 Now I'm your bookmark. My name is Leila Gurawiwi and I'm a proud Yulma woman of the Galpuk clan of North East Arnhem land. I would like to acknowledge that all of agency's untold talk series are filmed on the lands of the Rurundri people of the Kulin nation and we pay our respects to their elders past and present. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to agency's untold talk series. Agency is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander non-for-profit that celebrates and promotes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, culture and people on a local, national and international scale. Untold brings together leading Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander creative practitioners and thinkers from across Australia and beyond and shines a light on a broad range of topics from caring for country to the unseen work of women in communities and the importance of intergenerational learning. Our host for this series is Gomorroa woman Crystal Denapoli who is a astrophysics graduate now undertaking an honours degree at Monash University. Crystal is a passionate advocate for Indigenous sciences, Indigenous astronomy in particular, which she explores through public presentations, research, writing and by embedding Indigenous knowledges into secondary and tertiary curricula. Hi, I'm Crystal Denapoli. I'm a Gomorroa woman and astrophysics graduate and today I'm chatting to Naurangiri Men, academic at Monash University, Andrew Giles. Andrew, would you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? Yeah, thanks, Crystal. As Crystal said, I'm a Nangeti fellow and I've spent the last, I guess, 10 years of my life learning how to become a geologist. So from the scientific side I study sedimentology and structural geology and how basins and sedimentary basins deform on top of accretionary wedges, specifically related to the evolution of the North Island of New Zealand, which is pretty fun. And the other part of my role is an academic at Monash University is teaching or unit coordinating a unit called science through the eyes of the first Australians, Psi 2030. And in that unit, we try to discuss the intersection of Indigenous knowledges with Western science. So I wanted to start off, because for people who are probably watching this, they may be very unfamiliar with a lot of the language that we use here and some of the concepts that we have that we find English terms for, but may not fully cover what we're trying to convey when we talk about these topics from an Aboriginal standpoint. And so I was wondering if you could tell us a bit about how you would define the concept of country and why it's important to be linked to country. So country is intrinsically an important aspect of being an Indigenous person and I think the reason why that is is because typically us as Indigenous people would have very strong connections to where our family are from and where our ancestors are from. How would I define country? Country is, I think in some ways indefinable in the language that we speak, but to try and put it into words would be country is living, it's breathing, it's your ancestors, it's your family, your brothers and sisters. The country is not just the landscape, it's everything around you and it's how you embed, it's part of the way you embed yourself into your worldview. I don't, yeah, it's inherently just an incredibly important part of life. And so why do you think it's important to be physically returning to country and to be connected to country? Why do I think it's important? For me, more specifically how I feel, for me it keeps me, I guess not to make a pun, but it keeps me grounded, but it's healing, it's yeah, I think that it's important to go back to country because it's your responsibility as an Indigenous person to not only take care and look after country, but also participate in your cultural responsibilities and being your family and all of those things. And so how do you find, so you're the unit coordinator for SI 2030, so an Indigenous science course at Monash University? Yes, yep. And you're trying to explore, I guess, these types of topics about Indigenous knowledge systems, important concepts relating to Aboriginal identity and culture. How have you found trying to teach those sort of topics and explore them in a university setting, which is predominantly, I guess, sort of a Western institution? So I think that a lot of the time people tend to be reasonably sort of innocently ignorant, which is kind of a bit of an oxymoron, but bear with me. A lot of the time people just don't have the context and they're not taught about really any other worldview, let alone in the worldview that is intrinsically part of this country or what we would call Australia. And often I think that when you start talking, people that study science and people that try to like, you know, are interested in those topics and subjects, they reasonably, feel reasonably open-minded people. And when you start talking to them about the complexity and the depth and the breadth of understanding that Indigenous people had and still have, it's important to acknowledge that whilst a lot has been, a lot of understanding and a lot of context and a lot of language, especially language, has been lost due to colonisation, it's still important to understand that these people still know a lot and those stories still exist, whether it be fragmented or fractured, but those people are still intrinsically connected to that land of that country. And when you start talking about that sort of stuff and start opening people's eyes to that level of complexity and understanding, they tend to be pretty surprised. They sort of let go of their, they mostly tend to let go of their ignorance and are pretty happy to learn, actually. I don't know if that answers your question. No, no, it does. I find this, I guess this idea of trying to teach Indigenous knowledges in, I guess, sort of non-Indigenous let me clarify a little bit. I think part of it is that you have to do a little bit of unlearning. And I think that generally in science, I mean, it's a little bit of, it's kind of like something that I've done a lot and not necessarily just through teaching Indigenous knowledges, but also through teaching scientific perspectives as well, because as you will know, when you went to high school, you were taught to, you were taught the answers to the exams essentially, right? This is how it works. And then when you get to university, especially when you start doing science, you start to think, those people start to realize that, wow, when high school, it didn't really teach us how to learn. So I have a lot of experience in sort of teaching unlearning. And so when you start teaching that unlearning, it comes with, you teach that unlearning and they sort of, they start to recontextualize stuff. And part of that unlearning is also learning about the history of colonization, the history of the way science is treated, Indigenous people, and not just First Nations people of Australia, but First Nations people everywhere. And it's truth-telling, a little bit of truth-telling, well, a lot of truth-telling goes into it as well. And I think that that's an important part of understanding the Indigenous perspective from a colonizer's perspective is that history as well. Yeah. What have you noticed from the students' responses to, I guess they are at a pretty prestigious institution, they've been able to go through secondary school, primary school education, get to a university, probably feeling like they know a lot. And then they come to a course like this and find out that there is a massive portion of Aboriginal culture and history here in Australia that they had absolutely no idea about. What have you found from the responses to that type of learning or unlearning? I think when we talk about science, the Western understanding of science and the Western philosophy that, I mean, a lot of people will be familiar with, we have to, and then when we bring that into the Indigenous context, we have to we really have to discuss the truth around the way that science has typically interacted with Indigenous people. And we do that quite, we call it, you know, this happens in workplaces all the time. Often they talk about cultural safety or cultural awareness. Really it's really it's discussing or tackling the topics of anti-racism. Really what we should be talking about is deconstructing racism and being anti-racist when we talk about cultural competency. But we do a two-week section at the start of the course, and that two-week section is taught by myself and Joseph Ty from the William Kipper Institute, deadly brother, Yordi Yodafala. And we talk about the importance of, or we talk about that background and that history of the way that colonisation has affected our Indigenous people and then the interest in the way that specifically science and scientific study and endeavour has also had a huge detrimental impact on Indigenous people and Indigenous culture. You know, I guess one really quite startling example a lot of people find is the sort of large-scale removal of Indigenous bodies from country and into white educational institutions such as museums and universities and more often not even in Australia, so overseas in places like the UK. That is one reason why a lot of the time Indigenous people tend to look at science through a lens of suspicion and distrust. It's well-founded. But how do the students feel when we start to discuss this stuff? I don't think there's really any other way to feel than confronted. It's very confronting not only for myself and Joe when we talk about it, but also for the people hearing about this stuff. And I think a lot of times they kind of feel, because one of the main ways we assess this sort of stuff in the unit is through reflective writing. So the students talk about their, basically write about their feelings or how they felt about what they learned, what they learned and how they felt about it. And I think often the students feel quite regretful that they lived in this framework of ignorance. And also like so we're acknowledging, you've given an example and we're acknowledging that there is a painful history between Aboriginal communities and scientific institutions, educational institutions in Australia. What type of considerations do you feel personally that you've had to make when trying to bring community members into a course like this in a historically culturally unsafe institution? I think let's just quickly backtrack for a sec. When it takes maybe a little bit more understanding to really get why people have Indigenous people, First Nations people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, they have a bit of suspicion towards science and scientific stuff. And that leads over and extends over into a health and allied health professions as well, as you probably are aware. And a lot of this is due to the way social Darwinism was a really big thing in the late 20th, early, sorry, the late 19th, early 20th century. So with social Darwinism, could you expand just on what you mean? So social Darwinism is the idea that white people or the white race is more evolved or above or better than people of Asian or African or Indigenous descent. And so typically, these science at the time was propped up on this idea of social Darwinism. And that Indigenous people in Australia were essentially a link to the past. So they could study Indigenous people as a link to the past or the sort of like the more... It's like a living example. It's super brutal to talk. It's kind of a bit disgusting, even discussing it really, but just the way that people were thinking. But yeah, so it was basically like a real-life case study into how people were before they were civilised, which is typically a lot of the time the language that would be used to describe people at the time would be savages or natives or etc. So that's kind of where the distrust sits. And you can see it. You can read about it in history. And there's very famous stories about this sort of stuff in Australia that I think that a lot of people do know, but I don't think enough people know, and I think probably should be taught in school. But you know, I really am probably one that's relevant to hear Naam Melbourne would be the story of Truganini. Now Truganini is not Truganini, I should say. Truganini is not from Port Phillip area. She's not from the Kulin nations. She's a Tasmanian or a Lutruitan indigenous woman or she was. And she was from Bruni Island, which is down the southwest, I believe, of Tasmania, across the Dioncresto Channel. And the reason why her story is probably reasonably relevant to Naam Melbourne is because she was later in her life brought here and spent quite a lot of time with some troublemakers making trouble for the colony actionary actually. But her experience with science is kind of pretty fraught. I'm not going to talk all about her life, but she had recognised that a lot of her family members, friends that had passed. I should mention the reason why it's pretty famous story is because she up until and we don't really talk about, you know, blood quota percentage. And we think about identity a little bit different than that in Australia these days, especially among last black fellas. But she was at the time thought of as one of the last surviving true full blood black fellas or Aboriginal person. And so people from her family and from around here were quite, I guess, sought after by the this is it's pretty bizarre to think about this, but their bodies and their remains were really sought after by collectors. Because they wanted to collect them and study them. And she saw this happening and she really pleaded with Sir Augustus Robinson, who was the protector of the indigenous people, the protector of the Aborigines or Aboriginal protector, whatever the term was back in the day. But he was pleaded to by Drugnini to please just cremate me and then and spread my ashes back in the Dereclarso channel, which is, you know, the channel between her home on Brittany Island and the mainland, Lutruida Tasmania. And he after she passed, she was buried and then two years later exhumed and her body then spread amongst collectors. So it's pretty, this is where the distrust lies. I mean, that's a really good example to show you that even when Drugnini was pleading with somebody who she actually considered to be her friend, that the trust was immediately, yeah, it just didn't, the trust wasn't founded. He let that happen anyway. So that's really a harrowing story, honestly. And I know it's one of endless, countless stories here. And just to just to point out too, you know, repatriation is the actual work of bringing people, old people, ancestors back to country. It's super important. And it's, it's very, as an indigenous person, an Aboriginal person is extremely difficult, like it's lots of emotion, it's heavy, a lot of weight. Not only do you have responsibility for those old people, but those old people are not at rest. This happens, and it's happening, and it's a really good thing that it's happening. My fellow, another Northern Jetty fellow, a bloke by the name of Christopher Wilson, Dr. Christopher Wilson, he's an archaeologist, and he was at Flinders Uni, but now I believe he's just taken a job, Flinders Uni in South Australia, in Adelaide. He's just taken a job in Queensland, but he was an associate professor at Flinders University, and he was working with museums and elders in the non-Deddy community to repatriate bodies. And that's a really important work, just a side note. No, I think I think I'm very glad that you brought it up, because you're able to offer perspectives that a lot of us have not been able to have any sort of access to or be aware of, and especially to talk in any story. For me, I find that really heartbreaking that even in your final moment, you're still not treated or regarded as a human being with some sort of sovereignty to your own body, but that you are a fascinating test subject because you are some possible early... It was proven to be, even if you look at Indigenous identity from its basest, most vulgar factor of percentage. She was fully descendant from people that lived in the area at the time, but she wasn't even the last surviving person from her community anyway, so it was a little bit of a moot point anyway. Yeah, it's sort of like so much suffering and pain, but for what gain? And so I thank you for providing examples on the way that these types of institutions have treated Aboriginal people. And we've seen it recently. It's important to say that this stuff happened in the past, but it's also part of truth telling is recognising when you're still doing the same stuff. We've seen this recently with the recent change of government and the burial of maromains that were in institutions back on country near like Mungo, which Mungo is a really... I mean, if you know anything about Australian archaeology, it's a massively important site and area and it's been studied a lot, but there were some bodies that were repatriated back from museums to country and there were still discussions going on with local people and actually especially elders about how those people should be buried. And one of the last things the minister at the time before our recent change of government did before they lost government was to just bury the bodies without due consultation with local communities. So that happened literally months ago. So yeah, this is a process where you're finally getting bodies back home, which should have never been removed from country to begin with, and then you finally get them home to make up for the damage in the past or only to once again be participating in disregarding an Aboriginal way of paying respect to members who are past and respecting those burial rights or traditions that are associated. So it's one of those things where yes, this happened in the past, but we're clearly just seeing... They're still doing, the ignorance is still there and that's important to recognise. Yeah, no, I agree. And so in the context of then, say universities and research, I know you and I previously before meeting today have discussed this idea of given that history, why it's really important to have data and research sovereignty when it comes to working with Indigenous communities. Would you be able to sort of tell us a bit about what that means and why that's important? Yeah, so I'm a black fella. I understand that I have fair skin and we should probably make a point of this. Indigenous Australian people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, often refer to themselves as black fellas, even if they don't have black skin. And this is typically just a cultural reference to themselves. And it is... Normally people... Whilst it's important to recognise that people of darker skin still have more prejudice than lighter skinned Indigenous people. We're all still Indigenous. And so when I do refer to myself as a black fella, I'm aware that I have fair skin. No, it's good that we haven't discussed those type of definitions before either, so it is helpful for people to be aware as to what those words mean. So it's really important to... I'm a scientist and I work from Monash University and I would typically approach people being very honest that I work for an institution. But as soon as... Even people that I know, as soon as that I say that it's part of a Monash University program, often they're very suspicious. And the suspicion is valid. And the way that they feel about institutions is valid. It's important for... It's important to recognise that a lot of the time, science and Western science just wants to pull and store knowledge. It wants to know everything and it thinks it has the right to know everything. And it's funny and it sort of exists in this idea that knowledge should be shared and everybody should be able to have access to knowledge, but then they gate it behind publishing companies and charge you $30 to read a single article. But that's another story. But it's important that when you approach an Indigenous community, when you work for a research institution, it's important to recognise that those people have sovereignty over country and knowledge is part of country and that knowledge... They have sovereignty over that knowledge. Any data collected around things related to country. So if a biologist wanted to go onto country and work with Indigenous people to understand more about local ecology, I think that it would be really important for that biologist to then understand that the Indigenous knowledge related to that stuff should remain in the hands or it should still belong to the people that those stories belong to. Otherwise you're taking it out of its context and it starts to lose a little bit of its sense or it starts to lose a lot of its meaning. So even when I approach Indigenous communities as a Black fellow, they're still suspicious that because I work for an institution, they're going to... I'm going to take control of their intellectual property of their knowledge and then it's seen as sort of stealing culture. And when you do approach Indigenous people, you really need to talk with them and talk about stuff with them, what's appropriate to share, what's appropriate to talk about, or you only take snippets from stuff that has been freely expressed to the rest of the world through media or through resources that those Indigenous communities have developed. I just want to state, I don't think there is anything specifically wrong with research institutions approaching Indigenous communities to then further understand their relationship with country and the world and what they can teach about the interconnected nature of that country and the ecology and the weather and all that sort of stuff. I don't think there's anything wrong with research institutions helping and giving context, but I think that the research itself should be community driven and those community members should have the right to say what can and cannot be freely given up as part of that research or knowledge can freely be talked about or discussed as part of that knowledge. I think that that data that is collected in relationship to Indigenous knowledges should remain the intrinsic property or the intrinsic intellectual property I guess would be the term of that community of those people because if you take knowledge out of context then often it loses a lot of its meaning. Yeah definitely and we can see the way that with reproducing Indigenous knowledges without that greater context without community consultation you can end up as well with really misrepresenting Aboriginal knowledges. In fact to talk about more stuff that's been happening recently I try to keep up with stuff but sometimes it's pretty overwhelming but I do try to keep up with it. There was some large scale fuel reduction burns that happened. Did you see this story? I don't think so. I think I can't really quite remember where it happened it was definitely in Victoria. I can't remember the specific location but the whole idea in Australia behind fuel reduction burning is rooted actually in Indigenous knowledges. Indigenous people have been cultivating the land using fire and for millennia. When I say millennia I mean thousands of years, tens of thousands of years. And this fuel reduction burning so we're referring to specifically looking at things that may trigger massive bushfires in the landscape. Yeah so fuel would be fuel load would be leaf litter, bark, dead trees that sort of stuff. And typically Indigenous people have very localised understandings of how fire systems work well how fire works with a broader ecological system and they sort of exploit that knowledge to get the least destructive outcomes with the most benefit to themselves and country because remember we are intrinsically part of country. Absolutely. But I saw that this fuel reduction burn happened and it killed a lot of native animals. It was very burnt really hot burnt up into the canopy of the trees and it kind of left the area in a worse state than what it was previously. And who conducted these? It would have been the local council through the I guess the CFA. So it's sort of trying to use an Aboriginal method for caring for the land but clearly not in the right context. Yeah so it's evidence of well it's a case study I guess of people taking Indigenous knowledges but not fully understanding the framework of the context of those Indigenous knowledges. And you know the fuel reduction might have been successful you still remove fuel from the area but what you're going to see is in successive years you're going to start getting probably more fuel load because you have all these plants come in that are sort of opportunist plants and they fill in an area filling in this sort of space that would have been taken up typically by like ecosystem or the plants would have been there for much longer and those plants then die off and they just create a bunch more or higher fuel loads in excessive successive years so. So it's starting to cause. You're sort of fixing the problem but causing the problem. Causing a new problem and that's just a lack of understanding. While you have a fuel reduction it might be safe for the next five years or something like that it's just going to become worse and worse when you approach the problem in that manner. So I think you've done an excellent job of illustrating how context is really important when we're dealing with Aboriginal knowledges and bits of methods for caring for the land for example coming from Aboriginal knowledge systems but being taken and sort of removed from the context so we're seeing the negative impact that can have. So I want to then bring us sort of back to this idea of something that you and I are across maybe people who are getting to watch our conversation unfamiliar with but the idea that Indigenous knowledge systems are really intrinsically interconnected so losing that context or losing part of that bigger picture can actually have pretty serious impact and so I was wondering how have you tried to approach teaching an interconnected knowledge system in a course like Psy 2030. Yeah so a little bit about the the course is yeah it does we'll go just circle back to what it actually is so Psy 2030 is it's titled science for the eyes science through the eyes of the first Australians actually I think Indigenous science is still in the title but the whole point of it is to try to explain that Indigenous people use the similar concepts to what a scientist would use observation experimentation repeating those observations and experiments over long periods of time to gain an understanding of how the world works that that that idea I think a lot of people forget is not is not unique to science it science is not the only philosophical ideology that that tries to tackle understanding of the universe in this manner I guess where science and Indigenous knowledge is really diverge is that and I'm not saying Indigenous people don't do this because they do and it's an important part of understanding that science really tries to focus on it pigeonholes everything at branches start like I said earlier I was a sedimentologist and structural geologist and these are these are actually pretty broad like broad schools of understanding within and even broader school of understanding that can then be brought down to even smaller aspects of those those particular areas of study of science and so what people try to do is they try to become really really knowledgeable about really like small areas of knowledge and they they try to then rig they they then try to bounce like sort of rely on the broader community to then sort of like the scientific community then sort of try to bring those ideas together often it's it a lot of people aren't as good as visualizing bigger picture when it comes to science and it happens that it sort of takes a longer time and and and it's not necessarily as effective but it works it science science works in general um but so in science we have these big broad schools we have biology chemistry physics mathematics um earth sciences um and in the earth sciences you have the geosciences the climate science geography um etc etc like we have all these very regimented structural framework around how you learn and there is a red prevention structural framework about how you're learning from indigenous perspective but that there tends to be less of a focus on trying to understand the the really small things and more of a focus on trying to understand how everything sort of fits together so instead of taking all of these sort of abstract ideas and trying to then put them all back together you you start you start with everything together and you always look at stuff within its context you always try to understand stuff things within their context within the broader context of of of where they of what is happening in in in in on country I guess would be the the correct term so the way that we tackle this is we we really do have to approach it from a way that the average you know undergraduate science student would understand and that is by by taking these broader schools and then showing how indigenous people um understand that that those concepts but then showing them within the broader context of country uh what we try to do yeah yeah um so that's kind of how that works yeah yeah I I mean you've done it you teach you teach with me so you I think you you kind of get that no I I definitely see and and that sort of brings me then on to the my next question which is talking about um representation of indigenous voices in science in institutions I was wondering whether you could tell us whether you think um Aboriginal voices are represented well or underrepresented and why do you think representation matters um so it's really important when you talk on indigenous issues to not or indigeneity is to not be a talking head right unless you have you know express um sort of um understanding in community that you do have that right to talk of talk as a person of authority or of knowledge um then it's important to understand that um indigenous communities tend to tend to share a lot of thought and and understanding of the world within the community so the community you can't if you're talking about community you're talking about all the people in community in unless you have permission to really to be that that that person to talk on behalf of community it's really important to understand that you shouldn't be the you should not be the uh the talking head you shouldn't go around just saying stuff you shouldn't you should be aware that the things that you say um can can have broader effects and consequences and so I think that um when it comes to representation um say in my unit I really I try to not be the only person discussing indigeneity and well the only indigenous person discussing indigeneity issues and indigeneity um which is why I I like having you in the course because you have your own perspective and your own understanding um I I have uh you know Joe he comes in and he talks about he he he helps me with the the cultural competency I could do cultural competency by myself but it's important to have give other people afford the other people opportunity to have voices and voice um aspects of of what how they how they see the world and from the perspective of their communities as well um and so I try to have as many to represent as many people or indigenous people that I can in the unit and part of that is also um I think a lot of the time um people and the government loves this is that they especially again stuff that's really relevant at the moment um is that they really like to think that well the broader broader Australian people really like the idea that indigenous people are this group a big group of their indigenous people Aboriginal people um there were some sort of like homogenous sort of there was this homogenous group and we all sort of think the same and we're politically um homogenous uh and uh it really works well for the narrative because I think Westerners really struggle with the idea that actually um there are shades of gray and there's not the world is not a dichotomy uh believe it or not um but uh so for me it's really important that I get a lot of different people from different parts of the country um to to talk about their perspective um and that's representation um not just indigenous representation but trying to represent the the the fact that indigenousness is not homogenous indigeneity is not homogenous um and so you know I you Joe I've had other guest speakers in the past um and and that's really important um now when it comes to representation on a broader scale um I don't really know what you want me to say about it other than um other than obvious uh there is not enough yeah um I get asked this question a lot from people in my unit um so we talked about this concept of cultural competency a cultural competency in the modern western society is seen as a key employability skill um being able to uh amicably have conversations with believe it or not having able to amicably have conversations with um indigenous Australians is seen as an employability skill um which is it's it's pretty funny when you think about it but um uh I often get this question you know uh but what if there's no indigenous people in the institution that I work for um and how do I uh what if we you know we really want to know about that these these like these river systems and how they like linked and so how we can manage water better and and better better properly um better allow you know water allocations and that sort of stuff say we're talking from a agricultural um versus environmental versus talking about big stakeholders and things like that um they're like so what if there's no indigenous people in our in our institution what are we supposed to do and and I always go well this is not really I mean it's an easy question to answer um and you're probably not really going to like the answer um uh but it's a it's an easy question to answer but a hard problem to solve and the answer is always you need to have indigenous representation if you if you don't if you don't know how to approach uh the indigenous communities or if you don't know how to work with them um beyond having this um this uh dialogue with them then you need to start bringing them into the institutions that are making these decisions um if you can't do that you can have a reciprocal relationship but reciprocity really um relies on I think representation so um yeah often it's a hard problem to fix um but an easy question to answer um but yeah um if my broader view on representation isn't enough I am the um the only uh indigenous identified average um indigenous identified person that is an academic in the school of science at the faculty of science at Monash University yeah uh Monash University is massive so you'd expect that that number would be quite different but you're sort of just on your lonesome yeah I wouldn't make it don't make it sound so bleak but as an indigenous person yes I am I am the sole voice in the in the institution in the faculty of science yes which is challenging and it's really challenging um when we talk about representation um we have especially when it comes to STEM we have these these already really ingrained barriers for indigenous people to enter it and we started up talking about mistrust but um indigenous people typically get do worse at school um they they have stronger connections and um stronger um responsibilities to family um to country um and all of those sorts of things and so the barrier to entry is not only high because science is racist but it's high because um science is exclusionary so especially at institutions like Monash University so um there's sort of like a lot of elements to this then too then there's a lot of elements to it and it also comes back to you you can't be what you can't see you know this whole this whole idea of people typically don't like to do stuff that they can't well they it's not that I don't like to do it they people often don't go into areas of study or go into into careers where they they don't have a role model or somebody to to to show them that they can also that they can do that um and so because we have such low representation of indigenous people in STEM subjects topics in general um typically people indigenous people don't see themselves as doing that they they fundamentally one don't understand why it would be important well they do understand the importance of it but they don't understand that I feel like they don't really want to participate in the the broader context of science and um it's exclusionary and they can't see themselves doing it so it's there's a bit of a barrier there's I can really relate at least from the perspective of um a young woman coming from a rural background growing up in poverty uh hurdles when accessing education I I found it really difficult to imagine myself being an astronomer or doing any of the work that I'm doing nowadays and I can see the difference that it does make when you see people you respect and admire people that you can relate to in these spaces that make it seem a bit more um welcoming and possible to achieve so I get where you're coming from a very personal sort of um point point of view from mine so often it takes the courage and I think you hear elders talk about this a lot right it takes the courage to walk into walk into worlds right um this concept of you still have your cultural obligation you actually still have obligation in a country and that obligation only becomes more and more um that obligation only becomes more and more strong the the longer you ignore it or follow follow a different path in your life um and so you really have to balance this this cultural responsibility but also trying to fit in and live within those societal structures and be successful be successful in and as you know like you know I have a lot of like a lot of my family history is is is really challenging to to to think about and to to to confront and to to discuss and to research and understand what happened to a lot of people in my family because because they were indigenous actually actually because they were indigenous and so um succeeding for indigenous people in this society is is is a is a challenge in itself let alone being a scientist or or or um you know a leader in an organisation or um or just making rent you know what I mean yeah you know I do it's hard for indigenous people it's hard for everybody it's it's harder for indigenous people it's a much higher entry um much higher barrier to entry yeah you know well there's a lot of discussions at the moment um about treaty and relationship with um the Australian government um which is a colonial government uh that is imported from Europe uh with with a treaty with Australia's first people and that's in Aboriginal people or people who identify as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and a big part of that and you'll hear this if you if you if you if you really try to research understand treaty um especially in Victoria where we are now I think we try to I try to keep stuff relevant you get to understand my family and not from Victoria I grew up most of my life in Victoria um but my family are not from and my indigenous um connection is not in Victoria but it's important to try and talk about things we're here in Narm and it's important to talk about the problems that are related to the people here and when you when you look at specifically look at Victorian Treaty um you hear a lot about and this is not just um not just unique to Victorian Treaty but you do hear a lot of talking about truth telling truth telling is just super important it's acknowledging that that what has happened has happened and through truth telling you can those those um events can really be understood and then the people that perpetrated all the ancestors or the system that um that allowed the people to perpetrate those those great deep crimes or those great deep um uh I guess um theft of land and resources from indigenous people uh the more those people can then start to realize that now maybe we should start giving back giving back to indigenous communities and that's part of of treaty it's it's not just it's just not it's not just having some hollow agreement that is that the government has with indigenous people the nebulous indigenous people it's about telling the truth and it's about um it's about empowering indigenous communities to actually have um to to um to maintain sovereignty their right to sovereignty over their land to make decisions to to to have control of their their resources as much as buckfellas would not use them the same way that um crinkly wood um but yeah it's it's really important yeah I definitely agree I um I had a conversation with um Uncle Dave Widders who is a Gamilaroi and I apologise because I have forgotten his other mob that he identifies with uh but it was during one of these types of cultural competency discussions and he pointed out that for a lot of black fellas across this country country um for many of us we're sort of we are in the midst of being the first generation of education the first generation with the potential to have any sort of wealth so yeah it is there are a lot of hurdles uh in front of us instead um further than just getting higher to the university so many hurdles along the way of being able to keep in school to be able to um form a sort of stable life given the resources that a lot of us had uh so I am to conclude this I have to say I'm really I really admire your work I am really grateful that you've shared your thoughts with us today talking about a lot of your perspectives when it comes to indigeneity comes to concepts of country and also the way that we can talk about Aboriginal knowledge systems in Western institutions while acknowledging the history that exists there and why there are certain rifts so uh yeah I want to thank you for your work and say that I feel uh very reassured knowing that you are someone leading that type of change within our university