Not everywhere is the same. Not everyone is the same. One person’s self-improvement is not necessarily someone else’s.

To walk into a land not your own and see it as an adult with a fixed mind, rather than walking through it is a child, a teenager and someone from a completely different area who wishes to learn the local ways, are two very different things. To grow up with an understanding of the land itself, by walking with her, smelling her, growing with her, learning from her, and living with her, is very different from someone coming into it with blinkers on and not understanding, from their own guilt of being “privileged”, what it’s all about.

When we say, ‘Speak for me, for I cannot speak for myself,’ it comes from a place where people have adapted and changed, yet have a few people around them with much louder voices who say, ‘I have changed, yes, but I also take advantage of a system who sees me as someone who needs help, when I actually don’t.’ When a person says, speak for me, please, they are asking from their heart for someone else to say, “This is how my friend feels.” They don’t want bullshit, they don’t want someone yacking on about crap, they just want someone in their corner.

There are many people here in WA who are proud of what they have achieved through their own hard work, despite all the bullshit they get thrown at them. There have been many issues in the past, yes, but that is through individual grievances, not group ones.

The story and the dreaming is still very much alive. It’s a pity many people who do not live out in the country do not understand her history, and have lost their way. It’s disturbing. There aren’t enough people to explain exactly how disturbing it is, and how much is being lost through not being connected. Trying to understand something which is completely foreign to oneself, is not the same as understanding through experience. Making up modern yarns about something and passing it off as truth, when there are already traditional, well-documented stories, is not something that’s meant to be done. This is where we start to lose real history.

Understanding the difference between fiction and reality can be very difficult for some people. It can be even more difficult for people with an agenda to fix things that don’t need fixing, and to not fix things which are in dire need of fixing.

If one went back to the reality of “tribal” lore, for those who don’t know what that means, over here in W.A it was pretty bloody nasty. Those who did the wrong thing were basically “evicted” from their camp, and if they kept coming back, they were chased off. Those who did things a lot worse than just “the wrong thing”, suffered a fate far worse than simply being killed. To these people, the nutters, the killers, and the ones who interfered with children, looking to be convicted of a felony by “white-man’s law” seemed a lot more pleasant than getting speared.

“White man’s privilege” is exactly what the bad ones wanted. Understanding this is possibly the most important thing you will learn today. A few have lost their way due to interference from well-meaning people who do not understand how things work within a community. What I, and those who walk with me, are trying to do — is teach you a little bit about facts right here, and right now. We don’t do this through trying to be mean, or trying to have “out-loud” conversations, we do this carefully. Sometimes it’s hard to get voices heard, and sometimes it’s difficult to make people understand, so when we tell you stories, it’s the meaning behind the story that’s important, not the story itself.

Here the words are different. Here, still water with hidden logs and vast amounts of mud and muck and things one can get stuck in are places to avoid rather than dive into, and it is better to wait until the rains come before we start talking about that — this is what the real dreamtime stories were all about.

Teach your kids to be safe.