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 people are still here. My name is Rachael Hocking and I’m a Warlpiri woman from the Tanami desert. I’m from a small community called Lajamanu, which if you’ve ever been up to the NT, it’s about 500 kilometres southwest of Katherine, really close to the WA border. We call it Spinifex country out that way. I’ve lived and worked here on Gadigal land for the past eight years as a journalist, curator, editor and so I’m a visitor on these lands and I think about how lucky I am to have lived and worked on so many other Traditional Countries across this continent throughout my life, including my own ancestral homelands. Today is number 82 of 100 conversations that we’re having here 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’re recording live today in the Boiler Hall of the 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. In the context of this architectural artefact, we shift our focus forward to the innovations of the net zero revolution. Toni Hay is a climate specialist, environmental sustainability scientist and author, passionate about combating climate change and preserving the environment. A Gamilaraay woman who grew up on Yolngu homelands in the Northern Territory. Hay has a rich heritage and deeply personal connection to the environment, which, combined with her scientific knowledge and her experience, gives her unique insights. Hay was recognised with the Queensland Women in STEM Award in 2020 and is the author of an incredible book called Culture of Inclusion: Indigenous Climate Adaptation. We’re pretty thrilled to have her with us today, so please put your hands together and welcome Toni Hay. Toni, I loved reading that you grew up in Nhulunbuy because I’m an NT girl and I got family in Milingimbi, which is pretty close. Just want to talk about that upbringing and how being in Arnhem Land up in the Northern Territory, how it influenced your work in environmental science, specifically in climate adaptation.

Yes, it’s an absolute magical place to grow up. There’s nothing like the Northern Territory and I was very fortunate to be around and surrounded by culture and incredible culture up north. I was also able to look at, you know, communities, remote Indigenous communities, how they are with — you looking at your housing and looking at education and health and, from a remote perspective, is very different than when you’re living, you know, in the city or down south. So, I’m able to not only look at adaptation from a metropolitan viewpoint, but also able to see the complexities of a remote community and adaptation, how it works or doesn’t work and how it’s affected and how it will be affected by the oncoming climate change.

It’s really unique living in remote areas and just the length of time it takes to get services that other urban communities don’t experience.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, even as a child, I remember, you know, we’d run out of biscuits and my mum would say, ‘Oh, when the boat comes in’, you know, because the barge would only come once a month. So, if you ran out of something, you knew you had to wait. Christmas they’d start planning, you know, months before to get Christmas presents for the kids.

That’s right. Yes.

So, anything like that, you know, if you had your school formal at the end of the year, I remember we would actually plan a year before to get our school dress, the formal dress, so that we’d have it sitting in the cupboard for a year before we got to wear it.

Yes.

So, all those funny little things, but it shows you how difficult it can be in a normal day without a disaster around it. On getting all these different things that you need.

A different level of preparedness.

That’s right, yes.

Talked a bit about adaptation there, and I wanted to know if you could expand on what do we mean when we talk about Indigenous climate adaptation?

When I was looking at climate adaptation, I researched across six countries developing climate adaptation plans and it became very obvious that there was nothing for Indigenous peoples. They were all mainstream programs — they were not programs that could reach our communities and they didn’t include culture. So, they don’t reach the most vulnerable peoples, which we do fall into that category, Indigenous peoples across the world fall into that category, and they don’t include culture throughout.

It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, is it?

No, no. So, you know there’s culture to be included in it, but it’s also about climate change impacting culture as well that isn’t being considered. So, that is about sacred water holes. It is about, you know, the intergenerational sharing of that knowledge down from here and forward to our children and making, creating new stories on what that is. So, it’s multiple levels of culture through adaptation that we need to consider.

Yes, absolutely. You’ve spoken about the need to conduct risk assessments in communities and for them to have this Indigenous climate adaptation lens to move away from mainstreaming how we approach this. So, what does a climate risk assessment involve, particularly for First Nations remote communities?

Yes. So, a risk assessment, well, first of all, I’d just say that many Indigenous communities throughout Australia do not have risk assessments done. So, that’s probably a key point. And then risk assessments look at what they sound like. You know, your drought, your flood, your water inundation, your heat, all those sorts of extreme environmental impacts that we are and we will face. So, we haven’t even had those done in many of our communities, so we don’t know how bad our communities will have or be impacted by climate change. So, we hear in the news and everywhere about Pacific Islands, and we hear that sort of thing, but we could have 100 Aboriginal communities that are going to be majorly impacted and we don’t even know. So, you know, it’s a real problem. If we’re not aware of it, how do we solve it? How do we talk about it? How do we prepare for it? We’re not even at that stage.

One area you’ve spoken about that’s important for our people to start talking about is the impact of fisheries. And we know our people have such a long history and cultural connection to the water and fishing. We’ve fought for a long time to gain traditional fishing rights and that’s expanded into Indigenous fisheries industries. What are your concerns regarding the current fisheries management plans that are in place for Indigenous communities?

Yes, I’m very concerned. I was at a conference the other week and this chap in the Northern Territory had a barramundi fishing business and he’s looking at expanding that into two more boats. But what isn’t being considered in his business SWOT analysis is climate change because the risk assessments haven’t been done, the community education sharing hasn’t been done, that awareness is not there. So, he’s actually setting up a very large amount of money that’s going to an industry that is at major risk. So, he’s being set up to fail in some ways. You know, we’re saying, yes, go do this, go increase Indigenous fisheries. But we’re not saying is, it has a limited lifespan in certain waters. So, we’re not letting them know what those threats are, how long he’s got before we should be transitioning out, an exit strategy, as you will. So, we’re not having those conversations in Australia. Overseas we are. Overseas Indigenous fisheries are looking now at transitioning. They’re starting to take people out of the fisheries and starting to retrain into forestry or into other sectors. They have exit strategies around that. What it will look like to keep their economy going, to keep the people, their wellbeing, their income supported. We haven’t even started those conversations here, so it’s very worrying.

Do you think there’ll be a hesitancy to engage in those conversations if there’s a perception that it will threaten traditional fishing.

I don’t think the science is coming through into the community and into the programs. I think there’s a gap there. It’s not coming through. We know, we know the fisheries, we know the impacts. We even know down to the species and how fast and how far they’re moving. You know, I think it was Spanish mackerel moving 1500 kilometres, I think it was, every 10 years. We know this, but we’re not having those discussions. They will be impacted whether we talk about them or not. Nothing stopping the fish from moving. So, having those conversations is important. So, we’re aware of it and we can plan for it. They are doing it over in Vanuatu, they’re having a lot of research, a lot of resources going into planning as the fish are moving. And you know, we can actually, they know that the–

Trout is moving from Queensland across.

It is, it’s moving from Queensland, it’s going across — there will be a peak fish time, best time to grab as much as you can, make the most out of that market I guess without overfishing — still looking at all those environmental parts of that — but also looking at the longer-term picture and the longer-term planning of what they will be doing and how they will be doing it and again, transitioning. And having those discussions with the people in those areas.

Yes. So, perhaps starting those conversations or having more of those conversations with our Indigenous brothers and sisters overseas who are working in this space, is that one way we can start to get these management plans up to date?

Absolutely. We should be looking at some of those programs overseas. There are some brilliant ones. You know, we can look at the marine reserves and how that’s increasing the fisheries. We can look at what they’re doing, their plans, how they’re doing the longer-term plans. There’s certainly a lot of models that we can start to copy, improve on. When we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. They’re already being done. They’ve been doing some of these for about 10 years overseas. We’ve just got to catch up.

And so, Toni, when a natural disaster does hit a community, in the aftermath, what are the food security risks that our mob are going to face?

Yes, so about 80% of our Indigenous communities rely on subsistence foods. And that’s your hunting and gathering. So, 80% weekly are relying on those food sources. After a disaster, we find that our biodiversity — so, that’s our animals and food stocks — they’re not there. And people– and they might not come back for 12 months or so. So, our people are going hungry. So, after the food drops have stopped or after supports have left, our people are hungry for months afterwards because they don’t have their regular diet and the access to food. It’s a worrying trend that we’re not accounting for that now, post-disaster recovery programs.

I want to draw that out a little bit as well, because there’s also this connection to the impact on our traditional hunting and what that means for food, as well as what it means for culture and our connection to totems and community.

Yes, exactly. So, our totems are impacted. You know, we treasure them. We look after them. They are sacred too. Our different totems, different communities. I mean, our marriage rights, whereby our totems, our whole being is with our totem. So, when that’s impacted, it’s another level, not only just our food and we’re hungry, but also, it’s almost like our soul is impacted because our totem has been hurt. It’s not there or it’s a way off our land, off our country. So, we’ve got all these different levels. Yes. Again, coming into play. And they need to be considered again when we’re doing our disaster risk management, where we’re doing our adaptation planning. It’s all that cultural information and its impacts and its importance to that local community. It’s complex, but it’s not. And we need to be again, talking about these things and considering them.

You talk a lot about these different approaches that you bring together. And I suppose why is it so important to when we are looking at these climate responses to combine traditional knowledge, modern engineering and western science and not silo them in our response?

So, currently we see science and engineering or just engineering and a little bit of science. We don’t see culture and we don’t see traditional knowledge of any kind in current adaptation plans. So, that’s not only just for Indigenous communities, but this is also any adaptation plans across Australia. We need to combine the three because it gives us a much stronger planning and ideas around our adaptation. So, we definitely need the science on what, why, how, where. We need the engineers, because they’re the ones that actually build all this infrastructure and do a lot of the work that we need and we have the traditional knowledge, it tells us where we’re currently at. So, traditional ecological knowledges tell us this very much, what part of climate change we’re at for that local community. It can tell us a good picture of that. And then we have our Traditional stories — can tell us what’s been over thousands of years in that area. So again, what has already happened and what can happen and is likely to happen again. So, we can– if you are combining that, you’re actually developing a plan that’s quite robust, more so than just, you know, the straight plans that we’re doing at the moment.

And to build on that, what sets a community approach apart from just an environmental one.

So, community approaches are amazing. They’re doing some great work, and that’s more around environmental adaptation. It’s about rehabilitation, it’s about looking at revegetation, it’s about supporting mangroves, it’s about putting all those into practice to support those in those areas. A community adaptation plan is more about the people and it’s about putting the resources and the infrastructure around a community to make it more resilient. That is not happening anywhere near as well as it should be. And it’s not happening at all in in many areas and in others, not as well as it should be done.

We’ll dig into some of the government responses to this, because this is not what you’re talking about. This is knowledge that we’ve had for quite a while, you know, in terms of talking about embedding Indigenous knowledges into the practices that we have in the climate responses and all sorts of responses from government levels. But before we talk about what’s actually happening, what do we know about the socio-economic disparities that are going to be exacerbated, particularly for First Nations mob during climate change.

We know that Indigenous peoples globally will be most impacted. Lower socioeconomic peoples will be the most impacted. We know that it’s going to affect our health. We know it’s going to affect our food security. We know it’s going to affect our housing and how it’s going to deal with these extreme weather challenges. We already have all this information. It’s going to be very hard for many of our communities to be resilient and for our wellbeing to be maintained or to be improved, which is why we talk about closing the gap. It’s not just closing the gap anymore, it’s about also actually going to have to address all these extra externalities coming in to close that gap. It’s going to be very difficult.

What does this look like on the ground for mob, especially in remote regions?

Yes, so again, we’re going to have to start having these conversations. It’s going to be some communities will have to relocate. There will be climate migration. There’s going to be a lot of discussion around building up that resilience and that infrastructure now so that we’re able to stay on community. And so, we’re able to do it, you know, comfortably and well still and maintain that connection to Country. We need to be having those conversations right now.

And it’s important to highlight what this means for First Nations people in Australia, because there is often this misconception about us being a developed country like Australia. So, what are some of those common misconceptions that you hear, particularly in your line of work, about how Indigenous communities on this continent are going to fare under climate change?

Yes, it’s automatically we’re resilient. Yes, we’re resilient so we’ll be fine. No worries, she’ll be right. So, you hear those sorts of things and yes, we are resilient, but with these extra things coming into play with the society already, with the complexities we already face, we aren’t going to be as resilient as we could be. And I think sometimes resilience is thrown about as a reason not to do anything for our communities. I had a chat the other day with somebody and I said extreme heat with our peoples and I just remember it was said to me, ‘Oh, but Aboriginal people are really good with the heat, they’ll be fine. We’re really good with the heat.’ And I was thinking–

But not the heat that’s coming.

I’m sure. But I just said I’d just actually come across research, and it said that our heart and our lungs do not cope with extreme heat.

Wow.

So again, there’s those misconceptions. Yes, I think there’s a reason we’re not running around in the middle of the day. You know, in our homelands, I know in the Territory we have our sport starting at 7 am. There’s a reason for that, you know. So again, it’s those strange beliefs that we have. Also, the belief, you know, in the global picture of it all that developing nations need all the help and the support, which they do, absolutely. But people living in developed nations don’t need that. Indigenous peoples in developed nations don’t need that support. It’s like we’re taken care of. And that is a very big misconception. It misses out on those global funds to come and support us because it’s believed that all levels of Australian government is looking after us and it’s not. We are missing out greatly and we are in a lot of trouble going forward. I’m looking at some of our communities, are really, really sad actually. You know, when you go out and you start travelling and you go remotely and it’s heartbreak when you start to look at some of the living conditions.

And that this is what we’re facing on top of a climate crisis. You have really held the government to account in the book that you wrote about climate adaptation, and one of the lines you included is, ‘The government may provide a grant or funding to assist certain Indigenous communities or groups in developing an adaptive plan or a vision of what is essential to them. In many cases, non-Indigenous specialists are utilised to develop such programs, or they create a strategy that has no hope of being implemented by the relevant public authorities. This will fail.’ What is key to understanding why this approach will fail?

Yes, I I’ve seen quite a few examples of, you know, $20,000 grant being given out, go and develop an adaptation plan. But there’s no agreement or there’s no definite acceptance that the government will actually do anything off that, they don’t have to. You’ve gone and done your plan. But they don’t have to actually take anything up or do anything to assist with your plan. And so, it’s not being taken up. It also will definitely fail because it’s– you need all levels of government across all streams. So, we need our infrastructure, we need our health, we need our education. We need every part of our community at every level combined with our community, to work through our adaptation. It can’t be a little bit here and a little bit there. It has to be all of it to be effective. Otherwise, you just end up with a piecemeal thing that will never meet what it is it’s meant to meet.

And I mean, I guess this extends to the inconsistency we’ve seen in how government has responded to Indigenous communities. Why do you think we’ve seen such an inconsistent response, in particular in support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities?

Yes, like it’s very– we see the island states, you know, it’s very visible and it’s heart wrenching that you see the water inundation and you see it so you can react, you can do something about it. Because of that you can also see that the island states, it reaches the media, and it reaches the UN and it reaches higher bodies that put pressure to have something done. Again, we go back to the risk assessments on Aboriginal communities. We don’t know because it’s not really visible maybe in some areas, if we don’t know what the risk is, we don’t care, we don’t know what it is so there’s not a problem. That’s probably it. We don’t know, so there’s not a problem. There’s not a problem, no one is doing anything about it. We don’t hear about it. We don’t see we just– it just doesn’t exist because there’s not a problem. What it is, is a very silent, very scary trend, I guess, because we haven’t had those risk assessments. We don’t know what we’re really sitting on in some of those communities and we don’t know time frames. Is it going to be 10, 20, 50, 100 years? Is it going to be tomorrow? We don’t know because the assessments haven’t been done. We aren’t having those support voices come through from the media or from the UN or from anywhere else because the basics haven’t been done and we’re not aware of how bad the problem is. So, it’s a very worrying trend.

Do you have ideas, or have you heard of ideas about how we can raise awareness about the fact that the climate crisis is confronting mainland communities at the same rate as island communities and to build up that support?

Well, we definitely need the risk assessments done straight away. There needs to be a fair bit of pressure from the different levels of government to do those risk assessments and then to start having those conversations, and that is about implementing disaster risk reduction, early warning systems, adaptation plans, all those things that should automatic- we have them in most of our towns where we’re living in the cities and in the regions. We don’t have them for our communities. Why? Why don’t we have them?

And calling on the media to give equal attention as well, to tell the stories in the same way.

That’s right. You know, why aren’t Aboriginal people considered to be important enough to be focusing on our lives and our wellbeing when other communities are. Absolutely should be doing the other communities, not saying they shouldn’t. Absolutely the Torres Strait. Absolutely the Pacific Islands. But what– where are we? We don’t exist in this picture. We aren’t heard of. Why aren’t we? So, yes, I’m very worried that the conversation isn’t even there. Why aren’t we important enough that people care enough to be implementing these things for us? It’s not that hard.

Absolutely. And, you know, to go to some of the, especially the racist rhetoric that we heard in the last decade around shutting down remote Aboriginal communities, I suppose just to counter that, why is it so important for our people to be given equal opportunity to adapt and to continue living on land and caring for land, even though there are going to be so many pressures on us in those communities?

Well, living on your home is your whole being. We know that. It’s our wellbeing. It’s our health. It’s, you know, it’s our home. Everyone, I think, feels the same when it comes to their home. And I think we have to recognise that. But it’s more than that. We actually see our people doing so much for Country. Those biodiversity programs, our ranger programs, all of those sorts of things that we are doing on Country are adaptation programs. We see the biodiversity going forward is going to be in major trouble. I’m sure there’s people in these 100 Conversations that have already been talking about that. I believe it’s around 50% of Australia that is managed by Indigenous communities. It’s so important that our communities are not only doing what they’re doing now, but expand on the programs, increase education, increase the capacity of those programs, do those supports for biodiversity, feral pest management. It’s more critical now than it’s ever been to support Australia’s biodiversity. It’s not just for our communities. This is for the whole of Australia. It’s not just us, it’s everybody. Our programs are so important for all of Australia. I don’t know how else to say how important this is. I think people are looking at expanding them now. It’s even down to data and management to know what’s where. Where is it moving to? How is it moving? All of those conversations need to be had again, because our communities can address this. We can do this on Country. And it increases our wellbeing. It creates jobs. It creates that caring for Country and the importance of it. It’s just that overall wellbeing. But we, you know, everyone wants to stay in their home. You only leave at worst peril times.

That’s right.

That is for every person on Earth, really. It’s the same for us. We just want to stay where we can, where we are at home, and do the best for our home that we can.

So, Toni, when we talk about climate responses and climate preparedness for First Nations communities, who are the most vulnerable amongst our First Nations communities?

Essentially, the long grass people. When we are looking at our communities, the long grass people are the ones that are most at risk. They are the people who are transient. They are the people not living in a home dwelling or structure, or they’re moving between communities, or they live in the long grass, as we call it, in the Territory. They’re our most vulnerable. And I keep saying to people, they’re probably tired of me saying it, but if our programs do not reach the most vulnerable in our community, then they are not successful. And I think that’s a very important message to make sure we reach all levels of our community.

That’s a really important message to say, you’re absolutely right. If we’re not looking after the most vulnerable, then we don’t have two legs to stand on and say that we are doing everything we can.

Yes, that’s exactly it. And it’s a worrying trend.

It’s such an important message that you share, Toni. And I wonder, are there many other mob working in this climate adaptation space alongside you?

Absolutely, yes. And we have a lot of people working across all the different fields. We have a lot of traditional ecological knowledge going in. We have a lot of culture. The oldies coming in with their stories and their culture and telling us, ‘Nah, don’t do it this way, do it that way’. We have a lot of the young, really passionate going into drones and going into– or the transects and all the environmental science things now on Country, it’s great to see. Yes, we’ve been involved in a lot of different areas, but we need to grow and expand on that. And one of the things I keep pushing for lately is not just to be looking for after natural resource management or just on Country. It’s this assumption that we do just Country, but we should be able to expand and go into other areas within our region as normal businesses do and provide those services, you know, into other areas and to create those jobs. Why do we have to be restricted just to Country too. We have those skills, we should be able to utilise them.

So, like you said, that there are so many mob working in so many different ways, whether it’s traditional knowledge, science, engineering in this space. Are you getting a seat at the table with government?

Not yet. Not at the level it needs to be. I don’t know what the blockage is, there seems to be some– it just doesn’t happen or it’s a bit of fear. Or it’s just unsure. Or who to go to? I don’t know. I don’t know if these are real blockages or are they just made-up blockages? There are some blockages there. And I think we need to make it very clear about how we can go and just talk to our local communities. Really, that’s where you start. It’s not hard, just start the conversation, start building it up from there and start looking at lived experience, historic experience, bring in the science, you know, bring in all those and include it all right the way around so that we can actually come up with robust plans that will actually help our communities. And this will look at improving, you know, adaptation done well, improves wellbeing in communities because you’re linking all those services, you’re improving the services. You know, it’s a great way forward.

Speaking of collaboration, your daughter works as an environmental scientist. What has it been like to work together in this space?

I couldn’t do it without my eldest daughter. You know, she – adaptation is actually quite heavy. You’re reading all this heavy science that’s never positive. And we have this sense of humour, we can play off each other. She has a young mind sense that she’s vibrant and passionate and has enthusiasm. Whereas I’m a little bit older and I’ve been working through communities for a while, so I’m a little jaded. So, having that, she’s got the skill sets, you know, in drones, GIS and I go, oh, geez, you know, I wish we could do such and such, you know, and she goes, oh, that’s easy. We can do this through here. Oh, wow, can we do that? You know? So, it’s just combining and different skill sets and able to then come out with a better opportunity. So, when we’re working with adaptation with communities, we’re able to bring out the best that they want for their community and able to help them to achieve it. You know, it’s not our adaptation plan, it’s their adaptation plan. So, working with my eldest daughter, Courtney’s just been really, you know, just lovely. I just remember one time we were studying together. I’m going off on a tangent, sorry.

Tell us. Tell us a yarn.

But we were studying together. She was going to university. And I looked and I said, oh, that looks really interesting. Do you mind if I tag along? And so, you know, she said, sure Mum. So, I said, look, you sit down the front, I’ll sit up the back. No one will know we’re related. Except we have the same sense of humour, so, you know, we’re laughing out loud at the same things in class. We are blurting out the same words, you know, to things because you have that connection. It was just so funny. So, people very quickly realised that we were related.

Yes, that blackfella laugh.

I know that sense of humour. No one else in the class was laughing except the two of us.

I want to pick up on that actually, because you wrote about blackfella humour in your book, and I just thought that was such a beautiful inclusion, specifically as it relates to our resilience. Why was it important for you to include that section about our humour and resilience in a book about climate adaptation?

It’s something we naturally do. We do it without knowing we do it. So, you know, working in any difficult situation or talking with each other about difficult things, we do it in a jesty way and we do it with humour and we laugh off really difficult, heavy things. You know, but we do it through– that’s our way of dealing. And we can make light and joke. It’s still there, it’s still heavy, we still feel it, but we just– that’s our way.

Yes.

And it’s also a really good way to get us through some of these problems that we’re going to face. They’re not easy conversations some of these — they’re going to be really intense, difficult conversations to have. But if we can just sort of add our way, I just never really realised, it was just normal for me. It’s like a nervous thing, I don’t know, we just do it. And it wasn’t until we played golf on, I think it was NAIDOC day in Mackay and we had a NAIDOC golf day and I’m not thinking anything of it. Everyone’s dressed up, everyone’s having fun and the laughter, it’s the most laughter you’ve ever heard on a golf course, ever. That golf brings out stress, right, difficult conversations. But it was my husband, he said. I’ve never heard so much laughter and I’ve gone. What do you mean? Like this is normal. And so, that sort of brought that to my awareness. And I’ve gone, okay, this isn’t normal. This is us.

This a cultural difference.

This is a cultural thing.

Absolutely. I genuinely say black humour and black being both First Nations, but also that dark humour as part of our survival, as key to us being around for tens of thousands of years, you know. We have seen a lot and I think we’ve laughed our way through a lot of the hard times.

We have. And I just know growing up, in where I grew up, a little, tiny town, but you know, we get all the girls together and we giggle, we giggle, we giggle a lot.

Especially when you’re being growled.

Yes, my oldest daughter she’s a giggler when she’s getting told off.

And that’s it, it just bubbles up. Disarming as well for the other person.

Yes, I believe it is.

So, when you’re working with your daughter, what are some of the things that you’ve noticed about how the generations are approaching climate adaptation? The differences and the similarities and what are you learning from each other?

We need to have those conversations with our youth and our younger ones. So, we have through our old, you know, they tell us, they tell us whether you want to hear it or not. And now I’m reaching that old, I can now tell whether they want to hear it or not. And, you know, we say with adaptation now is new for us in a way. I mean, for people, not for Indigenous peoples, but people in humanity in general. We are now talking about adaptation and a whole nother level than we have before. So, over the last couple of hundred years, I guess, or so we’re just talking about people in general. What we’re going to find though, going forward, is my children and my children’s children are going to be talking about adaptation over a cup of tea and it’s going to be an everyday normal, no-big-deal event because it’s going to become commonplace. It’s something we’re going to be dealing with for a long time. So, it’s like having a bad humour but having a giggle earlier, you know, they’ll be sitting there talking about their septic systems and things like it’s a normal conversation. But that’s going to be part of going forward. And it’s about also sharing our stories now of what we’re going through so the grandchildren will know those stories of what was around and what we did and how we did it. So, that’s learnings again for them.

That’s it.

Because they will be facing those things. So again, it’s not just historic from thousands of years ago, it’s those stories of now that we need to be considering and including of those changes to share with our children.

So, I suppose in light of all of this, and I’m glad we’ve got quite a bit of laughter in this conversation. But there is a lot of heaviness and it can make people quite jaded, like you said, over time, thinking about climate adaptation and what the future holds for us. So, what hope does climate adaptation offer us, especially when it’s approached from a First Nations perspective?

It’s no longer acceptable that we can just keep putting off and coming up with excuses or saying we need to do more research. Climate change now is the most researched topic, I’d say, on the planet. The research is there. There’s no excuse for governments not coming and talking with us and working with us and building all of the strategies that we need to put into place. There’s no excuse anymore. This needs to be done now. It’s not something that needs to be done in two or three or four years while you get your department together or you get the link with another– you know, all these reasons we come up with excuses. We actually need to do this right now, across the board and across all Indigenous communities, fairly and equally. I think we are a strong people. We are in our souls, a determined people. We might be quiet about it, but we are strong and silently determined. When there’s a disaster, when anything bad happens, that is when we actually come together the best we’ve ever been. So, it doesn’t matter about that family spat. It doesn’t matter we haven’t talked to Aunty for, you know, five years. We come together stronger than we ever have in those times. And I think with the planning, again, if we do it properly, we can start to look positively and we can own climate change. We’re not just adapting to it, I think we can own it. And then by taking that ownership — and it’s a strengths-based thing — we can start to build our plans, we can start to make it ours and we can start to address it positively. We can do those things that we need to do. We need to start that, turn that conversation around, strengths based and bring everyone together.

Thank you, Toni. I really hope that people do listen to your message and the message of Traditional Owners across the continent, because like you said, it’s not the first time these things have been said and it is so important that people listen and start acting now. So, thank you.

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.