Respecting Country and People: Pathways Forward

Key ethos of contemporary Aboriginal culture in Australia includes a desire for sovereignty recognition, a request for equality of voice in decision-making as it pertains to their respective Country and people with the capacity for people to ‘Ask first’, that theirs is a culture that co-lives in the past, present and future and that all are infinite, and a desire to share part or whole of their Indigenous Knowledge Systems subject to respect and ‘asking’. Also, a recognition that they are the custodians of more than 60,000 years of environmental knowledge pertinent to this landscape, its lands, its waters, its skies, and its portent moods.