#24

Welcome to Weekly Whispers #24

What whisper did you hear from #23?

Did you consider some of the language you use that’s now become an identity?

Has it been a blessing or a curse?

I do hope you found time to laugh and giggle. Did you?

Where did the questions take you? Affirmation or confrontation? Or somewhere else completely?

Here's what’s struck me this week.

It’s NAIDOC week here in Australia

NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee and it’s a week to celebrate the history, culture, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

www.naidoc.org.au/about/naidoc-week

I confess to not knowing very much about it so I thought I would hand over the editorial for this week's whisper to my eldest daughter, Lauren, who knows and understands significantly more than me. She agreed. On the condition that I do a bit of my own research to find out more. Don’t you hate it when your kids throw your own whispers back at you 😊

Here’s what she wrote.

When my Dad asked me for a relevant quote I said, “Every page in this book!”.

How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World by Tyson Yunkaporta

Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who belongs to the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne.

Here’s a few of my favourite quotes from the book:

• We are all refugees severed from the land…disconnected from genius that comes from being in symbiotic relationship with it
  
  
• I don’t know why Stephen Hawking and others have worried about super-intelligent beings from other planets coming here and using their advance knowledge to do to the world what industrial civilization has already done... beings of higher intelligence are already here, always have been… they just haven’t used their intelligence to destroy anything yet... maybe they will, if they tire of the incompetence of domesticated humans
  
  
• In my travels I saw that it was our ways, not our things, that grounded/sustained us
  
  
• We don’t have a word for nonlinear in our languages because nobody would consider traveling, thinking, or talking in a straight line in the first place…the winding path is just how a path is, and therefore it needs no name…
  
  
• Some people are just idiots... everybody... from time to time... some deep place inside that whispers ‘you are special… you are greater than other people/things…’ this behaviour needs massive checks and balances to contain the damage it can do
  
  
• As I always say, if you want to find the next gen of great thinkers, look in the detention room of any public school
  
  
• In my community there is a phrase: ‘nobody boss for me’…yet at the same time, each person is bound within complex patterns of relatedness and communal obligation
  
  
• Most Academics tell me that they are unable to incorporate indigenous knowledge into the academy because their students are not smart enough to understand it

 
Beyond NAIDOC week: How will I help HEAL COUNTRY?

The theme of this year’s NAIDOC week is HEAL COUNTRY.

Hearing this theme, and reflecting on your own healing journey, how does this make you feel?

As many of us know, healing is not a one-week gig.

I invite you to reflect on where you think your place within healing country might be beyond the end of this week.

Do you think any healing needs to take place within yourself, to help heal country?

I offer an open ear for anyone wanting to start conversations. As a non-Indigenous person myself, I am still learning - and will be forever.

Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

Further Resources:

Podcasts

Healing Our Way - The Healing Foundation

A Cuppa and a Yarn - NSW Aboriginal Land Council

Mob Talk - Talia Liddle

Deadly Podcasts - Loui

Pretty for an Aboriginal - Nakkiah Lui & Miranda Tapsell

Deadly Discussions - Isaac Harrison

Coming Out, Blak - Courtney Hagen and Matika Little

Netflix

In My Blood It Runs - documentary

Beneath Clouds - romance/drama

The Sapphires - musical/comedy

Goldstone - thriller/crime

Wrong Kind of Black - comedy/drama
 

NITV and SBS on demand

Big Mob Brekky - daytime breakfast

History Bites Back - documentary

Living Black - Silence of the Stones - current affairs

Freedom Fridays - Moving from I have to, to I choose to

My intention is to openly share a change I’m making within my life. I’m hoping you can take the lessons learnt and apply it to any change you want to make.

This week was a conversation with a soul buddy of mine, Colin Hiles about the power of “I have to…”.

Definitely worth a listen.

Check out Episode #22.

SPOTIFY

APPLE PODCAST

That’s all for this week and I hope you enjoyed Weekly Whisper #24.

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Thanks

Pete