal man from another country who's coming here, and hopefully we can set up sharing these wisdoms, because I think it doesn't matter what culture you come from. You know, if you are making Australia your home, there's no reason why you can't learn. And I know I work very closely with Hawaiian sisters who are establishing the same sort of thing. So I think Western society, looking at the global warming, will have to start talking to their First Nation elders on how we did it. So with all the technology and science and everything that they keep sprucing, they can also learn the old wisdoms, a combination may bring us back from the brink, because we've got to do something. And I mean, you know, when you look at the horrendous tragic fires in Australia, it wasn't until that happened that they decided, oh, maybe we should talk to the Aboriginal firemasters. Interesting that the grandmothers from around the world all kept contacting me going, you've got all them fires in Australia and the smoke is going all the way around the world. You're doing big smoking ceremony for the planet, aren't you? I said, well, that wasn't our intention, but that's what's happening. So I think it's a combination we need of the old and the new together, walk it together. That's great. And it's really great to hear about the conceptative process. And that's what we actually need. I have one last question. And it's from Michelle Bedford. She said, can you translate what hill country can mean to anyone in the workplace or their community, whatever they may be in either Australia or another country? Well, hill country, you're not only healing that piece of dirt out there, like picking up rubbish and maybe planting stuff so we get more oxygen. When you heal country, you heal people. So the hill country theme this year is about both healing country and healing people. So it doesn't matter. And, you know, originality is not about the color of your skin. It's about the essence of your heart. And I've met so many people who are maybe they will say they're Aussies or English, but they were Aboriginal in a past life. So they have that DNA connection. And I think hill country is about, you know, not sitting back and not saying anything, but in your own quiet way or depending on how militant or strong you are, get involved in, you know, I have no hesitation in ringing up the Lord Mayor or the administrator of the Northern Territory and going, hey, no, you're not going to build that suburb there because that's a sacred site. And you've got all them psycads there that are really important and this and that. And you've got to leave a passageway for the, you know, for these particular animals of birds because that's their migratory line. So you've got to be active in being aware of what's happening. And then, you know, even simply as here in Darwin going to the Laracan Nation and saying, you know, I've got some experiences there anyway, I can help with the ranges or cleaning up. In the second book, I talk about people should start to learn growing their own food, which means cleaning up the rubbish in your yard, you know, not being such a society that use the stuff that needs to be thrown in the bin. So we're trying to teach all our mob to recycle and reuse, not to just, you know, all that plastic packaging. So it's actively looking to how can you leave as little a footprint on Mother Earth as you can. That's how you heal country. Sorry, just one more last question. Sorry, on TV. You keep saying that. And that's okay. As I said, I can talk for ages. Is there anything particular that you think we can look at to implement into our day to day? There are a couple of things. There is the webinar. Ask the specialist. It's free on Spotify. And it's all around cross-culture communication. I mean, there are my two books, but there is another book that's called Voices of the First Day by Robert Lawler. I always recommend that if you want to know more about Aboriginal cultures, traditional. But there's a lot written and spoken about. And as I said, you know, we will do it here in Darwin, but I'd love to see it happen in Singapore where you have workshops like this. And there are more, there are more elders that I know of here in the territory, just the most stunningly beautiful and brilliant elders. And they are absolute elders. You know, they can talk more about the song and the tangible and the intangible laws that govern our world. I mean, I haven't talked about moieties or skin groups, which is probably in the next webinar, and how we're connected to Mother Earth, the system of the nature, and all the creatures on the planet. Thank you so much, Aunty Bee. That's really great. I'm going to pass you back to Angela now. Thank you so much. And what great questions. Thanks to all our participants. I really appreciate it. Aunty Bee, I actually want to give you the last word before I wrap up. Is there anything that any, any last words before we close the session that you think you should leave us all with? Well, I really want to thank you and the, his honor. I want to figure out what Kevin or whatever it is. For actually instigating these, because the more we share, the more the, we connect and the, I found the, one of the biggest reasons for racism is ignorance. People don't know and they get scared and then they get angry and then they are not nice. So I think the more we share, the more you talk to, you know, talk to us, the better. And I think I love sharing this with you all. Anytime. Well, we absolutely love hearing it and couldn't agree with you more that cultural understanding is the bedrock of everything. So I think you're referring to our High Commissioner, Will Hodgman, who's listening in. He has some IT issues, but he's listening in. And so it's, it's fantastic to have him here as well. Look, I just, I guess it's my job to wrap up then. And I very much want to pay my respect to you Aunty Bee. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us. I can't tell you how much we appreciate it. I've certainly learned a lot listening to you. You'll be happy to know that we've just announced a travel lane between Singapore and Australia. Very exciting. So having you here in person and continuing our conversation is now very much an option at this time. I also want to pay my respect to Yvette, who has really driven this and it's just been absolutely fantastic having her help us all learn. So huge respect to you, Yvette, for bringing us all together in this. Look, I'm not sure if we've, I can see a lot of, a lot of comments. I'm watching all the little missing coming up saying thank you. So you know, we'll, we'll take a snapshot of all of those Aunty Bee and, and put it onto you. So from us at the Australian High Commission here in Singapore, thank you so much for joining us on Facebook or however you've joined us today. Thank you for participating. Huge thanks to Aunty Bee. We can't wait to continue our conversation and please if you have any questions that you didn't have a time to answer, you can just see our mouth at the Australian High Commission's Facebook page and we'll get back to you. So thank you again Aunty Bee for your huge generosity and for your learnings. That's okay. And in my language we say Mamak, Mamak Pachua. Mamak Pachua. Mamak Pachua. Mamak Pachua. Thank you and goodbye everyone. Perfect.