Decolonising Finance, Agriculture and Culture - Jocelyn King Is Interrupting Business As Usual

Jocelyn King is on the show today. Joc is a Bundjalung woman who over the course of her life and career has worked to develop her own understanding of and connection to traditional knowledge systems. She’s worked in and around finance for more than a decade, where today she is the Chair of First Australians Capital. At the same time, she’s building a farm in NSW’s Hunter Valley that reprises First Nations knowledge of caring for and re-awakening Country while adapting regenerative agricultural practices too. Jocelyn walks the talk as she seeks to advocate for First Nations justice, truth telling and self-determination, while also appreciating the limitations of working and interacting with capitalist neoliberal systems that do their best to erode equity, habitats and power dynamics.

I was very humbled and very honoured to spend this time with Jocelyn. The sharing she offered and wisdom imparted on me - a non-Indigenous ancestor of colonisers - was remarkable to experience. My efforts as a non-Indigenous man to act in allyship with First Nations people feels too limited for my liking, which I’m ashamed to say, but feels true. My efforts to support, listen and prompt questioning feels like an area I want to evolve and advance this year, which I’m hopeful to do through our upcoming project Eating Country to Save Country. As a white man I was genuinely enthralled and privileged to have this time with Jocelyn.

In this chat we cover a lot of ground - from reparations for past harms financiers have facilitated including the origins of banking in Australia to flipping mindsets and stories from extractive to responsibility oriented to the role of listening in truth telling. It felt like we barely scratched the surface but leaves me looking forward to speaking with Jocelyn again in the future.

Efforts to make good for the harms perpetrated on First Nations people in this country for over two centuries has a very long way to go. The struggle is sobering but the resolve of Australia’s First Nations people is a remarkable story of perseverance, unity and love, and Jocelyn does a beautiful job of offering her own experience, strength and hope here.

The April Finding Nature journal hits inboxes this Saturday morning and it’s on the topic of unity. Ina ll we heard from Jocelyn today and with that theme in mind, this quote from Tony Evans struck me in our combined efforts to seek voice, treaty and truth in this country: “Unity is oneness of purpose, not sameness of persons.”

Til next time, thanks for listening.

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