SCU Buzz | The Southern Cross University podcast

Weaving together cultural connection through string-making

It is not through catching fish that a handwoven fishing net is nourishing people, but through connection to cultural practice, knowledge and community, according to Dr Kylie Day from the Gnibi College of Indigenous Australian Peoples, and Aimee Andersen from the Centre for Teaching and Learning. The pair spoke on SCU Buzz podcast about their research project into the sustainable construction of traditional fishing nets.

'Stories behind the fishing net – sitting with the Aunties' is a Community Engaged Research Project revitalising the cultural practice of string-making to construct a traditional fishing net. The project is funded by Southern Cross University’s Centre for Children and Young People.

The musical introduction to this podcast was written and performed by Alako Myles.

Duration:: 52m
Broadcast on:: 07 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

We would like to acknowledge the wigible why people of Bundjalung country as a traditional custodians of this land. With power respects to elders past, present and emerging. Booglebär for having us here. Hey guys, welcome to SCU Buzz Podcast. My name is River. It's thought that the more you participate in cultural practice, the deeper you understand it. My colleagues at Southern Cross University are aiming to attune to the living knowledge that can be passed on through their community engaged research project, stories behind the fishing net, sitting with the aunties. Through workshops in collaboration with Bundjalung Elders, the project aims to construct a fishing net out of local native fibres. Joining me today are two of the co-leads of this project, Dr Kylie Day and Amy Anderson. Welcome to the podcast, it's great to have you both here. Thanks River. Yeah, thanks River. So to start us off, would you be able to tell me a little bit about yourselves and each of your roles at Southern Cross University? Yeah, I'm here as an Indigenous academic and lecturer, so I do unit assessing, I'm also the course coordinator of the Bachelor of Indigenous Knowledge course, and I do my own research. So here mostly talking about the research that I've been leading with Amy and Dr Janelle Benson, who's now in the US, and Wanda Deville Hill, who worked at CTL, but I just hand to Amy. Thank you. My name's Amy Anderson, and I'm an educational designer with the Centre for Teaching and Learning. And my role is centered around supporting academics with curriculum and assessment design and online learning design, and I work predominantly with Ginnaby, as my background is embedding Indigenous perspectives into curriculum. And my experience comes from living and working in remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory for 24 years, where my two sons live, who are two young men, young men in North East Arnhem Land. Beautiful. Yeah, so Amy, Janelle, myself and Wanda have been working together for over four years now, doing unit designs and filming with elders and working in community. It's lucky enough to go up to your colour and meet Amy's relatives up there, so part of the cultural spirit that I experienced up there, I guess has come back down into this project as well, which is really beautiful. Yeah, so here at the university, we're really focusing on looking at strength-based processes that Indigenous and non-Indigenous people can be involved in, in the community, to have an introduction to cultural practices. So a lot of people are just at that starting point of realising that there's a sustainability and a deep level of knowledge in the different practices and in the art. We're concentrating on string making and constructing a fishing net, and in that it's an active process that people are connecting with and having an immediate sort of healing benefit from engaging in our workshops. And I think that that point around the impact not only on participants, but to our own well-being as well, Kylie and I were talking this morning about how both of our roles at Southern Cross are quite desktop admin-focused. So being able to participate in a project like this where we're out on country connecting with people has enhanced our own well-being, as well as those of their Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants as well. So there's been lots of flow-on effects with this project too. Yeah, and we're just one layer of the project here today. So there's a deep layering all throughout, and so it's important to know that the project has come from a group of people. It started in a women's group that I was involved, which I am still involved with, called Nalengar Medjindupase, we got asked to design some women's art for the Serpentine Gallery for a NAIDOC Week exhibition, and all the other ladies that I work with in that group are fantastic painters, and Annie Gwen Williams and myself at the time, we were doing weaving, we were running weaving workshops here for different high schools and teaching people within some of our university units how to weave. So we thought, well, we can't really paint, well, you know, embarrass ourselves if we try to put an artwork in. So we asked if it was okay if we weave together, and we had this passion of making a fishing net. Annie Gwen had made one before with Women Up North, which is a project from Casino, but that fishing net got sold to somewhere in Sydney, and didn't really feel a connection there, so she wanted to do it again. So the plan was that we're going to make a fishing net out of Pandanus, and it was meant to just be a project that her and I were working on, but unfortunately was getting quite sick at that time since then she's passed away. But also during that time we discovered that the Pandanus had a leafhopper that was attacking it along the east coast of Australia, so what she'd made the net with previously, we couldn't go forward sort of ethically and use that this time, so needed to start thinking a little bit broader and a little bit more sustainable about what we could use. So through research looked at how string and different nets were made in Australia, and there's about 35 plants that you could choose from. And we went to some local weavers and asked their advice, and we're put onto the native hopiscus to the Cottonwood as our best alternative. So then it took a good few months to work out sort of how to collect and harvest that, and that process we worked alongside Dr Janelle Benson who had experience from working in the United American communities. She grew up on a reserve there and had family that had strong fishing backgrounds, so that was part of it, and then started to mention the project to a few other people, lucky enough to work facilitating field trips for caring for country, and on one day I was with Marcus Ferguson and was talking about and my design, and he wanted to be part of it as well, because he'd actually been thinking of making and wanting to learn those skills too. And then he mentioned it to Oli Castello, who one of the directors of Jogan Alliance, and Oli wanted to be involved too, and suddenly it just got bigger and bigger, and we brought in Wanda as well, so Wanda, and Arnie Jackie Williams as well, with Arnie Green getting sick. Arnie Jackie, who I also have been doing art and cultural work with for quite some time, wanted to honour the memory of her sister to get the net completed, so she's part of our project as an adviser there, and she's got a strong history with arts northern rivers, as having been a director there before and is just an incredible artist, so really fortunate that she's joining, has joined the journey with us and keeps us grounded at all times. So hopefully that makes a little bit of sense that, yeah, it's not just us, there's a whole group of people that are standing with us, as well as Nema Bunder Farm. We've had hundreds of hours of making string, and then when we went to construct the net, we're fortunate to have Nema Bunder come to us and offer a workshop there, which led to handing over our string to a whole heap of men that stepped up at Nema Bunder to construct the net, but I might just pass the Aimee now to sort of fill in some of the bits of mist. So an important part of this project is that it is a cultural revitalisation project. The impact of colonisation on this area with a bunch of young people meant that weaving practice lay dormant in this area until around 15, 20 years ago, where there was a bit of resurgence and there has been a lot of interest, as Kylie was saying, in reviving this cultural practice with fishnet weaving. So we've located an image from 1874, which was the last photographic evidence of this type of fishnet. So we've used that as a reference point and then have been guided by the Bundjalung Artees on the construction process and also the uncles on the final construction process as well. And this is a cooperative approach in how we are dealing with the project with Indigenous participants and non-Indigenous participants, and the impact on that is it's become a method of decolonisation as well for the non-Indigenous participants because they're connecting with Bundjalung people, they're having an experience of weaving process and it has built a community with this project within the Bundjalung participants but also the non-Indigenous participants as well. And one of the most exciting things for me being part of this project is seeing the intense excitement by the Bundjalung community in revitalising this practice. When word of mouth spread around this project, we organised the Living Lab first workshop and we had about 80 participants show up, of which there was over half of the participants were Bundjalung. So there was a real buzz of energy and excitement on the day and the impact for the discussions I've had with Bundjalung people and the Artees on this process has been quite huge as well because this project has also given local weavers agency to reclaim this cultural knowledge for themselves and I think that is a really important part of this project that even though it's a cooperative co-design approach with non-Indigenous participants it is clearly led by Bundjalung Artees and uncles and we are guided by them heavily in this project particularly in honouring Arne Gwen Williams who is our honoree co-author on this project. The key part of the project is the sustainability element as well so the selection of the coastal hibiscus or cottonwood really aligned well with the sustainability practices as Kylie said the pandanus had a leafhopper parasite that was prevalent in New South Wales so it wasn't ethical for us to use that material so we've selected the cottonwood at the beach hibiscus and the process of identifying seasonal identifying the correct seasons for collection collecting the fibres and then processing and preparing the fibres has been quite an intensive and lengthy process and from there we worked with participants actually making the string and I think the last count we had about 140 metres of string to construct the net and hundreds of hours of weavers and non-Indigenous participants making the string. An interesting connection between Amy and myself, Amy's grandmother and Arne Gwen is that Arne Miki, your mother, brought weaving back to this area so weaving was one of the last cultural practices to be revitalised on the northern rivers and that happened with a group of women down at Cabistry Island over a decade ago and of which Arne Gwen was part of but your mum brought that back down so that's how different nations share knowledges and practices. My mum, my amrla is Mirukiaoui Gunimbar Stubbs and she's deeply connected to this region, lives in Yirikala and North East Arnhem land but her husband grew up in Rhodes Bank so they have huge connections here and spend usually the summer period in the northern rivers and yeah about 15 to 17 years ago she started meeting with a group of women doing weavers weaving practice and she's a master weaver herself and essentially revitalised the practice in this area by sharing her own weaving knowledge because there was only a few people in the region that still had that knowledge so with her involvement there was a lot of excitement around the weaving practice and at that time they were still using pandanus as well and we were very lucky with the living lab workshop that amrla Mirukiaoui was actually here at that time and so she came with her own ball of string which was out of bunion tree fibres which in the northern territory in Arnhem land they do the same string making process but that bunion fibre forms their ceremonial armbands and headbands that are used in ceremony so she brought that string with her to continue her own process and then was able to guide the participants in the workshop as well so we were very lucky that everything coincided and she could bring her knowledge and expertise to share but one another thing that came out of amrla Mirukiaoui coming is that we talked about the kinship connection and the sharing of knowledge and that in yongamatha it's called gorutor which is the kinship and that kinship extends beyond your family and your extended family it's the connection to the country as well but also there's that reciprocal relationship with the sharing of knowledge for different clans across Australia and so by her coming here and sharing her own knowledge that was also fortifying the bonds of kinship between here and north east Arnhem land yeah and at some point we might take the net out there and show yeah yeah and I was fortunate enough when I was up there last year at that summer conference which is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Maths Alliance conference that Professor Chris Matthews runs I was fortunate enough to present in front of your mum she said just metres away and listen to me so that reciprocity that we talk about is sort of that giving back and sharing and just felt really blessed for her to to come down and be part of that workshop and she was really active on the day teaching and she is also forefronted in that youtube clip from jargon alliance so a huge thank you there yeah thank you Amra do you think that the the process of constructing a net through decolonization and with the community could lead to a potential of the rehabilitation of the river that we have here in Whijibawah Baland yeah a really good question I know that is a particular focus of jargon alliance with their water stories to look at sort of mitigating the damage the flood makes they've had a few yarning circles running around this more and at Namabunda farm where you've got a community of knowledge holders and elders collaborating on the mitigation for not just the Aboriginal community but for the broader community as well so that's very altruistic in sort of the planning and I'm not sure that the general community understand that is the the care that the elders and indigenous knowledge holders have for the whole community in in their planning in making the river healthier and yeah there's really great ideas that are getting founded with our workshops and with the connection with jargon alliance and Namabunda there's been the EPA involved as well the Environmental Protection Agency have funded some of their work and assisted us in sort of running our workshops as well so we're we're truly grateful for that connection but yeah it's just amazing the the the love for the whole community that's that's witnessed in every yarning circle that I go to and yeah as I mentioned it's not just for the benefit of Aboriginal people it's always looking at everybody in the community kind of a little bit of a metaphor for our net is how it holds people how it brings people in in our first workshop Ollie was mentioning sort of that in some ways the net is a representation of all of us preparing for the mullet run which means keeping our rivers in a really good state because our rivers run into the ocean so there's always a connection there between sort of the state of what we do upstream to what happens downstream and ultimately when you collect the best mullet it's from the deep sea so just knowing that there is a connection there with the mullet in the river if you catch them in the river they don't taste as good they're a little bit muddy so there's a whole level of understanding there of sustaining for generations to come so that's that's what is quite often happening in these yarning circles it's not just looking at short termism it's just looking at thousand years into the future how generations that haven't been born yet can can benefit from the knowledge and the sharing that's happening and Amy and I were talking about the collaborative approach of it did you want to speak a little bit about sort of the power of everyone working together yeah well as I mentioned before it's one of for me the biggest impacts personally on the project is this collaborative approach and I love the analogy that Kylie just shared around Oli Castello's comment that the net is also holding us together and I reflected on this project that also we're weaving a collection of our stories together in making this net as indigenous and non-indigenous participants and the impact of that cannot be understated so you both held a workshop at the living lab in the northern rivers would you be able to tell me about what that workshop involved yeah so the the living lab workshop was done in partnership with jargon Alliance and we invited participants who had expressed interest in joining the project to attend the living lab and as I said before the word of mouth had spread throughout the bunch along community and we had many around 80 participants showed up on the day so in preparation for that we had spent weeks collecting and processing and drying drying fibres for people to work with on the day and so we had bunch of lung weavers we had community members from finger head to cabbage tree chorokai and casino all attending the event and some some were experienced weavers some had never woven before and so within this workshop we we instructed people on how to make the string and that was that was very exciting for a lot of participants but we also at the at the end of the workshop whole held a yarning circle where you know bunch of lung people were were sharing the impact on them of hearing about this project and it the impact on them and the the excitement in revitalizing a cultural practice that for them it was a decolonization practice and it was community building with non-indigenous participants but as I mentioned previously it also gave the bunch of lung participants agency to reclaim this cultural knowledge for themselves and everyone that shared within the yarning circle had deep reflections about the day yeah yeah and prior to that we'd actually had a workshop with jargon alliance down at the library in Ballana where we sort of developed a few of the techniques together which is really lovely but at that point and in the living lab workshop they were just really the starting point of a whole range of things that show that we've approached things the right way so we've had like a snowballing effect and yeah we've just had an incredible journey working with this which led to a couple of workshops that we ran here with our participants at Southern Cross and then as I mentioned them at Bunder invited us out there to run a workshop where we started to construct the net and just a couple of days before that happened I had a conversation with an auntie who advised that they felt that constructing the net was a gendered process that would normally have been done by the men at that point which Janelle, Amy, myself and Wanda were all keyed up and ready to construct the net artheals but we needed to understand sort of we'd been advised by an auntie at that point so we needed to change our strategy and that's a respectful way and a proper way of doing that so we were lucky enough to have a history of working with Mr. Ditto-Arn-Baker who jumped in as our male colleague into the project and Ditto-Arn's quite an esteemed knowledge holder in the area and we all went out there and the women kept constructing the string on the day and Ditto-Arn took the men off separately and they negotiated together how to construct the net so it was like an emergent process out there and he had men from Councillors from Namadira Haver and come across later we found out it was the first time the men from the Haver and had come across to the farm which is quite significant and yeah we did have Dr. Tommy Koo works out there he's also a lecturer here at the university say that he knew that the day would go amazing I'm not sure if I can swear but it goes that was awesome so that just describes sort of the media effect that people having self-determination about what they're doing creates it was really beautiful to see men that work in that mental health space getting some immediacy from the project something that we definitely didn't expect. No we didn't expect that and just to add to that so Namabunda is a Bundjalung tribal society farm out in Alstonville and what I wanted to reiterate is the importance of following the right protocols and what Kylie was describing in you know us receiving some additional advice at kind of the 11th hour around the net construction being a gendered construction where the women would weave the string or create the string and then the men would weave the net and we actually realised that once that information was passed over to us some of the barriers that we're experiencing within the project completely disappeared and I think that reinforces that following correct protocol is always the appropriate way but also what Kylie was saying about the impact of the men actually constructing the net the Namadira haven is a drug and alcohol haven for Aboriginal men and the well-being impact on them in this fish net process has been quite huge as well because these are men that potentially will have issues with addiction potential mental health issues and I think the missing element in a lot of treatment programs is the cultural side and so they they have been running the they've taken agency of the net and the men continue to work and construct this net out at Namabunda and Uncle Phil was sharing with us out at Namabunda that the impact on the men at Namadira has actually been as I said quite big as well because there they have a cultural element that's woven into their treatment program as well so that's been a real strength that was unexpected. Yeah there's so many underlying connections there too because some Aniguan used to be on the board at Namadira Haven as well so just all these different elements of a line together which we didn't expect and then working out there Dr Tom Dick and Katie Bridge who I think she's doing on is here through marine science invited us to join them present about the net at the Rainforest Connections Conference in Ballana just recently and that was a real honour so we spoke to the parallels of colonisation and the reduction of the big scrub so it's not just the people that were colonised the land and pretty much every living aspect within this area was severely impacted with the forestation that happened getting rid of all the beautiful cedar trees so this impact still continues and our project introduces people to the fact that culture and different ways of not knowing exist and that maybe we need to look at the landscape a little bit differently sort of look at people and the environment and so we presented the project as a process of preparing people to care for themselves while becoming part of the community to regenerate culture and also that is a platform of continuous learning and relationship building with sustainable ways of being that existed for thousands of generations because if we look at fishing nets today that are made of nylon all of the nylon nets that are ever being made still exist so they take over 600 years to break down in the water our net in the water would take 12 months to break down and would become nutritious for the fish so there's a huge difference in sort of the ecological impact to the marine life as well so which we need to look after because in terms of the mullet run we want that to happen each season so we have to really take care of every aspect and yeah so we're presenting at the rainforest conference with respect that there's not much rainforest left here but the heart of the rainforest was Austin so we're remaking the net in a very sort of significant location there for rainforest and I feel that we all feel that going forward the strong sustainability side of it so as mentioned this is just the start of it and I did mention there's 35 different types of fibre that we can use we'd love to investigate all of them yeah yeah I think next we'd like to investigate using brown tarojong to process and construct the net so yeah we'll see where things go but I think both well all of Kylie myself Janelle and Wanda have experienced that there's many there are many spokes of this project that have emerged the sustainability angle the cultural element the decolonization the community building the relationship between SCU and the wider community there are so many different elements that we may choose to pick up and and run with in the future yeah yeah but I guess we'll always be highlighting the social cohesion and the possibility of it being used in education programs of a way of addressing racism hmm for listeners who may not have heard about the mullet run before would you be able to tell us a bit about the cultural significance of the mullet run and what it means for the bongolum community yeah I'll be able to talk to that a little bit but of course this comes from having a couple of privileged yarning sessions with Uncle Frank Kranza who's an uncle from the finger head mob so it's really uncle Frank's words he talks about the mullet run so it's a whole series of mullet that's sort of swim together so if you can think of a whole swarm of bees moving mullet move the same way as a school of fish and it's seasonal so and Uncle Frank describes how there's always a couple of fish at the beginning that lead the way and the rest is follow so the rest flow in stream so it's really important from an indigenous point of view to never sort of disrupt the first lot of fish because then you can't easily get them close to shore so if you disrupt the first lot of fish the mullet are smart they'll go further out to sea so then if you want to feed your family you have to then develop some sort of canoe to go out further to get the fish so there's a whole lot of protocol and law associated to sort of when you fish which ones to take but on that I guess what Ollie was talking about was keeping the water clean up here because the clarity of the water affects sort of the nutrition of what is later received as well so there's always everything's interconnected and our knowledge holders and elders keep this knowledge so the knowledge is is alive because it's always shared and it's intergenerational just not everyone listens though not everybody hears like still goes sort of paddling down at Brunswick and you'll see a coke board of floating around in the river so there's a lot of people that still aren't getting the message of keeping our waterways clear there's a lot of farmers that still yeah sort of don't look after their river banks that to this we've got a whole heap of farming practices that are not accountable to the cleanliness of the river and looking after that mullet run and stressing out our mullet and yeah I got told by someone recently that there's a whole lot of new fishermen that are going down and fishing out those mullet runs as well so overfishing so there needs to be some consideration about sort of how much you take and Annie Jack is really good at speaking to that about not overfishing on that making the fishing net we're we're not intending on actually using it as a net to to get all those fish it's just at this stage it's just an artistic piece that's that's in honor of Arne Gwen and that relationship there yeah we've sort of always advised people to only ever fish and take what they they require on that day and yeah if you do take more than you need make sure you share that hmm so would you be able to speak to you kind of actually you both spoke a little bit about this earlier but would you be able to speak again to the social benefits of the workshop and the social benefits of sitting and yarning with local elders well I can speak to what Arne Jackie has also shared as her own reflection of being part of this project and we've all experienced this to different degrees but the well-being impact of being able to sit in circle with other women for us and to be able to connect with something tactile do something with your hands and drop into a space that is safe opens up the possibility for you to actually share and develop friendships which is exactly what's happened and the well-being impact particularly on Arne Jackie has been very high you know I think all of us as leads on this project it has been something that's actually kept us strong as well that we are able to sit in circle and and kind of yarn together and it brings it builds a sense of community it reinforces a strength within us and yeah as I said before I don't think the impacts of of this can be overstated yeah and Amy was mentioning like I was talking about sort of how everyone's had this passion like they've been carrying this this passion with them since they've joined our project and you're talking about sort of from your area where you grew up there's an actual word for that did you want to share that in your mother yeah so where my two sons are from is younger country and a place called Yerkala and there there's a metaphor in your mother called Lyrui which symbolizes the coal and the coal that the metaphor is about the coal burning bright and even if the coal has no heat or flames within it the coal is about your your sense of self it is about your cultural strength and this is the coal that we carry within us and it can be reignited at any time and for me that brings a reflection on the cultural element as well that for some people that may have lost that cultural connection that coal that Lyrui is always there and it just takes a small flame to reignite and for me that feels really powerful yep there's definitely the feeling that we've all had after each workshop yep what are some ways that non Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can contribute to the safety of these cultural spaces well I think coming with an open mind and an open heart and and also realizing that as non Indigenous people we do not have this cultural knowledge and to participate in projects like this actually is a huge privilege for non Indigenous participants so there's that element but also I think this type of project and participating for example in yarning circles allows Indigenous ways of learning and knowing and being to be privileged and that in itself is for me a process of reconciliation and decolonization because I think historically that has not happened so if people are coming with open minds and hearts and realizing they don't know they have the potential to learn and that has a big impact so for me that's a starting point for anyone's journey in building relationships with Aboriginal communities yep and yeah that's exactly right so the project is strength based and it doesn't focus on the disparities that a lot of projects and articles about Aboriginal people show for example the closing the gap you can see there's a lot of deficit discourse in that so we've made a decision early on not to separate sort of Indigenous and non Indigenous people in our project everyone's been welcome which is sort of a mindset that jargon and namabanda have also embraced and Arnie Jackie as well and definitely one that Arnie Gwen held we're always teaching Indigenous and non Indigenous people how to weave that yeah and being inspired years ago by Arnie Bertha Kapine we're only just scratching the surface so the more people the better and as I mentioned there's parallels to sort of the destruction of the big scrub and we talk about the place base of knowledge so from an Aboriginal perspective Indigenous knowledge is a different way of thinking which I think actually adds to the learning process that some people are at the start of the journey others can go a little bit deeper so there's non-Indigenous and Indigenous people at all different levels of that learning journey so when you're doing something practical yeah there's a sort of a little bit of self-determination there and a lot of self-reflexivity that can deepen your own learning and connection to the country. I think in a lot of colonial spaces there's can be quite a fear around the idea of decolonisation but what does decolonisation mean or what can decolonisation do for non Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people? Well it shows that reciprocity and respect for where you're living and the idea that the country caring for country is really important particularly when you're looking at generations down the track if you don't look after the country you don't have that mullet run so yeah so you're looking after yourself and you're looking after generations in the future which can be a different mindset for a lot of people and yeah as I mentioned a lot of people are just at the beginning of this process Indigenous knowledge as like a discipline in academia hasn't been around for that long I think it was the start of the 90s that it was first brought in although it's an underpinning of a lot of curriculum now and a requirement for NASA in high schools it's still not implemented well so that's why as an academic can aim me with her skills with CTL and wander with her filming and Janelle with her strong STEM background we felt well if we can sort of showcase how people can work together then the whole area can get strengthened and since we've started we've seen lots of projects on fishing that's pop up and we're actually okay with that because we do think that yeah the more people concentrating on an idea it's it's great and just to add to that we have the privilege of in Australia having the oldest living culture in the world so participating and honoring Indigenous knowledge directly has an impact in on Indigenous people's well-being it's active decolonisation for me it's a no-brainer you privileged Indigenous knowledge you learn you decolonise yeah but we try not to speak for other people we work directly with community so people can have their own voice so that's definitely a facet of our study is that we don't over talk people and when a question is raised that that can get attributed to a particular elder or knowledge holder we'll always do that hmm would you be able to speak to the relationship Southern Cross University has with local elders and the importance of embedding you have touched on this but the importance of embedding Indigenous knowledge into higher education yeah well here at Southern Cross University we've got the Gennaby Elders Council so they sort of is a governance body that overlooks sort of Indigenous knowledge education here at the uni and practices and they meet every month in that process I mentioned I run caring for country when I've got a residential I ensure that we've got members of the Elders Council there we've got an elder in residence Uncle Herb Roberts that I work with all the time and yeah it just adds a groundedness quite often working with our elders is the first time non-Indigenous students have ever spoken to an Aboriginal person so there's often vulnerability that comes with work with the process as well but we always provide cultural safety because we realize that it's very new to a lot of people in regards to the curriculum it's just adding that diversity so diversity is really important we can see that there's been so many challenges and polycrisis that have happened over the last few years but I'm actually going to be college and having the Elders work alongside us has kept our college running really smoothly I think we already were doing online yarning so adapting to online classes was not really an adaptation it was just an extension of what we already had in place so yeah so a lot of what we do is just shifting our ways of doing but because very adaptable yeah it's just adding to people's skill base if they do consider Indigenous perspectives and what they do and just to add to that in my role at the Centre for Teaching and Learning as an educational designer the impact on understanding the yarning circle process and how that can be applied to assessment delivery for example for me that's a very important element in understanding the different learning styles of for example for Aboriginal people and integrating this into curriculum for example with Ginnaby units is a very very strong method of curriculum design and assessment and again I think contributes to you know integrating Indigenous perspectives into into the SCU curriculum we have a we're very privileged to have Ginnaby College at SCU which lead in delivery of Indigenous knowledges and also while Kylie was speaking about the Elders Council it makes me think of another metaphor in Yowamatha which is called Nauraka which is the backbone and your backbone is your foundation and for me I think of the Ginnaby Elders Council as being that backbone not only for Ginnaby but the University so we have that strength behind us which guides us. So I have one last question for you both where can listeners find out more about this current project and ongoing future projects and how can listeners get involved? Watch the Spain. Yeah well as the net is getting constructed at Nama Bunder if we have future workshops they advertise via Facebook generally. Our current participants we always let them know about upcoming things but we're towards the end of the construction but as I mentioned we might look into using other fibres so we might reignite some of the processes that they have been working and I've just thought our future research could delve deeper into the concept of self-reflexivity in the context of yarning circles so the project suggests that yarning circles can be a powerful tool for self-reflection, prompting researchers to critically examine their own biases and assumptions additionally exploring the gendered aspects of co-designing community identified in this project could contribute to a more nuanced understanding of relational research methodologies. So I just wanted to add that one about the yarning circles. That's what pretty much I was trying to say. But we have many thanks to give I'm not sure we've really given enough throughout but I'd like to give a special thanks to dinner one baker, Annie Jackie Williams, Annie Gwayne Williams, Annie Sandra Bolt, who's joined us on a number of occasions and four fronts, the jargon alliance YouTube video. Big thank you to Annie Sandra for your beautiful words. Juggen Dandy, who helped guide us at the beginning with the string making, Marcus Ferguson and Oli from jargon alliance and the whole team there. We've had some of the rangers join us all the time. And also the living lab. Oh yeah the living lab northern rivers. It's Serena and Susie have just been incredible and yeah big thank you there and also as mentioned to the Environmental Protection Authority and of course our lead investigators that aren't here today are Wanda and Janelle. Beautiful. Kylie Amy thank you so much for being here with us today. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you both. Thanks so much River. Thank you. 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