Colonial societies, IMHO, bring many valuable strengths to the new country, and for countries like Australia, where the colonial society and their dependents makes up the bulk of the population and mostly celebrates their own heritage and culture, First Nations societies have struggled to find respect and a voice for the vital strengths and wisdom that they and their cultures have accumulated.

Australia’s First Nations produced a spectacular “Statement From the Heart” with robust and humble suggestion for how to build a society that respects their knowledge and culture and still allows for the second peoples and more recent arrivals to live together and benefit from each other’s wisdom.

I expect I am a bit slow on the pickup, but it seems to me that “Foundational” is probably a good word to help us understand the difference between First Nations culture and the cultures of more recent arrivals. it seems to me that Australia needs to think of the wisdom and culture of First Nations peoples as foundational to our multicultural society in finding our way forward into the future.

European cultures have brought massive strengths of learning, enterprise and organisation, but in so doing, we’ve lost First Nations understanding and approach to land, to family, to listening, too belonging. And these seem to me to be exactly the qualities that Australia needs if we are to survive the mass extinction wave, climate change, and the avalanche of depression and anxiety that is sweeping Australia.

We desperately need to base our planning and society building policies on the foundation of First Nations approaches to the environment and to society.