We acknowledge this Kaurna country where we raise our families, work, and study, grow food and live our lives and we are indebted to Kaurna people on this unceded yarta.

We ask two questions of the founding members, the first is:

What does a sustainable inclusive future that respects the First Australians look like to you?

We want their answers so that together we can connect all the dots of the evolution of this place, this Kaurna land that we all now call home, this place Tarndanyannga which means the place of the red kangaroo, and Adelaide, after a colonial British queen. We’re going around a full circle here, respecting the wisdom of the first people in their understandings of and connections to this country, this yarta.

Our second question is:

Where would you start, and what do you see as the central areas of unlearning that need to occur to ensure a sustainable future for all of us.

We believe that regeneration is only possible when we combine all the knowledge of the past, the mistakes and successes, the ancient wisdom and knowledge of that particular land with the best of local and global contemporary knowledge.

 

Sue Gilbey has spent a large part of her life collecting stories and campaigning for social and environmental justice. She lives on unceded Kaurna land in Australia’s only CBD based eco-village, Christie Walk.

She is the founder of Just Sustainability Australia Inc (JSA) which was originally focused on equity for environmental refugees and is now responsible for a social justice /environmental weekly radio program. She is on the advisory board of the Sustainability Centre operated through the Natural Resources Management Board and is the South Australian ambassador for the Global Eco-village Network. She has published a book outlining the lived experience and resilience of women with disability. It is through Sue’s lifelong work, her belief in local engagement and the value of community and shared resources, that the need and implementation of this project is realised.

In 2009 Sue was deeply honoured to receive the Bremen Peace Award, a very prestigious International peace prize, administered by the European Threshold Foundation. She is still the only Australian to have ever received this award.

 

Michael O’Brien, Senior Kaurna Man talks about local knowledge and application of local Aboriginal knowledge to this land and place.

 

Date: 04 October 2018, Adelaide.

 

 

Karranjal John Hartley, Kuku Yalanji man, of Two Brothers Walking documentary (watch trailer here)  talks about what an inclusive, respectful future might look like.

 

 

 

 

 

Angelena Harradine Buckskin is a local senior Kaurna woman in Adelaide. She says:

we can’t change the past, we can’t change history, but if we do things the right way now, from the beginning, we can all work to a future together