The First Scientists: A Short History

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Before we start this episode, I'd just like to acknowledge that the more one of the body people and that there are county people on whose land this podcast is recorded, as well as the other 70 traditional owner groups whose state country might separate by the rate, and pay my respects to elders, past, present, and emerging. The first scientists in Australia were Aboriginal and Taurus Rhode Islander people. For 55,000 years, long before computers, satellites, and scientific journals, Australia's first peoples were reading tides, stars, seasons, animal behaviour, currents and ecosystems with extraordinary precision. Through generations of observation and experimentation, they developed deep knowledge across biology, zoology, botany, ecology, geography, astronomy, engineering, navigation, oceanography, meteorology, and more. Without needing written textbooks or computer databases, they memorized stories, songs, and dances to recall with precise accuracy the names, properties, and medicinal uses of thousands of different species of plants, insects, and animals. Through stories and songs, they passed down accurate accounts of significant geological and historical events, such as volcanic eruptions, floods, and sea level changes dating back to the last ice age thousands of years ago. Sadly, early European settlers often ignored this knowledge and frequently built towns and farms in flood-prone areas despite Aboriginal warnings. Through stories and songs, Australia's first peoples memorize the stars and constellations in the night sky for precise navigation, seasonal calendars, and precise timings of animal migrations and food availability.

SPEAKER_05 3:13

Some Aboriginal people had figured out how eclipses work and knew how the planets move differently from the stars. They used this knowledge to regulate cycles of travel from one place to another, maximizing the availability of seasonal foods.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

And, in some areas, the building of semi-permanent settlements. When European settlers arrived in the late 1700s, they brought devastating frontier conflict, displacement, and disease. Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were killed or forced onto missions and reserves as land was taken for Western styles of grazing and agriculture. Cultural practices that carried knowledge, including song, dance, and ceremony, were dismissed as superstition and replaced with the Christian Bible, which contains no scientific information about how to survive in and manage Australia's harsh landscapes. There are many examples of indigenous knowledge being overlooked by settlers to the settlers' own detriment. In the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition, Aboriginal people attempted to help the British explorers by identifying food sources. But critical knowledge was ignored, and the expedition ultimately ended in tragedy. Numerous other expeditions failed because European methods overlooked indigenous understandings of water, seasons, and landscape. Some early explorers and scholars did recognise and write about the immense knowledge of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. But unfortunately, widespread misunderstanding about it remains a problem today. Here's another quote from the article by Ray Norris.

SPEAKER_05 5:42

How did we get it so wrong? Australian historian Bill Gamage and others have shown that for many years land was carefully managed by Aboriginal people to maximize productivity. This resulted in fantastically fertile soils now exploited and almost destroyed by intensive agriculture. In some cases, Aboriginal people had sophisticated number systems, knew bush medicine, and navigated using stars and oral maps to support flourishing trade routes across the country. They mounted fierce resistance to the British invaders and sometimes won significant military victories such as raids by Aboriginal warrior Hamoi. End quote.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

These are grave historical injustices. They also represent the loss of priceless cultural heritage and numerous missed opportunities to learn from one of the world's oldest continuous knowledge systems. But this week is about progress. National Reconciliation Week runs from the 27th of May to the 3rd of June, encouraging Australians to reflect on relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous Australians, and to work towards respect, truth-telling, and a more just future. The dates are significant. And the 3rd of June marks the 1992 Marbot decision, which recognised native title land rights in Australian law for the first time. Progress since then has been real but uneven. The 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice Referendum was a national vote on whether to recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Constitution through an advisory body called the Voice to Parliament, which would have allowed Indigenous Australians to give advice on laws affecting them. The proposal was ultimately defeated after around 60% of Australians voted no. Despite centuries of struggles, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have shown extraordinary resilience, maintaining the world's oldest continuous living cultures while also leading in the fields of land rights, environmental management, science, art, sport, and social justice. In honor of this, today's episode celebrates Reconciliation Week by exploring how indigenous knowledge is finally starting to be formally acknowledged, and it's actively improving scientific understanding on the Great Barrier Reef. I hope you'll enjoy this interview as much as I

The World is Your Oyster: Introducing Libby Evans-Illidge

SPEAKER_01 8:43

did.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Good morning, Tanya. Good morning, everyone. Another big week done.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Yeah, Brett, I'm really excited because today we're going to be talking about how we can bridge two knowledge systems that have often been kept separate for too long. Western marine science and the knowledge of the world's oldest continuing cultures.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Wow, what a privilege.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

More and more scientists and conservation organizations are recognizing that protecting places like the Great Barrier Reef requires not just better technology and data, but also better listening, stronger relationships, and a broader understanding of humanity's connection to nature. But what do indigenous partnerships in marine science actually look like? What can indigenous knowledge systems teach all of us about caring for the ocean? And how can these collaborations help shape the future of reef conservation? To unpack these questions, our guest today is Libby Evans Illidge from the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Libby leads the Indigenous Partnerships Program, which formally launched in 2021. The program brings together Indigenous knowledge and marine science to address environmental challenges, working with traditional owners and rangers on reef and coastal management and supporting training, internships, and pathways for Indigenous students into marine science. Libby and her team also contributed to what they called a black paper, a policy document that helped shape the new national marine science strategy, ensuring a stronger focus on culturally safe ways for Indigenous knowledge to sit alongside Western science in marine research. Good morning, Libby, and welcome to Word on the Reef. Good morning and thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Good morning, Libby. Thanks for joining us. This is going to be a really great chat today. And I believe congratulations are in order.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

You recently received the Ames 2025 Medal along with Dr. Katarina Fabricius, who we also had on this show recently. Congratulations. Well done.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

Oh thank you. Yeah, it was a lovely surprise and a and a really great honor, and it was doubly special to share the festivities with Caterina, my great friend and colleague.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Oh, that's very special. Congratulations. Well deserved.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Now you've had a 40-year career in marine science. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background and how you came to be doing what you're doing today?

SPEAKER_02 11:32

Oh, well, my fascination with marine life began when I was a kid, going on family holidays to the beach and spending hours and hours exploring rock pools at low tide. But I also I had a really fantastic biology teacher in high school. So big shout out to teachers because I think all of us can probably remember one learning experience or teacher that really inspired us to take a particular path. And in my case, it was Mrs. Neldner, she was my biology teacher, and it was really with her that I had my probably my first real marine science aha moment. And I had to pick an animal. Well, we all had to pick an animal and write an assignment about it. And I was always fascinated with the oysters on the rocks at low tide, so I chose oysters as my animal. And I got a book on oysters from the library, and inside that book was a diagram of the anatomy of an oyster, all the bit's gills and its stomach and you know, all of its bits. And so I went to the fish shop and got some oysters in their half shell and did a little dissection at home, and I found all of these anatomical features that were actually in the book. My dad had a Polaroid camera, so I photographed my dissection piece and labelled it, and I got a really good mark. And that was really my aha moment. Yep, so I went to James Cook University. I grew up in Brisbane, but moved to Townsville to go to university, where I studied marine science, and after I graduated got a range of jobs, mostly in research assistant roles. Then I met my future husband in my twenties, where most young people, you know, get a backpack and travel around the world. But Peter and I got a small boat and went sailing. And and that's how I ended up in Torres Strait, where I then did some contract marine research for about nine years before landing the job and coming back to Townsfield to work at Ames.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Wow. Sailing life and living in a beautiful Torres Strait, surrounded by islands. How nice.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

The ocean selected another superstar.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Well, yeah, uh it's uh the Torres Strait's an amazing place culturally as well as both above the border and under the water.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

Yeah, wow.

Growing Bath Sponges and Cancer Drugs in the Sea

SPEAKER_01 13:45

So just quickly before we jump more into indigenous partnerships, I understand you were involved in your early career in researching the chemical compounds found in marine animals such as sponges for potential medicinal uses. Yes. Sounds fascinating. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Sure, yes. Well, sponges particularly are incredible animals, and that's what I ended up really specializing in. They're amazing. They're just a bunch of cells that are not organized into tissues and organs and systems like our bodies are, but they still achieve the same functions through chemistry. So they don't have nerves or a brain, but they achieve the same thing by these really complex cell signaling compounds for cell-to-cell communication. And they don't have a mouth or teeth, and they haven't got arms, so they can't fight off predators or competitors, but they achieve the same thing by producing these really targeted toxic compounds that are also really potent. And because as soon as they release them, it's immediately diluted by seawater, so it needs to still be potent enough to get to the target. And if you think about it, specificity only affecting the target and not your other cells, and potency able to do its job at very low concentrations, they're both traits that are really highly desired in the development of new drugs.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Yeah, it would be too. That's gee, that's fascinating, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Yeah, and I mean because the sponges or phylum periphera, they're a really ancestral group of animals, but they gave rise to a number of lineages, including the lineage that led to us, phylum cordata. And so as a consequence, we've got similar metabolic machinery. We've got complex organs and systems. Sponges do the same thing with their chemistry amongst their cells. And that's why so many of the bioactive compounds produced by sponges do hold promise as new therapeutics in humans.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

And is there many medications in medicine that are using it already?

SPEAKER_02 15:49

No, there are some. There are definitely some. You know, there's a couple of compounds that are used in breast cancer, for example. Well, sponges don't have breasts. That's another example of uh a compound that has got a particular application in a as a human therapeutic. But the sponge is not producing that chemical for fun, because it takes a lot of energy to produce these compounds. So it's got to have another role in the life of the sponge, protecting it from something or or helping it survive on the seafloor. So and that was really what I was very interested in is understanding the chemical ecology of these compounds.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Because I heard a while ago that stonefish also helps with anti-rejection drugs in heart transplant patients.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

Yeah, there's so many from other organisms. I think cone snail venom is used to block pain receptors, and yeah, there's a number of things. But one of the big impediments, like a lot of these compounds, are really, really complex, and we don't want to harvest every sponge in order to produce a drug. And so one of the impediments is finding a large-scale supply. Maybe not to take a drug to market, but to be able to do those clinical studies to determine whether or not the risk profile and so on of the new compound is acceptable. And so that led us to explore aquaculture of sponges as a means of scaling up the production of these fine chemicals. And if you can understand why the sponge produces the compound, and there was one that we worked on where the compound that we were interested in was a response to predation, so a parrot fish or something pecking at the sponge. And so we could grow the sponge and keep it happy, get it to grow fast, but prior to harvesting, poke it all over, and if the production of the compound that we were interested in. So we were we were looking at ways that we could ramp up the sponge, doing the biosynthesis of the compounds that we were interested in. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Well sponge bob's come a long way, hasn't he?

SPEAKER_01 17:58

It's absolutely incredible to know that people could be healed by medicine that's come from a gently poked sponge. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

Yes. But of course, because we knew that these opportunities to produce fine chemicals would come and go, because once you've demonstrated that it's good in the clinic, then a huge investment may then come to develop a synthetic method of producing the sponge. So we're not always relying on the natural source.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

To compound, you mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Yeah, yeah. So we also looked at the production of bath sponges because that is an existing industry, particularly in Europe and North America. I mean, it's not so popular in Australia to have a natural sponge in your bath, but there's a huge demand overseas, and the current supply comes from wild harvest fisheries, which are not doing so well.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Ancient Greeks were freediving and holding their breaths to pick up all the sponges out of the Mediterranean, apparently. Those are some of the early free divers, and they've harvested all of the shallow sponges, and then they had to get better and better at holding their breath and harvest the deep sponges. Wow, and and people just use it to exfoliate their skin, right? Because in Australia we we have synthetic plastic things that we wash our bodies with, but the natural sponge is biodegradable.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

Yeah, I mean the natural sponge is it's collagen, basically. The fibres are collagen. So some sponges have spicules as part of their skeleton. You don't want to have that in your bath. And you also want to make sure that you've gotten rid of all of the organic tissue because you also don't want the cytotoxic compounds floating around in your bath.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

But chemical peel.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

Yes, it's just it's just the um sponge and or collagen skeleton. So it's basically the dead skeleton of a sponge. That is the product. And that led us to think about it as an opportunity for remote indigenous communities, because one of the things that makes aquaculture non-viable is the cost of getting the product to market. If it's perishable seafood, you need to be really careful about that. But sponges, the product is a dead sponge skeleton that is not perishable and that's quite compressible. And I've spent a bit of time in the Mediterranean because there's still a sponge industry in the Mediterranean around the Greek island of Kalimnos, where they, you know, when they prepare the sponges that have been fished, they then put them in these what I would call a wool bale bag and you put it in a wool press to squish it down. But in um the Mediterranean they've got the same apparatus, but they use it to pack the sponges. And so it's cheap to get to market because it's they're light, they're compressible, and yeah, I still think that sponge farming for bath sponges, quite aside from the the fine chemical opportunity, would be a goer.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Well, Australia. How how far along has it got? Is there an industry in an indigenous community that's farming sponges from aquaculture?

SPEAKER_02 20:55

We did a lot of the science to show how to grow sponges and how fast they grow and their mortality rate and everything. But so far it hasn't been taken from the experiment to the enterprise scale.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Well, that's very interesting. Maybe one day it'll get going. And hopefully, yeah, if it's an aquaculture, then that means it's sustainable, right? It's not wild harvested. So that's it. People who start cleaning their pots and pans with natural biodegradable sponges, how interesting would that be?

SPEAKER_00 21:24

That'll fund all these diving trips you want to go on around the world.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

We'd best not tell anyone about it.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Don't tell anyone, especially on the radio.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Well, it wasn't our idea anyway.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

No, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

Yeah, no, I think it's a great idea.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

And sponges fascinate me because, like you said, one of the oldest living multicellular life, more than five hundred million years old, I think. I think the oldest fossil ever discovered was of a sponge, and everything else is kind of branched off from there in the animal kingdom. So they're really our great-great granddaddy, the sponge.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

We've got the same metabolic machinery still.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Yeah, not that much has changed. We're just big groups of cells that have gotten a little bit more talkative.

SPEAKER_03 22:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Can

The Path to Indigenous Partnership

SPEAKER_01 22:17

you tell us about the Indigenous Partnerships program and how it came about?

SPEAKER_02 22:22

Oh, sure. So I'll probably take a little bit of a step back to my time in Torres Strait, where I worked on a number of projects, and some of those projects we were based in communities of Torres Strait. And that's where I probably Got my first lessons in cross-cultural competency and understanding that wherever we are in Australia, in the sea or on land, we are on the lands of First Nations Australians. And in Torres Strait, there's still a very, very intact governance of who's the traditional owner of where. So, for example, you always need to get permission to be doing work, and you need to make sure that you get that permission from the right authority, and it might be a chairperson of an organization or it might be an elder, depending on where you're working and what you want to collect or what you want to work on. And so I learnt very quickly that we needed to do this for each and every project, and that we needed to make sure that we were following the right protocol. And there is no one size fits all, it may be different depending on where you're working, and that's just in Torres Strait, which is if you amplify that then to the whole of the Great Barrier Reef. Not a lot of that work was done in partnership with traditional owners, but it was done on lands and seas of traditional owners, and so just accessing the space required permission. Then I came to Ames in the early 90s, and I was leading this part of the bioprospecting project to acquire the samples for the therapeutic screening campaigns, and we weren't following the same protocol elsewhere in Australia. And I guess maybe the system of traditional owner governance over sea country in other places wasn't really clear and well known to us non-Indigenous people. But nevertheless, I knew that we were clearly accessing and collecting samples from the sea country of indigenous groups. So at the time I wrote a proposal that Ames should perhaps consider establishing a strategy to seek out who the rightful traditional owners are and either involve them in the work or at least ask permission to do the work. But at that time, I guess in the 90s, well, the Marbot decision had happened and we were sort of becoming more aware as a society. But uh I was the very clear message within AIMES was that AIMS is a science organization. That's not what we do, we just go out and do the science. We get the permit from the regulator, the Marine Park Authority, or the fisheries department, or depending on what you're collecting and where you're collecting it. But that was that was it. It was not your job to do that. So anyway, through the years, I mean I probably put up that same strategy, maybe tweaked and matured a bit a few times over the decades. And actually, at the same time, but unbeknownst to me, traditional owners were also getting themselves organized. And they were taking steps to have their rights and interests recognized over sea country. And then the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority established the Tumra Program, the traditional use of marine resources agreements, where a group could get a Tumra and then have a certain package of co-management rights to that sea country. So a lot of this was happening, and then eventually, in not that long ago, in about 2018, I think it was, I made another attempt with colleagues at Ames to again convince management that we needed an Indigenous engagement and partnership strategy. And this time it was picked up and it was absolutely supported right from our governing board, our leadership, and now I can say that it's totally supported across AIMS from the grassroots level.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Wow, well done. You were you were advocating for it for so long. And wow, it just goes to show you how much attitudes have changed for the better, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Well, exactly. And the way we then implemented it across AIMS is we established a tiered system of engagement. And they're called bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. And you know, it's not a very indigenous names, but we did think about having language names, but then which language would you pick?

SPEAKER_00 26:38

Because there are so many.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

And anyway, this was about educating the non-indigenous scientists, not the traditional owners. And as you can imagine, you know, their level of engagement increases, and so bronze level is has not got much engagement, but there is acknowledgement. So when we write a scientific paper, there's an acknowledgement section, and we've now got the practice where we always acknowledge whose sea country or the name of the group whose sea country the work took place on. And what that does, besides showing respect, it also establishes that piece of work as forever discoverable to those traditional owners because they can go to these bibliographic databases and punch in the name of their sea country and they'll be able to pick up any papers that have got that acknowledgement in the acknowledgement section. And I'd love to see a future where our publishing in the journals actually require that. You know, we already have to show permits or ethics approvals or other responsible conduct of research evidence, and it would be great in the future to see that that you know acknowledgement of who's C country and what sort of engagement took place to get permission might be included. But then the next level is the silver level. The silver level is still researcher-driven, led, but with permission. And then the gold level is co-design shared leadership of the project. And actually, our original, our draft system only had bronze, silver, and gold, and it was traditional owner feedback that asked us to add the platinum tier, which are traditional owner-initiated and led projects that we support. And so having this tiered system and now mapping the entire AIMS portfolio into those tiers, it lets us monitor through time how we're shifting the proportion of our science up the tiers. And it also gives our researchers guidance as to what the characteristics of their projects are and therefore what level of engagement we expect them to resource within their project.

Working with the World’s Oldest Living Culture

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Now, Libya, you've said that leading the Indigenous Partnerships program at AIMS has been the highlight of your career. Why has this work become so meaningful for you?

SPEAKER_02 28:57

Well, for starters, it is just incredible to I pinch myself every day. I get to work with descendants of Australia's first marine scientists. And and their knowledge is, you know, handed down through generations based on tens of thousands of years of environmental observations. And it's quite humbling, you know, we might come along with some qualifications and a bit of technology, but it's quite humbling to take a step back and actually make space for at least a neutral relationship when we're talking about working with traditional knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

And then I many years ago I had some traditional owner ladies come down from Groot Island to the aquarium. And the idea was I was taking them for a tour. But five minutes in it didn't work that way because they took over and and it's still something that stays with me and will stay with me forever. Is I from for two hours I thought I don't know any of this stuff. The things that I was learning about the connection to the animals and the country and sea country and their traditional values. We had the best time, but it was a real eye-opener. It really was. Their knowledge is priceless.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

Absolutely. And what a privilege that they must have immediately trusted you to be sharing in that way with you.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

So that was very special.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

I think it's also, you know, by partnering or at least acknowledging the need for traditional owners to be decision makers about what we can and can't do in their sea country, it's about recognizing those rights and interests.

SPEAKER_04 30:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

But also learning to see the environment through a new lens. Because it is, I mean, the Great Barrier Reef is a biocultural landscape. It's not just the reefs and it's not just the biophysical things that make up the reef ecosystem. It's this connection to stories of how that space has changed through time. And when you think about the current sea level was reached about six or seven thousand years ago, eighteen thousand years ago, we were at the height of the last ice age, and the sea level was much lower, about 160 meters lower, and what we now know as the Great Barrier Reef was a vast coastal plain that people lived on. And then there was an inundation, and so throughout all of that, we've got living descendants of the traditional owners who experienced that through tens of thousands of years, and knowledge about those events has been passed down through the generations in song and stories and dance, and the knowledge is living and still alive. It's always been there. We just need to unlearn what silenced

Protecting Language and Indigenous IP

SPEAKER_02 31:39

it.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

Yes, they they have stories passed down through oral tradition that remember things that happened 10,000 years ago, maybe even longer ago. And and then there's there's the Western scientists, European settlers came along and rediscovered things that they obviously already knew. And um I've just been reading the work of a uh scientist called Lynn Kelly who did an entire PhD on how oral history gets passed down. And this is why we need to protect their languages, because all of this really important knowledge is often passed down in their language, and the languages are dying out, younger generations are learning English and not learning their traditional languages. So there's been projects where an elder has uh tried to write it all down in a book before it's lost, and this is coming out as thick, weighty tones of thousands of species, every single plant, what their properties are, and these elders just had it all committed to memory. I mean, how many scientists of Western science can remember? I mean, we have these amazing books or databases where we can look up all of the knowledge, but how many of us could say that we have an entire database memorized just purely inside our mind? And and that's how indigenous people pass down all of this knowledge for thousands of years. So I'm incredible. I find that absolutely fascinating.

unknown 32:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:55

And and we can learn so much if we create the environment for that two-way knowledge sharing. And it's so important to protect the knowledge. We've got uh the indigenous cultural and intellectual property or ICIP is something that we're really exploring now and becoming more aware of because our intellectual property laws are just not fit for purpose for protecting or assuring rights over ICIP. And just a simple example is that if I'm in a community and there's some traditional dance happening and I film it on my phone, I own the copyright to that film. But the content that I've just filmed is something which I should not own. It should be maybe I'm allowed to see it and view it, but I don't own it, so if I wouldn't be able to call it mine just simply because I was the one that pressed record. And particularly in the bioprospecting field, because we've learned so much about medicinal properties of plants and animals from First Nations people, but books on uh Bush medicines recording this traditional knowledge, there will be a copyright statement inside that front cover. And so I think we've also got a responsibility to make sure that in collating and documenting this knowledge, we're not accidentally appropriating it away from the cultural owner of the knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

Yeah, a really good example is the famous macadamia nut, one of the most famous Australian native bush foods that's now famous across the world because it's so delicious. But as soon as uh European settlers discovered this tasty nut. Straight away it started being grown in other places. So the biggest producers of the Australian macadamia nut is South Africa and the USA. They're producing vast quantities of it and making a lot of money off it. And imagine if the indigenous people who first knew about it had actually been able to keep the right to that industry. And maybe it's the same with the sponges that you mentioned. I think the cakadoo plum is a native fruit in northern Australia, which the indigenous people do own the the industry for, because it's a tasty, tasty plum, apparently. I haven't actually tried one.

SPEAKER_00 35:09

No, I haven't either.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

Yes. And when we when we think about country, which is the land, the seeds, stars, the rocks, the animals, the plants, living and non-living, the tangible and the non-tangible, all of that is what I've now learnt is encompassed by the term country. It's not just the knowledge about the country, it's what's in country itself, which holds rights and interests for First Nations people. And so recognizing that and respecting those rights and interests has got to be at the centre of what we do going forward. Yeah, the data generated, if we go out and do some monitoring, for example, that monitoring data, do I own that because I was the one that was in the water making the observations, or if that's data from the sea country of a traditional owner group, there needs to be some data sovereignty recognition of that group as well. And that's okay because we don't have to own everything, we just need to have the right to use it with proper consent.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Yeah.

Return to Sea Country: The Woppaburra Project

SPEAKER_01 36:10

So what are some of the most exciting projects you've worked on in partnership with indigenous communities?

SPEAKER_02 36:16

So one of my favorite projects was a project done over a five-year project with the Waffle Borough people of the Keppel Islands in the southern Great Barrier Reef. And that project was essentially a marine science project. The purpose was to understand the drivers of survival and growth in the first year of a baby coral's life. And the idea behind that was if we're going to have a reef restoration methods developed, we need to improve survivorship of baby corals in their first year of life because in nature, more than 90% of them usually get predated by parrot fish or die due to competition, or it's very, very low survivorship in the first year of life. But after that first year, it's a reasonable survivorship rate. So that was specifically the project, and we've chosen the Keppel Islands because it's really a natural laboratory. It's got more sort of turbid nearshore areas and offshore islands that are in clearer water. There are gradients of energy and exposure to the fresh water that comes out of the Fitzroy River, and so it gave a really nice suite of environmental conditions to do these experiments in. But our Indigenous partnerships policy was brand new. This project started in 2019, and so it was the first test of our new policy and this new tier system that we developed. And so that meant that we needed to get free prior and informed consent to do the project in their sea country. Now the Wapabura people are just amazing history, but also a very tragic history, and the last 17 Wapabura people to live on country were forcefully relocated to various missions in 1902. And so there are no Wapperborough people at the time, anyway, there were no Wapabura people living on country. So, in order to seek free prior and informed consent, we needed to bring them back to country. Now, this project, I'm very glad that we put in sufficient resources to do this. But some people came from Sydney, some from Melbourne, some from Lockhart River, Brisbane, they're all over the place where their ancestors had been forcefully relocated to, and then their descendants grew from there. And over the course of this five-year project, we had about 90 Wapleborough people return to the Keppel Islands to be part of one of the activities in the project.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

Well, that's special.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

That just forget about the coral science. I mean, that was important too. But the impact of people returning to country, family lineages reconnecting, and family members meeting each other for the first time, that was quite, you know, quite exciting. And we've got a fabulous, really deep and respectful and shared relationship now with Waffle Borough. And we began the first workshop when we brought them specifically on country to talk about whether or not it was okay to do this project. But we always our protocol now is that when we're talking to a group for the first time, we start with truth telling. And by that I mean we've, you know, Ames was established in 1972. We've actually done a lot of research in Waffle Burrow Sea Country without engaging. So we start by going through some of these projects that have happened through time. And some of the projects were quite culturally offensive. And there was one project where we take a coral core from a uh large Parietes bombing and then interpret weather records and and isn't that great.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

But we've talked about those coral cores. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:56

But now try and put yourself in the shoes of a traditional owner. You've just learnt that Ames drilled a hole in the 500-year-old living coral.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Yeah. And we know that doesn't kill the coral, but of course when you have a connection with that coral, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

Yeah. And there are actually many things that we'd done in the past that's kind of raised eyebrows. And I think it's about telling the truth and being honest and establishing that respectful relationship based on trust and honesty. And we ended up having several on-country workshops that Wapleboro people came to, including doing some micro-credential training around reef restoration methods. And we can't take credit for this, but with the relationship between Ames and Waffleboro, the Waffle Borough people now have native title. They now have they've got a Tamra, have had for some time. It's now an incorporated organization rather than an auspice organization. And they was they've been successful in getting range of funding. So now we have young people returning to country to work on country. And I mean it's that coincidentally happened at the same time as we were doing the Waffle Borough Coral Project, but it was just really wonderful to see that happen. And it's you know quite apart from the science that we got to do together. I mean, we ended up with the Coral Core story, despite that initial offense. We then did a joint project with Waffle Borough, and besides telling the scientific story that that Coral Corps told, we now have the Waffleboro story of what happened during that few hundred years from their perspective, and that is now in Questacon in Canberra. So if you're in Canberra and you're at Cuestacon, the National Science Museum, look for the Waffleboro Coral Corps, which is a really lovely example of bringing the two knowledges together. We didn't blend them, we didn't integrate them. Both knowledge systems are there with their own sort of integrity and telling their own story alongside each other.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Imagine being a traditional owner with all this knowledge, and then you see this coral core, and we know that the layers record things like giant floods. You know, so just matching up the stories that have been handed down. There was this flood, and then there's another flood, and then there was a heat wave, and it's all written down in the coral core what you knew through traditional knowledge, right?

SPEAKER_02 42:19

Yeah, yeah. And I think too that, you know, even though there's been this forced disconnection from country, bringing people back to country, it was amazing that a lot of the stories do still exist. So they have been passed down in whatever mission different family members got taken to. And so it's kind of not lost. And it's, you know, re-emerging.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

That's the most fantastic thing ever. Imagine living in Sydney your whole life and you know that your grandfather's passed down all of these stories to you about things that you've never seen, and then you go for the first time to the Great Barry Reef and you see them. These are the things that my grandfather told me about. That's just a life-changing.

SPEAKER_02 43:01

Yeah, yeah. And I think as a nation, or certainly as a marine science community, we're we're waking up to this missed opportunity by not listening to traditional knowledge in traditional ways.

Differences from Western science

SPEAKER_01 43:18

How is indigenous knowledge different from Western scientific thinking?

SPEAKER_02 43:22

I think the main discerning feature of traditional knowledge systems is that it's very holistic and connected. It's deeply rooted in country, and you know, country is everything. It's the land, sea, animals, plants, stars, rocks, tangible, intangible. It's rooted in country and therefore it's rooted in place and relationships and connectedness at that place between all of those elements. And then that's all wrapped up in cultural law, as in L O R E. So it's a big system. Whereas in Western science, we tend to separate out the components and study just that. So for example, you know, I used to work on the chemical ecology of sponges, or we might look at sponge taxonomy, or we might measure growth and survival in a species of coral, or monitor changes in fish populations. And I guess more and more we've got people taking an ecosystem approach to their science. But even then, it's not as connected and holistic as a traditional knowledge system.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

Like we're specialists. We'd be better off if we also understood a broader range of things because then it gives us a a broader understanding of the real world that we've. Live in not just one topic.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

Yeah, and I think the expression of that traditional olive system that I love looking at, and I can really lose myself in them sometimes, and that's the seasonal calendars that incorporate what the stars are doing, what the wind is doing and the seasons are doing, with which plants are flowering, with which fish are spawning, with which you know, like the different layers from the stars on the outer layers through to the very tiny minutiae in the middle layers, and and how those things align. It's really it's just so incredibly comprehensive and connected.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

And that's a it's it's a whole nother level. They feel it within them. They feel it they can it's something that us in science areas can't we don't have that built into us yet. Or or will ever have that built into us where they can sit there and they can feel the changes in everything. They can see the smallest details because it's been with them for thousands of years.

SPEAKER_01 45:33

Yeah. But it's it's important for us Westerners not to then view it as a sort of, well, it's a mystical, esoteric thing that they're born with. They actually study hard for years under their elders to learn this information. So it is like them attending university, obtaining different degrees of initiation and knowledge. And that's something to really highly respect how much they study and learn that information over years of their life. Do you agree, Libby?

SPEAKER_02 45:58

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's perhaps one of the misconceptions about indigenous knowledge systems is that it's not a system that's been accredited through our educational institutions because it's different and it's been validated and accredited in different ways, and we just need to, you know, make space for that.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Yeah, I saw an amazing young indigenous man for Victoria on his YouTube channel and he was explaining the constellation in the sky of the emu, which is a dark patch in the Milky Way that looks like an emu, and he said, Well, when it's at some time of year it looks like it's sitting down on the horizon, so we know that the emus are sitting on their eggs. And another time of year, it's standing up in the middle of the sky, then we know that he's stopped guarding the eggs and it's okay for us to go and get a couple, but we would only take less than half of the eggs in the nest. And then every single constellation represents a different animal that it's okay to eat it at that time of year, but it's all around sustainability. Don't take more than half of the eggs, otherwise you'll you won't have any emus left. So they had their own management system for sustainability.

SPEAKER_02 47:05

Yeah, fantastic. And I I look the knowledge of astronomy, you know, the knowledge of the star systems and how that changes with the seasons. I came across that in Torres Strait as well, where people can navigate by the stars and the direction of the swell and currents and just this incredible vast knowledge of how it all fits together.

SPEAKER_01 47:27

Yeah, we've got IT, we've got uh artificial intelligence, but if the internet stops working one day, who's going to have the tools to survive?

SPEAKER_00 47:38

It's true.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

The people that know all of this stuff without needing to Google it. Indeed, yeah.

Common Misconceptions

SPEAKER_01 47:43

And so what are some other misconceptions non-Indigenous Australians often have about indigenous knowledge systems?

SPEAKER_02 47:49

You know, I think you mentioned it earlier that it's wrapped up in a bit of cultural law that us Western trained scientists might think, well, if you can't measure it and you can't see it, is it really real? But I think more and more I'm learning that there are these intricacies, like even just the knowledge about the emu, the example that you gave before, being able to relate the emu egg gestation to what's happening in the Milky Way is just extraordinary. And what I hear a lot that there's a really great monitoring tool, it's a completely indigenous ontology, called Strong People, Strong Country. And the premise behind it is that you cannot have healthy people if country's not healthy. And also that country needs people, so country can't be healthy if the traditional custodians are not on country looking after it. And sometimes I think, wow, if we've just returned people to country, I mean, is that something that we need to do in Australia to start to see ecosystems heal?

SPEAKER_01 48:55

Yeah, we could do multiple episodes about traditional burning practices because they've been doing traditional burning to remove the undergrowth and promote grass for the kangaroos. They've been doing that for tens of thousands of years, maybe sixty thousand years or something. It is actually the whole ecosystem is adapted to that, and now that the people got taken off that country, the people suffer from it, but the country suffers as well.

SPEAKER_02 49:19

Yes, indeed.

Corals as Kin

SPEAKER_02 49:20

One thing that I really learnt working with First Nations people is that country encompasses everything. That means if you you know you know about the coral core projects, we've got this huge archive of coral cores from all over the place. Those coral cores remain part of country forever. They are the kin of the people. And so once we see that, we start looking at these marine organisms not as a as a resource to use, but as kin to the First Nations people that are connected to a place because that's how they see it. And every collection we've got is part of that. And it actually came to the fore, again, through the Waffle Borough Coral Project, we were doing some work with the Toronga Conservation Society and their biobanking scheme and getting coral spawn and separating the eggs from the sperm and cryo-preserving the sperm. Now, those cryo-preserved sperm samples, they're frozen, but they're still living. So you can draw them out and use them to fertilize coral eggs into the future, probably for hundreds of years. So the Waffleboro traditional owners who are part of this field trip, they said, Well, where are you taking them? Where are you taking our kin? And of course, well, to the Toronga biobanking facilities, which are in Sydney or in Dubbo. And then there was a discussion about how they really should be to Sydney because they're saltwater things, even though they're not going to be in the salt water, they're going to be in the liquid nitrogen tanks, but they wanted them to be adjacent to the sea.

SPEAKER_01 50:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:57

And so none of them have gone to Dubbo, they're all gone to Sydney. And then it was, well, who gets to say who can have access to our kin into the future? How is that going to be managed? And so we ended up having a workshop in Sydney. We all went down to the Toronga Zoo. Um, we stayed at the zoo, which was fabulous. That got a really nice accommodation within the zoo, and we met with the traditional owners of Sydney because the Whopperborough traditional owners were concerned that their kin were going to be on the lands of another traditional owner group, and they needed to be sure that that was okay and that that was culturally safe. And as a result, we've developed these cultural safety protocols for biobanking, where material gets prior preserved in these methods and then taken to another place. And Torongo have now implemented that protocol with all of their work because they've got biobanking samples from all over the place.

SPEAKER_04 51:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:56

And so they're now recognising this as culturally sacred material.

SPEAKER_01 52:00

Yeah, and there's not in their facility. There's about 70 different traditional owner groups along the length of the Great Barrier Reef because it is 2,400 kilometers long. So there's a lot of different sea countries, and I've seen that also being a factor in coral restoration. If they're collecting spawn from one site and replanting those corals, keeping it on the sea country that it belongs to, it's a very important consideration.

SPEAKER_02 52:25

And it's interesting that across Ames, people are changing the language that they're using. So what used to be called the larval rearing facility is now a coral nursery. And, you know, like recognizing those little larvae as living kin of people. And one day, actually, we were meeting with the Bindle traditional owners, who are the traditional owners of our Ames site in Townsville, and we had corals coming from different reefs into the sea simulator. Our research vessel was down at the dock, and the corals were being transferred into the sea simulator to be spawned, and then there was a whole range of cross matches between different sea countries, all with consent. And the Bindle traditional owners took the opportunity to welcome those coral samples onto countries.

SPEAKER_00 53:16

Wow, that's so cool.

SPEAKER_02 53:20

And so there are concerns about moving things between sea countries, and that's why it's so important to get consent.

SPEAKER_01 53:27

Yeah.

Learnings from Indigenous perspectives

SPEAKER_01 53:32

Do you have any specific examples where traditional owners noticed environmental changes or ecosystem patterns before Western science documented them?

SPEAKER_02 53:42

Yes, and I think my main example of that would come from the Torres Strait in one community that has a very intricate seasonal calendar. And they've noticed that the way things are depicted in the seasonal calendar and the way things line up is changing. So plants might be flowering earlier than normal and no longer lining up with the run of mullets or the arrival of the frigate birds or the pigeons that migrate down from Papua New Guinea. So they're actually seeing changes in the way that these things align. So it's not just that one thing is changed in its seasonality, it's that the way the whole system links up is also being affected.

SPEAKER_01 54:27

Which is really sad because climate change is is robbing us of many things and it's also robbing us of thousands of years worth of knowledge and culture. That's just heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_02 54:38

But then they're they're now amending their seasonal calendar because things are aligned. You know, the mullet still comes, but it's no longer aligned with that plant flowering. I think another example might be when we were looking at sponge farming, we were looking at the oceanographic currents around a particular group of islands. And, you know, we're scientists, so we put instruments in the water to measure the tides and the the currents for a year, I might say, and then uh created a numerical model to create these visualizations of what happens to the currents at different tides. Well, when we reported that back, one elder immediately, he really liked the animation, and he said, well, and then started telling me stories about when he was a child, they would go out on their canoes, and if they were without adults, they knew they had to go in a certain direction because eventually the current would bring them back. But if they went too far north, they'd get caught in another current and the someone else has to go and fetch them. So this knowledge that we've spent a year creating actually was already in the h in the minds of these elders and with practical examples of how it affected the way they operated in their canoes, because they worked with the tides and the currents.

SPEAKER_01 55:56

Amazing. Yes, I think that would probably be true the world over that indigenous people have known about all of these things before Western people came along. I have read other really good examples as well, where scientists in Canada were puzzling about the structure of these oyster reefs off the coast of Canada, and they were puzzling about it for ages, years, before someone finally thought to ask the local indigenous people and they instantly just explained how the oyster reefs formed, which was actually through aquaculture that they've been doing for thousands of years, encouraging the oysters to grow in that place because they live off them. And I think there's probably many, many more examples because obviously they've been living in these places and observing them for a really long time. So it's probably becoming more common now. If you're researching something, definitely include in your research to ask the traditional owners because you might save yourself a lot of time. You might still want a graphic representation of the tides, but you might get a faster idea of where to look or something.

SPEAKER_02 56:59

That's right, yes. And we've recently, just last year, we had 20 senior knowledge holders from Eastern Torres Strait come to Ames and we ran a participatory mapping workshop documenting knowledge about a range of things, including the currents, and it was just amazing. And that's a process where we come together, we use maps to share knowledge, so we can make spatial layers at our data, and then we just have a whole range of coloured pens and sticky notes and sticky dots and things, and then we just build up layer upon layer of other knowledge about other things. Because we don't have good oceanographic models for Torres Strait, but the traditional owners certainly know how the currents move and how they change with the seasons as well.

SPEAKER_01 57:43

Yeah. And that's the value of having stories and dances. You know, you could do a a dance that demonstrates, well, this direction that I'm moving in and then I'm moving in this other direction, which could help pass on the the directions of tides and things to younger people in a much easier to remember way than memorising long tracts of text. And it would be great if that continues because if we say, well, we've copied all their knowledge down into books now, so we don't need to worry about memorising the dances and stories, and that would be a dangerous thing to happen. I think we need to preserve the original way of of transmission. Otherwise I don't know, we're losing some aspect of it if we're just replacing it with written words, I suppose.

SPEAKER_02 58:26

Yeah, yeah, I I agree. And I guess the quest to document is happening, I think, because there's this concern that maybe some of that knowledge is being lost because of past practices that have disconnected people from their country. But I think that, you know, if we just make space, I think it's fine to document it, but we can't rely on that forever. We've got to return people to country so that it's because it's a living culture. It's not something to be put on in a book and on a shelf.

SPEAKER_01 58:57

Yeah, and I was really I really liked how you said earlier that they are amending their calendar so it's not a static culture. They can update their knowledge over time so it remains relevant to the times. And I'm really into this researcher that I've mentioned before, Lynn Kelly. She's researched indigenous cultures across the world and the methods that they use to pass down knowledge orally, and I'm absolutely obsessed with it. So I'm gonna give that a plug for anyone out there who wants to learn more about how knowledge is passed down orally, and you can actually use the techniques to memorize anything, such as phone numbers, or if you're studying for an exam and you need to remember a lot of content. So there's probably a lot of people who are interested in studying science who listen to this podcast. Check out Lynn Kelly and you can use the same techniques. I think she's in that documentary, The First Inventors, as well. She teaches the host of the show how to memorize the countries of the world in order, as just one one example. And it's how indigenous people used what they call songlines or story trails. Sorry, I'm going off on a tangent here. I'll I'll stop talking about it now, but check out Lynn Kelly's work.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:10

Yeah, no, I think that the songline concepts as a way of memorizing knowledge and also navigating the landscape is just mind-boggling, I think.

Oneness with nature

SPEAKER_01 1:00:25

Many Western environmental systems separate humans from nature, whereas indigenous perspectives often see humans as part of nature. Do you think modern conservation is beginning to relearn that idea?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:37

I think we're more and more seeing ourselves as the human race as custodians of the planet. And that is exactly how First Nations people tell me they see their relationship with their country as well. Is that they are custodians and they're part of country and everything, all the living things in country are their kin. And I think if we start seeing the planet in the same way, we can go a lot further at taking steps to look after the planet.

Respectful engagement

SPEAKER_01 1:01:06

What does respectful engagement with indigenous communities actually look like?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:11

I think the first thing it needs to look like is taking time to develop relationships. You cannot parachute yourself into a community and announce that you're here to partner. You you need to take the time to get to know each other so that the engagement and possibly the development of a co-design partnership can be based on mutual respect and understanding rather than just things through your lens. I would also always start with truth telling. Is this really the first time that you've worked in this group's country? And if it's not the first time, then you need to start with engaging about what you've done previously. And besides time, we also need to make sure that we allocate proper resources and preferably have those meetings on country. Take the time to visit country and sit with the knowledge holders or the cultural authority figures that you're wanting to engage with. The other thing I might say is that it's important to engage early. Don't come along after you've already started a project or at the end of a project or even at the end of planning. So go engage as early as possible and preferably with a blank canvas, not with your preconceived ideas about what you want to do and where you want to do it. If you're seeking a co-designed partnership, you need to create space for the traditional knowledge and the and the traditional voice to also have an influence over the project plan.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:40

That's really good advice because I think, yeah, there is an instinct to go in there with a fully formed pitch and sell everyone on your amazing idea and how great it's going to be, which is sometimes how you pitch a a project in Western society. But you're saying Exactly. Yeah, go in and let them be a part of creating that pitch.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:57

And it's so important to allocate resources. You don't want to have a meeting where the only people who are not being paid for their time are the traditional owners, the cultural authority figures. And sometimes the traditional owner may need to take a day off work in order to come to your meeting. So, you know, it things need to be properly resourced and we need to see this as part of the cost of doing our research.

How to continue healing

SPEAKER_01 1:03:20

What still saddens or frustrates you the most with regards to Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations in the past and today?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:27

I think probably the continued misunderstandings and misinformation that is out there. I think the referendum was a good example of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:38

I think that That's exactly what I was thinking of when I thought about a missed opportunity to have a better relationship in this country, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

Exactly. And the misinformation about what that actually meant that resulted in so many Australians voting no. So that does sadden me because that was an opportunity to take a big step forward that we missed. The other thing that does sadden me is the continued gap across so many metrics between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:07

And the intergenerational trauma of the past histories that continues to harm people. And I kind of see that a lot with the people that we work with. And it's not that they're, you know, disabled in any way, but it's just the the continued impacts of colonization are very real. And I'd I'd love to see a future where we did achieve true reconciliation and starting with being honest about our history. Not feeling guilty about it, but taking responsibility for what happens next.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:41

We're all the poorer, you know, when we don't allow the world's oldest living culture to have a voice. All of us are the poorer for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:47

I just I I personally just it just frustrates me. I d I don't understand why we're not it's not happening more often. So you know, just hearing that that you have this connection with them and being allowed that that connection between our science and their traditional ways of doing things and their knowledge is just priceless. I don't understand why it's taking so long for us to accept that as an HR. If you've got indigenous friends, sit down and sit down and chat, have a chat, listen to them.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:17

Yeah, and educate yourself about Australia's Aboriginal history. Yeah. And not just the post-colonial history, which is really confronting, but the tens of thousands of years before that.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:29

And create that honest understanding of the impacts of colonization as well. And then educate your friends and family. Be that person in a conversation if something inappropriate is said, be the person that pulls it up, but backs it up with some factual information. That's something. And find find ways to be a good ally. You know, go to the NADOC March in which area.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:50

It's coming up soon, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:52

Exactly. Procure your goods and services from Indigenous businesses. It's always good to have a trusted, you know, indigenous buddies that you can have honest conversations with.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:02

And that's something that'll stay with me, just the look on the the ladies' faces, the elderly traditional owner ladies that I did the tour with, just the look on their face when I said, Would you like to do the tour for me and teach me? The excitement on their face. I'll never forget it. They're like Really? Yeah, go for it.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:19

And well, like you said, the the level of information they gave you would would have only been surface as well, because there's some things that they can't share at the outset unless you're, you know, initiated or what have you. But but there's some really good resources out there like some really good documentaries for free on SBS like Uh the Australian Wars and the First Australians and then the First Inventors. Oh, that was incredible, yeah. Like the Australian Wars is obviously a bit sad because it's about the colonial uh wars against the Aboriginal people in Australia, but the first inventors is really, really exciting and and fun because it talks about all the cool uh technology and knowledge that the Aboriginal people had, which is amazing and really exciting. And that's free on SBS, the first inventors.

Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 1:07:06

Do you have one last message for listeners if they only take one thing away? What would you most hope for it to be, Libby?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:13

I think really feel the pride and privilege of living in a country that has the oldest living continuing culture. Yep and recognise that we've got so much to learn if we make space, culturally safe space to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:28

Amazing. Yeah, great message. Libby Evans Iliage, leader of the Indigenous Partnerships Program at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Thanks for all your amazing work and thanks for joining us on Word on the Reef today. Thanks for having me. That was fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:41

Yeah, thank you. You're doing an amazing job. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:49

If today's episode has inspired you to learn more about First Nations Australians, please check out the links to documentaries, TV series, and books in the show notes. Many people in Western societies feel a deep longing for ancient wisdom and connection. Australians burn Native American white sage in their homes, travel to Peru to sit in Amazonian ceremonies, study yoga and Sanskrit in India, or journey to Nepal seeking spiritual insight from Buddhist monks. And yet, right here in Australia, we live alongside the world's oldest continuing living cultures. For more than 65,000 years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have carried stories, songs, science, spirituality, and ecological knowledge woven into this land and sea. But ancient knowledge is not a product to consume or a trend to borrow from. You can't get it from a weekend retreat. It is something sacred earned through relationship, responsibility, and respect. If non-Indigenous Australians truly want to learn from the wisdom held in this country, then the first step is not taking, it's listening. It's truth-telling. It's learning the history many of us were never taught. It's confronting injustice, repairing relationships, and working towards reconciliation, not as a symbolic gesture, but as a genuine act of humility and care. Because before we can ask to share in ancient knowledge, we must first show that we are willing to honour and protect the people who have carried it for millennia.