Whaia: Mana Waka

Who has the right to speak on behalf of water? Who carries that responsibility? 

Drawing on her lineage of wayfinders and traditional music makers, Whaia regularly takes the stage of international political gatherings – like the United Nations Climate Summit – to invoke the voice of water. 

She is a Māori vocalist, surfer, multi-instrumentalist, and cultural producer whose work moves between the sacred and the political, the intimate and the global. Born on the East Coast of Aotearoa and raised from age six amongst the rich red earth of Australia's Pilbara, she shares the journey of finding belonging in both worlds. 

As a member of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, Whaia collaborates with a network of global Indigenous elders who attend COP annually to bring the voice of nature into policy conversations. 

Whaia reveals the housing instability that led to her current home: the Mana Waka, a 40-foot bus she and her family built from the chassis up. It is a collaborative space used as studio, classroom, and creative hub. 

As a mother of three, Whaia continues to follow the instruments that find her and to reclaim the languages that were always hers. 

The message that echoes throughout: don't be selfish with your voice. Share it. 

...

Surfers for Climate is hosting the 3rd annual Waterwomen Camp Out this September 11th to 13th, on Bundjalung Country in the Northern Rivers.

Whaia will be sharing her sonic weaving and wisdom - live. 

Secure your tickets + use code 'waterpeople' for $50 off your booking. 

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Co-Hosts + Production: Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich

Sound + Video Engineer: Ben J Alexander

Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll

Additional music by Kai Mcgilvray   + Ben J Alexander 

Closing track: 'Sunseekers' by Andysixstring

Join the conversation: @Waterpeoplepodcast 

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Thanks to our generous sponsors this season:

Patagonia Australia: in business to save our home planet

Ngalung Kalla Eco Retreat: surf adventure paradise 

The Sunglass Fix: give your favourite sunglasses new life

Sodii: hydration for salty humans

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Water Shapes Us

SPEAKER_04 0:01

You don't have to be a scientist, you don't have to be a great speaker, you don't have to be even indigenous, because it's gonna take all of us to actually change the consciousness of what's actually going on in our world in relation to humans to nature. And if you just keep saying yes, if you just keep showing up, your life purpose starts to just reveal itself. It's kind of effortless after a while.

SPEAKER_06 0:28

Welcome to Water People, where we talk story about the aquatic experiences that shape who we become back on land. I'm your host, Lauren Hill, joined by my partner Dave Rastovich. Join us as we gather stories, insights, and useful skills from some of the most outstanding water folk on the planet. We acknowledge the Bungelung Nation, the traditional custodians of the land and waters where we work and play, who have cared for this sea country for tens of thousands of years. Respect and gratitude to all First Nations people, including elders past, present, and emerging. This season is supported by Patagonia, whose purpose-driven mission is to use business to save our home planet. Today, we're in conversation with Faya, a Maori vocalist, surfer, multi-instrumentalist, and cultural producer, whose work moves between the sacred and the political, the intimate and the global. Faya was born on the east coast of Eteiroa, New Zealand, but grew up amongst the rich red earth of Australia's Pilbara from age six. Through vocals and traditional instruments, Faya brings indigenous wisdom, ceremony, song, and specifically the voice of water into international gatherings like the UN World Oceans Day, where she performed in 2023. In addition to hosting her own immersive retreats and Sonic Weaver Sound Sanctuaries, Faya works with Earthrise Africa and the Wisdom Keeper Delegation, a group of indigenous elders from around the world who attend COP, that's the conference of parties. It's the annual United Nations Climate Summit. They go and they bring ancestral knowledge into the spaces that shape global policy. Faya came to surfing as an adult at age 25, and now as a mother of three, she's still surfing and searching specifically in Manavaca, her family's 40-foot traveling studio. It's a creative vessel and educational platform that's wrapped in a 12-meter evolving canvas. Manavaca is really a vessel of collaboration with artists and communities across Australia, sharing creation stories and projects that connect land, sea, and sky through art, activism, education, and community. And speaking of community, we have the chance to witness some of Faya's magic in person at the Surfers for Climate third annual Waterwomen campout this September 11th to 13th on Bunjalung Country in the Northern Rivers. Waterwomen is a growing network that exists to nurture community and leadership and ocean protection, guided by indigenous wisdom keepers, scientists, surfers, mothers, artists, and divers. The annual campout is where the network strengthens, gathering across cultures and generations to share skills and stories, time in the water, and around a fire. Importantly, the campground is tucked right next to a gorgeous little point break. Our guest today, Faya, will be sharing some of her sonic weaving and wisdom at this year's campout. Tickets are limited but are still available. You can click the link in the show notes and use code WATAREPeople for $50 off your booking. It's an event that I look forward to every year, and I hope to see you there. You can learn more on Instagram at water.women.collective. Now to the episode.

Whale Tooth Flute Opening

SPEAKER_06 4:41

Oh boy. Do you have a moment like that that you'd be willing to share with us, Faya?

SPEAKER_04 4:46

Which one? One of those moments kind of really brings us to the next one and the next one and the next one.

SPEAKER_03 4:54

There's like hundreds that I could think of.

SPEAKER_04 4:59

I'm 51. There's a lot of those moments. But if we're talking about water and upsetting here with the both of you, what I'd like to do is just share the waitangi. That's okay. So I brought the waitangi. He came on the walk today. And there's uh so there's a moment that I remember that's got a lot to do with you actually, woven in I think in the background of the etherics that that kind of happened to us that kind of bring us on the path to be able to hold this today. So it'd be nice if I just play a little bit before we begin and just to acknowledge our Torter connection, our wild connections, our oceanic lineage, our family lines together to sit and talk today, and for our children to play today and to laugh together. Very, very special. And to be able to go out into that headland today too, to feel the energy of this coastline and those waters and how wild they were, and wind whipped through us and kind of wakes up our bones. Just play a little bit of my Tohora Nihor, a whale's tooth flute. There was a young buck who beached himself on my homeland in Ao Teoro. His name was Kiwiki. And so Kiwikiwi had a lot of teeth, and this one particularly was given to Akava and named him Tewaitangi, the waters whale, meaning that the waters cry. And so I think it would feel right to just share his voice first before we share our voices. That's where my fano are from. And I uh come from a long line of ocean faring ancestry. But when I was six, I was taken to the Pilbara, where I was raised by my Yinjabundi Aboriginal grandmother and family. The name my mother gave me is Shelley. Shelley Emir. So that's my fano from uh the North Ireland. Beautiful to be here with my kids and and your boy, and just to sit here and talk about a love for water. And just to acknowledge this this land that we're sitting on. So very, very special. So honoured to sit here today. Yeah, that headland is something else. It's the first time I've been out there in that country. Really takes your breath away. Been here since 99 on the East Coast.

SPEAKER_03 10:19

I've never been there before. So I guess you know, things come at the right time. Awakenings come at the right time, our children come at the right time. Tongue are our treasures are gifted to us at the right time of the path that we take. If we're listening, if we're calling for those things. I was living on the Sunshine Coast and my friend said, Oh, come down to Byron. We're gonna go and visit some friends. They're staying at Ocean Shores and we'll go visit them. I go, okay, so I was with my Solomon Island sister, Stella, and the two of us came down, we met our brother Shannon, he was there, and we were just hanging out, jamming, and it was at your house.

SPEAKER_04 10:59

I didn't know that at the time. We were jamming that night. I went went to sleep, and we're going to go and do some stuff the next morning, take some jewelry from my sister's islands into the crawbery store in

A Dream That Becomes A Calling

SPEAKER_04 11:12

town. I remember being in the house and I had this dream and it was so real to me. And it was about my brother. I'm the oldest of seven. My third brother, he died, and he was just laid in the in the corner of the lounge room, and he was he was naked though, he had no clothes on, and he was just laying there. And I was so confused. I was like, why is he just laying there? Why isn't anyone doing anything? It's really weird. I couldn't understand. And I remember going up to my mother and asking her questions like, what, what's going on? Tell me what's happening. He he's he's dead, he's he's gone. And usually my mum's the type of person who is very emotional when someone passes away, when we have tonguey, when we have funerals. She's high she's really high on taking care of things and crying a lot. We cry to heal. So she was very calm in my dream, and she's holding me. She goes, Yes, that's right, he's gone. It's okay. And I was like, This isn't making any sense. And as she was holding me, I was crying. And I remember waking up in reality in your house, absolutely sobbing in the middle of this crying, to the point I couldn't breathe. I was like, Oh my god, what's happening? And I woke up like that and my sister's come home, she's like, What's wrong? And I'm like, Oh, my brother's dying. It's like and I I I was really, it took me a few hours to kind of get it together. And I was like, I I didn't know what that was all about. And I thought, oh maybe I should call home and see if they're okay. And then we went about our day. So we went into town and we were taking these jewelries and we're standing in the corrowary shop for a while. And we met this Aboriginal fella called Wa Tunga. And we just started talking to him for three hours solid. It was supposed to be working, but we just the conversations and the stories just kept going and going and going. And then I was like, wow, this is really strange. Like we were being held for something. Like, why are we still here? Like, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this guy comes bounding into the store with this energy, energy, energy. Oh my god, guys, come to the whale symposium. There's a whale symposium, the whale symposium. I'm like, what is the whale symposium? He's like, it's upstairs, you've got to come upstairs. And we're like, okay. So we're like, all right, uh, let's go. This guy's whipped us upstairs, myself and my sister. And we've walked into a room and it's full packed of people, and there's chairs everywhere, and there's this like corridor in the middle. And we thought we were gonna come and watch a whale film. I was like, yeah, yeah. And I've been hearing whale song in my head, being a musician. I've been coming to me. Just whale music, whale song. Anyway, he gets these two chairs and he sits them right up the back in the middle, and he's like bringing us snacks and drinks and giving us jewelry and putting like shell jewel rings, and I'm just going, this is so weird. And then we're sitting there, and then you know, a speaker gets up and starts talking about this film that we're gonna see, and then another speaker gets up and starts talking, and then another one, I'm like, wow, this is like an hour later, it's really going on. When's this film gonna start? And then you get up and you are talking. I'm like, oh, that's really strange. Because I think we were staying at his house. Oh yeah, right. So he's and then, you know, so then talking about all this whale business, uh, service for citations you were talking about. I was like, oh, that's really interesting. Wow, look at that. And then um, so the film starts and it's talking about the you know, the ocean and this and that, and then there's a there's a band there and they're and they're playing music along with this film, and then all of a sudden, it cuts to this huge whaling ship, and and they've just harpooned a whale, and they're pulling it in, and it's coming up the back of the boat. And the musicians are telling a story about Gutty Gutty, the white spirit woman, and talking about how the whales are our ancestors and how they're our sisters and how they're our brothers. And when she said that word brother, and I'm watching the whale getting pulled up the back of the boat, I had the flash of my brother, because my even though I'm dark skinned and brown hair, my brother is really white with red hair and freckles, half Māori, half aboriginal, but a throwback. And so when I saw the whale, I saw the belly of it, so it was white. And I the whole dream that morning kind of hit me, and I was like, Oh, my it's my brother the whale who's dying. And I started bawling my eyes out again, going, Oh my god, this is what I'm being shown. And I started sniffling up the back again, and I came out of that. Howie was there, our brother who um carries Migaloo, he was there, and I was like, wow, you know, Dean Jeffries, yeah. And I had this whole epiphany of like, I've got to take care of them. I gotta do something. So I came out of there like really in a bit of a haze, bit of an epiphany, bit of an awakening, that if their ancestors, which you know, we'd always known that everything is. So I we went back up to the Sunshine Coast and then I started talking to Howie, and then I started getting involved with the fight for fifty, which was with Sea Shepherd back then. So we start I started going into schools where my kids were at Cullen Primary and talking to the principal and talking to the assembly and going into classes and talking about whales and talking about ocean protection. And my son was in grade three back then, so he would have been like maybe eight, he's 23 now. And so that really kind of kicked it off. And I thought, well, what can I do as a surfer? Because you know, we're a big surfing family, and I'd paddled out before into s into honouring sur surfers in circles and stuff, and I thought, well, why don't we do that for our whales? So I I thought, well, let's paddle out in Noosa and and just have a moment for our whales, and that just started to grow. And so I was pushing that for a while up there, just trying to bring awareness and raising money and then going and sending it to Sea Shepherd and stuff like that. Then the council wanted to get involved because they saw how much, you know, action we were taking and gathering we were doing. We'd get kids to come into the park and do murals, we'd get like whale one boat from Australia Zoo to come out and to the out over to Coulomb and be there, activating the day, and we'd have this huge kind of gathering in the park. And then it got to the point where the you know the council wanted to get involved and and they wanted me to start a whale festival. And I was like, oh wow, this is like growing so fast and getting really big.

Turning Activism Into Music

SPEAKER_04 18:25

I'm not sure if I want to take that on because I was feeling really burnt out then after, you know, doing all the things. So I kind of backed off a bit, kept on with the music, and then started kind of going, Well, you know, being a musician, like I got tired of just the whole band thing, drummer, you know, loud like ten people on stage just making a lot of noise and fun, but it was like what else is there? And as a woman, a Māori woman, um, not being connected to my roots yet, I started to go, well, where are our instruments? What what did we play? What because uh, you know, I knew the Yidaki, the Dijrido, and um I was like, Well, what did we have? So I started researching that and calling for that. And so one instrument would come at a time. My auntie gave me my first instrument, it was a kuovo, and I started playing that. She died soon after she gave it to me, so I had to the instrument taught me how to play it. And I would take that out with with Bunner when I got asked to come on whale journeys with with Bunner Laurie and and the whale dreamers in Harvey Bay, just by searching, little following the breadcrumbs of you know, are there other ways that we can be active, uh, bring attention, be inspired, and inspire others to just take notice of what's going on, the things that we care about, the ocean, our whales, our whole, our our whole ocean family, really. And so, yeah, I'd go, I'd go out and start being part of the whale dreamers. And they're like, come come and be in the band and and travel with us and do something.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

I'm like, yeah, I'd love to.

SPEAKER_04 20:10

So we did that for four and a half years. Amazing journey, but still I wasn't connected to my roots yet. So after that, a couple years after, I started going home back to our Teroa, and I learned a little bit of language and a little bit of our protocols and a little bit of our women's cultural practices through the voice and how we call beyond the veil to our ancestral world and our elemental world using our voice, the voice of creation, which is in a singing voice or or a heart voice or a head voice. It's it's a voice where women sing from our womb space, our creation space, to kind of cross the void and and touch those spaces. And so I started bringing that into my world, and then eventually my cousin would give me another instrument that's from home called a putterino. I'm like, what is this? Find out what that is. Also, no one around to teach me, okay. Well, the instrument instrument will tell me how it's supposed to be played, and I play it in ways that no Māori has ever seen before. And I'm like, isn't that how you're supposed to do it?

SPEAKER_05 21:14

And then like never seen it, and I'm like, okay, I thought that's how you're supposed to do it. But does it sound alright? Yeah, yeah, but yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 21:23

Does it feel good?

SPEAKER_02 21:25

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:26

And so, you know, these these keep coming and they and they kept coming, and then year after year, and I'll just kind of follow the breadcrumbs again and just just follow the threads and and just keep showing up and things that we get asked to to be a part of. Like, okay, I'm not sure why, but just say yes. And then when I started to learn that voice of karanga, and then I started to bring my auntie who who helped me remember how to karanga, I brought her over to Australia to help other women karanga. A woman who came to that um teaching. Gifted me their Waitangi in exchange for teaching. And that was a good decade after I'd been searching. In the world of Tonga Puoro, our singing treasures, a treasures that our instruments that come from the natural world, like wood, bone, claystone. The the Tohora Nihor, the whale tooth flute, is well, in my eyes, the the epitome of the Tonga that sings to us. To receive a whale's tooth is like, well, you've done some work. And I realize when I received that, I went, oh, it's time now to start teaching or to start the something, the something, whatever that is, next, that comes next.

Finding Karanga And Receiving The Flute

SPEAKER_04 22:43

It came to me and I and I uh be I've been carrying it um wow, it's 26, right?

SPEAKER_02 22:49

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 22:50

Okay, I've been carrying it for 10 years. And I I guess that is um something that just really opened something up in my body from a dream. From that dreaming realm. And here on first light country too, uh, that kind of took me on a whole journey to where, you know, where I go and play it now, which is all over the world, in spaces of sacred prayer and in spaces like the United Nations and and in healing places for our community. And I guess, you know, that all started at your house.

SPEAKER_07 23:27

That's classic. I I'm not too surprised by for whatever reason so many ripples that have come out of that specific spot. Quite a few things happened there. Um, and without me present, actually, because I was always traveling, different people were living there and passing through there. And uh at one stage a Kiwi lady and a Native American fella moved in, and the lady was leaving her body, she had radical cancer, and um she was looking for somewhere to to rest and and leave her body. And they came along to to that spot and broke down when they got there, and she was just like, This is the place. And so I was like, Alright, okay, I'm not gonna stand in the way of that. Um feel free to be here and go through that, and that happened along with some very significant ceremony that he carried out after she left, and incredible moments with different animals and weather and just things happening there. So very interesting and so mundane, like you're in ocean shores. The other name for ocean shores is open source. Yes, I've heard that one. It's a suburb. It's a suburb.

SPEAKER_06 24:51

It's a classic Aussie Burb.

SPEAKER_07 24:53

It is a classic Aussie burb, and it's I don't know, there's just something I like I like that. It's not like, oh, it's this, you know, fancy blah blah rainforest retreat or anything. It's just like it's just there, and so much music was created. Just a home. Just a space, yeah. Very supportive space, and and really in in it was so much music actually happened there, and it was music of the kind that I I really resonate with, which is not really cerebral, intellectual, rehearsed, choreographed music, though I love and can appreciate that kind of music. I think we all do, but this was like spontaneous jam moments that would go on for hours and hours. Who knows what state you get in when you play that long, and then you there'd be a section within that that would be the cream of the crop that we would perhaps record and share with people or whatever, or not. Yeah, but that was just what was happening there. Um, so it's just classic to hear you say that something like that happened for you there, which is to me so wonderful, and I'm so happy that that happened and everything that rippled out from that is so fascinating. That the those subtle signs to be followed can lead to such wondrous things is great. I I wonder when you share that your life before that. Were you living that way? We were you open to those moments being significant though they were subtle, like a dream or a meeting with someone where you're just there. Was that what your way before that? Yeah, it was.

SPEAKER_03 26:36

Yeah, I yes, I'd have to acknowledge that it was.

SPEAKER_04 26:39

I mean, I grew up in I was born in Alteroa. I am Natika Hanunu, so I'm from the East Coast, North Island. And I was taken to Western Australia when I was six with my m to be with my mother in the Pilbara, like from Altera to this beautiful, like green, lush, volcanic, rich, you know, place. Island. Uh yeah, island with lots of family connections everywhere to this hot red earth desert place of a different language and a different vibration. And I was like, where am I? I'll just get on my bike and go. And so Yeah, I I grew up there and you know, we grew up in rivers and fishing all the time and just hunting. Um I remember the stars out there, I remember the land really talking to me. And when we were young back then, like we would just cross town when we were like eight. Like nobody cared if you walked across the freeway, which is like you know, a small road and towns like that, and you just go up some mountain and sit there, and big red boomer kangaroo would just come say hello, and you're like, oh yeah. And then you just come back down the other side of the mountain, like there's no tracks, you're like scaling rocks and spiders and all. Yeah, I guess we didn't really I didn't think, didn't ever think about it back then. Um so the land always uh spoke to me, or I was just kind of always in a state of wonder and curiosity. Um when I got into my teenage years, there was a surf shop in town, and I remember trying on this really nice warm jacket, this cool jacket, and I was like, oh, and inside the tag it said, only a surfer knows the feeling. And I was like, what's the feeling? What are we talking about? I want to know what the feeling is.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

That's so great.

SPEAKER_05 28:50

So then, you know, I I did other things.

SPEAKER_04 28:53

I I got I got hurled into a world of pain and you know, you know, all all the all the things that happened that you never want to happen to your children, and and then, you know, the the drugs, the alcoholism, the the street sleeping, and the where do I live, the gutter

Learning To Surf And Finding The Feeling

SPEAKER_04 29:10

stuff. And I ended up finding my way overseas and then coming back home. And when I was overseas um living on a cruise ship, I was a crew pier, so I was dealing blackjack and roulette out of LA. We go to Mexico twice a week when I was like 20. Wow. 21. And and there we used to go to Catalina every Tuesday. So it's the island off of LA. It is magical. And I remember I remember getting my scuba diver's licensed there, and amongst that 60 foot kelp, which felt like a little mermaid. Yeah. But I fell in love on that island, which kind of was a catalyst point. Fell in love with this guy. It nothing really ever happened. It was just something when you know when two magnets come together and then they like it kind of like did something to me. Um, because he was he used to be well, he is a musician, very famous one, but now. And he he would he would sing songs and give me his music, and I'd be like, I but I've always wanted to be a singer. Always wanted to sing. I used to sing on the way to school when I was seven. My I could sing the best ABCs ever, right? I'm gonna be a singer when I grow up. And of course that voice was squashed. Um that's also a big story. But I remember they could surf, he could surf. And he'd go, You've got to come to the islands, gotta surf. And I'd be like, Oh, yeah, can you teach me? Do you think I could do it? And he'd be like, if the big Hawaiian mamas can do it, you can do it. I was like, Yes, I'm picturing this huge Hawaiian mumma. I'm like, Yep, she could do it, I could do it. Yeah, all right. So I'd I'd now I'd just ask everyone that I knew on my journey, hey, do you surf? Can you teach me how to surf? And they're like, nah, I don't know how, or there's no surf on the west coast. And anyway, so I just kept putting this out there. I really want to learn to surf. Where's it gonna be? How's it gonna happen? So I came home, come home to Western Australia. We journey across the top into Darwin, through the Kimberleys, and then we come through the East Coast. Not that it was my plan, we're only going to Darwin, but as it happens, someone was going to Queensland and said, jump in my car, let's go. And I was like, Yeah, where are you going? He's like, Surfer's paradise. I was like, Oh, I've always wanted to go there. Let's go. So we come across, you know, we land in um, we go to Ellie Beach, we go out sailing, we see the stars. We end up in Broadbeach. He goes, I've got his friend who's gonna rent us a room 50 bucks a week, and they do some work out of the house, but we're allowed to stay there. I was like, okay, cool. And we rock up there, and the first person that opens the door is my sister Stella, the one from who took me to your house. Um, and she's like, Oh my god, sister. I'm like, Hello, who are you? Oh, cool. We're sisters because we're Polynesian. We're both Nisians, and it's like this gravity of like family. Yeah. And so um we got to stay there for a while, and out of that house, they were um editing this surf magazine called Groundswell.

SPEAKER_07 32:11

Oh, classic, yeah, I remember that. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:15

And uh, you know, I'm just a girl out of the bush. I don't know anything about anything. And they're like, hey, do you want to come to this event tonight? It's like got free food and free drinks. I'm like, yeah, I'm hungry and thirsty, let's go.

SPEAKER_05 32:31

I've got no job, I've just come from the bush. I'd love to go out tonight.

SPEAKER_04 32:38

It's the 9th of the 9th, 1999. Oh, yeah. And we go to this event, and they're like, hey, you need to go and get your photo taken with that guy. I'm like, who? Yeah, that guy over there, standing over there. He's the CEO of ASP. I'm like, what's ASP? And they're like, Association of surfing professionals. I'm like, okay. Oh, I thought it was about mind reading and something. So I have no clue. Green or yeah, and and I'm like, what's CEO? Well, the boss. Oh, okay, cool. That guy over there, they're like, no, not that young guy, the other one with the gray hair or whatever, the blonde hair. And I've gone, okay, cool. Okay, well, we'll go and introduce you. All right, so we go over there and Stella's like, hey, Rab, I just want to introduce you. So my my mother named me Shelly. I just want to introduce you to Shelly. Shelly, this is Rab. Um, oh, hi, nice to meet you. What's your name? He's like, Oh, Rabbit. And I'm like, what kind of name is that? He's like, Oh, yeah, it's just a nickname, but you can call me Bugs. I was like, okay. And they're like, Oh, can we get a photo for the magazine? He's like, Yeah, no worries. So then we've taken a photo. He's like, Hey, do you want to dance? I'm like, uh, maybe later. Because I didn't know anyone.

SPEAKER_05 34:06

Anyway, so the night went on, we had some fun, then we left.

SPEAKER_04 34:10

Uh, a month later, the magazine's being printed, and then my my sister, she goes, Oh, look, do you want to come to an island? Uh, we got your accommodation and food paid for and everything, and we just go to this island and and do some work for the magazine. I'm like, Well, what am I supposed to do? She's like, just give out magazines on the beach and stuff. I'm like, Oh yeah, okay, that sounds easy. Let's go. So it was the the Stradia Salt.

SPEAKER_07 34:34

Oh, classic.

SPEAKER_05 34:38

Sales jobs and stuff, and it's well, it sounded exotic to me.

SPEAKER_04 34:44

And it totally is a place. Yeah, like that. It's a very sacred place. So we ended up going to the Stratia Salt back when the old pub was still there.

SPEAKER_07 34:53

Yeah, that was that was a that was an actual venue, like it is now, D-Balls. Yes, yes. That was that had a vibe.

SPEAKER_05 35:01

Yes, it did. Oh, I did. Oh my lord. I really do.

SPEAKER_04 35:05

So, so we we end up going, and and for for and there was these other, and so you know, they want me to be kind of like a promo model kind of girl, and I'm like, okay, I've never done this before. I reckon I could do a good job. And then they had these other Gold Coast models with the nice blonde hair and you know, all the looks. I was feeling a bit insecure. I'm like, wow, everybody's having a good time and talking to these girls, but nobody will talk to me. What's going on? What a I'm probably not as pretty as them or something, you know, still young. Anyway, two days this went on. I'm like, wow, those guys are having so much fun, still no one will talk to me, you know, or interact. They're really standoffish. I was like, what's going on? Anyway, but the third night I remember the party was getting going, and then all of a sudden I see Rab walk in or bugs, saw him walk in, and I'm like, oh, there's that guy I took a photo with. I better be professional and say hi, because he's the only person I really know. Yeah, so he I spot him from the other side of the room, he spots me, and we lock, and I'm like, okay, and he comes over, I'm like, hi, how's it going? He's like, Yeah, good. And he'd just come back from winning the World Masters.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04 36:21

Um, so it's pretty fresh and it was pretty fit, and he had a lot of big energy. And I was like, How are you doing? Hey, how about that dance? He's like, Oh yeah. And so we started dancing, and I was like, Wow, this guy can really move. I was like, uh oh, cool. So we started dancing. We didn't stop all night.

SPEAKER_05 36:41

We ended up in the mosh pit, and I was like, This is like cool. I found the friend, you know, like we had such a good time.

SPEAKER_04 36:49

Oh, then he gets down on his knees at some point in the night.

SPEAKER_05 36:52

Will you please come to Hawaii with me? And I'm like, yeah. And Stella's like, get up off the floor before somebody sees you. Oh my god. And I'm like, yeah, okay, sure. Because, you know, it's like, yeah, that's so far out.

SPEAKER_04 37:07

Well, we ended up going to Hawaii together. That season was uh our first time. I think it was I think it was 99 or 2000, uh was the first winter season I ended up going with him. We w we went to super tubes and yeah, I just we just started a life. So he taught me how to surf. So, you know, I really wanted to learn how to surf and I think I got a good teacher.

SPEAKER_07 37:33

Did you find out what the feeling meant?

SPEAKER_04 37:36

I found the feeling.

SPEAKER_07 37:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:38

Yes. I found it twice. I have two beautiful boys because we lived at Kira then and we would go surfing every morning out at Rainbow Bay, and uh because Snapper was deep then, didn't have the sand bypass then. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

Different.

SPEAKER_04 37:52

Yeah, way different. And uh there'd be like five of us out there on a you know, four foot swell. It'd be like, oh, just go, you know, round and round with your mates. Um, not like today. And so yeah, got hooked. We shared six winter seasons in Hawaii together. And um yeah, love it. And then you know, our boys grew up in that life and a really blessed life in that way. And still surfing today. So still getting the feeling. I love to sit way out the back on a big log. Um, I like the fun factor. And I like to sit way out the back to kind of one, not get waves on my head. I don't like that. Um I don't mind wiping out once in a while, but with a long board I didn't like wiping out too much. And I like to talk to the to the expansive space sitting at the back. You know, you're not always looking at people, you get to look at a big vast horizon and can I sit there and talk to the whales? And they can't see them, I still talk to them. Yeah. And and sing, you know, hear songs, come in and write songs. That was another like pivotal moment where I go, oh, if I ask for something, I get it in a really big way. I think, you know, there's this energy is part of me that if I put my intention to something, then it kind of happens. Sometimes it takes a day to manifest. Sometimes it'll it can take, you know, a few years. But it does. I think it's that always that the quiet whispering of the the purpose and the passion of what you're really st really wanting to explore or or uncover or discover um in your life, you know, from that from that space of wonder. But um, that if you keep calling it within yourself, those quiet whispers um eventually they show up. Like so it's inevitable.

SPEAKER_07 39:56

Wonder. Isn't that a common thread? Uh it's so wonderful. It's just the pathway. Yeah, isn't it?

SPEAKER_06 40:03

You know, the pat wonder. Wonder is the way. I'm curious about your desert upbringing, what it taught you, what dry country taught you about water, and when you started to reconcile this deep ancestry of water people, of seafaring, when that when you brought that ancestry into your world.

Dry Country Lessons About Water

SPEAKER_04 40:30

You know, it's always kind of been there. I think it's just something we're attracted to that like gravitates towards, or we gravitate towards. Even we can find water in the driest of country. Like we would drive six, eight hours to be with bodies of water. Like growing up in the Pilbara, like my stepfather and my mother would always take us to the ocean. Um, we'd like cross rivers in our four-wheel drive. Uh, well, you know, we grew up in cyclone country. So we were always in cyclones. And um when Mino was talking about you leaning against the hill, feeling the wind, it reminded me of when we used to walk against the wind in a cyclone. Um, and it became so comfortable for us. You know, these days cyclones are very they they like scary things, things that we know we need to be prepared for. Like back then it was just like, oh wow, it's a day off. Everybody gets to be together after school.

SPEAKER_06 41:31

I grew up I grew up in hurricane country in Florida too. So it was exciting to see the world spin around you.

SPEAKER_04 41:38

Yeah, yeah, the energy of yeah, things flying just well, the trees and just you know, you gotta strap the trampoline down and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't want to lose the trap. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, a lot of things. So, I mean, you know, we used to go up and down the rivers all the time, we used to fish. That was our woolies, basically. That's how we fed a family seven and some aunties and uncles and that. But yeah, we'd always go fishing, we'd always go crabbing. I remember camping one time with all the cuzzies, and we had a little dinghy, and then I remember one cousin going, There's a turtle out there, and we're like, Oh, oh, cool, let's go jump in the boat, let's go see the turtle. Oh, this is gonna be so good. And we're like, Wow, look, there it is. And then my cousin jumps out of the boat, starts riding it. I'm like, what's he doing? Oh my god, hang on, what is he doing? And he grabs it, tackles it, throws it in the boat. And I was like, What's happening? I couldn't figure it out. It's like, why are we taking it out of the ocean? And where is it going? We had a little Suzuki, right? With all the kids could sit in the back. I remember the turtle being put in the back of the Susie and sitting on it, riding home where my stepdad gutted it and chopped it up. My auntie curried it, and that's what we had for dinner. And I'll never forget that because I was I was sad. You know, I was like, okay, yeah. And even when we used to go roo hunting, I used to be the one who stood on the back of the of the Ute with the spotty on the roof, looking for the eyes in the dark. Like, oh, it was my job to kind of like get the red eyes happening, you know, if I can get it, we get to eat. Okay, it's my responsibility. So I f I was like, I'm gonna find it.

SPEAKER_03 43:32

I'm gonna yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:33

And I was like, there it is, and I bang, and pull up. And as soon as he pulled up, I'd be like, oh no, what have I done? Oh no, I I'm responsible in one way, but now I'm responsible in another way. So that was always a ebb and flow type of feeling as a young kid. You know, you want to feed your family, but also, oh, I didn't really want that one to die. And so, yeah, and we'd we'd take care of um the young ones if we ever got them and release them again and stuff. But yeah, I just remember living like that and just being around the ocean in that way, like throwing a dry hook in a running stream, and five seconds later, bang bang, and just running up the up the sand dune and it come flopping along the bank just over and over and over again. That's what I remember. That's how you fish. I come to the east coast. I don't think I've ever caught a fish. Unless you get in a boat and you go five mile out, you might get some fish. But I put it in rivers and stuff. I mean not a lot but not the same as what it is over there. The abundance that is over there compared to what's going on here. Very, very different. I was like this doesn't feel right. Doesn't feel like that anyway what the land taught me is that there's so much over there and that the sky is so big because there's way less light pollution like as we can understand now. But as a kid I just remember growing up looking at so many stars and yeah feeling those cyclones as if it was just part of our day, our week and then you know when it was dry we would go to we would drive like a few hours and my dad used to live in Tom Price and we go to this place called Caragini National Park and we would just that would be our hang that would be our local and we'd just like go walking barefoot just walk walk walk walk for like kilometers there's no trail you just kind of follow the water follow the water line I mean now it really kind of breaks my heart because that whole mining industry is pushing pushing up against that that uh water body and I've been really feeling something about that for a little while now since it's been coming up you know in the news um on our phones which is great. It's a great device to tell us what's going on um with our water bodies that that that could be damaged. That makes me want to drive my bus across the country and just park it across the road. That's what it makes me want to do just to protect it at any cost. So I feel for the families over there who are trying to stand their ground um against that those mining giants um because you know once you damage something as beautiful precious as that it's like one of the beautiful wonders of the world Karigini National Park. So yeah yeah I guess I've always gravitated to water in some in one way or another. I mean don't we as humans?

SPEAKER_06 46:43

I think so yeah we definitely think so. I'm curious about when you rediscovered or reconnected with your Maori heritage and I'm just thinking about the the incredible seafaring legacy of your ancestors and when that landed for you in a in a personal way not just a historical way.

Reclaiming Maori Stories And Language

SPEAKER_06 47:06

When did those stories become your stories?

SPEAKER_04 47:08

The the Waka? Yeah yeah just recently actually okay um well I mean it's been trickling along over the decades yeah um because when I went back I mean we get called back for tonguey when people pass. That's when my auntie gave me my first Kowo instrument. But then I'd always come back home to Australia you know and then kind of meander my way around here doing this and that and then I'd always go ooh I'm feeling lost and I'd I'd go home again for a bit. I remember going to this gathering called Island Vibe. We did a weaving of a whale it was humongous and you could walk inside the belly of it and I remember the the guy who was leading that you know you the stories just kind of get delivered to you by random people but not so random. I feel like they're just my ancestry talking through other people telling me things I always have had a little bit of an ear going oh who's speaking to me right now? Why is this person telling me this particular story very randomly and what does it mean? Okay I'll just put that in my basket keep going along the path. But I remember when we did this whale um my friend said look if you could go home and find your whale stories and then bring them back to this gathering we could share them. And you should by the way you should meet this guy called Bonalori. I'm like okay who's that anyway he's a mourning elder from the Great Australian bite the whale dreaming man. I'm like oh my god wow really love to meet him one day so I go home to Aotearoa and I don't know where I'm gonna get these whale stories. So I I I talk to my aunties I go and I had no money by the way I had zero dollars to even fly there and then all of a sudden you know I call for help and I go look I really need some kind of support I'm a single mum I need some help and they go oh yes well you're a you're a grandfather customer so so we owe you three thousand dollars and I was like what because I I hadn't been on Centerlink and then all of a sudden I was like oh I need help and they're like yeah we actually owe you a lot of money and I was like what do you mean yeah you're a grandfather customer I'm like what do you mean grandfather what does that even mean and I started bawling my eyes out in the car park in my car going my granddad is sending me money to go home to find these stories so I fly back I call an auntie I go hey um do you guys know anything about whales and they're like not really oh you know you want to talk to your uncle Nahiwe you want to go find him where does he live? Oh we don't know just somewhere over there so I have to go find him anyway a long story short I end up I end up finding him and he says oh look come with me we're gonna go to the Wanganui River for a tangy there's a tangy I've got to get to you know he's basically uh the president of the whole Iwi the whole clan for our people and he's you know important and busy and so he's going to this funeral and I'm supposed to come with him to this funeral and there I get to stand on a Murai that talks about where my grandfather is from and that that's his Murai one of them you have a few when you connect the dots um so I stand there and then you know on the drives he's he's telling me all these stories about how he went on an Inuit hunt and so these stories start coming and then I fly back to Australia I go to Island Vibe I help weave this whale that becomes a stage and you know other things happen big other big stories happen with with gifting and sharing voice and whatever but that's just like another trail where you're being asked to go and retrieve something and but you you're not yet sure what it all means. You don't know really how to piece it all together or or what's going to come next. This was after you know the whole epiphany at your house and things happened and I think some years later actually but then you know not long after that I f I get introduced to Bunalurie randomly and start a whole whale dreaming season with them where I'm singing Murning whale songlines now. And I'm like okay that's interesting and I'm just going along for the ride you know I'm just caught in this current and um and I think I was telling you on the headland today like here I am singing Murning song lines and I'd get off the stage going wow that was amazing but um I'm not singing my own language so I'd always feel a little hole in my heart and then eventually in my mid-30s wasn't until my mid-30s that I'd met my husband now and I was in a position where we were living back on the Gold Coast and we're all having a beautiful family you know cohesive relationship with my new partner and the boys and their dad so we're all working together we're all around the table together we're supporting one another and I'm feeling that low empty space again I'm like oh I need to go visit my auntie so I'd call up can I can I come and visit you where are you can can we weave can we talk about stuff and she's like I said you know like a week or so two weeks she's like no no Bob I'm going to school you should come to school with me. I'm like what do you mean I've got kids I can't just leave she's like no you should I I'm going to the university you know they teach us everything there we it's like our own Marae within the university we have our own Murai which is the all of our language components and all of our karakia like every they are Maori or the the whole world of being Maori we have our own Murai which is on the university site. It'd be like having uh your own dance circle you know b bore a ring on a site of a university where your lineage could go and learn and be together.

SPEAKER_07 53:28

Is that new like that dynamic? How long has that option been available for people of any age to be able to dive in and and reintroduce themselves to their heritage their culture because that sounds incredible. Yeah like that sounds like is that happening in Hawaii is that happening all over the Pacific because that's a that's sounds amazing.

SPEAKER_04 53:56

I mean it's I mean our teachings are happening all the time whether they're in a westernized system or not is another thing. And I I think as Mahori people we bridged that gap I think back in the 70s and 80s really when my uncle was one of the ones sitting in parliament really trying to bring our language forward in the school system. So it was the work of those ancestors of my uncle who's still living today that really changed the whole dynamic of our educational system that they've done so much work to be able to make that mainstream now.

SPEAKER_06 54:35

So you can go from Kohangareo which is our kindergarten our preschool uh right through to our high school into university now full immersion you know that's that's a whole generation maybe we're pushing two now most definitely um even three um to be able to yeah strengthen our people strengthen that new generation that's coming through is that is that unprecedented in the world to have indigenous education opportunity through the entirety of schooling like is there another global north country where that is an option?

SPEAKER_07 55:20

I'm not sure that not that I know of I mean no I couldn't say yeah I don't know it's interesting because it's like you know there's always been learning structures and cultures throughout the world it we don't yeah we don't have to have an institutional westernized kind of idea of it. Though what's interesting is that meeting place like imagine being there as a Paky white fellow there you're walking around and you're seeing that cultural thing right side by side and the friendships being forged you know like not so over there is where we do this and over here is where we do that. I don't know there's something to that which seems new ish.

Waka Protocols And Returning To Home Waters

SPEAKER_04 56:01

Well I mean there was a there is and is still a westernized society there in Altera and we also have our Marais but to put them together in an educational system on the same ground I mean that's what we need to do to be able to do kind of emerge as people as I think on humanity as a a leader in that in that movement of merging cultures acknowledging the old while bringing along the the freshies the freshies just off the boat naughty teenagers as naughty humans those months I didn't grow up there but I feel it and more so I hear about it when I travel the world today I hear about it from other cultural people how Mori set precedent around the world and it makes me feel so much pride that my ancestors are those people those type of actional actionable people to be able to bring our ancient ways of being and living and seeing the world and seeing nature into today's very fast paced very you know mixed up I mean here comes the age of AI but yet we're still holding our maramataka we're still holding our matariki celebrations you know our star uh acknowledging um ways of of being and doing and acknowledging rivers uh with personhood yes yes well absolutely and that's my Papa's river so I fuck a Papa to the Wanganui River and I'm still yet to paddle that river but I have been feeling a huge calling to do that you know and in the global uh movements that I've been invited to to be a part of that have truly blown my mind as to you know why is it that we're being asked to be a part of these things. I don't just don't question it anymore. That would be dishonouring I've I've felt after a while, you know, not just dishonouring of myself but of those who asking. But yeah the first time I ever paddled Waka was in the Salish Sea with our our Lummy nation, the Eagle Clan family just off of Washington. And so we got asked to come over there and go paddling with them. It's the first time I ever hopped in a in a traditional Waka in a traditional canoe with my daughter Moana and they've taught us so much about what protocol looks like in a canoe and how you approach land when you pull up even before you put your foot on the land you we are asking for permission to come onto that land by the local peoples. Although we paddle with our Lumi Nation people who have been paddling there forever they're making these journeys and it's a week long journey we go from island to island to island to actually live and breathe and continue the practice of how they have always lived. So if we don't keep practicing those ways they disappear and the the stories disappear the songs um but they're very strong in that area and they've taught us so much. And then we were invited to go paddle in Maui so we've been there twice in the last couple of years so we now we're paddling with star navigators voyagers from Maui and I'm like wow now we're paddling Maui how's the how's that happening? I mean it's gorgeous and beautiful again practicing protocols but but lately I've been feeling this you know like this recurring thing like it was with with the whale dreamers I was singing this culture and how beautiful and I'm learning so much but it it's not mine our ancestral voice. So I I've been talking to my husband lately uh for the past like year I'm going I've got to go home I've got to go paddle my own river I really feel like I need to take Moana up the Wanganui River and actually paddle it and go home and meet my own waters.

Sponsor Break

SPEAKER_06 1:00:29

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SPEAKER_07 1:02:33

Sody is offering water people listeners a free eight flavor sample pack and 15% off your order just head to Sodi, that's S-O-D-I-I, dot com dot AU slash waterpeople, or click the link in the show notes I hear you loud and clear on that level I uh had a similar thing in 2011 perhaps or twelve one of those years where I had some friends from Taranaki and Raglan area reach out about the Popotol, the Maui's dolphin, the smallest dolphin on the planet that at that stage there was only 50 that the people studying that species of dolphin thought there was only 50 left

A Solo Paddle Against Seabed Mining

SPEAKER_07 1:03:20

in the world. And there was a threat of seabed mining coming to the west coast of Alteroa and so our friends there had seen things we'd done in the past which had been long slow sailing journeys up this coast, up and down this coast, also in America and they asked for me to come over and just lend a hand try and come up with ideas for stopping the seabed mining industry from coming to that west coast. So I instantly got this inspiration to paddle that coast on a long paddle board but on my own and all my other sort of uh initiatives and ideas for meaningful adventures and um projects had been with big groups of people but for some reason I was just like I'm just gonna go do this one this way and my first ever beach memory of my life is the black sand at PH burning my feet before we left and came to live in Australia. I don't remember surfing or anything I was only little I was under seven years of age but I do remember that black sand and the black sand was what the mining industry was after the iron ore and the sand. Everyone was terrified and still is of seabed mining for the reasons that the all of the um decades of chemical use and mismanagement misuse of the land on the island there with farming practices had delivered all of those toxins and sediment to the seafloor and that if mining come it would be it would stir all that up in one go and just flood the ecosystem with decades and decades and decades of industrial toxins. Not only that then the tailings would be spat back out and this was all in the habitat of the Papoto, the Maui's dolphin. So anyway I was like yep I'm gonna paddle from Taranaki to Pihar my where my first beach experience where my mum's side of my family comes from Tarunaki area when she was little and my first moments like I said were at Pija and so there was like you know 370 K's of coastline to paddle and the idea was to paddle it and only using my hands I'm going slow which means I have to do you know hours of paddling in the day come in spend the night with some local brothers and sisters whoever would put foot us up and look after us. I had a couple local friends with me on land doing that and we did it and I knew that when we started we couldn't say that every community between those two places knew of this issue, this looming threat out on the horizon. But when we finished the paddle we knew that every school and kind of Head person that we got the moment to have a cupper with knew about what was happening and what their options were, what they could do about it. And for me it was huge. It was actually a really, it was a huge moment. My dad had left his body the year before, I think it was, and I paddled past the Manacal. It's huge, treacherous body of water. But the day I I the day I crossed it, I had Papotow dolphins bow riding my paddle board with me for 40 minutes before I crossed the gnarliest body of water I've ever paddled. On the day that my dad had left his body, I was alone, completely alone. It was thick fog, couldn't see anyone, couldn't see anything, no like support systems, whatever, totally just with those dolphin and those waters. And then the experience of it was something of a full circle-ish type of moment, something that just I don't know, I just had to do and brought me to my knees, brought me crying, brought yeah, a lot up. But it was incredible, and I'm so glad I went and did that at a time where I don't know, it I on a rational or logical level. I remember you were pretty nervous about me doing it, and in general it was, yeah, it didn't maybe make sense to a lot of other people, but it just felt like something I had to do. Is that something you can relate to when you're talking about this? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:29

Yeah. I mean, nobody else knew that I was doing it, but it's just like something that I have to go and collect. It's like pieces of knowledge, uh pieces of the puzzle of our life that we gotta put together somehow. And I think each one of those callings kind of builds a bigger picture of what our life purpose becomes. When you were talking about the dolphins, it makes it reminds me of a time that I had in Harvey Bay where um we'd we'd just done this uh event.

Calling Whales With Voice

SPEAKER_04 1:08:01

We just opened the Whale Festival with it with another piece um called Song to the Ocean that I've been working with a friend of mine. And uh, you know, we we always try and put some cultural protocols into this like very orchestral, it's a double orchestra piece where we invite um family to come and do share art and and then invite the kids in to be part of the music and teach and share. And then we have protocols where we where I introduce this this way of thinking of how how do we bring our practices into an everyday scenario? How do we bring those ancient ways of being into this new world? So when we open the show, I share a karanga. It's called Song to the Ocean. I think, well, if I am a Mori woman and I was, you know, and I think I think about I think back like a hundred years ago or more, what would it have been like if our relations between each other and how would we have interacted? And I can see that we would have come over with Waka and and then maybe you know our Aboriginal family would have been standing on the beach and they would have seen us. What would we have done to build those lines of I see you? And so, you know, um as a uh First Nations uh producer in the show, I go, I say to my composer, I go, you know what? If I was in a waka, I would probably blow my conch. And then maybe then they would they would see and hear us, and then they would gather on the beach and they would do what it what they would do. And then I would probably karanga and I would call to them in my language, and they would call back to us, or they'd start singing to us, or whatever it is that they would do, and we would come together and we would be together and we would share the fire and we would share whatever we were bringing and our wakker and whatever they had, and we would share food and whatever. So in the show, we opened that way where we have a 25 m diameter circumference of of light sculptures that the community built with us, and then the orchestra would be inside, and then on the outside there'd be three uh plinth stages where there'd be two percussionists and myself as uh as a solo vocalist for the show. And then I was like, Well well, what if we have the elders on one of those plinths and we imagine that we're like in that way where that I would blow my conch and and and I across the space, and then they would call to us in the way that they would want to or used to. And then I would call back to them like we karanga on the Murai, and then we would have this uh calling of of language and culture and love and frequency and belonging and knowing and being. Um and so that's how we open the show. So we always open the show. And you know, then it then the show begins, and I remember these aunties standing on the stage singing back to me. And I feel like I'm just carrying a whole, you know, lineage inside of me in my bones, even though I didn't grow up there. I know it's in my bones. It's in my blood. It's in my white or it's in my spirit. And so that's uh been such a beautiful connective uh tissue between uh myself personally and country and our relationships that we have with one another as First Nations people. And in that opening um after the show, then then we move into the show and it's you know, it's a beautiful show. Um afterwards, after that show, uh a woman came up to us crying, just elated at what she had sought from home uh from New Zealand, and she said she'd never seen anything like that before. Seeing the two cultures come together in such a way that it moved her beyond her body and it brought her to tears. And she was like, I don't know, while watching boat, I want to invite you out to come to see the whales. I was like, Yeah, let's go. Um to me and the auntie, and I'm like, Auntie, invite whoever you want and we'll go out. We'll go out on the boat. It's like okay. So the next day we go out on this big, you know, double decker huge boat with tourists and everything, and my family and auntie's family, and I bought my conch. I thought I said, Auntie, bring your clapsticks. He's like, all right. So we go out there and we're looking for whales, looking for whales, looking for whales, but no whales. They're just over there. Just over there. Or just over there. Or they keep going away from the boat, right? They're not coming anywhere near us. And I thought, oh, maybe I should blow my conch. So I can't get my conch out. And I like to do this big ooh. Nothing. Nothing. And I thought, oh, you know, a conch could really sound like a buck, maybe. Like it's a very low tone, piercing tone. Maybe it's not very, you know, warm. So I put that down, I go, okay. No response from that. Now it's at the end of the tour, and we're about to head back. I'm like, whoa, we didn't see anywhere else. Well, it's it's now or never. I I f I have to karanger. I have to call to them. So I was like, okay, well, let's see. And then I feel this energy rising up, and I start uh calling out to them in my language. Now, my auntie who taught me how to karanga, she told me the story once how she turned a pot of whales with her karanga with nothing but her voice. And I thought that was amazing. I was like, really? So I was in that moment of going, it's true, she said it happened. So I'll I'll try, I'll try and talk to them. So I'm I'm calling with my karanger, like this big worm voice. And all of a sudden, they turn around and they come up to the boat, swim right up to us, go to the edge of the boat. I've now climbed over the railing and I'm holding on to the side of the railing, and it's spy hopping, and I'm singing. Now I've turned from karanga into singing, right? Singing like a whale, how we do, how I do from my whale song journeys that I've learned. The downloads that we get given from them. They our tehorda offer us our whale song. You have to be in their presence to receive those songs, those song lines from them, which you would know if you're in the water with them, or if you dive under, you can hear them singing. And so I'm I'm doing my whale song what I what I learn, uh spending time out in Harvey Bay, and I'm singing and singing and singing, and I can almost touch it, it's so close, and it's spy helping like this for ages.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:42

Everyone would have been there.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:44

40 people have cameras going. I don't notice anyone, I'm just like right there with this beautiful whale, and there's a couple around him or her, and it's looking at me and I'm singing my heart out, and then after a while, it dives down, it turns around, gets its towel, and goes splash, and just totally soaks me in water, and then swims away. And and and the captain on the boat goes, Well, folks, that's what happens when you put indigenous women on a whale watching boat. Those whales were swimming away from us, and as soon as they started singing, they turned around and came to be with us. You know, that's like now that's in my body, in my in my flesh. And you know, I thought about it over the years, I'm like, wow, that's so magical. Because I I've tried to call whales in different places, but haven't had that experience. But I've put it together that hang on a minute. They're our family that come from Antarctica, they go past our Teroa, where they hear our Wahine calling to them. So they know that voice, they know that language, they know that family. And they come all the way up the east coast of Australia and they come into Harvey Bay, and I am now using that language and that call, and they're like, Oh, it's family. Who is it? Who's visiting us here? So, you know, it's like, oh, they're familiar with that vibration because that's our relationship to each other, and so I was like, Oh, that's the song line. That's what a song line is. To know it, to live and breathe it, to experience it in that way was something that has changed my life.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:43

Great.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:44

So beautiful.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:45

I have um yeah, endless love of these stories. And yeah, just the I think they're very personal stories actually, and uh like I don't really share mine, so I won't hear in this way, but I will with people when we're sitting around the fire and it's you know, eye to eye and heart to heart, and it's I don't know, you know that you're not gonna be misperceived or words are not gonna land for those people and stuff, but there is such a universe there within that relationship, isn't there? There is just there is yeah, so many like unspoken beyond words in the mind, anyway, in that experience. And I I feel like a lot of surfers, we we probably get glimpses and these little like knocks on the door, as people, especially here in Australia and and in Altero, I'm sure too, but the amount of like dolphins among lineups and migrating whales we all encounter, though I'm sure most people who are listening to this and who do live in this place would have had that experience where you you pass by each other and that they might come and sort of ask for a communication or a greet that there'll be a greeting of some sort, but then a depart pretty quick, it's a departure. But there is also just so many stories within, I guess, the right circles where that type of interaction has gone so much further, and there's so many more moments that happen with whales and dolphins and humans in the ocean. And I just think it's wonderful for people to know that that's happening, and if that's their particular like calling to want to pursue that or not even pursue, just to be drawn towards the ocean to those beings and to explore that further, go for it, do it, follow that feeling because it just follows the feeling. Yeah, to me, that that is knowing that feeling that there is just so much there. Yeah, and in in my life, I just know that in the biggest moments in my life, I there has always been a bunch of moments like that in the ocean, with not like your experience specifically, more just my my own interactions with cetaceans that have meant so much. Yeah. And it's I think it's great for people to know that that's there, that that relationship is happening.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:32

Oh yeah, there's a story that I've heard about you when you were at home rec reclaiming language, a teacher said to you, Don't be selfish. I love I love to hear you share that story. Yeah.

Don’t Be Selfish With Your Voice

SPEAKER_04 1:20:49

So when I did go back to to the uni, to the Marae and the university, and I was doing like certificate one and two. It's not even level one that goes to level four, and then you have masters, right? So we're all in it together learning. Um, I'm learning how to count and say hello and stuff. And then you have like you have like the ones at level four where the reciting is 20-minute, you know, whyata or mortea, like long lullabies that tell lots of story and parts of place and being. Every lunchtime, no matter what your level, we would get into the yard and we would line up in uh kapahaka, uh, which is like our our song and dance positions. And it'd be like one line first line, front line, second line, third line, and go as deep as there are many people. And you always stand in the gap. So you don't ever stand behind someone, you always stand in between two people, so we can always be seen. Everybody's important, whether they're in the front line or the back line. And I remember, you know, being a bit shy, like I'm around my peers who know a lot. And the the kayakor, the teacher, she's like, we're going through the motions, we're singing this song, and she's like, Oh, she's getting frustrated. Oh, sing up, I'm uh, open up your waha, open up your mouth, share your voice, don't be selfish. And I was like, huh? What? Be selfish with my voice. Here I was protecting my own ego. Because, you know, maybe I'm not as great a singer as her or him or whatever. And really, it's not about me, just me in a collective like that. Well, in a collective in general, uh, as a family, everybody's voice is important. And it's not about being a perfect singer, it's about just opening up the engine and opening up the throat and having those vibrations well, this is how I understand it, having those vibrations run through your body to even know what it feels like to make sound like that, to make big sound, you know, like through our lives where they're taught to, you know, be quiet, don't make too much noise, don't speak up too much. Jesus, not a very good singer, you know, you shouldn't really do that. Uh so in in that context, to not be selfish, it became a bigger picture about how we're using our voice and that it's really important, like in a big strong rope, there's many threads. You know, we've seen Whale Rider. We know the threads that all together, all the voices together, so become so powerful. And if you've ever stood in front of a of a group of Māori singing, you would know the vibration hits you like a brick wall. It runs through your entire body and activates every cell in your body and it comes pouring out your eyes, right? You start crying because when everybody is giving their best, their bravest, then you know, that's the strength in how we move a waka at all. How do you move a canoe? Not with one person, it takes many people. So yeah, I just that that comment, if don't be selfish with your voice, it hit me like a like a boulder. I was like, wow, I can think about my voice in such a different way that it's there to be of service, something to be shared, not hidden.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:27

And you've done that so beautifully in so many different venues and gatherings around the world. I'd love to hear you speak to some of those, specifically the United Nations world stage. But we're preparing to gather as a group of women for the Water Women Camp Out. I just wanted to hear you riff on the importance of showing up, of gathering together. Why, why make the effort?

Bringing Indigenous Wisdom Into COP

SPEAKER_04 1:24:56

You know, when I was asked to come into the United Nations for for climate, I was like, hmm, what does that mean? What is all this climate talk about? I mean, I'm not a really I didn't think I was a climate-saving person, but I guess I care about the weather because I enjoy it. So I should probably care about it a little bit or just get to know what what's actually happening and how can we understand it more. So yeah, when I was asked to kind of take a journey with the elders, I didn't even know I was going into COP. I didn't know I was going to the United Nations at all. I was going for a sacred journey for prayer with elders from all over the world. I was asked, so I said yes. It was simple as that. And that opened up into a world of, oh, after this, by the way, we're gonna go to the COP conference. Well, what's this COP conference? What is that? Well, it's the conference of the parties. Well, what parties? Well, the the worldwide parties from everywhere. I'm like, okay. And I just got asked to present inside an oceanic global uh conference that was happening.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:06

And I was like, well, geez, what am I gonna talk about?

SPEAKER_04 1:26:08

Well, I can only really speak from my own lived experience because if I don't speak from my own lived experience, then I'm just making stuff up from a book, perhaps, or you know, uh from from from the mind. I like to speak from my heart. And so, yeah, we got introduced to the climate space, and it's been an uncovering over the last four years as to what it actually is and how it works, and I'm still going through it. I'm still learning about how do we implement policy into a space that, well, can can it even hear us? Can it even hear our voices in the back? How do we bring our voices to the forefront, actually? Well, that takes a really big team of people who have been circling around it for well, some dec elders, for some elders it's decades, and for the the admin team and the ones that work in the background to get us meetings and to get us to the tables, you know, some years. And yeah, I just go because the elders are there and they're asking for support. So really I just try to bring the mana of who I am and what I know and what I've learnt about being with our ocean family. What has it taught me? What what is it that I have learnt from being in the ocean, living in the ocean, being a surfer, being a songwoman? And and I would never have called myself that, but lately people are calling me a songwoman, whale songwoman. I was like, oh, am I? Oh, I guess I am. Because, you know, after the years of of being in their presence, then you just are enveloped by their whole being and way of living. So you start to see things differently, and that maybe perhaps. That perspective perspective of what I have seen could help. I'm not quite sure. Maybe it can. If I keep my eyes open and my ears open and I'm listening, there might be a moment in the weeks that we are there or the years that we're there. There might be a single moment where I can where I can place something into a conversation, into a conference, into a room, into one person that could change the whole trajectory of whether we do any deep sea mining, of whether we kill animal whales, or whether we do any of the stuff that we're trying to actually bring awareness to. So I just keep showing up. They keep asking, fire, can you come? Because, you know, we have such passion for this that really that's all it takes. You don't have to be a scientist, although it's good if you are. You don't have to be a great speaker because there's lots of jobs to do. You don't have to be even indigenous, because it's going to take all of us to actually change the consciousness of what's actually going on in our world in relationship to humans to nature. And so, you know, if if it's in your heart and if you feel that like something whispering to you, like, oh, I think I've got to get up, I think I've got to do something. What can I do? You know, just reach out to anyone in your community that is connected to uh, you know, uh a non-for-profit or or someone who's actioning something, just like go along and and find out and just follow that pathway and see where it leads you. Because I can tell you, we're all out here needing support. And if you just keep saying yes, if you just keep showing up, your life purpose starts to just reveal itself. It's kind of effortless, actually, after a while. Everyone's special, so you don't have to think you have to be special to show up and and and make a difference.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:06

Beautifully said.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:07

Can you speak to us about this exceptional gathering of elders from around the world? That just that is such a vibrant concept to me.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:18

Yeah, so back in 2021, I was invited to go on a pilgrimage across the world to sacred sites with some amazing um elders who look after Tetihuacan, the temple in Mexico and Peru, and um, you know, Aztec calendar keepers and knowledge keepers from Africa and human rights lawyers. And so I just said yes. I wasn't sure why, and I just thought, oh gosh, who am I to go? Um, and along that journey, one of the elders that was part of it, his name's Pooh and Moodley, he started an online uh gathering space during COVID where elders could still speak to one another, you know, across the world. And he it's called Earthrise, the Earthrise Collective. And they would gather once every full moon online to just be together and learn from one another and share different medicines and uh teachings and knowledge. So it's about activism, ancient wisdom, and alternatives. And I've been part of that, waking up at 2 a.m. every full moon to get on a Zoom call, because that's what time they do it in Africa. And I'm like, well, you know, there's something special going on here. So I would wake up out of my tent in the middle of winter and sit outside with my computer with like three blankets, logging on at 2 a.m. going, I really want to be with these elders. You know, it's such a new, you know, usually we would we would pilgrimage, we'd walk to go and see our elders. We're all kind of landlocked, gridlocked. So like, wow, now I'm being with all these elders on a Zoom call. So out of the Earthrise collective, uh, a few of them go into COP and have been going into COP for a long time. And then they started asking me, would I come with them into COP? And I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, sure. I'll learn about it, I guess, on the way. And so out of that collective, some of the elders from there and and other places started to gather. And so this collective is called the Wisdom Keepers Delegation. And that's the delegation that goes into the United Nations for the for the climate summit every year. We've been doing it for four years. So we we meet a week beforehand and we sit in ceremony and we think tank and we gather as a family to prepare to go into such a space for the next two weeks.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:56

And what do you witness these elders bringing into the United Nations space that would not exist otherwise?

SPEAKER_04 1:33:05

Joy. It's a very hard space to be in. You know, they've got a lot of people sitting there on the microphones, and it sounds like this. And I mean, with all due respect for what everyone is coming there to talk about, it's very lulling. The talking, the speeches of two weeks is very, very lulling, and you can really drift off. And there's so much to be said and so much to be shared. Um what the Wisdom Keeper delegation brings in, besides policy, because we are still pushing the policy, is the rainbow, the colorful rainbow of life. We're bringing in the voice of nature, we're bringing in our sacred tools, we're bringing in the sacred drum, the sacred flutes. I bring my conch. And we wake people up and we bring those song lines and those stories that hopefully bridge that nature's in the room now. I mean, when we're talking about nature, shouldn't nature be in the room? Where are the trees? Who's speaking for the trees? And I mean, really speaking tree language or water language. While we can sit there with our papers and our policies, and yes, you know, we need to do that because we have two worlds colliding. We have a Western world and we have an indigenous perspective. The wisdom keeper delegation really cuts through the sea of blue suits like a rainbow, you know, bringing this bridge of consciousness.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:54

I've often been struck by the way indigenous people that I've known share just enough in a world, in a culture, the culture that I've grown up in, where you're encouraged to broadcast everything all the time to anyone. It is a striking thing to see sharing restraint, to see someone read a room and share what is appropriate in that moment for the people who are in the room. I just wanted to ask you about what it's like to walk, to sing, to swim in those two worlds.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:32

You know, that's so true what you said. Uh you gotta have a few cups of teas with an auntie before she'll tell you a story. Because it's about trust, right? Because there's been a lot of broken trust. Yeah, at first it was it's very daunting because you know, that world could potentially seem so important that you don't belong. But I feel like if I'm speaking for all of my ancestors, whoever stood up for our oceans, our forests, I feel like I have a responsibility to stand and be present and to speak up.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:17

Because if we have an opportunity to be in that room, then we're privileged to be in that room, then don't waste that opportunity. So I I give, I listen, uh, and it's very fast-paced in those environments. So we are, you know, everyone's running from one place to the next. I mean, it'd be good if it was a month long, not two weeks. But yeah, it does, it does take a lot of awareness to be able to feel not just the words that are spoken in that room, but the energy, the whole energy of the cop in general, is a moving organism going from you know, country to country. And different countries have their own energy. That's why it's important for us to go and greet the land and the waters before we go into a conference space, um, so that we have some type of touch point to follow our protocols. I mean, that's how I feel about it when we do that. But yeah, we when you walk into a room of people that are there, we don't walk in alone. That's one thing. We walk in with uh other elders or support team that come with you. So we're never ever alone. And that gives you strength to be able to stand and reveal what the message is. And it's pretty much always the same, is that we are still here or we are still speaking on behalf of nature in uh in the ways that we know and carry through our lineage and and in our lifetimes.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:11

And we all carry those lineages, don't we? If we trace far enough back.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:16

Exactly.

Waterwomen Community And Surf Lineage

SPEAKER_04 1:38:17

Like if you're out there and you're feeling like, oh, you don't have any culture, you don't have anything to kind of connect to, and I I would rather connect to Mori people because they fascinate me, or or the Native American people because they're so beautiful and you know, I love their songs. You know, everyone has Fenua, has land that you're connected to. Whether you knew your parents or not, you have a mountain that you were born by. You have a river that ran when you grew up as a as a baby or a kid, or even if you don't remember that, you have one even now. Yeah, some people I've spoken to, they're going, Yeah, but I was an orphan, I was taken from my land. I I don't know what my mountain is or my river was or what their original names were. So I don't know how to connect to that fire. How do I do that? Okay, well, where do you live now? And who is the mountain that you live by now? Do you visit it? Do you go and sit by that river? Do you talk to the river? Do you listen to what it has to say to you? Do you put your back against a tree and and just be with that tree? To just be in relationship with those utwa, with those element elemental forces because it's always there to be found if you want to go looking, right? So the point is to to keep searching if you haven't yet already found it.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:40

That makes me think about the water women camp out and that important moment that I've seen with that happen, where you attended that and other gatherings where a lot of water women have gathered. And just the strength that comes from that is super cool. Like just to see women lit up and feeling like, yeah, we we occupy this space and we do it this way. You know, in such a world where you you have seen and felt it on the Gold Coast is a prime example of a a male-dominated, extroverted dominated sword fighting frickin' jousting fest. And it's so great to grow away from that, and you know in these ways things happen, and I just think it's fantastic, and um and it seems while it's also empowering and like this strengthening, it's super nurturing. It just looks like a really healthy way for people to be together.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:44

And importantly, for me, as someone kind of similar to the person you were describing earlier, who doesn't necessarily have a really clearly defined blood lineage in my life. Um, for me, these gatherings are also about establishing our surfing lineage and acknowledging the elders who have come before us in the culture to which I belong, to which we belong, to this surfing wave riding culture that spreads across the world now and has for a long time. But these gatherings are a way of having in real life community, in real life connection and relationship with other women. So what has happened in the past where each successive generation of female surfers haven't had a thread to connect the previous generation, and so it's forgotten, and each generation feels like it's reinventing the same wheel and pioneering in the same ways, even though there were these incredible women who came before. So these gatherings are also about that to me, like making sure we have these relationships and networks set up so the women who have come before us are not forgotten. Let's put it there.

SPEAKER_07 1:42:00

Yeah, like when you're saying like Pam Burridge and different women are at those events and they can speak to what to young girls about what they have gone through and how to look out for certain things and stay safe and be strong and and learn.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:17

And also to hear from people like Pauline Mencer, who was an early activist in a lot of different spheres of life. Like this isn't a new this isn't a new lane to be s outspoken politically, environmentally, in terms of gender issues and otherwise. Like there are lots of people who have done this work before us, and it only makes us stronger to connect with them and the work they've done.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:41

Yeah. I remember I remember s surfing out there as a as the only girl. Yeah. Out out at Snapper and Rainbow. I I'd like to look around going, hang on, um, where are the other girls? Oh my god, I am the only one out here. What? Where are they? I know. Uh like I said, I was 25 when I learned to surf.

SPEAKER_07 1:43:03

Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:04

Yeah. Bit bit later in life compared to most people around here grew up here. Um and I remember also, yeah, and you just you just had to be strong. You had to be fierce. If you wanted a wave, well, I mean, I was a bit lucky because it was less people back then. So it was really, it was all local family. But I even remember when I was pregnant with um my first boy Jagger and with Keo as well, that I would surf right up until I was seven months pregnant. And, you know, because I'd knee paddle after a while. When you're surfing two, three times a day, like you don't really notice. It's just normal. But you know, people would go, Oh my god, you look like a V8 on water. And when you go paddling by, then you know, old guys would be like, You shouldn't be out here, it's so dangerous for you. And I'd be like, Yeah, okay, buddy, I know what my body can do, right? But I I'd I'd stand up and I had this huge belly. And it wasn't, you know, to show off or anything. I just I just love surfing that much. So we just did it all the time. And it just, well, this belly grew and just coming along with me. And um, I remember so that that was a snap of rainbow. I remember years later, like you know, 10, 12 years later, I was up on the Sunshine Coast surfing at Coulomb, and this woman paddled over to me. She's like, I remember you. I'm like, okay, hi. She's like, I remember you.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:40

I used to work at Rainbow Bay Surf Club, and I used to watch you from the balcony surfing along with your big belly pregnant.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:48

And I was like, okay. She's like, Yeah, that was really inspiring.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:52

And I was like, oh, cool, you know, just doing whatever it felt to do.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:58

Yeah. But yeah, just the fact that that woman remembered seeing that, that that's even possible.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:06

Is can can we do that as women? Can we surf and be pregnant? Well, yeah. Do a lot of things actually whilst pregnant. Yeah. So yeah, I think we're we're way more resilient than we realize.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:19

Yeah. Or than we're led to believe too. Vaya, you mentioned the tent earlier. I'd love for you to speak to these other two worlds that you've been holding at the same time. This standing, singing on this global stage, representing yourself, your culture, your lineage, and then also making a life and a livelihood here in Australia.

Tent Life Pilgrimage Trials And The Bus Waka

SPEAKER_04 1:45:47

Yeah, that that was a really tough, challenging time. I mean, we were living in Corumban at the time in the valley, just had my daughter, so she was a few years old. Just coming out of COVID, and then the owner wanted her house back, and we were like, oh boy, six years have nurtured us. We're just starting to feel settled. And then it was like, oh, off you go. You know, we've been told to kind of move on. And I was like, no, we look for a place everywhere, and we were house sharing, and you know, we had the funds to be able to do it, but everywhere we looked, we just couldn't get back in. And it was really tough times back then trying to get housing for everyone. We had pets and we had kids, and so you know, we were on the lower demographic of choice, and then it got to a space of desperation, and my friend up on the Sunshine Coast, he kept saying, Hey, you know, I've got this piece of land. You can just come and stay up here with me if you need to. And I was like, Yeah, we'll be fine, we'll be fine. And then eventually got to the point where I was like, actually, we kind of need to come to you if that's okay. He's like, Yeah. So we uh got a shipping container of our stuff, and we went to his uh place just out of your Mundi, just north of your Mundi, and we pitched our tent and we got some old golf buggy batteries. We hooked them up to two house solar panels so we had power. Our mate let us cut down a couple of trees so we could fork them and you know, build like uh shanties with big tarps. We went to Bunnings, got big tarps, and uh for 14 months that's how we lived while we were trying to figure out what to do. And my husband at the time, God bless him, he's like, let's get a boat. We'll get a boat, and then we can go and see the whales, and then we can pull up at the beach, you can bring your crystal balls out, and we can play wherever we go, it'll be fantastic. I was like, Yeah, yeah, sounds good, but I've never seen you catch a fish. I'm not sure. I've seen you chop wood, I've seen you make fire. You're a forest man. I don't know how I feel about getting in the wild ocean with you, my love. But hey, um, what about a bus? And I'd always thought to kind of get a sprinter because I had a van. It was getting small, you know, going to gigs and trying to sleep, getting home. And I thought, oh, let I want to get a sprinter. This is ours. This is how the manifestation can work.

SPEAKER_07 1:48:23

Sprinters like coasters or are they smaller than that? Smaller.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:26

It's smaller, like a big posty van.

SPEAKER_07 1:48:28

Oh yes, sprinters, yes, another one here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:30

And I thought that way I could take my family on tour with me. Yep. And they can we can be together and we'll just duck off and do that. Yeah, well. That turned into a 56-seated coach idea, but the it didn't come for a good year. We were living out there on this dirt that wouldn't grow anything. The dam there was so brown we couldn't drink it or swim in it. And I was drying out like a sultana. I mean, a saltwater woman, I was like, it's the ocean's too far.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:03

I'm starting to crumble. My mental health is like disappearing. It's not a good sign. No, no.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:10

This lush grape has now shriveled up into this back of this rocky patch, which I was so grateful for. But in that, I was called by the elders to come on a journey. And I was like, yeah, okay. And so, you know, do you remember the big floods that happened up on the Sunshine Coast that swept the freeway away? Well, that was the first call that I got, and they were like, come to Egypt. We're doing ceremony. Well, that's where we started anyway. And so I would try and I mean, that's a whole nother story that could go on for a whole nother podcast. That one story of how I even got there through a flood, which then stopped all trains getting me from Sunshine Coast to Brisbane to get my flight. That had this whole Section of, oh, you know, guys in white hazmat suits escorting me out and all this kind of weird stuff happening, where you're just pushing through the fear, you're pushing, risking something bigger than yourself, which you're not even sure about yet, but you got such a deep feeling that you're like, you've got to do everything that you can to kind of connect the dots. It was one of those life moments that actually got me to join the elders overseas, which which launched this whole journey that led into the UN. Now I almost didn't make it a multitude of times when my friend tried to drop me at the train station to get there. Well, the train's derailed, so I can't go. Well, let's get you on a bus. Well, we can't because the the highway's swept away and flooded. Well, let's go around the mountain. Well, that's going to be blocked and it's gonna not, we're not gonna make it in time. Well, how are we gonna do it? Well, you go to Sunshine Coast Airport and catch a plane from from there to Melbourne to Sydney to catch that flight. No, that's too long. Well, the group said, Can you get a jet? Can you get a private plane and get to Brisbane? I was like, maybe. And they went, well, if you can do it, I'm like, all right, Google, can you take me? Yep, four how much four thousand dollars. Okay, thanks. Um, get back on the phone to the elders. Look, um, it's four thousand dollars to get me to the airport to catch my plane. Okay, we'll do it, we'll reimburse you. We gave our last deposit for our bus to get there. So I caught this jet twelve minutes. Never flown in the front of a jet before.

SPEAKER_07 1:51:40

That is 12 minutes, yeah. It's tiny. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:43

From there to Brisbane, where I am now sweating. Now I'd already left three days prior from my camp because I had to then get to Muridal before my camp flooded in. So I'd been on this three-day journey just to get to the airport, and then the day I'm going to the airport, like everything's gone. So now I catch this, I catch this private jet, which my girlfriend and her NDIS worker took me to. And then the guy goes, Well, are your friends coming for a ride? I'm like, What do you mean? He goes, Well, I'm just gonna drop you off, then I have to bring the plane back, so they can come for a ride. Technically, you bought the whole plane.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:18

I was like, Okay. So we get in the plane, they're their minds blowing, oh my god, this is crazy.

SPEAKER_04 1:52:26

They drop me at the Brisbane airport, and then by the time I get there, I'm hot, I'm flustered, and we stop for a sandwich and an orange juice during that day of trying to figure out how we're gonna get on this pilgrimage. And then I get to check in, and there's a lady with a desk and a piece of paper, and she's like, Okay, so you can't check in yet, you've got to go and do your COVID test. And I'm like, What COVID test to get on the plane? She's like, Yeah, you know, that's how intense it was back then. I wasn't even sure if I could even get back into the country. And I've gone, okay, why do I do that? She goes, Well, you've got to go downstairs. Now I'm supposed to be checking in right now. No, but now I've got to go downstairs, I've got to line up, I've got to do this test. So now I'm standing there and I'm waiting for this test, and I'm eating my sandwich, I'm drinking my orange juice. Okay, I do the test, I come back up, I check in, I go to the gate, I'm like, oh my god, I've made it. I'm here, I actually made it three days later. And then they're calling my name over the PA. Please come to the desk. I'm like, yes, I'm here, I'm here, I made it. And they're like, oh sorry, your test is positive for COVID. You can't get on this flight. I was like, cannot be. I don't have a sniffle, I don't have a cough, I'm not sick, I'm hot and flustered because I'm stressed out. Yeah, but I definitely don't have that. And they're like, Yep, you can't get on. And I was like, No way, I can't make the pilgrimage. And then it got so intense that had three guys in hazmat suits escort me out of the airport into the arrivals section. The doors opened, and I'm videoing, they're like, delete, delete, you can't have that. Give us your phone. And it was like so intense that uh I had to put it away, and I'm like, but I'm alone. And then anyway, they escort me out these sliding doors. It was like a movie. The doors opened, I walked through, they turned around and went back, and now I'm still standing in the airport. I'm like, Well, what's going on? So I'm there now, and I've go to this table and I've got to charge my phone. So I'm charging my phone at this table, I'm crying, I'm calling my girlfriend, who's the producer of you know this documentary that they're making at the same time, and I'm like, sis, it didn't happen, it didn't work, I didn't make it, I did everything, everything. And she's like spoken to a doctor and a lawyer. They both said you're good to go. So I want you to get on the domestic ride from Brisbane and go to Sydney, and then from there, buy a whole new ticket to Egypt and then come and join us. I was like, What? She's like, You'll be fine. I was like, no way, this is crazy. And so I'm sitting at this table, this is just off the charts. I'm sitting at this table, I call it the crying table, because anyone who didn't make it would come to this and start charging their phone or crying and telling, you know, ringing family, going, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. And because of the flood, no one left Brisbane, so all the hotels are booked. Can't we can't sleep anywhere, can't go anywhere. So they're all there crying. And then this one woman, she was a teacher in the UK. She says, you know what? I told her my story. You know what we found with the kids in school? They kept coming up with positive COVID tests. So we'd send them home all the time. We're like, well, this is really happening too often to be a coincidence. They figured out that the kids of the chemistry class found out that you could trigger a positive COVID test with orange juice. Because it's acidic.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:08

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:09

So if you drank anything acidic an hour before the test, you're positive. So I've gone, I've got another test in my bag. I'll retest myself in a couple of hours. Negative. Okay? Because I drank the juice waiting for the test. I was like, oh my god. Bing bing bing bing. So I I sleep there, I go to the domestic at Brisbane, I get on flight to Sydney, and I'm standing in line, I buy another ticket, and I get in there, and as I'm standing in line to check in, I'm hearing conversations going, oh, did you hear the news? Or what news? Oh, apparently, as of today, you don't need to be tested to enter Egypt anymore.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:54

And I was like, what?

SPEAKER_04 1:56:56

This is just too much to make up. So crossing that, I end up making it to the gate of Isis, which was the first point of ceremony. And so I'll go on this five-week pilgrimage from the bottom of the Nile into different temples with an Egyptologist who tells us certain things. And you know, and every now and then uh a guardian of the temple would grab me and go, Hey, because my mukkal, because Bedouin women also wear markings on their chin, right? So they would they would look at me and they go, Oh, you must come with me. And security would go, Oh yeah, you have to go with him. But he's like one of the priests. And I'm like, okay, would take me into locked doors and take me down into places and show me things. Tell me, put my hand there or put my head there and show me stuff. Then we went to Shasta, then we went to the big island at Mauna Kea, we'd have ceremony at Mauna Kea. Um elders would take us to sacred places. And then I'd go back to the tent. And so I'd go from these like beautiful hotels and linen sheets and showers and buffet breakfasts and plane flights and ceremonies and prayers and deep sacred fires back to a tent on the Sunshine Coast where we're digging holes, barely any power, but it's freezing cold winter, it's dry hot summer. And I'm going from one extreme, these polars of life and style and living, and I'm like, what is even happening? And then I realized when I got really sick one time, and I was on my hands and knees there one day, just like crying, going, I want hot water, I want a shower. I like want all these luxuries of life, of comfort. Um, and I was really having this harsh reality of just basic survival needs, like walls and doors, and put your lights on with your finger, this ease of being. And I remembered it actually brought me back to when I was a kid and how I grew up in the Pilbara. And I was circling back and I was like, oh, the land is bringing me really deep into my body and really taking me through an initiation before I go on this pilgrimage, which was called the initiation. However, the initiation had already begun by living very raw on the land and remembering what it was like to be peeing on the land, to be digging holes and taking care of your own waste, to be really carrying in your your water, like how easy is it just to turn on a tap? And how much effort does it take to go and get water from a from a source and then bring it back into where you're sleeping and eating and and living? We had to do that quite a lot. And as a woman, also to be offering on that land, yeah, it really kind of broke away all of the veils of what it is to be with nature, just strip it all away. Just let me take it all away from you to realize well, one, how vulnerable you are as a human being, but two, how resourceful and how resilient you can be as a human being, and how much less impact you can have as a human being living off the land like that, with like barely nothing, to be able to then be strong enough to go through ceremony with elders all around the world. So that was an initiation and a half.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:59

That's how I see it. And so the bus. So during that time, we're saving up to live somewhere. So we're we're looking for a bus. And we're kind of like thinking, oh, we'll just buy a bus and we'll bring it into this backyard and and and we'll just do it ourselves. How hard can it be? Oh boy. We were so lucky because we ended up going and viewing a bus that an old guy in Gimpy was flipping buses. He'd get them. He was an old bus broker, and he'd get them and he'd shell them out, transform them, re-register them as motorhomes, and he stopped counting after 50, uh, 50 buses, like which was years ago. And he was just this old hard yaka working guy. So we went and looked at a bus from him, and then we went, Yeah, well, this bus is cool, but it's got no storage underneath. Like, where do we put everything? Because, you know, girls got a lot of instruments and a few dresses. Okay, I like to add nice things. And and so we're like, Well, we'd like to get a bigger bus. Can you help us? And he's like, Yeah. And he was so beautiful, Doug and his wife Lynn, that they ended up inviting us to live on their land. He sourced the bus for us. He allowed us to build it on his land, which he had another couple who was fitting their bus out, and another guy who lived in his bus that helped him, and another guy who was an electrician who was building his bus.

SPEAKER_05 2:02:23

So it was this whole bus community that we had stumbled upon, been guided to, where we would live in an old wrecked bus and then we would go and work on our bus.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:34

Because we, you know, we didn't have a lot of money, and our my parents-in-laws helped us with a deposit. So, you know, we'd go and do jobs and then we'd pay a little bit more and then go do another job and pay a little bit more, chip away at it. And then my husband and I just worked so hard to to build it from the ground up. We took it right down to the chassis, took floors up, and you know, did what we have now. And came to the painting. I was like, oh, what colour shall we paint it? Oh, yeah, this, that, and the other. And I thought, well, more so about the colour, but what is the story? What's what's the story about this? Like, what are how do we transform our lives from what we knew, living in a house, doing our work, into who are we now? And what is important now, and what's really kind of speaking to us? And and most of the time for me, it's it's water. Water speaks to me. And so I thought, well, it's a bus, yeah, but really it's a waka. We call our cars a waka sometimes when we, you know, kicking around. Oh, let's just go in the waka and go down the street and you know, get whatever we need. So, really, if I think about it, the bus is a waka. The bus is a canoe. Oh, we're land sailing. We're land sailing through this beautiful country. It's been my home. If and and if I see it as a canoe, then that's what I should paint on the side of it. A canoe. Well, that's how I can share my culture and I can share it with people. And then so I thought, well, but there's there's a there's an a nod to country. So we put the rainbow serpent on the side that that moves with the wakara at the same time to kind of acknowledge our family, my upbringing, my Aboriginal grandmother from the Yinjabundi people. That land taught me so much. But also the the work that we're doing here on the East Coast with elders that um have very deep relationships with, um, up and down this whole eastern um seaboard. What about a space for them? What about what what if I shared the outside of the bus with like everybody and everyone could paint on it? We could all paint our water stories, we could share stories through art, we could do activations with the bus, we could use it like it could be for everybody. It could be a place for identity, it could be a place for creation, it could be a place for education. You know, when when it goes by, you know, people could recognize I've seen I've seen a group of um Aboriginal kids when we drove past up to Townsville for a show, and they saw the the snake on the side, and they're like, eh, look at that. You know, like they see they see themselves in it. And uh I see myself in that uh in the waka that we've painted on the side. It's got our it's got our creation stories in it, the one that I the ones that I'm connected to, ones that have been given to me through my practices of of going and searching for that. So it's a place for many voices to be able to share with one another. And that's how we're living now. We're living in our bus full time, and we go overseas and do global work and we come back, and it's like, okay, how can we serve community? How can we show up? Uh, how can we offer what we have to others? So that's our mana waka. The mana, the life force uh that that moves within the waka, that the waka carries. Because while a canoe is sacred, what makes it sacred is the people in the canoe that move the canoe forward. And so, yeah, that's how I see the bus. The yeah, the mana waka is what I named it. And um, yeah, just to be traveling around Australia and and going and visiting people and getting to know people and and just even talking to a couple of people who I've crossed in the street, they've gone, oh wow, the canoe, yeah. Look, I I care for a country over here who has a big tree where a big canoe's been taken out of it years ago. I can take you there, I can show you if you like. I was like, wow, really? And so this this this bus and this just little idea of how we see ourselves, you know, you might not have much. You might not have a lot of money, you might not, you know, own a house or land or anything, but what you do have, you can share with people, you know, and it's our stories, our life experiences, our connections. And so, yeah, that it's been amazing actually how many people love to see it and and relate to it. It starts with a canoe and a rainbow serpent, which is the mergence of light and water forming a rainbow, which connects to all life on the planet, not just this land or you know, a certain demographic people, all people. And uh we've all got water inside us, and it all matters, and we've all got stories inside us that matter to be shared and to be seen. And that's what's on there for now, and there's space for more to come, and I I don't want to presume what's gonna come because that's for the mystery to reveal itself, right? Yeah. Sometimes you don't know why you're stepping forward or what's gonna happen, but just allowing the mystery of life to surprise you is like more profound than you can even imagine or make up yourself. Yeah, that's that's magic.

Closing Thanks And Where To Follow

SPEAKER_06 2:08:38

Thanks for listening with us today. Our editor this season is the multi-talented Ben Jake Alexander. The soundtrack was composed by Shannon Sol Carroll with additional tunes from today's guest, Vaya. We'll be continuing today's conversation on Instagram, where we're at Water People Podcast. And we're now on Substack. Sign up to get bi-monthly updates in our newsletter called Field Notes. It's where we share behind the scenes stories from making the podcast and the books, films, and music we're absorbed in at the moment. Written by us, free to read. Link is in the show notes.