Keywords

Recovering from the impact of settler colonialism requires all kinds of ingenuity, dependability, and to always think universally, to think in Wiradyuri and plan intergenerationally, not letting the demands of the day prevent us from doing the work.

Budyaan’s influence meant that, as adults, we could fall back on the principles and instructions of our Old People. We could rely on the wisdom embedded within our own Wiradyuri view of the world. More than 65,000 years of unbroken, intergenerationally transmitted knowledge and wisdom is a pretty good asset for keeping our nation’s strengths, and encouraging our young people to live according to the principles and concept of Yindyamarra: to be good and respectful listeners, and to look for the resonances within the Elders’ teachings to help the young people address the challenges of today.

A practical example of this is the film Yindyamarra Yambuwan (Respecting Everything). It is a creative and innovative collaboration with me and other Elders, as part of Sullivan’s (2016) Doctoral research with Charles Sturt University. The film brings to life our Wiradyuri concept of Yindyamarra, challenging many misconceptions. Through deep respect, our Wiradyuri philosophy reminds us of our responsibilities, it teaches us how to organise relationships and most importantly how to care for and connect with country. (The video can be accessed via: https://vimeo.com/140548913.)

We are using language and cultural lifeways to rebuild the architecture of our nation to meet the demands of modern society. In 2019, my sister Flo put it like this: ‘we are rebuilding our language to rebuild our people, and we are rebuilding our people to rebuild our nation, and we are rebuilding our nation to rebuild our Country’. So, what are the principles and values we use to do this rebuilding work?

Through my family I was taught how to live a good Wiradyuri life.

Luckily, my grandfather knew that the loss of our language would be bad for all people, and this would have a catastrophic impact on our Country. Somehow, he knew that if we lost our language, we would not be able to think in the Wiradyuri way. If we lost our language, we could lose our own way of talking, and telling our stories, and singing our songs, lose our ceremonies, and lose ourselves—because our language is our life, it teaches us how to be respectful, polite, honest and gentle, just the way our Ancestors intended us to be (See Grant & Rudder, 2010, 2014, for more on Wiradjuri language). Yindyamarra is a Wiradyuri concept that must be lived out through our actions, it implies a state of being that means to be properly Wiradyuri we must be respectful, be polite, be kind, and give honour, and do things slowly and thoughtfully in order to live a good and productive life, including how we relate to and connect with Country. It’s as simple as: Healthy COUNTRY = healthy people!

So, obviously, if we want to transform our practices then clearly, we must transform our thinking and if our practices are made up of our sayings, doings, and relatings, as my friend and brother Stephen Kemmis (and others) tell us in this Volume, Living well in a world worth living in for all: Volume 2: Enacting Praxis for a Just and Sustainable Future, why do these things matter so much? From my Wiradyuri worldview, I must be able to think based on Wiradyuri concepts such as Yindyamarra, which is framed from a Wiradyuri Indigenous Australian cosmological perspective rather than from the perspective of a Western, settler colonial mindset.

In the free word order of my Wiradyuri language, our foundational frame is one of an unchanging (although manipulatable) network of relationships. Of all the places I’ve been and all the places I’ve travelled, Indigenous people all appear to place a very high value on relationships and identity. We think about relationships with other people, with the spiritual world, with place, and with the things in the living and natural world.

I believe Wiradyuri people belong to Country. People talk about ownership, but in the Wiradyuri world, Country owns us; it is not the other way around. We are part of it. We are deeply connected to it, and to all the life that unfolds on it. We are part of a web of connections that encompasses all its living things. That web of connections also embraces many features in our landscapes: rivers, mountains, valleys, and pathways along which our Ancestors and our forebears travelled through the land.

I belong to Wiradyuri country; it does not belong to me. I do not ‘own’ it. It is the core of my being. I come from it. All Wiradyuri people come from it and belong to it.

At the heart of Wiradyuri knowledge is the idea of Yindyamarra. It is at the core of Wiradyuri life, and the relations of Wiradyuri people with themselves, each other, all the living and important things on our Country, and all the people who come to our Country. Yindyamarra is the seed that bursts into Wiradyuri life; it is the guide for Wiradyuri living, in Wiradyuri language, culture, and heritage.

When the seed of Yindyamarra germinates and grows, it can be seen in people acting respectfully, listening, observing, being patient, being thoughtful, and being deliberate in thought and action. Although people’s actions have some consequences that are good, and some that are bad, Yindyamarra teaches us that we need to pursue the good and do what we can to avoid or prevent the bad. Yindyamarra also recognises that no one acts alone. We are always living parts of the community of life on Wiradyuri Country, among places that are bursting and brimming with significance—some made significant by the Ancestor-creators of Wiradyuri Country, and some in the many thousands of years of history since the Ancestors travelled our Country, naming the world and giving us the law by which Wiradyuri people should live.

And, Reader, you come from your own Country. Everyone’s roots are in some place, somewhere. You may not be aware of the power and significance that bursts into being there, but they are there to be discovered if you open your ears and eyes and heart and mind.

These two volumes about Living Well in a World Worth Living In connect profoundly with themes that are part of the idea of Yindyamarra. They explore what it means to live well, and what kinds of worlds are worth living in, for different people and different places around the world.

The specific words ‘living well in a world worth living in’ express an idea that is very ancient and express part of what the Wiradyuri words Yindyamarra Winhanganha mean. Those words do not translate directly into English as ‘living well in a world worth living in’. The phrase in English simply captures a part of the spirit of Yindyamarra.

From 2009 to 2015, I worked with Rozzie Brennan Kemmis, Stephen Kemmis, Professor Ross Chambers, Donna Murray, Deb Evans, and many others on the Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) Wiradyuri Language, Culture and Heritage Program Committee. In those years, guided by the Wiradyuri Council of Elders, the university aimed to assist Wiradyuri people in their project of Wiradyuri cultural heritage recovery and development, in addition to language recovery and development—the language work and the teaching of the language that have been such a big part of my life in the last thirty years. When my sister Flo was the Chair of the Wiradyuri Council of Elders, and representatives of CSU were trying to find words that might convey part of the meaning of Yindyamarra in relation to CSU and its connections to Wiradyuri country and culture, we agreed that these words seemed to capture the University’s statement of its intended ethos, ‘Yindyamarra Winhanganha—The wisdom of respectfully knowing how to live well in a world worth living in’. The phrase joined together the spirit of Yindyamarra and some English words that express the purpose of education.

It is a pleasure to write this Foreword in the knowledge that, around the world, people are trying to find ways to live well and to find ways to bring into being worlds worth living in.

That is what we have been striving for here on Wiradyuri Country for hundreds of generations. Yindyamarra is at the heart of the movement which is now reviving Wiradyuri language, culture, and heritage, and contributing to Wiradyuri Nation-(Re)building.

This movement stretches beyond Wiradyuri Country. In the global ecological crisis, people everywhere are finding their connections to place and to the community of life. It is a moment in which people everywhere can all reach out to each other, from our own places, to revive and renew the webs of relationships between peoples, and the global web of life.

Knowledge that we are living parts of that web is at the heart of the notion of Yindyamarra. Western understandings of ecology now also recognise this interconnectedness and interdependence.

These books—the Worlds Worth Living In volumes—are contributions to an international conversation about education for a better world. I hope that this conversation can be conducted in the spirit of Yindyamarra: attentively, thoughtfully, and with respect, to nurture people and the world’s community of life.

At 84 years of age, I am travelling down the final journey of my life now, and I feel like I have lived a good and productive life. I can sit here in my armchair and smile, with Yindyamarra in my head and my heart. With Yindyamarra re-orientating the lives of my people, I am grateful for my life which has been of service to others. Finally, I am endlessly grateful to my beautiful wife Betty, who made it possible for me to do this work. She is the absolute embodiment of Yindyamarra.

I hope in some way Yindyamarra can live in your life too, or perhaps encourage you to look back in your own story and find your own version of Yindyamarra to support your personal and professional journey of living well, in a world worth living in.

Mandaang

Uncle Dr. Stan Grant (Snr, AM)