Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Yeah, the country itself does speak to you, and I think that there was a direct relationship between me and the aboriginal people because there was a very clear acknowledgement that the country is in charge.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Welcome to supernormalize, the podcast, where we challenge the conventional break boundaries and normalize the seemingly supernatural. Join me, CJ Barnaby, in the liminalist space to explore less charted realms of existence and to unravel the mysteries of life. Experience each episode I'm blessed with the opportunity to talk to regular people from across the world, where they openly share their understanding and wisdom in service to others. If you're looking to upgrade your life, you've come to the right place. Be sure to like and subscribe and I'll bring you great transforming conversations each week. My treasured viewers and listeners. If you have a life story or healing modality or unique knowledge that you'd love to share, reach out to me at supernormalizedroton me. Let's together embrace acceptance of the supernatural and unusual, what it really is completely normal.
[00:01:55] Speaker C: Today on super normalized we have Susan, who's a person who lived in northwestern Australia amongst the native people, native Australians. As a part of her job, she went out there, first of all, I think following her true love at the time when she got married and wasn't expected to be out there for too long, but found herself in a role working with not for profit and for profit organizations and ended up being there for 17 years. The land touched her in a really deep sort of way, and her understanding of time changed and her understanding of the consciousness of the planet changed as well. Today's story is about that and also her understanding of how her detailing work helps people too. So it's an interesting conversation I'm sure you'll enjoy on for the show.
Welcome to supernormalize, Susan. Susan, you've had a lot of experiences of the australian outback because of your work and your dealings with our natives, native peoples here in Australia. And when we had a bit of a discussion about that before when you were visiting, it really touched me because of your experiences with the desert and how it actually changed you as a person. And then also, you were also talking about your work as a DJ and how you like to use that to raise consciousness, and I thought, I'm going to bring you in the show.
So welcome.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: Thanks so much, Chris. Thanks for the welcome.
Interested in my journey? Yeah, cheers. All of those things are true. Different words that I would use, but they're all true. So yeah, I'm really so blessed to have had a real spectrum of experiences that have been enhanced by some extremes. The desert is definitely one of them. You really taught me a lot of things. I'm blessed.
[00:04:00] Speaker C: Excellent. Excellent. So what happened to you out there? I mean, but first of all. Okay, maybe we should find out more about you. So tell us about Susan and what Susan does.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: Yeah, so I, you know, I was a kind of a cheeky city girl from Sydney and kind of grew up, did a lot of traveling early. And so I was open to new experiences and fairly confident.
And, you know, I could carry myself, okay, in a few different arenas. And at a point in my kind of midlife, I fell in love, got married, and ended up in a whole new world, which was northwest Western Australia. And I committed to this new frame of being alive called being married, which all happened out there in the desert. And so those two things came to me at the same time. And as I appreciated the desert, it felt very much like, to me, like a really alien place. And I travelled quite a bit, so I kind of knew how to do places where I felt out of my comfort zone or didn't speak the language or didn't know my way around or couldn't understand what the maps read. So I kind of approached it like it was a whole new country. And that turned out to be the right way to appreciate far north west Western Australia because it is not like anywhere else on earth. It's a really unique environment that teaches lessons that can only be learned in that place. And that opened my heart to lots and lots and lots of different understandings that are unique to that place.
[00:05:48] Speaker C: Right. So you were. You were to say, like, you're more of a normal sort of person before you got out there and. And didn't have a. You weren't touched by nature per se, because you're living in a city by comparison.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I kind of grew up on the. On the fringes of a national park. And I used to run into them, the park after school every day. So I had a love of nature and I had a love of the sounds of nature. But my whole experience of nature was born of, you know, the beach and the trees.
And any real interactive interaction was framed by those things. Even when I traveled, I gravitated towards the water, the beach, the trees and, you know, that forests, those kinds of experiences. It hadn't occurred to me to lean into a desert experience at all. And so when I ended up in the Pilbara and when I went there, I was following my husband, who was my new husband, who was working out there. I actually thought I was going to a suburb of Perth. So I was kind of a cappuccino sipping, opinionated, white, liberal, democratic, you know, Sydney suburban, you know, I traveled internationally and I was a bit of a corporate beast. And I was far too busy to pay attention to where my new husband was working. And I actually thought it was a suburb of Perth. And I remember being horrified that I had to get on another airplane when I got to Perth to go to wherever it was that he was and calling the travel agent going, what do you mean, another airplane? So I ended up stepping off the airplane and it was kind of 40 degrees, and I stepped off the airplane and went, whoa, we're not in Kansas anymore. Heck, this is a little bit unusual. And I was right. It started there. So, you know, there's a reason.
There's a reason that the desert doesn't have any trees. It's really hot and there's not a lot of water.
Before I left the airport, I'd work that out.
[00:07:55] Speaker C: Yeah, right. And so did you know, stepping into that zone that you experienced in the desert, how did that change you mentally when you realized how different it was?
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it was really quite profound. So the colors are different, for a start. And your appreciation of what is beautiful changes quite dramatically so that, you know, those aqua hues of the beach and the lakes and the. And those kinds of things and the tree vistas and dappled light through the trees and, you know, these are familiar backdrops of beauty that we have in our minds. And so going out there where there pretty much weren't trees and the trees that were there were photosynthesis, synthesizing light and water completely differently, and therefore had a different colour and a different shape to them and were kind of hardy.
And the vast majority of the land actually was denuded of trees. So that whole veil that the earth has of trees was. The petticoat was lifted.
And there I saw the, you know, for miles and miles and miles, as far as the eye could see, how this very unique rock formations were behaving. And they are behaving in a way that is completely different to the way they behave on the east coast of Australia and in most other places where there's limestone and sandstone and these much more younger geologies. So it really shifted my internal compass about what's under that, my feet.
And it also started to shift my idea of what is alive, you know, in my mind and the way that I comprehended the world, the fish and the trees and the birds and the bears and the kangaroos were alive.
And when I started to appreciate the incredible beauty and the depth of what's underneath our feet, I started to deeply appreciate that the rocks are alive and underneath the rocks are alive and that the timeframe of life is now much longer than a being with a heartbeat. And so it really started to shift the internal comprehension of time and my place in time and my ability to comprehend what is beauty, apart from new colors and new vistas and being able to see through air that is unpolluted and a whole range of things. Just watching the sunset every day on the west coast and seeing the incredible sky show every night without interruption taught me a lot about color and a lot about space and a lot of that expansion, and it just reframed my appreciation of Australia, but also what is beautiful and that the earth is alive. And I started to deeply connect to the earth itself and the life that lives on top of it.
[00:11:40] Speaker C: Right. You said back there that it's like you realize the depth of the experience of life had changed so dramatically because of your experience of the ground underneath. It sounds like you had a deep, deep, deep connection there, and within that, it changed your whole cosmology. So what did it draw you to do? I mean, did it make you feel like behaving in a different way or in your relationship to the earth?
[00:12:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I was really keen. You know, I'd been an urban lasso, and I was really keen to take every opportunity to immerse myself in it.
So every person that offered the backseat of a four wheel drive, I said yes to. And I worked out how to pitch a tent and how to sleep in a swag and how to pack an esky and how to do all the things that you can do to immerse yourself, to go out there and have a look at it. Every gorge is different. Every waterhole is different.
I bought myself a kayak, and I would sit on it and just go for miles and miles and miles. And there's fabulous stories about me getting lost in places that no one is ever going to find. You definitely on a kayak to just go out and see and go, because it's extraordinary. The variety is extraordinary. You kind of have this idea that you understand what the coast might look like until you go and have a look at it. And it is astoundingly different. Every time you turn a corner, you are surprised with, how the hell did that thing get there? And why is everything else jagged and the thing in the middle is round, and why is everything red and that thing's actually grey. How come that, like, there are. Every time you. You appreciate a new part of an island or a coastline, it's full of surprises and so it kind of draws you in to go and have a look and learn something else about, oh, my gosh, you can't anticipate how nature is going to surprise you, so it becomes a little bit addictive to go and have a look and let nature kind of slap you in your face and kind of say, so you thought you knew. Check this out. Whoa, there's a big boulder there. How did that get there? My God. Did it roll down? It can't roll down. There's nothing. Oh, my God. Where did that. You know, there's a million questions and there's only a couple of answers. So it's a really interesting, fascinating lesson that you don't know, you truly don't know, and that time is infinitely more complex and longer than we're able to comprehend. I think one of the things I'm fond of saying is that if we're able to comprehend the aboriginal, unbroken culture here, we're fortunate as Australians that our First nations people are the longest continuous culture in the world. And, you know, the oldest set of artifacts that have been found thus far from the Northern Territory and there's 63,000 years old, and then they found another group that was 47,000 years old and then, you know, they find the rest. So, you know, that's a phenomenal amount of time.
[00:15:19] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: If you kind of look into history and you squint a bit, the pyramids are 3000.
So 63,000 starts to bend your comprehension of what is time.
And if you're able to, you know, when you're having conversations with people who are able to recall ideas and concepts that are stretching back that far, I think a bit of your brain melts and it drops down the back of your neck like, it's a bit like understanding. You know, if you really can truly comprehend, you know, that we are.
We're orbiting around the sun at the edge of a relatively small galaxy that is one of thousands of galaxies, that is one of millions of galaxies that are within us. And if your brain truly comprehends what that is, I think there's a bit of a snap and half of it falls out because it is outside of. It's certainly outside of my mental comprehension to be dealing with the minutiae that my brain can deal with. I can kind of see out there and I can use the words to describe it. But if I ever go from here, the minutiae to there, I think my brain will just collapse and you kind of get that feeling. I got that feeling out there in the desert that the earth was teaching me something about eons and ages.
As I was comprehending, you know, almost feeling the earth moving beneath my feet and drawing me to a deeper understanding about this phenomenal earth that we call home and the human experiment that we are, it really taught me to listen harder and to appreciate things from a different perspective. And that lesson came directly from the earth itself.
[00:17:17] Speaker C: It sounds like that you've having experiences where it seems like almost the world around you is. Has allowed you to step into a liminalist sort of space where things change right before your eyes and in an unexpected ways to lead you on that path to a deeper self discovery. So, wow, that's very cool.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: I think it does for all of us, even if we don't notice it. We kind of go from kindergarten to high school and go, oh, I'm going on a journey. But really it's fundamentally completely different. And you have to kind of shift gears and, you know, if you're open to it, every time you step off an airplane or every time you kind of put yourself in a different environment, you need to come up with a completely different lexicon of where am I and how am I? How do I fit in here? So I think traveling early, which I did, I traveled for about eleven years before I. Before this experience overseas. So I was open to being comfortable in the uncomfortable. And that helped a lot for me to be open to what am I seeing here? And I remember looking at the colors and going, oh, that's not very beautiful. And within a week I was in love.
And I distinctly remember, because there's no. There's very few trees and there are these exceptional rocks, boulders. And I distinctly remember being sitting around a fire with somebody who was kind of annoyed with all the rocks in the way and arcing up. And they're not just rocks, you know, I was defending them with so much enthusiasm because I'd fallen in love with them. So, yeah, the country itself does speak to you. And I think that there was a. There was a direct relationship between me and the aboriginal people because there was. There's a very clear acknowledgement that the country is in charge and that their culture and their authority and their ability to live and have a cultural authority comes directly from appreciating the country and comes from. Directly from the country itself.
And I can see that. I can see that. And I kind of see that for all of us, whether or not we're aboriginal people, is that the authority to be here and to even hold a position on anything comes from the fact that the earth itself is hosting us and teaching us.
[00:19:53] Speaker C: Well, that's a powerful message in itself.
So you were doing some work out there. What were you doing?
[00:20:02] Speaker A: So, yeah, I didn't realize that I'd be out there as long as I was. I thought it was kind of a six week stint and then I thought it would turn into a six months stint and I would be back in the Cappuccino society of Bondi beach. But that didn't happen. So I ended up accepting the poison chalice of going to work for aboriginal people and wait, what do you say?
[00:20:33] Speaker C: Poison chalice?
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Because no one in their right mind will do that. It's a tough gig, you know, it's, you know, I kind of was familiar with the MBA and the lawyers and the Collins street and the marketplace army of smart people.
And I remember looking over my shoulder and thinking, in comparison to working on country for not for profits with aboriginal people, that entire economic framework is for pussies.
I really, you know, it requires all of that and a whole heap more. There's, there's an idea that the people that work with aboriginal people are either misfits, mavericks or missionaries. And I think I might have been a bit of all three, actually. There is a, you know, it does, it requires all of the skills that you need on Wall street and a whole heap of other skills, many of which come from the aboriginal people themselves.
And you're of course, doing all this in a remote place which is inhospitable. I think that's probably one of the things to appreciate is that clearly I love the country out there. But there is a reason why places are remote, and the basic reason is because they're inhospitable.
You know, the majority of people in Europe, everywhere, they moved to where it was comfortable and where agriculture was easier than up the hill over the run. So these remote places to operate first world entities is tough going. Tough going.
So, you know, I. But I had drunk deeply from leadership theory and I'd been trained by some of the best and worked alongside some of the best. And I could see the top of the hill from where I was. So when I was out there and I was given the opportunity to do some work in social justice, I grabbed it with both hands because it was a case of, if not now, when, you know, it's all well and good to march and it's all well and good to put a hand in the sand, and it's all well and good to watch the news and go, mmm, that's right, they should do that. But when you're out there and you get an opportunity to do it, I didn't have it in me to pass the cup, so I took it and it was full of poison. You know, it was a disaster. The entity was a mess and every conceivable problem was happening with it. But I was passionate about establishing a beachhead of positivity and establishing a new narrative about success that not for profit organizations can be successful, they can win, they can be profitable, they can win the award winning, they can. It can be fun to work for them, you can aspire to work from them, completely change the narrative. And so I went out there as what I think we now call a disruptive leader, and pretty much from a leadership perspective, went out there with a baseball bat and started swinging at stuff because it needed to be broken, it needed to be changed. There was, you know, generations of failure and poor results and poor expectations and dependence and blame, and it was a cycle of not a lot of things to be proud of.
So I was helped a lot by the fact that I looked like this.
And so no one was expecting a cappuccino sipping woman from Sydney who'd never worked in Western Australia, let alone for aboriginal people, to have what it takes to cut the mustard. So that really helped me because people were expecting very little. So while they were chuckling about how disastrous this was going to be and how entertaining I was in my short skirts, because it's bloody hot in my short skirts with my diamond rings and how everybody thought that this was the biggest joke in the world, I got the job done.
So by the time they noticed that I was winning the awards, it was too late and we started to turn things around. So it was a really interesting journey. And that journey continues because I still work with them and they're still doing amazing work and still winning awards, and I'm really proud of the legacy and they carry it themselves now, which I think is a great sign. I think it was, it was a very wise tibetan, I think, that said that one of the signs of greatness is that the people that you work with believe that they did it themselves.
And I think I, you know, I really tried very hard for the legacy to not require me anymore, and I'm.
[00:26:13] Speaker C: Proud of that 17 years.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: I know, right. Who was.
What was I thinking?
[00:26:23] Speaker C: Well, like you said, you didn't expect to be out there for that long, and all of a sudden, it's. Right.
[00:26:28] Speaker A: No. Right. And I kind of. I was ready to come. Come back to. To the east coast after about five years. But I had accepted this chalice, and it was a roller coaster, and it was traveling very fast, and it was important, very important to me that this was a beachhead, that other people would continue, that this would continue that if it was another. What I used to call the Susan show. If it was the Susan show, I don't need to do it in the desert. I could do it somewhere comfortable.
So it needed to be something that had substance. And in order for it to have substance, I needed to train people to come behind me, and that required a lot more time and energy. And so it. And it started to work.
So, you know, finding people to come behind me was, was, was, you know, a challenge.
Not only is it an uncomfortable and a very unique place, but you think, we've got housing issues in the cities out there, where are you going to live?
[00:27:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Alone. If you come out there and you've got all the skills and you've got your MBA and you're an accountant or a lawyer and you're willing to go and do that work, where the hell are they going to live?
And so there's a whole range of issues that needed to be resolved before I was in a position to be able to step aside. And so that did take quite a long time.
[00:28:11] Speaker C: Tell us about your understanding of welcome to country.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: Well, I think that, for me, it's a double edged. So the first thing. The first thing that I think about is that we are welcome to country quite broadly everywhere we turn these days. And so I think we. It helps us all to know that the ideas of First nations people in Australia, we've been welcomed to.
So I think that's really important is that it's not somebody else's ideas. It's not somebody else's problem. We've been welcomed into this thought room, and so we should feel comfortable to walk in and being in the idea room of what is first nations in Australia. The other thing is that the welcome to country is a very, very powerful, ancient freedom instrument. This is one of the things that I learned over and over again from First nations people, is that these instruments of welcome to country help us understand whose country we're on.
Not just anybody can welcome you to country. And when you listen to a welcome to country, the person who stands up will tell you under whose authority they're standing there, and that generally will articulate the country that you're being welcomed to. They're not welcoming you to the whole of the country. They're generally welcoming you to a specific part of the country because that's the bit they've got the authority for.
So in there is this really important idea is that nobody's actually speaking for the whole nation when they're welcoming you to country. They're standing up and saying, this country, the Aora nation, or the Butchala nation, or the Gubbi gubbi, or the Nalama nation or whichever nation they're talking from, I'm welcoming you to this country. And so it's about defining that there is an edge to their authority. And so by defining that edge, they're saying that I have the authority here, but I don't have it over there, but I'm going to use my authority from here to welcome you to this country. And that does two things. It identifies this country and not this country.
And it also helps you understand who's in charge.
And can I say, it costs not a cent. Right.
And the more it happens, the more it sets that authority up. And this has been going on for, can I say, tens of thousands of years.
And this old cultural practice is very serious. You do not go on to somebody else's country unless you let them know and you have the authority to be there. This was kind of about, you know, making sure that the cultural authority of a country knew who was on it. You know, we didn't. They didn't want to have raiding parties, taking their fertile women away, for example, or if there were only, you know, 20 bands of kangaroos, they didn't want one whole band to go missing. Right. So it was very important for them to look after their resources, and it was also really important to show respect that, you know, whose country it is. So what used to happen is that a group of people who wanted to come to country would get to the edge and stop there and camp there, and someone would see the fire, and they'd go out there and they'd say, simply wait until they were acknowledged. That's showing respect.
So then there was, you know, that greatly reduced tribal issues about boundaries.
So I think we can see this idea about respecting a boundary, not arguing whether or not it should be there, just respecting that it's there has enabled an incredible amount of peace in this land.
And I think we can look to Europe and we can see what's happening, that Mister Putin didn't really respect that boundary.
And what happened? Well, hell broke loose. And we saw some major issues about somebody who popped over the boundary to a music festival, didn't respect that boundary, and all hell broke loose. Right. So this idea about respecting the boundaries is a really powerful idea, and it's in its contained very graciously in the idea of welcome to country.
And I think it's also helpful for us to understand that, you know, things haven't necessarily gone fabulously well for the First nations people of Australia, but yet they are continuing to welcome us. There isn't a will you please bugger off ceremony.
Right.
But there could be. There could be some people up there with a heap of attitude, but we don't see that. We see a very gracious welcome to our country.
And every time they do it, we understand whose country we're on. So now when I talk to you about the butula or the Aora nation, we kind of have an understanding who those people are. We can say it. We know what I'm talking about. Those words didn't exist ten years ago.
But since we've been doing welcome to country, these ideas are becoming stronger and stronger, and every time they do it, they're reinforcing the authority of the country. It's very wise. Very wise.
[00:34:05] Speaker C: Right, right. So how does that also relate to. I mean, your understanding relate to native title and what that actually means.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: Right. So native, you know, behind that comes this idea of native title. So, you know, I think the thing for.
For us to understand is that native title is a little bit of a spin doctors expression, because there is no title in native title. Right. So you, and I would understand title relates to who owns. There's a piece of paper which is the title of who owns a bit of land. No, there is no title in native title. So what native title is actually about is that mining organizations essentially needed to have unbreakable access to core product.
So they needed to know that their access to their core ore was not going to be taken away from them before they invested a gazillion dollars into building a thing. Right. And this has happened in other places. So, for example, in Russia, they just said, that's mine now. So all these organizations, american organizations had built this giant infrastructure in oil and gas, and the russian government said, mine, taking it from you. So they didn't want to do that in Australia because the investment is for phenomenal in size. So they invested close to three decades in articulating who to write the check to.
And so the process of trying to understand who to write the check to. So the government had the land. And there was this real question about. But hang on, the aboriginal people were here before the government. If they ever go to the human Rights Commission, we're in trouble here. We need to establish who to write the check to so that we can never be kicked out of our mind, because it's a big mind.
And so they went through this process of establishing. How do you spell the name of the guy to write the check to? And we call that native title. So native title is not what they call fungible. It means that you can't take it down to the land office and sell the freaking thing.
It's not what they call fungible. You can't exchange it for money.
What native title means is that this group of people who have this bloodline or this language group, this group of people which can be dnaed, used to own this land, but they don't anymore. They can't have the land, they can't have what's underneath it, they can't have what's growing on top of it. But what they can have is the right to negotiate to these buggers over here that are about to blow it up. Now, you may or you may not win that negotiation. That's up to you. Get busy off your pot. So here's an organization which is called a prescribed body corporate, which is basically an entity that can negotiate on behalf of that group of people.
And you go, and you all go, you negotiate with this mining company that wants to blow it up. Good luck.
So that's essentially what happens in order to establish that you're the group that's about to go and negotiate with the dude who's going to blow it up for you. You need to establish to basically to the Westminster system of beyond reasonable doubt that your group of people have continuously, culturally used this land, this map of land, for 300 years.
So that requires you to be able to prove it up until the point that the white fellas arrived, but just to make sure that you didn't steal it the day they got here, you have to prove that you had it 100 years before the white fellows arrived. 300 years, unbroken use.
If you can do that, you can get exclusive native title, which means that you can go and have a chat to the guy who wants to blow it up. That's what it means. You can't sell it. It doesn't mean that you can go and get money from the government to buy houses or anything like that. It just means you used to own it. That's what it means.
But what's now happening as that develops is that we're starting to be able to spell these language groups. They're starting to commodify. They're starting to win some of these negotiations. Some of them are turning into treaties. They're starting to articulate their request to manage the natural resources. So it's starting to start in some areas, they're starting to form into First Nation local councils, if you like. Some of them win negotiations with mining organizations. Some of them are very beneficial.
They have education funds and health funds, and they do what the government could have been doing all along.
So it's a bit of a double edged sword, but it isn't title.
[00:39:31] Speaker C: Okay.
That makes a lot clearer for me. And, yeah, I can see how that plays out. And I hope that the first nations get what they deserve for those people coming along to blow it up anyway.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: Well, it certainly has fed a lot of lawyers for a few generations. There's a lot of boats that have been purchased. If nothing else, the marine industry has definitely benefited from the concept of native title. But anyway, you know, it's above my pay grade. But essentially, it's a part of the system that is now ingrained in Australia. And in some instances, it's doing really good work for aboriginal people. In some not. So. So let's just hope that this instrument gets better and better for our First nations people and for all of us overall.
[00:40:24] Speaker C: For sure. For sure. Now, as part of the information that you sent me previous to our conversation, you wrote, they are us now. What do you mean by that? It sounds like you're saying that we're all one, which I believe wholeheartedly.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: What an outrageous thought. I know, right.
[00:40:41] Speaker C: You've embraced that in a different way, obviously.
[00:40:45] Speaker A: So one of the things that I understood very deeply about working with aboriginal people, that as soon as you say the word aboriginal people's lights turn off, it's almost like their brain hits the black ice.
And I'm very much aware that there is, you know, the indigenous affairs and there's indigenous this, that and the other. And therefore there's an idea that that's somebody else's problem and that they're over there.
And I think what we've.
There's a few kind of reasons for it. Firstly, aboriginal people look dramatically different to the majority of people that now live on australian soil. So they physically look quite different to us. So there's that also, it's complex to comprehend aboriginal history. 63,000 years is a lot different to. We just celebrated 200 in Australia. Right. So we've got very different historical frameworks.
We also don't necessarily speak the same language. The majority of people that I work with out there remotely speak English is a third, 4th or fifth language.
And First nations languages are not like picking up French or Spanish. They are impenetrably difficult to speak. So there is this natural communication barrier. So there is an otherness to aboriginal people in this country. And I think that this is reflected in other first nations, is that they're over there and we're over here. But one of the things that is really impressed on me is that we've been talking about culture and we've been talking about law, native title, we've been talking about some cultural things. Welcome to country. But we tend to forget that aboriginal people are people, people just like me. And their blood runs red and they love their children and they want to have a happy life, just like me. And we have a tendency to think there's someone else's problem and there must be a department to look after that. And isn't there an organisation to sort this out, rather than appreciate the people as people and respect their perspectives like we would a neighbour?
So I think that this idea that they are us is really powerful. If we can kind of separate some of the frustrations, which might be education, or it might be welfare, or it might be the corrective system, and it might be native title or it might be some of those issues from the person who's standing in front of you, which. Who is a person.
And that I find really helpful is for us to remember that we are blessed to inhabit this earth with a whole range of people.
And we're blessed that aboriginal people are amongst that group and to welcome the idea that they are us. And there is no one more important than another.
And so that idea, I think, is really helpful for us to understand that we are all one.
We're all one.
And, you know, if you're able to hold an aboriginal person's hand, it's warm.
[00:44:24] Speaker C: That's beautiful.
So you're walking in two worlds. Can you explain what that means?
[00:44:33] Speaker A: Walking in two worlds. So walking in two worlds is something that we worked really closely on for a long time. And when I stepped aside from the operational work over there in the desert, I was instructed by the old people to continue to walk into worlds.
And, you know, that means that we have this white, liberal, democratic, english based system of specificity and spelling it right, and computers and this whole world that we understand and we can navigate, but at the same time, at exactly the same time, there is another world which also exists, which is appreciated by aboriginal people, another kinship system, another way for you to show deference to the country, another way to understand your position in the country and that exists at the same time. And to be able to do both, to be able to bow your head to the wonder of both.
I've got a little story that I like to tell to articulate this idea, and it comes from an old fellow who's passed away now, so I can't say his name directly, but this old fellow was a very, very, very senior lawman and very, very well known and spent a lot of time with lots and lots of smart anthropologists walking out on country and identifying boundaries and sites and all sorts of stuff. And he was at our house for dinner, and we were interrupted during our dinner by a very noisy bird nearby. And he started to chuckle and tell the story that when he was just out on country with the anthropologist, they were around the campfire for dinner, and a bird interrupted them. And the anthropologist, quite, very well educated, knows the country very well. This fella said, oh, there's that bird. I know that bird. I just can't remember his name. What's his name?
And the old fellow laughed and said, you white fellows are funny, you know, you've got three names for that bird and you can't remember any of them. You've got a latin name, an english name, and a nickname for that bird, and you're asking me what it's called.
He said, I know that bird.
You can hear him call, but you don't know whether or not he's calling his mate or he's warning his mate.
You don't know whether he flies in a flock or by himself. You don't know if he's a young one or an old one. You don't know what he tastes like. You don't know how to catch him. You don't know how his nests are built. You don't know where his eggs are. You don't know if he comes in summer or winter. You don't know if he calls in a mate or he flies to his mate. You think you know that bird.
I am the lawman. I know that bird, but I'll tell you if you like.
And that was kind of a joke that he told us, and it really resonated with me that we think we know stuff, but there is such a deep understanding that these First nations people have about this country that is happening at the same time.
And if we can just open our minds that these things coexist then we're able to navigate this place called Australia with so much more substance. Yeah. So walking into worlds is a joy.
[00:48:25] Speaker C: Right. So we've been here now in time and we're in 2024. It's 2024 years since what?
[00:48:36] Speaker A: Oh, yes, 2024. 2024 years since what? I asked this question several times and people look at me and go, I'm not so sure. I think what a great christian nation we are. We can't even say the words. It's 2024 years since Jesus Christ, the advent of Jesus Christ, which was such an extraordinary advent that everything changed and pivoted, including the date. So I think it's kind of. That's one of those things that aboriginal people, and working with aboriginal people has helped me understand is that my appreciation of time. So, you know, it's 24 years since y two k. I think we can all remember where we were. Those of us that are over 24 can remember where we were. When the year 2000 came, it was a very big deal.
But it was only 100 years before that or so give or take, that we had the first world war, but the Internet was only created in 1990.
It's essentially ten minutes ago.
100 years before that was the first world war. 100 years before that, we're in the 18 hundreds in the year 1000, where we're kind of, you know, we're kind of before there was writing.
So when we start to appreciate way, way back, you know, like I said earlier, the pyramid's 3000 years old. That's pretty old, right?
But it's only 3000 years.
Aboriginal people have been operating culturally on this continent for 63,000 years.
That gives us as australian people.
So if you've got an interest in human justice, a kangaroo on your passport, a postcode in this country, you've got an appreciation of time that is our birthright, that no other country has.
And so this appreciation of the ideas, not necessarily the flesh and blood, but the ideas about the country is in charge. And the ideas about how we operate on the country come from the country itself, are ideas for us to really value.
What I mean by that is the behavior of people that lived near the coast where the tides would come and go and their primary diet was seafood, was dramatically different to the people that were inland. People that were looking for goannas in the desert and were digging roots for their sustenance. And the behaviours of people that were operating in the rainforests were also dramatically different to those other two groups. And so that's what I mean about, you know, this brings us back to the beginning of our conversation that I can speak for this country, but I don't speak for that country. They've got a whole different idea because the country has told them to behave differently, and I'm not. I don't have any right to speak for them or on their country.
And so this idea that, you know, this. This actually applies to us today. So I understand these things because of my life and my listening to the country, but that doesn't give me any authority to go to North America or to Iceland and tell them how they should live.
Right? So there are ideas of Iceland that are unique to Iceland that are good for the people who live in Iceland, and so be it.
And the same with Tierra del Fuego and the same with the other places, right? This idea of recognizing that the country is in charge and not a doctrine or an imaginary friend and allows us to have a lot more fluidity and a lot less labels about, you need to, you know, you're gay or you're straight or you're female or you male or whatever. You know, all these labels, it allows us to fluidly move from one country to another and accept that the ideals and the morals and the exchanges and the ideas of that country are unique, and they come from the country itself.
And if we pay attention to what. How the country is telling us to live, we'll live longer and better.
[00:53:44] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:53:45] Speaker A: Right. So I think that was a response to your question. I I hope. I think I might have gotten a little bit distracted there.
[00:53:55] Speaker C: No, no. That all makes sense to me. It actually probably asked the question, though. You say it's like the country is in charge. Do you think that a big key to this is actually dropping the colonial mind and just stepping into your intuition?
[00:54:11] Speaker A: I totally do. And I think dropping the mind altogether and understanding that the country's in charge, but we are stewards of ourselves for the country.
So this whole idea that taking ourselves off the throne of ourselves and accepting that the country is bigger than us and the country was created and this whole universe of exceptional was not created by our minds.
It was not created by our minds, but it was created.
And so, you know, allowing yourself to not be in charge and to acknowledge that if I can't work out which imaginary friend I want to choose from, I can definitely see that the earth is in charge, and I can pay attention to that, and I can. And I can draw some knowledge from what comes from the earth.
Does that make sense?
[00:55:27] Speaker C: It does. Yeah. For sure. For sure.
You're all one of many hats. And one of those hats is a DJ that likes to guide people on a path for a bit of a spiritual evolution on the dance floor. Can you explain some of that? I mean, your dj name is that woman. How'd that come about? Even.
[00:55:48] Speaker A: That woman? Well, that's. That makes it sound like I'm on a quest. The truth is, I like to have a good time and I like to dance. And so from there comes the quest. It was very, you know, there's a selfish desire to have a good time.
That woman, I think that woman came about because that's actually what people call me.
[00:56:08] Speaker C: Did you, like, just break onto the dance floor? I've had enough. This DJ, and you break up and. And just say, I'm taking over the decks, and you did a better job. They said, who are you? I'm that woman.
[00:56:20] Speaker A: Well, you know, when I come into a boardroom or negotiation or whatever, people just go, is that woman really? Is that that woman? And so I know that's the nickname that I have behind my back. That's what people call me. So I figured, fair enough, good enough. But I also believe that it's actually not about the DJ. At the time I started, there was a whole heap of, you know, very, very cool dudes up there, you know, exuding confidence, and I thought, yeah, that's not what it's about. It's about the music. So it kind of doesn't matter what my name is. And I chose a name that was completely forgettable because it's not about me. It's about the. It's about the good time, and it's about the music. It's about the message in the music. So I intended for it to be totally forgettable, and that kind of worked. It's not about me. It doesn't matter who I am. It just matters about the music and to not pay attention to me.
So, yes, I definitely did that thing, and it was definitely a case of, I've had enough. I need to show me, how do I press the button? Show me how to do this. I need to do it myself. And then next thing you know, the monster was born. Yeah, definitely.
[00:57:41] Speaker C: How long have you been djing? For now?
[00:57:43] Speaker A: I started about 2009, so a little while now. Yeah, a little while. And. And, you know, it was a hobby that really took. Took cold.
It was way to entertain myself out there in the. In the middle of nowhere, where, you know, when we got there, there was a whole heap of people that were drinking black cans that were standing around a jukebox. And screaming badly at the doors. And I knew that that wasn't going to fly, so I needed to do. Yeah, it wasn't good.
[00:58:17] Speaker C: You're like, raise it from that level.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: To your kind of come from the. From. From the 1990s and the two thousands in Sydney and was like, to enjoy myself in a dance floor. So I knew that something had to give and it did. So awesome. Yeah, I definitely leant into doing it, but at the time, it was new out there and it was out there. And so I think it was another thing that, being on country, I don't think I would have had the confidence to just crack into the Sydney nightclub scene and say, get out of the way, I'm here. I think it just happened because I was out there and. And I had the space and time and people were happy for any kind of new entertainment, and away I went. So it was born of the fact that I was way out there. And I think being way out there meant that I had no idea what was cool, I had no idea what was popular. I had no idea what was. What people were listening to. I just went on my own aural journey and started to put it together quite badly for the first few years. Can I say, I was the queen of the train, the train crash, for quite a while. But never mind. Carry on. Let's keep going. Hands in the air. And we had a fat time. And I'm so glad because there was. And there were no female dj's. There were not. There was. And they certainly weren't expecting a woman in her fifties.
They thought I was there to pick up my kids or the police shut the party down or something.
So, you know, there was a lot of. There was a lot of. What are you here for, lady? Getting out of my way. I'm about to go up there.
So that, you know, that, you know, and surprising people, that first of all, oh, my God, it's a chick. And secondly, it's a grown up chick. Was shocking.
And then the music was, you know, spank your mother. We're going to have a good time. That was also shocking. And there was a lot of.
In the space that I played a lot in, there was a lot of invitation for women to come to the dance floor, what I used to call the pussy posse. You know, there was a. There was no sexual tension because there was a, you know, there's grown up woman up there. So I kind of thought, well, here's the thing. I don't want to fuck any of you. Let's dance. And my allowed to say that. So, you know, there was a lot of liberation in that. If I'm having a good time, you know, I'm going to be. I'm the person who's going to be in the most trouble here, and I'm having a great time. So catch up, people. And yeah, definitely, you know, giving people permission to really just dance and that was really liberating for me and for them.
[01:01:26] Speaker C: Excellent, excellent. Sounds a great point of connection for you in the community and also a great point of release.
So, sue, we're actually coming towards the end of the podcast. If you wanted people to find you, how would they find you?
[01:01:41] Speaker A: If they wanted to find me musically, you can find me on Insta at that woman 101. And if they wanted to find me on Soundcloud, you can find me as that woman. That underscore woman. W o m a n. Excellent, excellent, excellent.
[01:02:01] Speaker C: Thank you very much, sue, for sharing your understanding of First nations people and country and how it's affected you and also how your dj evolution happened as well. That was really cool and I really enjoyed all of your conversation. Thank you so much.
[01:02:21] Speaker A: It's been an absolute honor to be invited to connect with you again. Thank you so much. And also to connect with your listeners. And, you know, these are important times, and it's great for us to be aware that it is our ideas and the things that we do that make a difference. So thank you so much for the invitation to share some of my ideas. I really appreciate it.
[01:02:44] Speaker C: Excellent, excellent. Thank you. All right, I'll just say goodbye to listeners.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. And, yeah, the touch of the idea of the country is in charge is something that's going to haunt me in a really beautiful, positive way. It makes me think of how our minds can be caught up in our own little worlds when the greater world actually has a lot to give, too, if we just step into it.
If you've enjoyed today's show, please reach out to sue on the connect points that she actually offered up in the end of the show there. And it's also in the show notes. If you wish to have a look down there as well on the website, and if you're on YouTube, you know, like and subscribe, and if you're on any pod app and you think somebody could really enjoy this conversation, please share to just one friend. Because that way more people get to hear and decide if they like the show and then maybe help it grow. That would be really appreciated by me. And, yeah, also gives me incentive to do more. Really loving doing this, and I really love talking to people, and I do think that it's actually making some good in the world. So thank you very much for listening. And if you've enjoyed today's show, come back to the next one, and until then, it's bye for now.
