Rhys Paddick is a Noongar/Scots-Irish Australian who walks two worlds — and who has built a business teaching people how to get off scripts and speak from somewhere truer.

We talk about the strange afterlife of Australia's "acknowledgment of country" ritual, what "country" means when you capitalize the C, and why every performative ritual eventually collapses unless authenticity is at the center of it.

This one stretched me. I came in with my Westernized brain trying to wrestle indigenous wisdom into the shape of a concept I could hold, and Rhys, very gently, kept handing me back something I had to feel instead. By the end I was a little tired, a little eager, and weirdly grateful — which Rhys then named for me as a thing I'd remember.

What We DiscussThe acknowledgment of country, and how a good thing got hollowed out

In Australia, "acknowledgment of country" started around 2005 as a way to honor the traditional custodians of a place. Twenty years later it's at the bottom of every email and the top of every 9am Thursday meeting.

Rhys's take: the words are fine. The problem is that nobody is given any context for the concepts behind them, so people perform the script and quietly worry about getting it wrong.

Country with a capital C

In the Western sense, country is geography plus political borders. In the Aboriginal sense, country is geography plus political borders plus a spirit — alive, conscious, holding law and story, doing the teaching and the healing. Often imaged as a mother. You don't have to be in the bush to be on country. You're on country right now.

Why I keep asking the wrong questions

I confess to Rhys that whenever I encounter indigenous wisdom, I have the sense of asking questions built on broken assumptions — like asking someone to describe the taste of a pear when I've never eaten fruit. He offers me the concept of liyan — spirit, the thing that magnetizes you toward something, the thing that knows before the mind catches up.

Knowledge = head + feet

The Noongar word for knowledge, understanding, and experience all translates roughly as Kaatidjiny — head, together-with, feet. Knowledge isn't a thing you store in your skull. It's something that has to travel from brain to fingers to feet to expression. A whole epistemology in three syllables.

Ditch fear

This is the heart of Rhys's work, and I think it's the heart of this episode. Most acknowledgments of country happen out of fear — fear of offense, fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of the binary right/wrong frame people impose on themselves.

Rhys's intention isn't to give people a better script. It's to name the fear, talk about it honestly, and help people locate their own courage to speak from the heart instead of the head.

White guilt — does it serve you?

I asked Rhys, awkwardly and honestly, what to do with the white progressive guilt of having benefited from historical atrocities. His answer surprised me with its directness: yes, you can choose to identify as white, liberal, ally, footy supporter, whatever serves you in the moment.

But the real question is does this guilt serve you right now? If it does, keep it. If it doesn't — and for most people it doesn't — ask instead: who am I now, and how do I show up?

Come as you are

Rhys says Aboriginal people tend to be interested in you first, before they're interested in the labels you bring. The "ally" identity, with its performance checklist, often gets in the way of just being a person showing up with intention.

Success is a feeling

Rhys doesn't run his business on KPIs and conversion rates. His measure of a successful workshop is whether the room — and he — feel good at the end. He invokes the Maya Angelou line: people don't remember what you taught them, they remember how you made them feel. A useful corrective for any of us in the thought leader business.

The journey from acting to acknowledgment

Rhys grew up in suburban Perth — Sega Mega Drive, glasses, musical theater. He studied Aboriginal performing arts at WAPA (where Hugh Jackman went, which Australians like to flex), worked as an Aboriginal Islander Educational Officer at his old high school, did university mentoring, and eventually partnered with a change strategist to build "Acknowledge This" — which he later rebranded to Modern Custodian.

Custodian as posture, not title

The word "custodian" carries responsibility, presence, and agency. Rhys reframes it: it's not something you're appointed to, it's something you choose to embody right now. For your emotions. For your household. For your moment. We're all modern custodians, if we want to be.

Go Slowly, Be Present — Yeyi!

I asked how to stay in touch, and Rhys taught me a Noongar farewell — Dabakarn koorliny-yay — which translates loosely as "go slowly present." As in: take it easy. Which immediately put The Eagles in my head. ("Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.")

ResourcesFind Rhys

• Website: moderncustodian.com.au — and bring a beverage; the newsletter is unlike anything else you'll find online
• LinkedIn: Rhys Paddick

Concepts & Thinkers Referenced

• Matt Church — Rhys's and my business mentor
• Tyson Yunkaporta — author of Sand Talk and Right Story, Wrong Story; previous guest on this podcast (PYP 494, 439, 436) and the person who first short-circuited my Western brain in the same way Rhys did
• Bill Plotkin — referenced obliquely through the soul/initiation framing (PYP 455)
• The Salamander Room — a children's book by Anne Mazer, about a kid whose bedroom turns into a forest. Came to mind when Rhys described his studio filling up with propagated Devil's Ivy
• Tupac Shakur — poet, Shakespeare student, and (in Rhys's office) source of the quote "Real eyes realize real lies."
• Emma Gibbens — Rhys's biz partner in creating "Acknowledge This," and excellent thought leader in her own right
• Condom Man — an Australian 1990s safe-sex superhero I had never heard of. Motto: Don't be shame, be game. Strong contender for a tattoo or a workshop title
• The Eagles, "Take It Easy" — for reasons that will become clear