The Other Others

A peek into our wanjau process of collective sense making, applying the Ko-design methodology we've been working on for a couple of years to a textual analysis of medical disinformation.

I've recorded more on this topic (medical disinformation) this month, but the platform AI keeps taking it down - probably because of keywords and the incapacity of machines to know the difference between bunk and debunk. Anyway, my recent research has led me to believe that those radicalised online may be experiencing a similar ontological and psychological condition to displaced Indigenous people, and may benefit from the same treatment protocols Tracey Westerman devised for Aboriginal patients who are heartsick for Country.

Sara Kian Judge, Yuin woman and artist, discusses how autism helps her work with bats and sharks and see things as the Upside Down People do. We decide it's no longer 'too soon' to take the piss out of Steve Irwin, and reflect on taking responsibility for our more destructive batshit behaviours, while allowing Country to nurture our gifts.

Brother Arpad Maksay catches up to reflect on our yarn in my new book, and see where we've grown to since then when in comes to violence, public violence, and what it means to train for violence in service of a community, and whether it is possible to do this without ableism and a little bit of soft eugenics. Brother Arlo Davis drops by at the end to add some more to this, on Native storytelling and governance, and some knowledge he picked up at the latest Alaskan Federation of Natives gathering.

(Double Interrupted) So my friend Tammi Jonas from the Food Sovereignty mob has helped me start reading again and to work on my interrupting problem. I did okay here, and managed to record a whole episode without stepping all over another person's tongue. We talk about peasants and Naomi Klein's book Doppelganger, because she might be coming on our crappy little podcast soon.

Kisani Upward, Gamilaroi woman, is doing some research on Indigenous responses to natural disasters, specifically bushfires, while I work on my bad habit of interrupting (mostly by excusing it as a 'cultural thing')... Kisani convinces me that the feeling of being homesick while you're at home is not a first world problem, but a 'coping with ontological fluidity' thing.

Guy Ritani (Permaqueer activist, Maori science communicator) asks me, "Any whale stuff coming up for you lately?" Hell yes! A hard yarn about radioactive whales, skepticism vs cultural knowledge, what is real vs what is true, trauma, making sense, and discerning between spirit and bullshit. There are conflicts, maintaining both identity and intellectual rigor in this howling red-faced modernity. No apologies for sound quality - don't be such a spoiled techno-brat! Suck it up and pretend it's the 70's again....

There is more to the disinformation being deployed in Australia's referendum (for an Indigenous voice to parliament) than meets the eye. This episode is something of a diatribe. I'm tying together all our true stories of resistance and putting a firewall between them and the fantasies of white supremacists and disgruntled settlers who are co-opting the language and Lore of our ongoing occupation and struggle, to secure our support in extreme libertarian radicalisation and stochastic terrorism in Australia and abroad. These things have been under-reported, and you can't imagine how extensive and pervasive these networks of chaos are.

Tammi Jonas from the Australian Food Sovereignty Network despairs with me a while as we try to figure out why half our friends went crazy over Covid lockdowns and are now marching with white supremacists, promoting soft-eugenics and even calling vaccinated Aboriginal people 'pharma-colonists' who are pursuing genocidal policies against 'heterodox' settlers.

AFSA: https://www.pozible.com/project/eating-democracy/comments