The RegenNarration

This is an excerpt from episodes 92 and 93, parts 1 and 2 of Songlines: Combining the most powerful knowledge systems ever known. We pick up the conversation with Lynne Kelly, as she shares some of the incredible stories of how schools and universities have been embedding her work (think law and medicine degrees with students memorising 88 constellations!). Then she runs us through how it works, how this has transformed her understanding of Indigenous cultures and Country, and how this is just scratching the surface of Songlines, and what it could mean for all of us right now.

In the back half of this excerpt, we pick up with Margo Neale sharing some of the transformative decade-long journey bringing the Songlines exhibition to life. We go on to talk about some of the nature of Songlines, where everything has a place, and why the elders are trying to help all people feel they are part of this story. As Margo puts it, no one can live anywhere if you only know your stories of the last 250 years.

Title slide: cover of the pictorial companion to the exhibition, by Margo Neale.

Music:
By Jeremiah Johnson.

Find more:
You can hear the rest of our conversations in the main episodes, ‘Songlines: Combining the most powerful knowledge systems ever known’ – Part 1 and Part 2 wherever you get your podcasts (you’ll see some photos on those episode websites too).

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

This extra to episode 93 features more of Margo Neale, co-curator of the extraordinary exhibition Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters, and co-author of the best-selling book Songlines: The power and the promise. Margo and I decided to keep rolling with our conversation at some length. I found it to be profound and wonderful stuff, so I wanted to share it all with you.

We start here with the transformative effect the exhibition has had on her. And how it has affected the communities who led it. We go on to chat about how Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Songlines embrace technology – but don’t lose themselves in it. The tech is harnessed to rehumanise, not dehumanise. And this kicks off a whole other conversation about Songlines - involving some incredible stories of wayfinding, Tyson Yunkaporta’s railing against the myth of primitivity, and Margo’s dancing troupe of the 60s.

Title slide: Artwork from the post by Margo, featuring some great photos, on how the communities were central to the success of Songlines.

Music:
By Jeremiah Johnson.

Find more:
You can hear the main episode with Margo, ‘Songlines: Combining the most powerful knowledge systems ever known, Part 2’.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Like our previous guest, Lynne Kelly, in part 1 of this series on Songlines, Margo Neale is a pioneer. Margo is of Aboriginal & Irish descent, from the Kulin nation with Gumbayngirr clan connections. And she’s the lead curator of the extraordinary exhibition Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters, that has made such an incredible mark on Australia, and is about start its high-profile world tour. At the same time, the First Knowledges book series Margo is bringing together has started with an instant best-seller - Songlines: The Power & the Promise, which Margo co-wrote with Lynne.

The second book in the series, on design, is out now, and the following one (by Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe) steps straight into the thick of what’s become known in Australia as ‘The Dark Emu debate’ (triggered by Pascoe’s book). That’s the pointy end of our reckoning with our still largely unconscious Western colonial worldview. And it’s doing it in a way that might just help us finally transcend entrenched feuds, and reveal to more of us the enormous benefits on offer in combining our respective knowledge systems - the most powerful knowledge systems ever known.

This is the nub of Margo and Lynne’s pioneering work. There’s something missing in our reconciliation processes, they say, and by extension with our understanding of how to be fully human in the world, intrinsic to regenerating country as the source of all life.

Margo Neale is Head of the National Museum of Australia’s Indigenous Knowledges Curatorial Centre. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Australian National University’s Centre for Indigenous History. In addition to former fame as a touring go-go dancer!

This chat was recorded at Kimberley Cottages & its Windjana Wellness Centre on 23 August 2021, with Margo at home near Braidwood NSW.

Title slide: Margo Neale (source). Find more photos on the episode website.

Music:
The System, by the Public Opinion Afro Orchestra.

Closing tune by Jeremiah Johnson.

Find more:
Tune into the Extra to this episode with Margo

And to Part 1 of this series with Lynne Kelly

Margo Neale

Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters

Songlines pictorial companion book to the exhibition, by Margo

Post by Margo with great photos on how the communities were central to it all

The First Knowledges book series inc. Songlines.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Lynne Kelly is now often referred to as The Memory Whisperer. Amidst great personal trial and self-doubt, she stumbled on a series of insights that are revolutionising Western understandings of ancient knowledge systems. And with the likewise brilliant Indigenous woman Professor Margo Neale, they are showing how the combination of Western knowledge systems with reinvigorated ancient ones, is where the deep promise lies for enabling the regeneration of life on this planet.

Late Night Live is one of Australia’s longest running radio programs on the ABC. It’s hosted by an Australian legend across media, film, the arts, and now even regenerative agriculture, with his wife Patrice Newell. His name is Phil Adams. And late last year, I was gripped by an interview he conducted with Lynne and Margo on release of their book, Songlines: The Power and The Promise. That in turn, stemmed from the Indigenous-led exhibition taking the country, and soon the world, by storm – Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters.

Phil said of that exhibition that he’s never seen anything of comparable quality anywhere on earth. Margo Neale was the lead curator of that exhibition, alongside the Indigenous communities involved. It was this chat with Phil Adams that also alerted me to the exhibition opening in Perth soon after. We managed to get along just before heading north, and have joined Phil’s chorus. I’ve since read the book by Margo and Lynne, and been blown away.

Phil wished they’d allocated an hour to this on his program. Well, let’s enact that wish here. And then some. We’ll speak with Margo in part 2 of this Songlines series. Today, we feature my conversation with Lynne, on how her transformed life is now helping bridge non-Indigenous understanding of the most powerful knowledge system ever known. And how her personal practice of it has transformed her life – from becoming a national memory championship title holder, to learning languages at will, well into her 60s. And that’s just scratching the surface of Songlines, and what it could mean for all of us right now.

This conversation was recorded online (from inside the store room of the Exmouth Yacht Club – thanks Cathy & Denise!) on 8 July 2021, with Lynne speaking from her home in Castlemaine, Victoria.

Please do jump on board as a subscribing patron of the podcast, via the new Patreon page, become part of a wonderful community of supportive listeners, and help keep this podcast going!

Title slide: Lynne Kelly (supplied).

See the episode website for a few photos related to this conversation.

Music:
Faraway Castle, by Rae Howell & Sunwrae.

Closing tune by Jeremiah Johnson.

Find more:
Lynne Kelly, her books, blog, photos and more

The book, Songlines: The Power and the Promise

The exhibition, Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

The Patreon page for The RegenNarration is now live! And from here, the podcast goes weekly, with some brewing plans that I hope you might support. It’s actually been a pretty long and deeply felt process to get to this point. So I wanted to share some of that journey with you here – some of why I’m doing this, where it’s come from, and what’s coming on next.

For those who just want to cut to the chase and become one of the first subscribing patrons of The RegenNarration, you’ll find the link below.  And thank you!

As I mentioned last week, since starting this podcast four years ago, listenership has doubled and even tripled year on year. There are now thousands of listeners to each episode. Plus those on a couple of radio stations picking up the podcast. And with that has come the wonderful support of 20 donors – 10 of whom have committed to treasured monthly support, and a few to extremely generous gifts. Thanks to you, this podcast has been able to make it this far, and you’ve shown me that a listener-supported model for this podcast is possible.

With much gratitude to those listeners who’ve been gently at me to do this, the Patreon page for The RegenNarration offers another way you can support the podcast. And a way, it seems, that many people enjoy supporting podcasts. I hope you’ll find it that way here too. My hope is that the Patreon page will offer a way for a broader base of listeners to support the podcast, at whatever level you can, to sure up its viability, enable it to keep going, and to enable more of us to connect with each other too.

As for going weekly with the podcast, there are just so many terrific stories I feel like we could do with hearing more of right now. I’ve also been feeling increasingly that we still need to sway the balance out there - more in favour of the ‘news’ we really need, rather than the news we still tend to get.

If that sounds like something worth backing in, please do jump on board as a subscribing patron, become part of a wonderful community of supporting listeners, and help keep the podcast going!

Music:
Stones & Bones, by Owls of the Swamp.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

This is an excerpt from episode 90 featuring the Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam, Marieke van Doorninck, on how the City is working to become the world’s first ‘doughnut economy’.

We pick up our conversation with 20 minutes or so to go, starting with how people are engaging with the City’s doughnut economy strategy. We go on to talk about a few ways the work is being done, including some projects and initiatives under way, or being talked about.

Marieke brings depth to the notion of a circular economy – beyond just the technical changes – and talks of some of the system changes we need, and how we might achieve them. And as even the Biden administration looks into Doughnut Economics, how can we ensure it maintains its integrity and doesn’t become another target for greenwashing?

Title slide: from the cover picture of City of Amsterdam documentation on their engaging with Doughnut Economics (supplied).

Music:
Faraway Castle, by Rae Howell & Sunwrae.

Find more:
You can hear the rest of our conversation in the main episode, ‘Becoming the World’s First Doughnut Economy, with Amsterdam Deputy Mayor Marieke van Doorninck’.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Marieke van Doorninck is Deputy Mayor of the City of Amsterdam, the first city to formally adopt Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics as their compass for human progress. At this podcast's beginning, Kate Raworth talked with me about her best-selling book Doughnut Economics, proposing an economic model fit for the 21st century - one that meets the needs of all within the means of the planet. She calls the doughnut a playfully serious approach to framing that challenge. And it has inspired the imagination of people everywhere.

Pope Francis calls Doughnut Economics “our species’ compass for the journey” to a sustainable future. A chapter of David Attenborough’s latest book is dedicated to it. And certainly, Kate Raworth’s episodes have been among this podcast’s most listened to.

Due to the overwhelming response to her book, she’s created the DEAL (the Doughnut Economics Action Lab). It helps cities, communities, states, provinces, countries and institutions everywhere adopt Doughnut Economics as a reality, scaled and tailored to their circumstances. In the wake of COVID-19, Amsterdam was the first city to formally adopt the Doughnut last year.

In many ways, that seems fitting too. A Time Magazine article earlier this year started with this: ‘In 1602, in a house on a narrow alley, a merchant began selling shares in the nascent Dutch East India Company. In doing so, he paved the way for the creation of the first stock exchange—and the capitalist global economy that has transformed life on earth.”

It then quoted a 30 year old woman coordinating the community movement called the Amsterdam Doughnut Coalition: “Now I think we’re one of the first cities in a while to start questioning this system. Is it actually making us healthy and happy? What do we want? Is it really just economic growth?”’

This is a whole city deciding to do something different. And a government responding.

This chat was recorded online with Marieke in her office on Thursday 19 July 2021.

With a brief message from me on some new podcast developments.

Title slide: Marieke van Doorninck (supplied).

Music:
Faraway Castle, by Rae Howell & Sunwrae.

Find more:
Marieke van Doorninck

The City of Amsterdam’s ‘doughnut economy’

Doughnut Economics Action Lab

The article I wrote for The Conversation on all this that went viral, even gaining the interest of Sydney talk back

My conversation with Kate Raworth back for episode 3

Kate’s keynote from episode 46, & Robert Kennedy’s 1968 speech excerpt, that featured at the top of this episode.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

This is an excerpt from episodes 88 and 89, parts 1 and 2 of A Native Grains and Native Mills Resurgence. It features around 15 minutes of each episode, patched together with Rob’s closing lines from the Extra to episode 88.

So first up, you’ll hear Rob Pekin and Gaala Watson from the legendary social enterprise Food Connect. We chat about how Gaala and Rob came together here, and the connection between social enterprise and Aboriginal systems of governance. Then we go on to explore how their early experiments with a ‘custodial enterprise’ model are reaping big rewards – from a change to their leasing model, to this brilliant milling and baking initiative.

In the back half of this excerpt, you’ll hear Ian Congdon and Courtney Young, the young farmers pivotal to this changing of the face of farming, and the food and economic systems generally. We talk of their vision, and their experiences of the growing demand for what they’re up to. We chat about their doubts, how incredibly this story has come together, and their reflections on where to take it from here.

Title slide: hand chiselling the new locally made mill (supplied).

Music:
Faraway Castle, by Rae Howell & Sunwrae.

Find more:
You can hear the rest of our conversations in the main episodes, ‘A Native Grains and Native Mills Resurgence’ – Part 1 and Part 2 (you'll see some photos on those episode web pages too).

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Welcome to Part 2 of A Native Grains & Native Mills Resurgence, featuring the young farmers changing the face of farming in Australia. Ian Congdon, Courtney Young and family are farmers, mill makers, artists and business people, and they’re exploring how all this connects with culture, creativity, and the regeneration of country and community. If you haven’t yet listened to last week’s episode with Gaala Watson and Rob Pekin from Food Connect, the trailblazing social enterprise and legendary community food hub in Brisbane, no fear. You can listen in reverse order, as it were. So given you’re here, stick around for this incredible story.

It's a serendipitous chain of events deep and wide across Country, that includes connections with elders, native grains off Bruce Pascoe’s farm, this podcast, and this young farming couple who wondered if they could build the first Australian mill in who knows how long, and how that might help leverage the sorts of systemic changes so many of us would like to see.

Join Courtney, Ian and I, on what happened to be settlement day for their own farm, and would you believe, the day they finished their first mill!

Title slide: Ian, Courtney and family (supplied). You can see some other terrific photos on the episode webpage.

This conversation was recorded on Monday 28 June 2021.

Music:
The System, by the Public Opinion Afro Orchestra.

Faraway Castle, by Rae Howell & Sunwrae.

Find more:
Woodstock Flour

Courtney’s website

Tune into Part 1 of this series, A Native Grains and Native Mills Resurgence, featuring Gaala Watson and Rob Pekin from Food Connect

You can hear my conversation with Tyson Yunkaporta, that Courtney refers to, on episode 70

And as it happens, that one was just after my conversation with MarkTaylor from Miller & Baker 

And finally, hats off to Andrew Heyn from New American Stonemills and Don Hearn from the Noteworthy charity, the organiser of the Angie McMahon gig at Little Pork Deli, Barham.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

This is a brief extra to episode 88 with Robert Pekin, founder of the award-winning social enterprise Food Connect. It features 10 minutes where Rob and I continued on briefly after Gaala left. It's well worth the listen for some profound reflections on Rob’s part.

Title slide: Robert Pekin (supplied).

Music:
By Jeremiah Johnson.

Find more:
Tune into the main episode, ‘A Native Grains & Native Mills Resurgence, Part 1: Gaala Watson and Rob Pekin on custodial enterprise’.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!