173. Manchán Magan on Language & Land, from Ireland to the Kimberley

But we happen to have these, there's a word ca lled [croma fertil] in Irish , which means the stout ores , the ores that keep you rooted through difficult times . We have that in so many indigenous and old and traditional cultures and heritages in this land . And it's not too late . That's the real beauty . It's still alive in Ireland , it's still alive in Australia .

So much has been lost , but it is there . If we turn to it now , respect it and give the time and respect and awe to those elders who have somehow managed to keep it alive .

And we're going to start this series of episodes here with an experience of the Kimberley like no other , through the eyes of Manchan Magan , the extraordinary Irish travel writer , documentary maker , radio producer , theatre performer , builder of the first straw bale house in Ireland , regenerator of the 10 acre block it stands on , and bestselling author .

Manchan's books include '32 words for field: lost words of the Irish landscape' , which is said to have begun as a cult hit in Ireland but has become one of its most talked about books in recent times . And his latest book is 'Listen to the Land , speak: a journey into the wisdom of what lies beneath us .

These books are changing the consciousness of a country and among the people around the world he's touched deeply through them too, is popular guest on this podcast and friend, Nicole Masters .

And , as it happens , when I was with Nicole on her visit to the east of Australia back in April , Manchan was in WA , including here in the Kimberley , which , of course , was where I was headed next .

B y the time I got here , Manchan was home again and trying to make sense of an experience that , remarkably for the life he's led , has had a greater impact on him than any other . 'It has changed everything, he tells me .

I'm certainly left with layers of feeling too , coming out of this , as I've reflected on the many unexpected threads weaved through and around this conversation . They include links with some other conversations on this podcast , as well as some coming down the line, along with my own family story .

I'd never felt much of a connection with my Irish roots and have never been there , and I've only five generations of connection to this continent , so really I'm still just getting to know it .

But it's interesting , for as I'm sensing so much more about this continent , aided and enriched by the generosity of its first peoples , I'm also feeling significantly the words and stories and connections Manchan talks about here from Ireland . And he's experiencing the inverse of that too, I suppose you could say . T here's so many mysteries in all that .

But it's sure rich to be putting the pieces of one's self , community and country together again . Before we kick off , big thanks to Jacaranda Hill Farm for your full year subscription to the podcast . I do love the byline on your website by the way - a regenerative world of dreams . It's what this independent , ad-free , listener-supported podcast is all about .

So if you're also finding value in this, please consider joining the good folk at Jacaranda Hill Farm and a great community of supporting listeners, with as little as $3 a month , or whatever amount you can and want to contribute .

You can enjoy a variety of benefits , like some behind-the-scenes footage from me , invitations to events and , of course , you'll continue to receive the podcast directly . Just head to the website via the show notes RegenNarration . com forward slash support . An d thanks again . Ok , let's join Mankan .

I start by asking him , given he'd become so deeply focused on the cultural roots of his homeland , how he came to be in Australia .

But she decided she realized that people in Ireland had very little understanding of Aboriginal issues , and even the Irish in Australia . So she raised this festival to bring them together around St Patrick's Day , rather than the traditional activity of Irish people on St Patrick's Day , you know , of drinking copious amounts .

And so she asked me to come over because I'd written these books and I would look into almost the indigenous elements that are still to be found in Irish language and mythology and culture . So she thought it'd be interesting .

You know I might have something in common with some of the elders , but , like I stopped flying in 2019 after the Extinction Rebellion Revolts , I protest .

I decided I'd been a travel journalist for 20 years , encouraging people to fly , you know , to weekends , to go off across Europe or further fields , to go on longer holidays , and I just thought , in good faith , I could no longer continue doing that , like had I done it for another 10 years , knowing the damage that flying was done that I just think would be ,

you know , would be unforgivable . I've already probably encouraged too many people to take too many flights . So , I stopped flying for holidays and for travel journalism and I still agreed OK , I will take occasional flights for cultural issues . So when I got this offer , I this invitations go to Fremantle .

I needed to check that the festival was on the level that it really was integrated with Aboriginal elder groups and it was respected by some senior elders . So fortunately in Ireland there are these few musicians who have been connected to Aboriginal rights and issues and people for like 20 or 30 years .

So one is Luca Bloom , a musician , a brother of the folk musician Kristymour . Another is Steve Cooney , who is Australian . It was an amazing digital duplayer in the 70s . He was an anthropologist looking at skin names in Australia and eventually the Aboriginal said no , you're a virus extraction , you need to go and find your roots in Ireland .

So since the early 80s he's been this key figure in Irish music and in talking about Aboriginal rights . And then you know there's this book by Tyson Young-Caporta , sand Talk , and he asked me to be on his podcast . Yeah , a few months maybe . In February he asked him . This year he asked me to be on his podcast .

So that introduced me to another whole swathes of different Aboriginal elders .

So it turned out I went out to the festival and , like on my first day I flew out , on my first day , dr Nul Nanup , the great like Nungar , wise man of Perth , was there waiting on the veranda for me to just basically tell me what I needed to know , to inculcate me in another way of .

And then Dr Wayne Webb , down in Wlanda , in Wadandy , who was right down in the river , gave me an invitation to go . And then so Shane Howard , who you know , this rock musician who has such a dark Irish roots , and he put me in touch with some people in the Kimberley .

So I thought , ok , and everyone said to me , particularly the woman who runs the festival , if you're going to Australia you need to get out of Perth , you need to get out of Fremantle to get a sense of what's going on . And there was one man in Fremantle , a man called Kenneth Doss , and he is a Gunnuwandy cultural elder . He's young , he's only about 27 .

From Little Town called Yealy , up in the Kimberley , up between Fitzroy Crossing and beyond , and not hell , it's not called Hell's Creek . What's ? It called ? Paul's Creek , the next Hall's Creek . Sometimes it can be a little bit hellish , but mostly it's called Hall's Creek and then sometimes the hellish element comes out . But yeah , so Like .

So , after the festival , kenneth Dawson said look , I want you to come up to you , lee , and you know you Lee has a big sign on it so I could off the main road . And he's they . It sort of says you know , nobody is allowed in unless you're invited .

So it was such an honor to be brought into this really strong driving community and to be given like another , like another glimpse of the war , another glimpse of the world , and there was a few , there was a few other cultural centers , obviously the , the one in my names , are all going now .

Oh , where helicopter the great artist is in the great sandy desert , and it's not no , it'll come to me in a second , but it meant that I was only there for three weeks and I was given this Profound insight into an aboriginal culture . And like for me , as I said , I've been a travel journalist but I've also been a travel documentary maker for 20 , 25 years .

Yes , you know , there's making documentaries for the travel channel international and for Irish television , irish language television , so TG car , in which all of the programs are in the Gaelic language , this 3000 year old language that we speak , and so for that . I was making Programs about different cultures all around the world .

So the the yami people on an island of Taiwan , or the now and the mossy matriarchal people of China , or the Taro Mara Mountain runners of Mexico , or the Mayans are the Bedouins or the Berber , basically all over the world .

And yet when I arrived in Australia , the only thing I knew about Australia and just chose the level of ignorance in people like me I just , you know , irish people go there and they just say , oh well , that's great countries , great , you know , great beaches , great swimming , great surfing , but there's no culture .

That's what we hear , that's what we say , even even sort of well-informed people like me . And I arrive and say in Perth , in Fremantle , and there is dr Noll Nanup , and then we're when web , and then the elders up north , and I'm realizing , oh my god , we have no idea .

There's only one place in the world that has a continuous culture , as you well know , for whatever 45,000 , 55 , 65,000 years , and Nobody is talking about it in the sort of Informed , educated spheres . I live in an island that shook me to the core , like I'm 52 , and nothing has made more of an impact on me than that .

And that's changing , because I mean without question it's changing because in my childhood you'd hear none of it , like though it was . They were so completely marginalized still . And as an adult , it's not just because I'm looking now , it's on them . They're on the map . It all makes sense , funny .

They're on the colonial map , which is still entirely problematic and still largely marginal . But the stories are coming forth and they're telling their own stories . Now too . It's They've got the means . They're taking the means , obviously hard one native title rights For all the work still to be done there .

But all these things means the terrain is changing on the cultural terrain is changing on that front here , but the backdrop is still not too Out of keeping with what you've described for yourself . And then my own personal journey too .

I mean I cottoned on to it a little while ago , but really it's partly why we're here is to really get to know our country Properly . I mean I even dream occasionally of imagine if the instances of good relations that happened on European arrival , imagine if they that became the way , rather than the colonial conquest model .

That became the way and we have to sort of recover from together and recover culture and recover hearts and communities from . Imagine if it did go the other way . But hey , here we are and we can go about it now . And and the way that it's affected you , it's a way that it's affected me . It's profound , isn't it ?

So I wonder for you , how do you sit today like in the wake of that ? What have you reflected on and and taken with you now ?

During coven , I had this book out called 32 words for field , which basically looked at the incredible Wealth of knowledge that is encoded within this Gaelic language , this Irish language , though we've been speaking on the island for for two , two and a half , three thousand years and like that idea of 32 words for field , I could name probably 45 different words for

field at the moment in the Irish language . Wow . So like bono is a field made level by years of dancing , redland is an upland field , town is an arid field , noorn is a field left for cattle at night and Bronner is a fallow field . It just goes on and on and the same way I have probably by 28 words for stone .

I have so many different words for a hole , from a hole that a cow hoof will make that'll be filled with rain . I like there's just , there's this , that detail , if you have one , people living on the land , and again , 3000 years seems like a long time to me , until I went to Australia .

But so that book really took off in people's minds in Ireland Just during covert it like it's been a best-seller . It's been on the best seller the top 20 list for the last three years . And then I had a book out last year called listen to the land , speak .

That Extended that to say okay , what is the knowledge that was encoded by our ancestors into the land in the form of mythology and in the form of Din Shanakis , which are the place names and the insights that on the stories that our ancestors wove into the place names , so that when people walked that land again they would understand the climactic changes , the

otherworldly happenings , the practical information about line pits or wells that were in that area . So that's a new way for the Irish to look at our culture . Just because for so long we were , you know , we were colonized and then my great-granduncle and my grandmother were some of the Key leaders who founded the revolution 120 years ago .

So my great-grand-uncle founded the Irish volunteers , the IRA . My granny was president of the women's army . She spent like three years in prison , 32 days on hunger strike at different periods in a nice area at one time .

So they were fighting and they were using our Irish language and our Irish culture , and particularly our mythology , to like that fire to catalyze the country into revolt against Britain and to gaining their pride in their independence . But so that's how we looked at the Irish language almost . It was a slightly Republican thing . It was we were .

It was an uncomfortable thing because it kept on with the legacy of the violence that continued in Northern Ireland , and so it's only in the last five years , maybe ten years , that people are beginning to wake up to .

Wow , we have a profound culture that was living absolutely in harmony with the land and and so I thought , okay , I mean , that is getting so much attention my work is in Ireland that I thought I am flat out busy .

Yeah , and then last year I brought I have a tour of it , I have a show in which I bake sourdough bread and the audience churn butter , and we use those as metaphors to explore these big ideas about how a culture can understand the method .

They the the stars , the land , them the underwater System and , particularly like this , some of our myths in code information that goes back Way before we were there . Them , we're the Bronze Age people . That was my .

The DNA inside me , my genes are this 4000-year-old bronze age stuff , but we have stories going back to the Neolithic people who came before us and the hunter-gatherers .

So all of that I said was we were , I was trying to communicate and through this show we're a big bread , and I was doing this in America and these native elders came up to me Cree elders Actually was in , it was in Alberta in Canada and they said we hear what you're doing in Ireland . It's really important . You need to keep on doing this .

You need to pull out the old knowledge . And they said the indigenous knowledge . And I said no , we can't call ourselves indigenous like we have . We have wiped out whole indigenous people . The Irish have wiped out indigenous tribes down in Argentina . We weren't great in the States .

In Canada we were the people who set up the residential schools and Irish person set up . And in Australia , okay , we came out as poor criminals , often , I've you know , against their own will . We weren't colonizers , but when we did get a bit of a land , there's some atrocious stories about some massacres that the Irish were involved in Australia .

So , and we're still losing our rivers on our land . So I don't think we can't , we couldn't dare call ourselves an indigenous Culture in Ireland until we are living in that way in Ireland , in other words , respecting the land and then Acknowledging what we have done in other , in other places .

But that said , the elders are saying , like in Canada and the States , okay , you need to get , you need to get over that history , acknowledge that history and connect with your past . Because he said , you're white skinned , you know you have this lineage that goes way back . But you're also white , so people will listen to you . They're not gonna listen to us .

You have a seat in the EU . You sometimes have a seat on the um , you have power , you have sovereignty and that gives you responsibility . So that was like last year . I was just full of those ideas and then in March of this year , I go to Australia and I realize everything needs to stop in my life .

My life now needs to be devoted to these Australian Aboriginal elders and Torres Strait elders , who have been such a key connection for our two Irish people for 200 years .

And Just because , like everything I did in Western Australia was somehow funded by the mining industry yes , I was you all the arts events I went to the universities , I visited the art centres , everything I did , the travel , the flights I took , where everything is subsidized by the mining industry . So I can't see the solution coming from within Australia .

And , as you say , it's amazing what's happening in the last few years with this acknowledgement . But I think the world needs to stand up and say there's only one place that has , you know , a continuous culture for up to 65,000 years . In fact , as we're now seeing , isn't there some rumors of 120,000 but let's say for thousands of years .

It's only one culture that has a continuously . It's up to all of us in the world to protect that culture , and so we need to go to Australian government to say we're gonna work with you to mitigate , you know , the losses , the , the financial penalty of Giving that land back , of either stopping mining or doing it in a very minimal

, respectful way , and so for that then , informed people in America , in Europe , in Ireland , need to know about Aboriginal culture , and so all of us need to tell it from our own perspective , because for an Irish audience it's gonna be a lot better if someone from Ireland tells the story in some way .

It's watered down , it's better than a bit of original if we had it straight from Aboriginal voices . But that can be a hard thing to communicate . The culture divide is too big . A first step could be , you know , an Irish person getting a taste and then going deeper from there . I hear you that's how am I ?

And so in , just , in practical terms , just , I'm now working on a TV series about now begin the very beginnings of seeing .

Can I make a TV series for Irish television that echoes , that shows some of the sh the mirroring cultural facets between Irish culture and our way older and wiser Aboriginal brothers and sisters , and then to also write a book about that it's bitch an illustrated children's picture book , probably with Aboriginal artists and showing some of the same myths and tales and

stories that you find in Ireland and a Aboriginal aboriginal culture . And then , mainly , there was a great exhibition Done by the National Gallery in Sydney , you know of the seven sisters to touring exhibition . I think it was a big hit in Australia . Now then went , it went to LA and now it's a going to Britain .

I need , we need to get that to Dublin , to the main Museum gallery of Dublin .

So there's a few of us are working on that because if we had that over it'd be a great , great Back to a backdrop to then bring some elders and cultural leaders and and lore keepers over from Australia To talk at events , at festivals , on the television and in one way , the Aboriginals have enough to do in their own country .

They can't be spending their time , these great lore keepers and elders , going to other countries . But somehow the world needs to know more about what's going on in Australia .

You know all these other places and you said many times in the wake of that that the things you had no idea on that were under your feet and , of course , in your ears . The connection between language and land , as you've articulated here already and you've spent , you've done so much work on .

To then think that that , in a way , comes back out to the world through this portal , but only in a way that all your work back home set you up for .

And now that you can go forth and leverage off those connections between this deep knowledge of your home and its connection to this continent here , by the way history went , but this utter opening at the same time through this culture , this ancient culture Amazing to think you would .

You know , in a sense , what I imagine you thought you'd left behind yeah , not flying , etc anymore that actually you couldn't get a more global perspective than this , whether it be , you know , through time or through space . This is all encompassing ancient , I mean .

These people have stories about 130 meters of sea level change , like if we want to know how to go through the times we're in .

We have the people to listen to , as you say , but amazing that your journey sort of almost , in a way , come full circle or in a way just Just it's the confluence of everything that you've , the journeys you've been on to date that are just opening up to this perhaps ultimate one .

So Tyson Young-Coporta has this line you know you don't know existence until you've been punched in the face . And you know we understand . He said he's been punched in the face . He says every Aboriginal person he knows man or woman has been , knows what it's like to be punched in the face .

And that struck me because , like my grandmother , knew what it was to be punched in the face , to be kicked in the ribs , to be Trown downstairs by the British soldiers , by the British officers , as did my great-granduncle . My great-grandfather's , older even back to the key person in our lives is our my great-granduncle , four generations back .

So this is between 1670 and 1740 was a gone or a le . He was the last of the old poets of the old Bardic school . So the Bardic poets were the continuation of the Druids . So St Patrick comes along in the fifth century and he says like no , we're having Christianity here , we can't have druids .

But the druids can keep their their power of the word so they can't take their spiritual leadership anymore . The druids were very like the Brahmins , you know , they were this elite caste who control the spirit world and also the power of the word , and that is , that's like lore and memory and Mythology .

So St Patrick says no , we , the monks , are going to take the spirit , spirit side . The poets can take , everything else can take , that the word can be manifested , that mantras of power , that the mythology of the lineage going back for thousands of years is stored in the minds of the druid and then poet .

Which is why the likes you know , the likes of shem as he need , the likes of poets and yates are so important in Ireland . They weren't just literary figures , they were continuation of the druid .

So I said , the last of that bardic school was my great-grand uncle , four generations back , a gone O'Reilly , and he was entitled to wear a cloak of crimson bird feathers , so as a sign of his power or his hierarchy , like crimson bird feathers .

That's pure pagan , that's pure like indigenous ritual dress , ritualistic dress , so that it was the memory of him who sparked my great-grand uncle , who was his great-grand uncle , was then a gone O'Reilly Just to found the revolution to death , to sacrifice his life in 1916 during the Easter Rising .

So he founded the , the war , the volume , though the army in 1913 put all of his money . He was kind of rich so he bought all of the guns that used the word about now , half of the guns so we used in their uprising against Britain 1916 . Wow and he knew he was going to be wiped out . He knew he was going to sacrifice his life .

So my granny was watching him Kissing his foresons goodbye , and kissing his wife goodbye , who was pregnant , and he knew he'd never see the sons again , he'd never see his wife or the baby in her womb again . But he just thought this is needed and so that was the , that was the legacy of our lives .

And then I come along in 1970 , so my grandmother saw that in 1916 . That's why she devoted her life to his issues , his causes . You know there's bringing back Irish culture , irish language , irish mythology and getting independence from , from London .

And I come along in 1970 and basically I'm a foot soldier in her war , in the O'Reilly's war , in who was the name of my , the , my great-grand-uncle , and I needed to escape from that . Like that was an intense hotbed to be born , brought into the legacy of their violence .

And so my granny was still involved with the IRA up in Northern Ireland in the 80s , which is like that was terrorism . You know that was some dark violence that was going on , but for her it was a continuous fight . So I needed to escape . So I escaped .

I went off to Africa for a year , went off to South America , went off to India until I was about 27 and then I Then I started making documentaries about those places I Africa , india , south America , greenland , the Middle East , china , everywhere .

And , as you say , I was on this island off on Lanu Island , off the coast of Taiwan , and there was this yami elder there and he brought me under in his cave . They live in these cave houses to avoid , well , underground tunnel houses , to avoid the , the storms and the typhoons that would rage through the area .

And he said , like you don't understand me and I don't understand you , but I'm gonna sing a song . It's one of the origin songs of my people because he says all I know about you is you're most likely from a sea or a river .

Most people live by the water and so , although we have nothing else , if we sing our songs and when they song , when , when he sung his song , she up and my tenon song that song , I had goosebumps all over me because it reminded me of the songs I had heard the Blasket Islanders sing when I was young so let's say when the orally when my great-grand and my

granny decided to relearn the Irish language and the mythology .

They went down to the only place that that had continued Unbroken for the three thousand years , and that's along the extreme west coast of Ireland along the tourist road now that's called the wild Atlantic way , but that's where the Gweltacht is , that's where the Irish speaking places are , and so that is .

They've kept their folklore in the original language there for thousands of years . And my grandmother and my great-grand uncle went out onto the Blasket Islands , an island off the coast where they were still living Like a a stone age life on us . They were , you know , killing herrings and seal . They were getting turf .

They were climbing down the cliffs with ropes made of seaweed and horsehair to get it to get wild birds eggs . And that's where my granny learned her Irish language and the singing and the myths . And so the government Forcibly closed down that island in the 50s . They was too wild , almost too barbaric for them , and they removed .

The old people were moved onto the mainland . But I knew them when I was growing up and I heard their songs and I heard the lineage and the power in it . So when I met those yummy people in Taiwan , I thought what am I doing ? Chasing around the world ?

I need to go home and reconnect with that and and find it because we have , we've oppressed and we've been like any post-colonial country . We've been ashamed of our mythology , of our language and our culture .

So I came home , I bought 10 acres of woodland , of sorry , of a field , and started growing , reviving the land , regenerating land , put an oak forest down there , so I growing vegetables , kept hens , bees , pigs , and Slowly came back to a way of being connected with the land and I thought this was the end .

I thought , as you say , I'd write these books highlighting the wisdom that was in our mythology , the knowledge and Lore that was in our language , and then just stay home . But , as you say , somehow it hasn't . It hasn't been like that .

it's amazing . I mean , I don't have , I mean with someone with Irish roots and I don't have the grounding that you've got in that . So I I don't relate it Literally to anything I know , but even when I'm listening back to the recording putting the episode together , I'm I'm stunned into motionless Elevation .

You know , which sounds like a complete contradiction , but it's an absolute transportation , clearly , the sounds tapping into something I mean I don't know what he's saying the sounds tapping into something that , even though I'm not of this continent though I guess there's five generation generations of epigenetics , sure , but you know that's not much when we talk about the

ancient history on this continent but there's something there that Reaches , you know , even me quote unquote and it feels . It feels as momentous and big as you have described it , affecting you , yeah , and so I guess , yeah , I , I , I seek to the best ways to live that knowledge from here myself , and so for you it means these productions .

I'm wondering as much how you come to that , to the specifics of what you do from here . With that , I know you were on a quest before we spoke . It's why we held off till about now to speak , as much as to connect in the Kimberley as well , because it seemed relevant and

timely too . But is it through processes like that that it dawns on you what you need to do ? How does it come to you ?

In one way it's easy because I mean I remember back to what those old people in West Kerry and the Blasca Islands so when I was growing up I spent three quarters of my year in Dublin and a quarter of my year in the Graltok , the Irish speaking area , surrounded by words and ideas and that were entirely different , like still on the island , so on in a tier ,

an island off the west coast of Ireland , again , that I spend a lot of time in . When people sneeze , they don't say dealings , when I could say dealing , god be with you , but there they don't . They say desha , which means Sun wise . It means may you go back in orientation with the Sun . God again .

It's pure pagan thought and there's so much of that in Irish . Like when we say a gust of wind , we say she Gweeha , the she Gweeha means means of the fairy wind . It basically it's a gust of the fairies blowing , blowing through you , because they were everywhere . I'd a word for cancer is I'll show cancer , I'll show .

So , brian , I'll show means a chemo drip , a cancer drip , but I'll show is actually a particularly nefarious or evil type of fairy Okay , and Brian , I'll show means the magical droplets that fall on the tombs of certain tyrants , causing rot . So our language is utterly infused with a global world way of looking at the world .

So in some way it was easy enough . And then to go back to the mythology and show look , this myth is not , is actually the cala , is the great wise woman of Ireland , the great , the power figure who sort of created the land .

And she , in her early myths , she says when I was young , the great ocean to the west of Ireland was a forest , a richly mountain forest landscape , which in fact it was . You know , there was the Panjian continent , so the Appalachian mountains of America have the exact same rock strata as Ireland because they were once one and then there was a big divide .

So there's a lot of knowledge in our mythology about the genealogy going back thousands of years . There's a famous story about the three great waves of Ireland who town Kleana , town Tuia and town Rua , and they protected the island . They roared around the island , protecting it , almost coalescing the island . So they were gravitational waves or particle waves .

And what geographers are now realizing ? The position of these waves is exactly where the flood waters would have been washing off the land 11 , 12,000 years ago , when the war , when the land warmed and the ice heat melted .

So in some ways , that first step of reconnecting with the land was just going back to the language and the myth and highlighting these issues .

The next step , as you say , is more profound because , like what the indigenous people said to me in the First Nations , people in Canada and the indigenous people in the States say there's so much more knowledge there , there's women's knowledge there , there's lore there .

You need to go out into the land and listen , you need to just sit there and it will tell you . And in the modern world , you know where , we've been conditioned by small-minded , rationalistic , pragmatic thinking that is uncomfortable to do because you think is my narcissist , isn't going to come in , is you know ? Am I just going to lose the way ?

But really , I think what inspired me thinking wait , this is so long ago . But then I go to Australia and instead , my first day , there's Dr Noln Nanak , the great Nongar Elder , and he starts talking to me about the waggle . You know this serpent that has created many of the Kree rivers . We have the exact same concept in Ireland . It's called the old face .

It was this serpent who created our most sacred rivers . The two most sacred rivers in Ireland are the Shannon River , and Shannon is named after Shona goddess , and then the Boine River , and Boine is named after another goddess , bo-in , the pale cow , or the cow who could access to wisdom on the other side of the dimension .

That Bo-in , that Bo-in , that goddess is the exact same God that you find in India , named Govinda . So I by realizing , like when I go to Australia , that all of these , like even the Kaila I told you about this key hagg figure who has all the lore , who is sort of animal-esque , she turns into animal .

As I was taking the flight up to Kununara from Perth , there was an artist there , angela , her name will come to me , but she started talking to me about the wajna . The wajna , you know this female owl , otherworldly being , and there were so many overlaps between the stories that are told about the wajna and the Kaila .

So I'm realizing , okay , although it's kind of tricky for us in Ireland because we feel we've lost things , there are our cousins and our sisters and our brothers in our relations , other parts of the world who have so much more . Like Robert Nagala , who was one of . His father was one of the last first contact people . I met him in Balgo .

I spent a good time in Balgo and Robert Nagala was saying so . You know he was . His people were brought up on the Tanaman Desert and he starts talking to me about the stars . What his , you know , his people knew about the stars and very similar to .

So , let's say , in Ireland the main idea of the stars is , you know , we have the Roman and Greek words for the stars , but beyond that we have the concept , like the Milky Way is Shiog Mespeda , so it is the spirits of the sky .

This dark stretches within the Milky Way are sort of regarded as this other world , a bit like the supernatural , the emu , the emu dreaming that some super , that some Aboriginal tribes have there , like they have the emu and we often have the Larvon , is what we call those patches within the silky way which is the white mare or otherwise Baloch n'bo Finna .

So which is the way of the white cow , or the way of this cow who can access knowledge on the other side . So like , clearly , in one way there's no connection between Aboriginal people in Irish , but because humans have created the same myths and have at some point been rooted in that same humanity , you know , thousands of years ago .

We're finding all these fascinating echoes between them .

My wife will laugh at me on occasion because I'll hear things , I literal noises around the place and sounds that she won't hear , and sure I've been a musician so I guess it's a there's a trained aspect to that , maybe a bit of just different genetics , but I feel like it's getting more acute the more I develop my practice , if you like , of listening to people

. And you know , for every episode that goes out and you'd know this too well you have 100 conversations and it's all listening . You're going in to learn and listen and and then relate story in a way that you hope is a bridge of some kind . I mean , I guess on the one hand it's an invocation , your book title even listen to the land .

That as a practice , I wonder , as someone who spent your adult life largely doing that , going around the world and listening to people who were , you know nominally on different pages . You know from completely different cultures to yours , that the art of listening . I guess how has that practice evolved for you ?

Have you felt yourself change through that art of listening ?

A lot of it's gone to seed . I'm just about producing enough food for myself . Where my partner has a cafe , the Fumbly Cafe in Dublin . I used to produce a lot of food for her , a lot of honey , a lot of eggs , but

I don't anymore . Just because I am being asked to talk , to go to different people all over Ireland , like you can't imagine the intensity of the passion for people in Ireland about these ideas of lore , of connection to land , of connection to spurs and so that we have in our , in our culture and that unites us to cultures all around the world .

It has just gone crazy . And because I'm one of the key , or identified as one of the key , figures , I am constantly talking . Now , the one thing I feel really strongly is , in this age of like 2023 , in this first quarter of the 21st century , men , particularly middle-aged men like I'm 53 , need to stop talking .

Yes , and what I find is the people who are inspiring me and the people who are going back to the land and who are reconnecting , who are making those sacrifices and saying , yes , we need to acknowledge what we've done to indigenous people , or even to even to like the peasant classes in Ireland , in England , the colonized people .

We need to acknowledge the injustice that we're done to those and find new ways of being the people who I see that are young people and often women . So I need to , I need to shut up as soon as I can .

I need to stop talking and I need to get them to allow these 20 or 30 year olds , who aren't as compromised , as conditioned , into that absolutely exploitative mindset that is deep in myself and my bones and allow them their time . So , but I realize no , I'm not in it , I'm not listening enough , I am not working on the land enough at the moment .

Just because it's that weird paradox , I'm writing these potentially beautiful , beautiful books about how we find spiritual connection in the essence of land and story and myth and humanity , and I am just tearing around the country the whole time , which is why I did the vision quest .

It was the reason I did the vision quest was because you know , when I , when I met those Cree elders in Canada , the first I said to them like but we've lost so much of our lore , especially we've lost our female lore and our women's lore . And they looked at me .

This was Jerry Saddleback , lana Whiskeyjack and Lewis Cardinal , who are sort of key elders in Canada . So for the residential schools investigation , these were some of the Jerry and Lewis were some of the key elders , and Joanne Saddleback who oversaw this . So it's just by coincidence .

These were the people who came up to me in Edmonton , alberta , and redirected my life . But I said , like we've lost the women's lore , that we've lost the women's lore , and they just looked at me , they stared at me and they said how would you know ? And it was such a great me , a man , I wouldn't , I know nothing .

But it gave me goosebumps all up and down me because I realized there was a site in Ireland called Aoui Nagat . It was the cave of transformation , the cave of the female goddess energy .

And I had been hearing about this in sort of vague , you know , new age or hippie circles , maybe since the early 90s , but I could never find anything about it in any book or on the internet . And it was in a place , was told to me . Look , it's in Ross Common , it's near Queen Maeve's Queen Maeve Citadel .

So the centre of the old kingdom , our ruling centre of Connacht of the west of Ireland 2000 years ago , was in Ross Common and Queen Maeve was the supernatural goddess who controlled it . She was both half human and half divine . She was a super , a supernatural , semi divine being , and so all her buildings are still there , her central ritual site .

Because I say she was a goddess , but she was also real , but her , you know , this is how we told our story . But you can go there and visit these 2000 year old sites with all of the processional and parade ramps . But beside it was , they told me , was this place , aoui Nagat , the cave of transformation .

And eventually I could , I read the myths , myths that are said , you know , maybe 3000 years old , and they talk about how Coochullan , our great warrior hero , used to would be sent down there by Queen Maeve with two other men to see which of them could survive a night with her wild beasts that lived down there .

So it was basically , it was a stage , a ritual of training , to see where you brave enough to be , you know , a sign of manhood , and but I could never , ever find it .

And then , only in the last , like I'd look , I'd go to Rackrann , go to this place in Ross Common , go down every back bohorine , every back little laneway , you know , a grass , that ended up in a field , could find nothing . And finally , about like four or five years ago , I was there .

I was going down the lane and I saw a group of obviously we were tourists in a field .

They were wearing , you know , haley Hansen and all that rain Patagonia clothing and they cut out and they said , oh yeah , this is the cave , and all it was was a tiny entranceway like a badger hole or a fox in the wall , and that led down to this like 40 meter tunnel down into the ground and then there's massive , big cavernous chamber inside it .

And this was it . Like people had always known about it , women had always known about it , but they just hadn't told , they're not going to tell the Christian Church , they're not going to tell the mainstream .

So actually there's probably a lot more knowledge like that that is in the minds of older women , of people who are still looking after the herbs and the land . Yes , and for that it takes the likes of me , a journalist and a television maker , to shut the hell up , go away and allow these other people , allow that information to come back again .

But so what , the ? What the elder said , like first , is to be humble , know what you don't know . And then they said , like , you need to find . So I would . The minute I came back from Canada , I was invited by the government . I said there's going to be a delegation of senior Cree elders coming to the Irish government and coming to the president's house .

We want you on the welcoming committee , and so I was . In one way it was . It was a crane , a train wreck , like the politicians in our Irish government , in our chamber of governments , in the Senate , gave that . We're trying to be respectful .

You know they , the , the , the , the prime minister and all the other leaders greeted them , but they did so in a , in a patronizing way . They didn't even realize they were patricians . They didn't realize that they were dealing with a far older , wiser tradition . And you need to do it . You need to follow their protocols , not yours .

You can't be dressed up in your suits and showing them the 19th century photos of portraits of other males in big old suits . You need to smudge the chamber , you need to give them offerings , you need to give them tobacco , and so that was humbling . That was in the government chambers , but then we brought them to the president's house .

Now our president is Michael G O'Higgins me hall G O'Higgins , an amazing man who is just , understands the law , understands the Irish language , understands nature . He's been a protector all his life and he the elders immediately realized they were in someone , the presence of someone who adored them and respected them .

And this , me hall G O'Higgins , has been a lifelong campaigner for average on causes too . He's on that page .

So as we left the government chambers , louise B Houth , who's the Canadian poet laureate she's a Cree elder who's highly respected she said to me Mankhan , you have things to find out about your own culture , like I have just seen how your government leaders are dealing with their culture .

You know , in this hypocritical , ham-fisted way , you need to quest , you need to go out into the land , shut the hell up and listen . So I am humbly trying to learn these things , but aware that I am also , you know , the wrong person , the wrong person to do it , but I'll learn .

. I obviously think about this a lot too . I wonder if there's something about your skills , like the journalism and the filming and the productions , but that perhaps just platform these people like that .

We provide , we help , be a conduit for these people so they speak for themselves and the people we need to hear are speaking , and that the people like yourself who have the trust for them to tell you I never forget it and able to hear not far from here , actually from the Maruara and Paulina up here in the Kimberley said , if you just come and go and she

had lots of people do you'll hear what you want to hear from Aboriginal people . If you want to sit with them , then you'll hear what they know .

And so I wonder for people like you who are in that position of trust and have this well of experience in these productions , in these media , that maybe that's the meeting point where actually it's not you or it's not me speaking , it's them speaking . But we can provide that meeting point if you like , and that conveyor . What do you think ?

And people then come to me and say , okay , tell us so much more . And I say , no , don't you realize ? I'm not an academic , I'm a journalist . I can pick up just enough layer .

But the other thing , as you said , because I've spent those 25 years looking at other cultures , so I can go to Australia and clearly I'm not the person who's going to , like Steve Cooney , go out and do spend 10 years , 15 years , learning all the skin names and all the knowledge .

But like when Ben Ward , who's a midiwong elder from Ben's Creek and who I met up in Kunanara , when he tells me about the Ord River and Lake Argyle , you know which had these diamonds the diamonds were considered the sacred eggs of the rainbow serpent and he tells that to me and he says you know so when that water was flooded , or when those people are taking

the diamonds out , mining the diamonds that his people and his relations were custodians of those diamonds for , you know , tens of thousands of years , and then the mining company take them out .

But all I hear is that we have a very similar story in Ireland about serpents eggs , serpents eggs near St Tract , st Tract as well , which is in Monastery , redmond and County Sligo , and these were also serpents eggs that , if any , if they were ever stolen , they had magical powers .

They also were cursing stones , so if they were turned anti clockwise , against the sun , they would curse . If they were turned in the direction of the sun , they could give blessings . And these were stolen and they were .

They , you know , the end of civilization as , according to the story , so very like the devil's marbles which were in the Northern Territories as well in Australia , with these spirits would steal or possess children . So I can hear that R is the same point .

This woman who told me about the wange and the Angelina Caradabuna who's from I mentioned , she's one of those Kira Koro artists from Kalamburu .

She , when she's telling me about the wange and the other worldly figure , this alfigure , I'm seeing the parallels that I would have heard about in South America , among the , particularly in Papaya and in Colombia , and then in our own culture , and in one way that's superficial because you know the , all these cultures are different to themselves .

But if we are building to give people an idea that there is indigenous people and wisdom In every place in the world , where there is even rural English people who have been living on the land colonized by different kings that they had no connection to , you know , for four thousand years , are our land , or Australia , are our Canada , I think it can help that

there is this sort of person . Like another thing , it blew me away up in Balgo , the , there was an artist who said I showed them the . You know the stone carvings in Ireland that are like five and a half thousand years old , on new grains , on our passage tunes , and one of them is the triskel .

You know the three circles going into a central idea that could be to do with the movement of water to the sun .

It's hard to for us to understand them , but this artist said that he felt he had seen a similar , a similar symbol in some artists who came in either from the great sandy desert or from the other desert , the desert , into Balgo with a similar symbol . Wow .

So , like I love the idea , we've lost the meaning of our symbols on our rock art in Ireland of the five and a half thousand year old culture , but they're very similar ones that you find in a bridge of culture . So could , could there be a language there ?

A symbolic language is there's just so much for us to communicate on , beyond , as we need to talk about , to share the experiences of our trauma and our oppression and what happened . But beyond all that , disease , cultural riches is riches that I believe are only that , are only just beginning .

The key idea is the bullies are the kill criminals . So bullies means a bubble of knowledge , or the other word is kill criminals , which is a hazel of insight . So these were hazelnuts , nuts from the hazel tree that fell into the water , fell into a particular supernatural .

Well , you know , in Ireland we have these three thousand sacred wells , with more sacred or holy wells at any place in the world .

And again , it was very interesting to go to Australia and to hear from elders the stories about their water holes and the power and the serpents and the spirits , very , very similar , both different and very and have these similar echoes .

So every single well in Ireland had a had a deity , an animistic deity connected to it , but then a saint was put on top of that . So most of St Patrick like . We have really good , detailed accounts from St Patrick describing what he was doing from 437 AD when he arrived , and a lot of his time he's just going around the pagans wells .

These wells that had were connected with a god of the leaf or the tree or the rock or the rainbow , and taking away that , that dirty pagan god , and replacing it with with with the saint , and so , yeah , these , these wells were animated , they were made magic by these hazel . The hazel , basically a tree .

You know , the king of all trees in Ireland is the oak tree . That's where you go for your wisdom . So the druid . Druid actually comes from through vid . Through is an old word for an oak or a spine . It's basically the access Monday . The access Monday .

So the druid was the person who connected the , the underworld , with the real world , with the world above , with the other world . And so druid , so the oak was . That's where and where we used to worship was in oak woods , in oak groves , thing called nematon 2000 years ago .

So a lot of the early Christian sites actually are called like Derry , the center of the great saint column . Kill . Derry means Dira , means oak tree . Oh , a great goddess was Bridget , she's . So she was a pagan goddess who then became a saint , saint Bridget , but she is in killed air , killed on the church of the , the dark of the , of the oak tree .

So the oak was where we went out for our wisdom and the spine of the world , but the hazel was where if we wanted to get more subtle insight , because these hazel berries would fall in the nuts , would fall into the water and give insight . And so our great God , like so many of the goddesses and the wise women , have been eradicated from our stories .

Because you know the only reason these stories survived , as I said , they survived in the oral tradition on the West Coast of Ireland . But that was the poorest place , that was the place that was most decimated by the famine , where sometimes , you know , a third of the population died .

So really , the place where we get the myths is in the manuscripts , and the manuscripts were written down by the monks from the 9th century until the 12th , 13th century . But obviously they wrote them down with their own Christian turn on them , their own Christian bias . So they removed a lot of the power film store , powerful stories

. But what we do get , if we dig deeper , is that women like the goddess Shanna , who sought out she wanted more wisdom , she wanted more eloquence and more spiritual connection . So she goes on a journey , a spiritual journey , to the well of all knowledge and wisdom , and this is con as well .

It's a supernatural well that exists underneath the Atlantic Ocean and these bubbles of what , these hazel bubbles , these krill crement , are in there , and orders required is to drink some of the water or swallow back one of these hazels and you have wisdom .

So there's so many different words and accounts that talk about the ways of expanding your knowledge , of gaining enlightenment , and beautiful ones about feeling like Lesbonne .

Are these different glimpses that you see around your eyes that when the other world drifts into our own World's script , lean is another , is the same concept where the other realm will bleed into our own , because most of our consciousness is . Most of my story is about the multi dimensionality of life .

There was a real world which most people didn't give much attention to . They gave , they were thinking about the world of the ancestors and magic world . They were constantly bleeding in and out of ours .

But I think , as I'm living on this continent and I delve into and with the knowledge of indigenous folk , here , I wonder if people like me everywhere , who are in situations like that post colonial context like that , that don't have their indigenous language to go back to on the land they live on .

But there's a universality right that you've sort of alluded to throughout this conversation that we , we sort of learn what we need to learn . Even by hearing you speak about Ireland . It sort of pertains to here and Pertains everywhere , would you say .

But I do think I love the idea of all of us moving towards a future concept of indigenous , in other words , all of us being aware what does it take to be absolutely rooted in a particular place and to understand the seasons and the how to revive the land had to keep the water is pure and so like .

That's why I think we can look at these different cultures and see , like in Ireland , you know we're dealing with climate change , not to the same extent of Australia , but we're seeing that those wisdom and knowledge within even the way we used to look at climate , there was these terms like Lent and the bow of the , which is this mid spring cold snap between

March and April .

So you have all the crops in the ground in March , you're ready to grow , and then Lent and the brobo of the days of the river , of the wandering or the striped cow Riving , and just bring on this uncertainty idea there , on God , of scarving the go , which is it's actually a winterly period between May and June again , when the crops are gentle and delicate ,

and you've got to be in the go , which means the little , the rough wind of the cook who and again , I didn't know what the people had , these sort of , you know , just charming stories about the weather , until I go to meet different people , with Zach Webb , particularly down south , who tells me about your own , you know , when the new shoots appear after the

harsh summer , or my car , when the herring are fat . So we , all of us , all of us are people who only survived , only got this far , by observing every element of nature around us , and so this is skills that we are going to need in the future , like I did the project two years ago for called see Tamagotchi .

Remember Tamagotchi , these little Japanese toy people used to play with ?

Well , I went to fishermen all along the west coast of Ireland and asked them for words to do with the sea , words to do at fishing , words to do with climate , waves . See , and my God , the wealth and knowledge I got from them . And you know that often we think , why did the Irish star during the famine ? And they were surrounded by the sea .

When they were surrounded by sea , fish and fish and seaweeds . And you know , in America some of the people who survived , they will the ancestors , they will sort of be dismissive of their relations who were so poor , and that's a step of postcolonial trauma . But they will say , oh , they were probably ignorant .

And the one thing I realized from collecting these words many of them are recorded nowhere , these few words is there was no sense of ignorance . The people of the west of Ireland knew every element , like there's a word of the sea , there's a word buraita .

Buraita means an underground reef that you or I would never know is there unless we had an echo sounder , you know a digital equipment which we may not have in the future , you know .

So a buraita means there's an underground reef and on it is a kelp forest and in that kelp forest it is rich and alive with , with mangahi and balahi , which are mangahi , is is a balak and balahi are balonrass . So , as the fishermen said , if ever you know where a burait is there , you are guaranteed there is dense fish in that kelp forest .

At least there was in Ireland until 15 years ago , until we finally polluted and over stocked , or over fish or waters , but it's that type of level of information . Or like there's a lovely word , a moonyu means the chewing up of baby soft skin crabs and the spitting them into the sea to be used as bait to catch all this fish . Or leovador .

Leovador means the aspect , the idea of setting light to little bits of birch bark or paper and throwing them on the water and then using that to attract herring to the birch bark at night , and then having a net , you know , creating a loop net around it to catch all the fish .

So all of these immensely practical bits of knowledge and bits of knowledge , wisdom about the environments that are only built up over over eons of years . Here can I give you one proverb . You know , irish is alive with proverbs , but each of the proverb is only there to convey wisdom through the ages .

From o gluing , g gluing , which means from generation to generation , but the word gluing means your knee , so it's basically from your knee to knee , from your mother's knee to the baby's knee , to the grand mother's knee , to the grand child's knee , and so with gluing , gluing , this phrase goes . It goes sail chi vil voor sail umed aavan .

Sail chi umed a sail on daun . So the first part sail chi vil voor sail umed aavan . The life of chi vil voor of three whales is the life of one umed a of one growing ridge . So a whale was considered to live about a thousand years . They actually only live about a hundred or two hundred years , but we thought they lived three thousand years .

So the life of three whales , three thousand years is the life of one growing ridge is , according to the proverb . And sure enough , off on Acolyland and Ireland and up on the northwest coast there are these growing ridges , these mounds in the landscape that archaeologists say , yes , they are three or four thousand years old .

So my ancestors , the early bronze age ancestors , would have grown emmer and iron corn and rye and barley in these fields , okay , and you can still see the mounds of them today . But somehow our people , our ancestors , remember that , remember that those were three thousand years old . But the second part of that phrase grows my mind .

It goes so sail chi vil voor sail umed aavan is the first part of it . Second part sail chi umed a sail on daun . The life of three growing ridges is the life of the world now . A growing ridge , according to the proverb , was three thousand years old and according to archaeology , so three growing ridges , three trees , is nine thousand .

It is the life of the world . Is nine thousand years old according to the proverb and nine thousand years old is nine thousand years ago is exactly when archaeologists and anthropologists say humans first came to Ireland nine or ten thousand years . Somehow that knowledge was stored and we weren't even the same people . You know .

We are the bronze age people who replaced the Neolithic people . There's tiny traces of Neolithic DNA in us but there's no traces of the original hunter , gatherer people who were these blue eyed , brown skinned people who arrived here , you know , nine , ten , eleven thousand years ago . Somehow that knowledge was kept alive . So that's why this is so important .

We are entering into an uncertain future where all of the , the stabilities , the certainties of life , life , the economic certainty , the health certainty that was threatened during covid , the weather certainty , the financial is all under threat . But we happen to have these .

There's a word called crana fertile in irish , which means the stout ores , the ores that keep you rooted through difficult times . We have that in every and so many indigenous and old and traditional and cultures and heritage in this land . And it's not too late . That's the real beauty . It's still alive in Ireland , it's still alive in Australia .

So much has been lost , but it is there .

and the seers and the monks and the healers and the wise women , it can appear that we're a long way off that centering of those people , of those voices , of these stories , of these words , of this language .

If it was felt by people listening to this that that feels like something that perhaps even unattainable many people might think it's such a shift , obviously from from the way our power structures in this post colonial society happen . What are your feelings on that ?

And particularly like what you , what you're , what the regeneration is doing with your movement , your podcast , your system of talks are doing , are highlighting a different way of being and , as you say , it is far from the mainstream , it's far from those politicians in Dublin that I brought the elders to who are well meaning , in fact , in Ireland at least , indeed ,

just but just you know , just unaware . You know , and then you know you're some of your leaders , both in Western Australia but also just Australia , who , some of whom are well meaning and some of whom are just on the take and want to exploit until they destroy .

So , as you say , we can get lost in the darkness of that , in the absolute greed and exploitation that's happening , particularly the people you're meeting , that network that you're not . It's not , you're not creating , but you are a web , you are some , one of the strands , and it's meant that , uniting people from all places .

You know , from Nicole Masters , zach Bush to all of the people in Canada and in Australia and New Zealand , that you are highlighting your work . There's a new paradigm happening . You can feel it , you see it every day in your inbox and the people you talk . I see it every single day .

So either we get we get lost in despair because we think that world that we were brought into in the 80s and 90s , which had no hope for us and look like nothing , is going to change .

You'd say then us daring to talk about regenerated future , about people who are interested in focusing primarily on the health of the water and the soil and realizing , if you do that , everything else would come from it . You know they were .

They were only pie in the sky ideas in the past , and now I just see everything changing and I do see this movement of young people saying we're not willing to accept it anymore .

You see the people of you know the middle age , people of my age , sort of either crushed if they're too far into the system , they think they can't dare change and they see the system crumbling all around them . They know that maybe in their lifetimes they might just get away with it , but their children and grandchildren are ruined .

And then you see the young generation say it's not too late , the wisdom is still there , the knowledge is still there . We are . It's amazing what we've learned in the last decade about regenerating soil , about how to grow healthily .

I had to grow bountiful and the likes of you are going to enormous difficulty and unsettling your life , roaming to find these stories and bringing people together . So there's two worlds .

The world is almost split into two worlds at the moment an old world that is unhealthy and is not doing well , and this other one that is we're young , we're starting out , where I'm sure of ourselves . But I just see the energy and the spirit in it that I think it's only going to grow . And I was born in 1970 as an absolute dreamer and idealist .

I spent my whole time Probably on some sort of you know , autistic or asperger scale . I couldn't really connect with the world , but I could connect with my herb garden . When I did , I was directly in contact with these spirits , with these what I thought were guardian angels or other worldly beings , and they were so beautiful and so unencompassing .

But I never saw any of that in the world around me and now I'm seeing it now , every day I'm seeing more of this . So I am hopeful because I see this energy . But if some pragmatic , realistic , realist came to me and said look , you know the oil , the bar and the companies , the banks , aren't going to give up their money .

The mining companies in Australia will never , will never , you know , will never stop . It's hard for me to argue against their strong logic , because it's pragmatic and it's what the past was based on , but I do believe we're going into a new future .

I think I read somewhere that the Jesuits , when you were young , spotted an idealism in you and it reminded me of when a priest when I was in primary school I would have been all of I don't know nine maybe , and he pegged me for a future priest that at the time I was horrified by the thought but Because I didn't want to join that you know what I was

observing there . But but later on I came to think , I came to wonder what he saw and maybe actually he was picking up something of what I was feeling and and looking for . It's interesting to wonder . I never met him again , so I don't know .

Seek , you know , connecting people and like just to talk about that complexity of of the our shared , of Ever , of everyone's trauma in different ways , but also in relate to the church , like you know , we Canada , australia and Ireland are all dealing with the legacy of residential homes and the abuses that happen in them .

Oh , we won , and like , in some way you could get lost in the darkness of that . And yet I go , you know , out to Australia , go to Balgo . The reason that I was invited in and really welcomed Well , I brought kangaroo tails , that that helped Into the , into the where I , where I eat , the artist home .

But also it is because some of the that the artist there remembered this woman called sister Alice Dempsey , st John of God's woman , who came out in the 80s and she was the first person . So the Balgo mission , you know , was kind of an oppressive place was basically bringing people in from the desert , from the town of Mount desert .

They're going to Andy desert and just taking stealing everything for everything about their culture from them . But there was this one , sister Alice Dempsey , young and none from that young , none from the south of Ireland . So he's the violent . And she decided she said no sure , why don't you come into the church ?

It was one Eastern by 82 should why don't you bring your artwork and make some art for the church walls ?

And they , they were just , they were astounded that these people who are just trying to suck all their , to kill all that culture , I've them , allowed them do this , and then sister Alice next say next year , so why don't you sing some of your songs at the Easter , the biggest celebration with Easter and they sang the songs .

So a lot of their art and their songs were actually preserved by , by the focus of getting these ready for the church . And we know , you know , the church can be a key , important memory for For certain Aboriginal groups , as well as being a place of great trauma and oppression .

So nothing is simple like an Ireland , we want to turn ourselves away from religion and the church and all the terrible harms it did . And then we , you know then what ? How are we going to deal with our Irish and Aboriginal legacy ? In some way the Irish and Aborigines really helped I mean , the Aborigines helped the Irish to an enormous extent .

And there are these some stories of the Irish because they were oppressed by the English being slightly better , less oppressive in certain cases . Now , there's not .

There are definitely stories of trauma and a total oppression by Irish people done on Torres Strait and Aboriginal people , but the stories are so complex and they're only going to come out is if we're in contact with each other , if we're engaging . For start this broader , rather at the moment , as you say it's frozen in time .

I called , though I don't know much about Australia .

You can imagine there are so many Australian people living in Ireland , and particularly my girlfriend's cafe , so many of them and I Tell them about my three weeks in Australia and they say they have never once encountered an Aboriginal person , definitely not encountered an elder , not , never , never heard their stories from them .

Yeah , so we are all frozen in just awkwardness and shock and horror about that oppressive past we've all come out of , and what it requires is it's what you're doing is going around linking people together , creating new narratives .

He was the son of the sea god , monon on Mathleer , but then the same Patrick would have made him into Monochon , little monk , and this young , that name had died out for a thousand 1200 years , until my , you know , because my relations were not only warriors but they were also Gaelic scholars . So they brought back these old names from the manuscripts . Wow .

But the one thing about Monachon in sixth century , he had a little . He had a little hovel , little shack in the wilderness and outside he had his leaks and he had his bees and his salmon and his wild garlic and he collected berries . So he was leaving living that hermit life , and that is desperately what I wanted to do and what I did do .

I had a weird life . Like I said , I would make a TV series once a year in a foreign culture , in South America , china , africa and then I'd go back living there for nine months , ten months on my own , never had a partner , never wanted a partner .

So only in the last few years that I fall in love with this , this girl in Dublin , and am I finding myself a lot more in the public eye . And I that's why I know I won't do it very long .

That's why I know I'll be sitting back very soon , because there's so many I Probably I have this little role to play at this time , but there's so many people who can do it so much better than me . I'm aware of my conditioning . I'm aware of my 1970s , my small-mindedness , my , my misstep , my cultural insensitivities .

So I'm particularly when you're dealing with such complex cultural issues like the protocol with indigenous elders or Canadian First Nations people you know I am misstepping the whole time , but we do it humbly and they are so understanding and gracious .

You know , 2015-2060 , right up till XR to extinction rebellion , 2019 , and then , of course , covid knocked it all off the table . But I was working . I had started working with a regenerative farm down in in In County Clare in the west of Ireland .

There were three former big wave surfers so Ireland only was discovered as a ideal destination for big wave surfing Probably about nine years ago , and three of the prime people who were doing it they were still were , you know had contacts with billabong and with these other big surfing companies .

Would they , would , you know , be flown around the world to surf these big waves ? And eventually they realized no , we cannot do that in our hearts . We cannot be flying just to hit on a big wave for some media , for your red bull , to film it . So they went back to Ireland and started growing vegetables with the same passion that they were doing their .

You know , it's big wave surfing , professional surfing and there was just , you know , the wilds of Ireland where we think nothing could ever grow . They had fields and fields of vegetables , so I got very involved with them .

They were called my hill and and then One of them , the one with the main surfer , fergal Smith , said I'm gonna have to put myself up for the election , for the general election , because the stories are too urgent . We need to get these stories into government . So I offered to help him . Just write some speeches and write some pamphlets and things . Cool .

What were my writing ability ? But this was January 2016 . I thought , no , I'm hiding , these stories are too important . I need to put myself up for election . I was living in the midlands of Ireland , where I still live , and that was an area where the midlands in any country , you know , new ideas don't really come into the midlands . They tend to .

They tend to be sewn or bare fruit , first on the , on the wall on the coastline , then slowly . So the midlands of Ireland is a slow moving place and there was no talk about green issues or ecological issues there . So I thought I should put myself up as a green party candidate just to begin the discussions .

And I did and I knocked on people's doors and it was so hard One of the hardest things I've ever done in my life just to put myself out among from some , to constantly have to be chatting , convincing people , talking to people , and obviously I didn't get it .

I mean , I made it to the eighth round , so I did pretty good and I got a lot of those issues onto Into the public sphere in that area . That then had I probably had I done the second , the next election , that was 2016 .

Had I done 2020 , I probably would have been elected , but that would not have been good for my , my mental health or my heart or everything . Yeah , I need to hide .

Thanks so much for joining me . I feel like we could go on , but I'll leave

you to your day , but not before . Of course , we talk music , and you know this because you've kindly listened to a bit of the podcast since we met online . What music occurs to you now , or indeed may have , you may have been reveling in for some time .

something I said , check out this podcast if you want someone you know to get a glimpse from someone who is this Custodian , who's traveling the country , finding these stories , creating these town hall gatherings to share information .

Some of the conversations are uncomfortable , some are too , maybe , you know , just so awe-inspiring , though they're almost too hard to envision , but you are putting those stories out there . So I Honor what you're doing , thank you . And like , as we know and it's happening all over , all over the world there are people summoning up these new stories . There are .

But anyway , in terms of music , the music I would pick would be it's an album called the Brendan voyage and it's played on the illen pipes by Liam O'Flynn . The illen pipe pipes are the old , the sort of like the old war pipes . You know the bagpipes in Scotland , but they have way more range . Like the bagpipes was a warrior , Was a warrior battle cry .

You know , just to bring people into that berserker mood , go fighting . The illen pipes are beautifully melodious and they're haunting and they're otherworldly and in fact the main music played on the illen pipes is Pertinibu Ki , which is the song of the fairies and it is known . It brings whales , whales in From the sea , it lures them in towards the landed shore .

Beautiful . Again , down in Wadande country , to hear Zach Webb talking about their connection , the connection of those the Wadande people see saltwater people with the whales , was beautiful . Anyway , the illen pipe has a strong connection with the , with the whales and this , the Brendan voyage .

It's a muse , it's a soundtrack to a voyage that was done by an Englishman . In 1982 An Englishman decided to recreate a journey by st Brendan . St Brendan the navigator in the seventh century , set out on his little cork , his little simple canvas cow hide and wood boat , and Allegedly sail the whole way to Newfoundland , to North America .

He definitely went as far as Greenland because he wrote this account and it describes and going to Iceland and then going on top of a whale and thinking the whale was an island and the whale moved around and then seeing the great Dragon fire bret , of the volcanoes in Iceland and then going further again north . So it's amazing story . I was 12 in 1982 .

Tim Severin this English adventure recreated that journey and I it sparked For me a sense of oh my god .

These stories from long ago from our , our great navigator and mariner sailors in the midst are Actually possibly true , because he recreated with the same conditions in a little leather boat , and so the soundtrack of his , of the film that was done about his journey in 82 , was this the Brendan voyage .

It is absolutely beautiful , was composed by Sean Davy , with the muse , with the pipes of Liam . And when I went to Africa in 1989 I fled I did not the hotbed of my , of my granny's Republicanism , of the small mindedness of Ireland , which was still absolutely controlled by the church in 89 .

I needed to get out and I got on the back of an ex-army truck for left from London .

It was the whole way across the Sahara , across Togo , ben and Niger , cameroon , zaire , uganda , tanzania for seven months , and the only tape I brought was that , the Brendan voyage , and he used to play it in the Back of the old Bedford , the old ex-army British truck , and it just Transported me and it still does .

Whatever I listen to , brendan voyage , I am beyond . I am with my ancestors , but I'm also acting to see , and just beyond , beyond , whatever that means , in another realm .

We'll talk again , Anthony , and thank you .

And , of course , speaking about wonderful gatherings , more guest presenters have been announced for the next big Regenerative Agriculture event here in Australia , down south in Margaret River , WA .

Zac Webb , who Manchan talked about and who featured on the podcast earlier this year , will be there welcoming all to country and presenting , which makes me doubly honoured to be emcee , and it'd be great to see some of you there too .

If you'd like to hear from the co-curator of that incredible exhibition that's touring the world Songlines: tracking the seven sisters , head to episode 93, to hear the entertaining and profound stories of Margo Neale .

And if you'd like to hear of an encounter with the Wagyl on this podcast , head to episode 143 to hear Noongar leader Heidi Mippy and some other great company out in the WA wheat belt . And for my yarn with Tyson Yunkaporta, that's in episode 70 and still resonating with many listeners I've heard from .

This episode was recorded at the Derby Media Aboriginal Corporation , aka 6dby , deadly Derby radio , the story of which also remains one of the most popular episodes on this podcast from back when we were last here a couple of years ago . So cheers to Chris, OJ , Jodi, Sunimah , Sam, Zac , Jada and everyone involved there .

For subscribers to the podcast , I'll continue to send you behind the scenes missives about what's unfolding as I get around the country , and if you've been thinking about becoming a subscriber , I'd love you to join us . It's with thanks , as always , to this community of generous supporters that this episode was made possible .

Just head to the website via the show notes RegenNarration . com forward slash support and thanks again . And thanks also for sharing the podcast whenever you think of someone who might enjoy it and for continuing to rate and review it on your favoured app . It all helps .

The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden off the soundtrack to the film Regenerating Australia . My name's Anthony James . Thanks for listening .