Welcome, everyone, to 100 Climate Conversations. Thank you so much for joining us. As always, I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the ancestral homelands upon which the Powerhouse museums are situated. We respect their Elders, ancestors and we recognise their sovereignty was never ceded. To the Gadigal people whose land this talk is being recorded on, I acknowledge that the colonisation of this continent started here. I acknowledge your resistance and your resilience, and that despite violent attempts, your cultures, land and your people are still here. Today is number 100 of 100 conversations happening every Friday. The series presents 100 visionary Australians that are taking positive action to respond to the most critical issue of our time: the climate crisis.

We are recording live today in the Boiler House of Powerhouse Museum. Before it was home to the museum, it was the Ultimo Power Station. Built in 1899, it supplied coal-powered electricity to Sydney’s tram system right into the 1960s. So, in the context of this architectural artefact, we shift our focus forward to the innovations of the net zero revolution. My name is Rachael Hocking and I’m a Warlpiri woman from the Tanami Desert. I’ve lived and worked on Gadigal land for about eight years now and I’ve been working mostly as a journalist, but recently more as an editor, trainer and curator.

Dr Terri Janke is a Wuthathi and Meriam woman and a global expert in Indigenous cultural and intellectual property. Janke is the owner and solicitor and director of Terri Janke and Company, where the team strives to empower Indigenous peoples to manage their culture and attain their business goals. In July 2021, she authored True Tracks: Indigenous Knowledge and Culture and was the co-chief author of the 2021 State of the Environment Report, the first collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge systems in the report’s history. Janke’s work speaks to the interconnectedness between Indigenous rights and climate resilience, emphasising the importance of Traditional Knowledge and its crucial role in addressing climate change. I’m so honoured to have you join me today. Thank you, Terri.

Can you please put your hands together … Now Terri, there is so much that I could jump into because your life’s work is quite remarkable. But I wanted to know if you could take us back to the beginning and talk about some of your formative life experiences, your mob, your community, your culture. I know you were born in Cairns. How did these early experiences in your life shape your passion for social justice?

Well, as a kid I was really aware that being Indigenous was something that everyone sort of looked down upon. In Cairns, where I grew up, as a kid we weren’t expected to do well at school. And then you would see how First Nations people were treated, and that’s Aboriginal people from the Cape or Torres Strait Islanders that were living there or local Aboriginal people there. It was like we were on the fringes. And so, as a kid in the 1970s, I grew up really being impacted by that and thinking that I would have limited choices until I went to high school and I thought: It can’t be like this. I don’t agree that that is First Nations people’s place in society, and I wanted to change it.

So, when I was going through high school, we moved to Canberra and there was the Tent Embassy. There were marches on land rights and the songs were coming out [from] Goanna band or No Fixed Address – I remember really well. And I wanted to be part of that, but I didn’t know how. And as a black kid, a shy black kid, didn’t really know what to say. But I found that if I could use the law, and I was moving to go into study law because my sister Toni was going through law school, and I thought I could use the law as a means of social justice. And I thought: Hey, I’ve watched L.A. Law on TV at the time. Thought, you know: It’s cool to be a lawyer. But I didn’t realise how hard that would be as a journey. I thought: Was it going to be criminal law, something in the courts? It’s very adversarial, which is not really an Indigenous way of solving things. But I ended up finding intellectual property copyright through the arts because I dropped out of uni, actually, after property law – this was pre-Mabo Case – and I didn’t think I would be a lawyer. It wasn’t for me. It was just a very different environment.

But after working in the arts, I got connected to culture and to people who were using the arts to convey social justice messages and look at disadvantage, advanced land rights – anything to do with Indigenous empowerment. And I was so inspired by it and [being] part of that community that I thought I may be able to go back to law because now I found where I could find my place. So, social justice as a lawyer became my pathway. But specifically intellectual property, because I understood that there was arts, culture and knowledge that First Nations people had despite the impact of invasion. It was something that we still held and were connected through with our identity. And it was even more important as we were moving, you know, this was the 1990s – we were going to move to technological shifts. Just the way that Australia was changing post the bicentenary, which I had come out of, and the early 1990s were more about rights. So, I was really empowered to work in Indigenous intellectual property.

It’s really interesting because around that time when you were saying you were starting out, you were starting to find your feet, your passion, the landmark Mabo decision is handed down in the early 1990s. How did that moment change your career trajectory?

It was the first time I saw it as an Indigenous person, or there were a number of applicants there, taking the law and making such a huge impact on the Australian legal landscape. When I first did law school, we were taught that the doctrine of terra nullius was alive and well. When I first started, there was a big thick blue textbook that I read and it was just full of land law that basically was the basis for the terra nullius ownership of Australia, [for] Indigenous people having no belonging or rights. So, the shift was that when I got to do property law again, the Mabo Case was in – you know, the lecturer was talking about it, so I felt connected automatically.

But there was also that sort of disbelief I had in the law that the law was impacting Indigenous people’s rights. We were the ones that would go to court and, you know, the criminal injustice system was impacting on us. Landlords were impacting on us and all of those rights. It was the first time I was like: We’re turning it around now and we’re seeing native title rights come up. And we didn’t have the legislation at the time. And I remember that it was all in the papers and in the news. Obviously, it’s very sad that Mr Mabo passed away at the time that the decision was handed down. But he just – also because he was Torres Strait Islander and Meriam, I was just so connected with it. I just felt like it was a new pathway for me as a young Indigenous law student to have faith in the law. So, I went back thinking like: Yes, I can do this, and imagine what type of decisions can come out of, you know, legal cases. So, it was fascinating for me.

I would have – I mean, we talk about it all the time in the media, but to sort of see yourself reflected back in that way, it’s powerful. It has a huge impact, especially when you’re developing your passions and looking where to go. And today, you are a global expert in Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property rights. For people listening who maybe haven’t heard IP described in this way, what is ICIP?

Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property is Indigenous people’s rights to their heritage. So, that’s the heritage from their Country, their land, seas and waters, the sky country. And it is that that’s passed down through the generations like knowledge of Country, story, songlines, art – all of that is part of our kinship obligation to continue to practise culture. And we want to keep it true, keep the cultural integrity strong, keep connected to those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander source communities. So, the rights to culture are the rights to practise culture, to maintain, control and protect it. And it’s important these days because we have a lot of outsiders coming into communities and on Country that may want to use it commercially or within research. And it severs that connection of Indigenous people to their culture. So, the rights are about maintaining those links and they are cultural in nature, but they are also about empowering opportunity for Indigenous people, for their economic futures as well.

Absolutely. A lot of your work recently has been around ICIP and its relationship to our fight against the changing climate. How is ICIP work and our rights in this space intrinsically connected to our fights to protect Country?

Well, First Nations people have cared for Country since the beginning of time – time immemorial as Indigenous people believe. It’s a fundamental belief of First Nations people that Country is kin. So, you treat the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, each other with that reverence for – that you are part of an ecosystem, that we as humans are part of that circle of life and that we are not at the top of the pyramid that wield our power over all things. So, in knowledge systems, they all come from Country. So, knowledge of Country might include knowledge of the landscapes and the waters, but the plants and when they flower so that the birds will come there and eat the flowers.

But at the same time, you might know that the stingrays are coming, or the fish are there so it’s time to hunt, and then to be careful about that. It might be where you might look after species that are giving birth at the time. So, it’s that global or holistic way that Indigenous people think about Country. And the knowledge runs deep. Knowledge of Country. So, Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property rights come at a connection with climate change or with the opportunity for the world to tap into Indigenous knowledge, to look after the environment better. There’s a huge opportunity to tap into Indigenous knowledge of 65,000 years of cultural practice around caring for Country, to look after Australia, the continent, and basically restore some of the damage that has been done over the past 230-something years.

Absolutely. Let’s dig into how that is happening at the moment. You were the co-chief author of the 2021 State of the Environment Report. As I said before, it was the first collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge systems in the report’s history. That’s a long time coming, right?

Yes, it was.

It was remarkable for me to read that because I remember at the time hearing it, but I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised with the state of Indigenous affairs in this country. But what was that like to receive that invitation to come on as a co-chief author?

Well, I wanted to understand that Indigenous voices would be included in there in a meaningful way, and to be brought on – I was brought on as a co-author with two very esteemed scientists: Professor Emma Johnston and Dr Ian Cresswell. And there was also a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, authors that were writing it – many of them esteemed scientists, including esteemed First Nations scientists. So, what we wanted to do was include Indigenous voices in the report, and it was across all the themes, you know, from climate change to land, heritage, urban, biodiversity.

All of those themes were to have collaborating authors that were Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to put that point of view around what was the state of the environment. And it was interesting because you have a Western science sort of bias towards what’s written and the scientific fact, or some sort of imperatives that you get from an inquiry that scientists only know because they studied and have the technical know-how. But here we have the body of Traditional Knowledge and Indigenous practice coming in to inform the state of the environment and cultural practices that sustain the environment, or the impacts of the deterioration of climate on the cultural practices and the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. So, it obviously would involve a lot of different inquiry like people’s oral stories or knowledge on Country – and they’re not necessarily scientists in the whitefella way, but they might have lived on Country.

There were women who were living and working in the desert, for example, working with species and understanding, you know, species that were invading the environment, and who were working with plant knowledge. Or rangers, a lot of rangers doing amazing work. That was one of the success stories, I think, of the inquiry to see the caring for Country through the rangers working in Indigenous Protected Areas and all of that. People working on Country. And not only was it providing jobs for them or giving them pride and connection to Country, it was actually doing a good job with managing Country so that we as Australians can benefit from a sustainable environment. So, bringing those two different ways of thinking together was a challenge. But I loved how at the start of it we had meetings together, regularly met, and we put together some collaboration guidelines to navigate how we as a group of authors of this report would think about reporting. And if we raised something that was based in science, we’d look or appoint – we’d look for something that was also backed in either an Indigenous case study or a project that brought to life that it was a Western science and an Indigenous science collaboration report that we were working on. And it was challenging. It was not without its challenges, but I watched this group of amazing scientists come together and think through – there was a lot of writing, rewriting, a lot of weekend work. We did it through COVID, online. It was amazing. And I just thought that they did an amazing job and, yeah, myself, Emma and Ian were the co-chief authors of it, but the whole collective put together a report that, yes, it did say that the state of the environment is deteriorating, [that] cumulative impacts over many years are leading to extreme weather events that are impacting our environment.

But also, it did point to the fact that if we work together – First Nations people using Indigenous knowledge, Caring for Country Principles – that it could be turned around. Now, to me that’s the good news, and it is a really great highlighting that opportunity for communities to work together and bring ancient knowledge with new knowledge to, yeah, to really care for the environment. Imagine if everyone thought that Country was kin and cared for it like their mother. You wouldn’t have as much destruction.

That’s absolutely true. We have heard that pretty much every conversation I’ve had on this stage for the last two years, that’s been the sentiment from blackfellas who work on Country. Treat it like your mother. You treat it like your kin. And where are you going to go wrong there? I want to speak a bit about that two-way learning – the two-way knowledge systems that you incorporated into this report for the first time in the report’s history. How big a shift was that for the report, for the Western scientists you were working with to expand the scope to include our knowledges on par?

I think it was done with a lot – I mentioned the collaboration guidelines that provided a pathway for them to think: If there’s a scientific lens that they’re going down or they’re reporting on a particular aspect of the environment, that they would look for evidence in both camps: a scientific approach and a First Nations approach. Writing together was – I know it was a challenge, but we did it. So, I think people took it on board to listen to each other and write in ways that they might not have done before. And I don’t think it always was as smooth. Some people were challenged, but mostly there was great willingness to bring on board the voices. I think even if they were challenged, they would think: We need to put those perspectives. Not just the co-authors that were Indigenous. It was looking for projects, looking for evidence, looking for data that would bring out that voice that people look for.

Two things really came to my mind through this process that would have been challenging. First, there’s an absence of the data because the data sets often fall to a very scientific lens of – you know, there’s a lot of data out there, but it’s captured from the lens of what a scientist would be looking for, whether it’s the health of a river system, [which] might focus on the chemical, what’s in the water or the pH level. And I’m not a scientist here; I’m moving out of my depth here. But First Nations people might look at what’s the impact of the reeds or for weaving and the women going there to weave or practise, or how that might impact children going there to swim, you know, going on Country to practise culture. So, those two things are coming together here. So, only one’s really captured in a data set that is a scientific journal or some sort of university capturing of knowledge in a database, or all of those sorts of databases that collect scientific knowledge. But when we looked for things from an Indigenous lens to finding what’s the impact on culture and health and wellbeing on the local people that rely on that river for their cultural livelihood, a lot of that information is not in a database, and how do you measure it together? So, that’s a challenge. So, I think that was the first thing that people found a challenge.

The other thing was we had to go and do a lot of talking to people and holding workshops and consultations as part of asking First Nations people about what the state of the environment was. So, that was a challenge, I think, because which community do you go to? How do you do this in a fair way to take in all the many different First Nations voices? And there was a national consultation process that was done by Murawin consulting that fed into it. But you can see here that it was a new type of inquiry that imported data to the report, and we used it in there so you can see things like people’s quotes. We can see language in there, in the report now, and I think it makes it a better read.

Yeah, absolutely. It definitely does. I mean, you’re reading it and you feel like you’re listening to blackfellas tell you a story about Country. And I want to dig into some of those stories because, as you said, many of the stories that the report tells, they speak to how these climate changes are being felt in real time by Traditional Custodians who are seeing their practices, their traditional practices on Country disrupted because of this massive shift in the climate. What are some examples of this disruption that you and your co-authors witnessed on the ground and heard stories of?

Well, there’s a big issue with the rising sea levels in the Torres Strait. You can see that in islands such as Boigu and Saibai. The impact of emissions is raising the sea level and they’re going to lose their land. They’re going to lose heritage sites, sacred sites. They’re going to lose their homelands. And not only that, it impacts cultural practices. I mean, in that particular case, we’ve seen Torres Strait Islanders launch Australia’s first climate change case in the courts, challenging ministerial decisions around not taking action quickly enough. So, it’s really causing absolute destruction and loss to those communities.

But then you see things like shifts in seawater coming into freshwater, changes in the brackish water so that there’s shifts in species, hotter temperatures, species on the move. So, Indigenous people’s cultural practices are changing. The food, the hunting and all of that will also change cultural practices around collecting plants or flowering species to eat. That’s all shifting, and I think it really means a lot.

These climate changes are seeing extreme weather events. The bushfires. We’ve seen absolute devastation here on the south-eastern part of Australia with the bushfires a few years ago, which caused absolute devastation to Country. And First Nations people really, you know – it’s their Country and when you see it burnt, the connection to Country, it really impacts the health and wellbeing of it. And particularly with the practice of cultural fire management being something that could help Country be looked after better. I think it really impacts First Nations people at a physical and emotional and spiritual level.

You talk about that in the report – that impact on our health and wellbeing as being just another major consideration we need to take in now. We see it on young people when they think about their futures and what future they have. Young people, especially in places like the Torres Strait and even my own Country in the Central Desert where I went out to my family’s outstation a couple of weeks ago: Hunter, just an hour outside of Lajamanu, south of Gurindji Country. And there had been a very large wildfire through it since the last time I’d been. Most of the outstation had been destroyed. And we were thinking to ourselves, while we were standing there: Are we going to be able to come back here in 10 years’ time? Are the roads going to be safe? Is this Country going to be safe to come back to in 10 years’ time when I might have children? And I know these feelings are pretty universal for mob, you know – that pain of questioning what’s going to be there. So, how important is it to really focus on those health and wellbeing implications of this climate crisis?

Well, I think it’s an outcome of – if we don’t do anything, it’s going to impact everyone’s health and wellbeing. I know First Nations people – thank you for your story – connected to Country and their health and wellbeing is impacted, but it’s going to be everyone’s. And I think the youth of Australia are seeing that probably more than people of my generation and the generation above me. They’re wondering what are they going to say to their children. Are they going to be able to enjoy the beaches, the rivers and to see the landscape as, well, I’ve grown up with? And you say in your community how it was when you were growing up there. So, I think that it impacts people, particularly when they feel helpless about it. When the people who are making decisions – how do they have a voice to it?

So, I was relating this to when I started doing this – a lot of people at my work, the young people, they were all really interested in this particular project that I was working on. And even my son, who is in his early 20s and he was never interested in any work I did, but was very interested in this because he felt like he had a stake in the future. Like you said: It’s my children, what am I going to have in the world? What do I inherit from you guys if you don’t destroy everything? So, there’s nothing for us sort of thing. And it was really – I think it was thinking about it, and it hits everybody, I think, emotionally, around it. And when we’re writing that report, we’re thinking about – it is a devastating message to be the ones to say the state is declining. It’s a hard message to tell people.

But the good message is: Hey, we can work together. Imagine that. If people feel like their voices can be heard, what can they do at an individual level? And the report does speak to things like citizen science that, you know – not just leaving it up to government, what companies can do. What do we expect of the companies that we invest in to do when they are making decisions around the mines that they are making or the roads or the projects that they are doing in the environment? I think we have more power as individuals than we know, but we want to be able to just feel like our voices are heard. So, the report – it’s hard news to take, but the news is also: Let’s all work together and we can do this.

Be motivated by it. And you don’t pull any punches. It’s always important, I think, for young mob especially, to see colonisation named. This report names the ongoing effects of colonisation as implicated in this situation that we’re in, how these effects disempower our people, how they deny us access to our Country, and how they foster that resistance to our knowledge systems. How are you seeing our mobs combat that resistance and devaluing of our knowledges?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the ongoing colonisation is impacted in the laws, the systems, the policies, the way things are done and how this area is regulated. So, what I’m seeing is First Nations people, grassroots movement; I mentioned the rangers. I think that they’re absolutely a success story of the last five years. And just being able to – and the government has supported them through funding people working on Country.

But I also see, you know, great alliances formed like the Indigenous Desert Alliance group pulling together to say: Hey, let’s work together in a response. The Aboriginal Carbon Foundation and Indigenous Carbon [Industry] Network coming together to say: Hey, if we all get together, we can work. So, I think these things are ways that First Nations people are responding. And I was amazed to also see a lot of First Nations scientists working in there. You had Bradley Moggridge, who works in inland water. You had people working in marine science and land and a lot of projects that were collaborations between universities, research organisations and Aboriginal communities that were working together.

So, there was a lot of goodwill for that. But I think there is still a need for resources and to understand, I mean this – the decision-makers, the ongoing colonial focus on, you know, the laws being about: we don’t – we value it as a place, [but] not letting in the Indigenous knowledge, the ways of those cultural practices, and pointing to all the limitations towards letting that in. It needs to be challenged, I think, and we need to open up to see these collaborations – and there are good ones – as stepping stones that we can build on to open that up more. And I’d like to see that more in the data that’s being collected, the evidence base focusing on what First Nations people’s values are: What are their needs, their Country? And working together with scientists to look after Country. Because the other thing is, is that so much of this country is now in Indigenous hands, whether it be the Indigenous state is growing. We either hold it through land rights, native title rights or have native title rights and interests, the national parks or Indigenous Protected Areas. So, that automatically also puts us to think about how we can work with First Nations people to look after that Country.

Let’s dig into a few more of those legal fights, because this is your main area of expertise. In your 2022 Mabo Lecture, you called out the inadequate legal protections this country has for heritage protection, and you said: ‘The consent to destroy state base approach of … Aboriginal cultural heritage laws is failing us.’ This is what allowed Rio Tinto to blow up Juukan Gorge – cultural heritage site, has ancient knowledge and stories within it. And we know – many of us are well aware of the story of pain and heartache and how irreversible that act was. How important is strong Indigenous cultural heritage legislation in our fight to protect Country?

Well, the Juukan Gorge destruction really highlighted the inadequacies of state laws and how they are – the Commonwealth law fails protection of culture, and the whole system is based on almost like a consent and destroy. It is proponents going and getting consent to basically develop, and it might lead to a destruction of a site, and you have to get permission for it. It seems like counterintuitive to some – an approach from an Indigenous point of view which would think about: This site is intrinsically of value to culture, to us. But if you also think about its value to Australians and to the world as a heritage site, and the value of that site to world heritage was amazing. But we don’t recognise that. We only think about the value of the site as we’re moving towards whether or not we destroy it or, you know, on the road to development. And I’m not anti-development when I’m saying this, but I believe if people work together, you can know that earlier.

So, the shifts in the laws need to involve more consultation with First Nations people that are impacted by activities that are going to destroy heritage. And that includes the physical site and the intangible heritage as well, like the song stories and the culture associated with it. So, how do we do that? We have laws that empower our minister to make that decision. There’s some changes in Victoria that give mob a bit more of a say. But how do we turn that around? So, the system needs to think about how it fundamentally can pick up on the value of culture at the outset, rather than it be something on the road to destruction, and involve First Nations people in decisions. And to put up there in the psyche of all Australians, all people who are running companies, that we have inherited stories, cultural heritage that is on par with any amazing site in the world – you know, pyramids or, you know, stuff like that. It’s so much older and the knowledge. So why don’t we see that and value it?

Absolutely. I mean we know we feel it when we’re on Country. And I feel like what you said at the very beginning: If people just shifted their thinking a little bit more to see Country as mother, to see Country as carer, then it’s not difficult at all to start reaching that level of value that we inherently grow up with for our heritage. I want to know if you think, in light of what we’ve been seeing in the Torres Strait, the incredible advocacy for Country that a group of people have been going through over the last few years, are we going to see more cases like the Torres Strait 8? Holding the government to account for not just the lack of action on climate change, but for a breach of our human rights?

Absolutely. I can see that happening. There’s cases being filed every year or every six months now that run that point – not just the duty of care that the government or the minister has to make in terms of their decisions around the environment and the impact on First Nations homelands and cultural practices, health and wellbeing. But, yeah, the human rights, the right to practise culture. That is a fundamental right. I mean, it is not – many people might know the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People as an expression of world Indigenous people’s rights to their culture, their lands, their identity, their systems of law. There is that piece of international law, but it’s also in those fundamental – you know, the right to practise culture in those human rights conventions and to live and have food security and to feel that you’re not under threat all the time and to pass on your culture to your children. I think economic rights as well are there in the human rights suite of conventions. And there will be more – I can see them moving in our Australian courts, but also international law. So, people will be moving towards that.

We’re seeing so many shifts that I get really excited about: moves to grant personhood to our rivers, to our mountains, to our Country, to actually start to use legal frameworks to give that autonomy, that agency back to Country, as we do see it as living and breathing. We do see Country as a being in itself … We’re coming to the end, Terri. I just wanted to go through some reflections with you. We kicked off these climate conversations in March 2022. So, it’s been nearly two years now, 100 Climate Conversations, with people like yourself who are doing incredibly important work, collaborative work with community, with Country, to try and ensure that we have a future – that we have a better future than what we’re currently facing. Have we made progress in climate and social justice in that time, in the past two years, do you think?

Well, I would have to say yes. I think there’s been a lot of collaborations since the State of the Environment Report. The response by the Minister, Minister Plibersek, was to make an announcement about a new heritage law, more funding to rangers. We’re seeing commitments to amending the fundamental environmental laws at a Commonwealth level and that is changing, and we’re seeing First Nations people being involved in the development of those new laws. And hopefully that will change. But I also think that people are getting much more aware of the opportunity, as I was saying, with the opportunity for knowledge to inform the way that we care for Country, but also the way that we might develop things like bush food, industry responses to building products that take into account First Nations ways of doing things. I can see that happening within the research sector and people wanting to understand the protocols. A lot of the work that we do is to teach people around what are the ways that we can work together and have a good collaboration. So, we work on protocols called True Tracks principles that are saying: Go through these 10 principles and you can get a better engagement and a better outcome, but don’t always focus on the outcome. Think of the process of involving First Nations people collaboratively. Asking them for the use of their knowledge and respectfully using it. Indigenous-led co-designed collaborations. Giving attribution. Keeping the integrity. Benefit sharing is another big one that we’ve got to think about. We just don’t take the knowledge and then, you know, it’s used all over the country and no blackfellas [are] involved with it anymore. We are thinking about these principles to guide us through a new way of working together. And I see that commitment has risen in the last two years, and it’s at this level. We’ve got Indigenous data sovereignty principles around that, and just a lot more understanding. But it’s got to start at that level from an individual to a community level. And we also need to have – I think what’s lacking is the resources to undertake these processes and projects, and that will need to be looked at. And it’s government, corporates and philanthropy that can all work together. And I have seen projects in all three of those areas in the last two years that can make a difference. And, yeah, I do have a positive outlook on it, and the next generation are much more attuned to it and I love that.

Like you said, the framework and the protocols – they’re there. Mob have done this work for decades. It’s just time to invest in that work, that trajectory, that mob know is possible if you listen not just to custodians but listen to Country.

Yeah.

Beyond your expectations, Terri, to close this conversation, to close the 100 Climate Conversations, what are your hopes for not just the foreseeable future, but for the next generation, for your children?

Yeah. Well, I always think long-term. I’m already thinking about my great-great-grandchildren and, personally, and why I wanted to be involved in it, was I wanted to be an honourable ancestor at a personal level. That there would be something in the work that gives them a future, and it’s something we can all do. And that legacy, I think, for me personally as an Indigenous person – I don’t live on Country, so I can’t do that. But my contribution is to do the work that I do. And I think everyone should find some way that they can be an honourable ancestor in their sphere of influence. And it makes – it touches my heart that obviously, you know, I want to be able to speak to my grandchildren through the work that I do and the legacy that I leave. And the healthy environment and healthy culture – things that I had interrupted in my own life, you know, the practice of culture – I really would love them to have that. And not just my great-great-grandchildren, [but] the great-great-grandchildren of the non-Indigenous co-authors of that report and of all Australians to be together and think: Hey, we’re grateful that we have inherited a country that is strong and healthy.

Thank you Terri, thank you so much. Could everyone please put your hands together for Terri … This conversation and all the conversations I’ve had on this stage have meant a lot. And you speaking about being an honourable ancestor – here I go. Yeah, that’s why we do this work, right? That’s why we have these yarns. My space is the media. Your space is in law, and we’re all trying to do something to ensure that our children, our children’s children, your children, your children’s children, all have a place on this earth, on this country in decades to come. And being back home recently, just really drove home the importance of having these yarns in spaces like this. Because if we don’t talk about it, what are we doing? And so, I just encourage all of you to listen deeply and then to act. Listen deeply and act. That’s where we start.

To follow the program online you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And visit the 100 Climate Conversations exhibition or join us for a live recording, go to 100climateconversations.com.

This is a significant new project for the museum and the records of these conversations will form a new climate change archive preserved for future generations in the Powerhouse collection of over 500,000 objects that tell the stories of our time. It is particularly important to First Nations peoples to preserve conversations like this, building on the oral histories and traditions of passing down our knowledges, sciences and innovations which we know allowed our Countries to thrive for tens of thousands of years.