My people (the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander  people of Australia) are part of a global community  of Indigenous peoples who have nurtured the land,  carved story in it, sung and danced and cared  for every inch of its vast landscape as ecological  scientists and nature resource managers, since  time immemorial. 

As the world’s oldest continuous culture, my  people have lived through time measured on a  geological scale, witnessed multiple ice ages and  adapted to transformative climate change. The  plain truth is that the scale and consequence of  this present change is different, and the tools  and authority for addressing it are no longer ours  alone. The history of our globalizing community  and the social, political and economic systems that  underpin it have brought us all to the precipice of  systemic collapse.

The circumstances are more urgent than before, the  context more complex, but – just as it has always  been – the answer lies in a better understanding  of nature, a better (proper) relationship with our  landscapes and, as ever, it is the knowledge and  sense of responsibility of Indigenous people, as  custodians of landscape, that best place them to  help everyone come into a proper relationship with  nature, with “Nayiri Barray” – our Mother. 

We are hopeful that, because now is different,  people will listen differently, and then, that they  will act differently. There is an opportunity (and  necessity) for a new relationship to be struck  between economies and nature. The Indigenous  people of the world are best placed to be the  negotiators of this new relationship because we have  the deepest knowledge and we also experience the  deepest consequences when things go wrong.