ESTHER:   Good afternoon, everyone.  And welcome to everyone who is still coming in the room and joining us.  This is the third ‑ this is the third session in NAVA's advocacy program for 2020.  It is fantastic to have so many of us here as usual, and what we've been doing as people have been coming in, because it takes a while to see who is here and who is in the room ‑ Mary has already read my mind ‑ Mary from Art on the Move in Perth.  I was going to say as your a coming in the room tell us who you are and where you are.  Kerry Mackenzie is saying hi.  More joining which is wonderful.  Hello Lucy, Kerry in Toowoomba.  Julie Gibbs from Gympie Regional Gallery.  Hello.  Fraser Coast.  Fantastic.  So many of us.  Hello, hello, hello.  Now, in the last few sessions of the NAVA advocacy program we have had a good few hundred people join us.  Because it does take a little while for people to come in, to make sure that everyone can hear us, we'll just continue to follow that chat and see everyone letting us know when they're from.  Tell us what country you're from as well.  It would be great to know where ‑ Anna Cordingley, Aisyah.  Hello.  It is really astounding actually seeing not just the range of us from around Australia but those of you from overseas.  Special hello to everyone who is really pushing the time limits and the time differences.  It's, yeah, really, really fantastic to see so many of us.  

Towards the end of our discussion ‑ there is Michaela again.  7 am Luton time over in the UK.  Anna saying so great to have you here Wesley.  Which is super.  I am going to do a few introductions and thanks once we get going.  For those who are really keen for the live captioning link, we've got Helen, our live captioner.  She is based in Brisbane.  Hello, Helen.  And there is a live captioning service and one of my colleagues is going to post that link soon, so that we can all see that.  It's a super useful thing to have as you're listening.  We're now up to 83 of us, 84 of us coming in.  Thanks, Helen.  Helen has just posted the link there which is just now at the bottom of the chat with our live captioning.  Those of you who followed ‑ who have been here for the past weeks, you will know of course we're recording as well as making the captioning available we will also transcribe this session and that will be available soon as well.  Of course, the first two are already up which is great.  So before we, you know, formally start, Nadeena Dixon, Gadigal Wiradjuri Yuin woman, where are you today?  

NADEENA:   In the heart of Redfern.  I always feel powerful and connected in this space, making my art from this rich historical community.  

ESTHER:   And Wesley, you have got mood lighting.  Wesley Enoch, somewhere that looks extremely elegant there.  It's interesting, we've noticed this ‑ and we're going to notice as we go through as the months pass that night will fall in this eastern part of Australia.  So all of our lighting is going to change.  I forgot to turn my light on.  I am going to have to get up at some point.  Wesley, where are you in today?  

WESLEY:  I am here in Gadigal country, Surry Hills.  Neighbouring to Redfern.  Got my beard very slowly as everything else is happening very slowly as well. 

ESTHER:   It is that chance, you know, to do those things.  My hair is much shorter than it has been for ages.  Penelope is just asking a very important question, we're just double‑checking I am recording and I totally am.  I pressed the record button.  The little red thing is on.  And that's making me very happy.  So, yes, that is totally happening.  There's now around 100 of us here.  Welcome everyone.  Thanks so much for noting where you are.  Mary on the other side of this enormous continent.  Wesley is going to be right back and I am going to make that gesture soon to turn that light on which I wish I had done earlier.  It's one of those ‑ yeah.  There's Stafford in Tasmania.  Janet from Perth also.  Hello, Janet.  We were texting earlier.  Nice to see you.  Look, it is so heartening, I have to say, that so many of us want to have a nice big conversation about advocacy, obviously.  There are a lot of obvious reasons why now is a good time.  Thank you, Julie Gibbs.  It's fine now but it's going to get worse is my worry.  I will wait for Julie Gibbs to say to me ‑ when Julie pops on the chat and says Esther, it's too dark, that's when I'm going to turn my lamp on.  Is that a deal?  You will let me know and I will get up and go and turn my lamp on a bit later.  

So, yes.  Now is, of course ‑ we often think time of crisis we need to work really quickly and develop what we need to get through right now but, of course, this is also a time where we do need to decelerate and exhale.  And think in a whole bunch of different ways so that that expansive sense of the future stays with us.  As people are coming in, I'm just going to cross my fingers that I can show you the outline of our advocacy program.  So hopefully you're seeing now on your screens what is the outline for our advocacy program.  Good on you, Harley.  Thank you.  The NAVA advocacy program is going to happen over the next few months.  And it's going to culminate in this event here, Arts Day on the Hill, a national day for advocacy for the arts which will be on 12 August, hopefully in Parliament House, if all of us and Parliament House still exist by then.  But certainly an online kind of world.  And, you know, to get us there, to really develop some skills in advocacy and to have a bunch of workshops that are going to get more and more practical as we go, we've put together this program with thanks to the generosity of philanthropist Daniel Beeson which was last year a two day workshop in Canberra, back to back meetings is now a free online program that we can all work with and build on together.  The program is broken up into four chunks of four weeks.  The first four weeks are about advocating the arts.  And these two weeks we have already had.  And we're now in the third week on First Nations advocacy.  And then next week each of the four weeks has a fourth week that reflects back on the first three, just a Q&A.  And there will be a politician here for each one of those Q&As.  The first four weeks looking at advocacy and what that means, the second four weeks looking at policy development, the third four weeks looking at understanding the media, and the fourth four weeks looking at understanding the politics and political engagement.  And then leading right up to all those practical things.  How we're going to plan a meeting with a politician, how are we going to get some insights into how those processes and machinations work, and how we're going to refine and apply the skills that we've all newly developed so we can have some great impact on Arts Day on the Hill but also well beyond.  

There is also an arts day ‑ a NAVA advocacy workshop handbook.  Hopefully you're seeing the front page of that now, the 2020 handbook part 1 Advocating the Arts.  This is available for NAVA members only.  And so if you go to our website and go to the members only section, that's where you will find the special handbook which includes some exercises, some that you can do individually, some you can do as groups, I've been really heartened to see on the chat the numbers of people saying, "Hey, let's connect up.  Let's do things together."  So this will give you some guidance in doing some stuff together as well as highlighting some of the things that we've been talking about.  And as promised, I have included in that handbook something that I'm just showing on the screen now.  It's not going to be very, very clear but I mentioned this last week.  This is my one‑page very brief history of arts policy in Australia, which I wrote for last year's Arts Day on the Hill advocates group.  You won't be able to see this particularly well.  It's not particularly clear on my screen but there are three columns, the Labor Party, the Greens, the Liberals and the Nationals.  I've got from the federation of the Commonwealth, the turn of the 1900s, up until today, it's a very brief outline of what the major parties have done or dropped when it comes to arts policy in Australia.  That is one of the thrilling and valuable things that you will be able to have as a NAVA member as part of that handbook.  There will be five different chapters of that handbook across the time.  

So there's now just over 116 of us.  We're a good 10 minutes in.  I am assuming that everyone is hearing me okay.  In the past we've had a couple of technical challenges in the first few minutes but just listening or rather reading on the chat I'm not seeing anyone ‑ thank you, I'm not seeing people say it's crunchy or I'm confused.  Thank you, Georgia.  Which means that let's make a formal start.  By name is Esther Anatolitis.  I'm the executive director of NAVA.  I am here on the lands of the Boonwurrung (?) of the Kulin nation.  And we are coming and gathering on a lot of different countries this evening which is just fantastic.  This is the third in our advocacy workshop programs.  It's about developing some great skills in advocacy, doing that together and then applying them so that we can get some really, really great national impact and something that is not just in an emergency, not just in a time of crisis, but really build something that lasts.  Katrina is saying good morning from London.  Good morning to you.  Hi Sarina.  And Debbie is saying the sound is great.  First of all it is my huge pleasure and honest to introduce ‑ or reintroduce because we had the honour of being with Nadeena last week, introduce Gadigal, Wiradjuri, Yuin woman Nadeena Dixon.  Nadeena, hi.  

NADEENA:   Hi, Esther, how are you?  

ESTHER:   I am okay.  Okay is the best I can offer right now.  How are you, Noonuccal Nuugi man, Wesley Enoch?  Are you okay?  

WESLEY:  I'm okay.  I wanted to explain that the beard was my way of putting a clock of my time in lockdown.  I can go ‑ I look different to what I looked like last week.  By the time it's finished it will be down here somewhere maybe.  

ESTHER:   Fascinating.  

NADEENA:   Great. 

ESTHER:   Nancy Lane is telling me my voice is breaking up very badly and that the other speakers are okay.  So I am ‑ it looks like Debby is asking Anna Fryer whether they might be related.  My apologies to Nancy who is having my voice break up.  I'm hoping for others it is clear.  But yes, here we are.  For a session that I've been looking forward to for weeks and weeks as soon as we started to plan this and knew that the two of you would be available for us to all be here.  Let's talk about First Nations advocacy in the context of advocacy for the arts, in a context of broader national, political advocacy, what it means to be a citizen, what it meant for our First Nations, for our first peoples to be advocates before they were citizens, what it means now, what it means into the future.  There's something that ‑ a number of ‑ there's a number of ‑ what is the word ‑ there's a number of insights and the kinds of wisdom that both Nadeena and Wesley have offered me and all of us over many years about this.  And in particular, Nadeena talking last week about the relationship between ‑ for her practice and voice practice and politics, for Wesley in a range of personal artistic and institutional public roles, the way that your advocacy role and advocacy voice works.  We're going to have a lot of different contexts and different platforms for talking about this.  And everyone there is a ‑ there's a chat function that you've seen.  We want to be able to take as many questions as possible and also to be able to have a really great conversation together.  

So Nadeena, let's start with you.  Last week you spoke about that interconnectedness, that intrinsic connection between your practice as an artist, the voice that you develop and the choice that you find yourself making when you're kind of choosing a medium, I guess, for a particular work or something particular that you want to express right now.  Tell us, you know, just ‑ yeah, tell us how do you consider that distinction, that interconnectedness between practice and voice?  

NADEENA:   I think it's, you know, about just tuning into that energy frequency of where the story world lives and bringing that language through your work in the strongest way that you can.  And some of the mediums speak more strongly to a particular theme or project or memory that you're trying to communicate through your work.  

ESTHER:   And can you give us a ‑ ‑ ‑ 

NADEENA:   But I ‑ yeah. 

ESTHER:   I was going to say can you give us an example of that when you're ‑ when you're making something and responding to that connection that you feel?  

NADEENA:   Well, I remember ‑ I just turned 50 last year and for most of my life I didn't actually consider myself an artist.  And in a lot of Aboriginal communities it's not something that we sort of practise art separately from our lives.  So it wasn't until I was 46 that I realised I was an artist.  Because I thought when I'm singing I'm a singer when I weave I'm a weaver when I dance I'm a dancer.  So for me it was my way of communicating through, you know, my connection whichever way I was working at the time, and then what really sort of helped as well to reframe how I saw my own practice was an elder said to me it's all the same dreaming, girl, it doesn't matter if you sing it, dance it, make it into a monologue, photograph.  For me it's the same dreaming or the same story but just interpreted through whichever form.  

ESTHER:   And what did that mean to you then, like to then be 46 and say, "I'm an artist"?  What did that shift for you?  Yeah, what does it make possible or what did it change?  

NADEENA:   Well, I suppose, you know, when I was younger and I was sort of living across two spaces, I grew up pretty immersed in Aboriginal community and I went to school speaking language and mixing English and language up so I didn't know which words were English and which words were language.  And then at some stage I thought I've got to make my own pathway.  So it was my way of sort of finding a place or connection to offer what I create to the community.  There wasn't anything set up when I came through.  So some of it would be like I started by translating nursery rhymes into... because I grew up around the old people and they spoke quite a lot of language at the time.  So I said I was a native speaker as a child, so there weren't a lot of schools at that time mainstream in the primary schools that had ‑ preschools that had any Aboriginal content with any language songs.  It came together as a necessity I was finding a way to be me in a western space and also connect through community.  So I sort of felt I was a little bit of a cultural translator or supporting cultural practice in spaces where culture might not sort of be visible.  

ESTHER:   Wesley, what was your experience as a young man, and I think your experience with language is quite different to Nadeena's. 

WESLEY:  Yeah.  I mean, you know, you grow up with certain things.  I have lots of different language around excrement and body parts.  Look, growing up very much Stradbroke Island, that kind of connection, and a very strong Christian upbringing as well.  So, you know, you don't get a name like Wesley James Enoch by accident.  Enoch is from genesis.  It was given to our family by missionaries.  There's this whole kind of sense of connection to the church that was part of, I don't know, the survival.  I often like to think of the different generations of advocacy as, you know, different almost Maslow's hierarchy of human need as well.  This notion of for my grandparents it was basically just human rights, you know, the right to just live.  You know, to have a life, to have enough food, to have the kind of freedoms to have a family and to keep that family together.  I know that the church was part of my grandmother's strategy of keeping her, you know, 13 kids together when my grandfather died.  There was this big kind of sense of that being important part of it.  By the time you go to my parents' generation ‑ and Nadeena and I are the same age ‑ this notion of going our parents' generation there was a very strong kind of political advocacy that was going on.  The rights to participate in society in a different way, to vote, you know, to have the freedoms of movement, of ownership, of employment, equal employment.  And so that the strategies also changed around that.  This idea of what had been before for my grandparents, anyway, a kind of suppression, if you like, of that cultural knowledge of that deep understanding.  They held it out almost as a secret going forward because it was the reason you would be oppressive or all those sort of things.  It became a different thing for my parents' generation where you go actually to articulate your cultural heritage becomes an important part of a political struggle.  And, you know, by the time you get to some of the great leaders in my family, like auntie Kath Walker who used poetry and politics in the same things, used art as a way of changing the hearts and minds of people, then you see her two sons, uncle Vivian and uncle Dennis, both passed away now, but the sense of one became basically the black Panther movement in Australia and the other became an advocate for arts.  You see these kind of almost a separation but then also being exactly the same.  

And so by the time you get through our parents' generation to let's say me and Nadeena too, and in many ways, the idea of cultural advocacy, the idea of saying we are protecting and expressing a culture that for our grandparents was oppression followed this expression and, therefore, turned it into sometimes an underground movement, and even I imagine Nadeena you had the same experience where you would literally ‑ literally get it beaten out of you at school or in different government‑run environments.  And that sense of what's happened in the last 50‑year period from the '67 referendum on this notion of how the cultural expression and the cultural rights become more important.  So we see that going hand in hand with artistic and cultural rights kind of being expressed.  So the idea of the art movement from the visual arts to weaving to theatre in my case, to dance, you're seeing that these things are becoming more and more important.  

And also even more important, I think nowadays, as we see the next generations that now we have an inverted population pyramid in Australia.  There are more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people under 25 than there are above which is very different to the other non‑indigenous demographics of this nation.  And we're seeing... very well even though I haven't contributed much.  But the idea there are all these kind of children and that becomes even more important that they grow up with that cultural heritage intact.  

ESTHER:   That statistic about the younger people reminds me there is a ‑ there's a statistic that ‑ I forget where I read this ‑ but within the next 10 years or 20 years there will be more First Nations Australians than people who are here who are born in England or from an English background. 

WESLEY:  We can only hope. 

ESTHER:   That's the current projection, which is just, yeah, extraordinary.  Nadeena, that's a real extraordinary and clear but also ‑ what's the word ‑... account given us that recent history.  I know in your family you, of course, have had also that experience of family and elders being at the forefront of very critical advocacy that has involved a lot of personal risk as well.  Can you tell us a bit about that?  

NADEENA:   I suppose I was heavily influenced, of course, by my grandfather's involvement, you know, with ‑ yeah.  It's like the story of my life.  And a lot of our stories, as Wesley mentioned, that we were under these particular legislations in the early days where we were basically banned from practising our culture.  And it then had to go down into the roots of the old people, they said the cultures are sleeping in the rooms.  And it will emerge and it does emerge at times where it's more culturally safe.  In some ways I'm a direct result of that as well, with even weaving where it was assumed that Aboriginal cultural practices didn't exist.  But, you know, the stories of like aunties of mine weaving in secret at night and that's the reason why we have these knowledges today.  But bare power and strength and love of, you know, our unique culture meant that they would often be putting themselves at risk to have any sort of public ‑ or be able to be identified as maintaining cultural practice was an act of defiance or it was as political as it could be, really, just to, you know, be who you are and to keep that cultural identity strong.  So, I mean, a lot of what Wesley spoke about is threaded throughout my story. 

ESTHER:   And how did that then for you, Nadeena ‑ you talk about, you know, coming to a point more recently and sort of identifying as an artist, and I think about what that word "artist" means, I think about Richard Bell's great work, you know, Aboriginal art is a white fella, white concept, this notion of identifying as an artist has a certain, you know, it's a strange thing.  It's a strange sort of imposition of something which invites, perhaps, certainly in some ways in which we consider the art world, the artwork, the artist, and we start to use those terms we're almost extracting the person from the work, you know, we're talking a very different context.  For a world and upbringing, a cultural life where the practice is indistinguishable from who you are.  Tell me a bit about the politics, I guess, of who you are and what political advocacy means to you at this stage in your practice and in your community more broadly.  

NADEENA:   I think everything I do is underpinned.  You know, a lot of black fellas will say that.  Just being black is political.  As soon as you're born, you know, you sort of ‑ your life is intertwined with so many elements that, you know, you ‑ at my age now like I've become a sort of ‑ I'm playing a strong role in the revitalisation of cultural practices.  I trained under four master weavers.  As that generation is now getting older and they're sort of saying they're more directing my age group to step up and sort of carry that ‑ carry that responsibility because it's sort of like seeing it as Wesley and my age group is kind of the link between the elders and the next generation but I've heard it described that it needs to come through us to get through to the next generation.  So there's ‑ there's cultural responsibility as well to see how actively we are shaping and facilitating these processes in these spaces that in some ways we've had to become trailblazers because the pathways didn't exist or they might have been sort of started in our grandparents' generation but then we've had to sort of bring those levels up and bring it into sort of contemporary space where, you know, we embrace all our expressions of art form as equally powerful and rich and beautiful, you know, whether it's rap, or whether it's practices have been passed down unchanged.  That lovely variety is a full expression. 

ESTHER:   Nadeena, there's a couple of comments for you in the chat.  First of all Debbie says that's sad to hear about, you know, having to hide those practices but great to hear also that your cultural elders continue their practices to be able to pass on to next generations, and Kerry Mackenzie also says it's good to see you passing on your history of family ‑ she says ‑ that's two separate sentences.  It's good to see you passing on your history.  Our family and many others don't have that connection.  

NADEENA:   I mean, that's also being strengthened.  So because of the stolen generations and the impact that those legislations had on our people, where a lot of the communities are not ‑ are sharing knowledge or, you know, they're strengthening other practitioners or they are looking at how they can revitalise and research those specific localised practices.  So I think there's another layer of cultural resurgence of identity, pride and sort of localised learning our own mob's designs I can see that coming through in another lovely big wave.  

ESTHER:   Now, this prompts me to ask the next lot of questions which is very much about First Nations advocacy within community as opposed to beyond.  And Wesley was talking earlier about kind of a brief history from a time of questions around survival, questions around, you know, in the more recent decades, referendum, recognition, you know, finding that place where there are increasingly, I hope, well recognised multicultural First Nations communities across the country and finding different ways to find those ways of exchanging, advocating, and then the broader Australian politics which are very, very troubled at the moment.  A couple of questions that I wanted to ask Wesley, and the second question is going to be about, you know, kind of what needs to change.  So I'm planting that both in your minds, our next question about, you know, what are the multiple conversations and what's happening.  But listening to Nadeena just now I can't help but also ask Wesley, how does it feel to then be at a stage where suddenly you're an elder or you're starting to be perceived as being elder?  

WESLEY:  Yeah.  Look, people ogle you all the time and am I ready ‑ you grow a beard like this and people start to uncle you straight away.  The point that Nadeena made, too, it's ‑ we are at this point in time maybe the first time in our modern history since colonisation, this notion that we have a full cohort of multi‑generational practitioners.  So in the theatre case where we have practitioners in their 80s, you know, when you think about Uncle Jack Charles and you have people who are going through in terms of youth theatres and things and then all the generations before, like almost if you just go back to practitioners who were working in the 70s, let's say, and 80s, you know, when you think about the Gary Foleys, and the Lydia Millers and Rota Roberts, they hit this ceiling that meant somehow society was not ready to shift and the power structures were not ready to shift.  By the time you get to '88 that time between 1988 and 1993 which was the year of the world's indigenous people, that five‑year period you see the building of indigenous theatre companies, dance companies like Bangarra, indigenous galleries were opening just then, Bromali was just before '88.  You see the whole shift.  Mostly because of the advocacy that came about by the resistance to '88.  There was a real sense that our forbears, people who were our parents that generation fought against it because they came across this kind of seal.  I always love to quote uncle Kevin Gilbert.  He wrote one of the first Aboriginal plays called the cherry pickers in 1968.  His saying was you sharpen your axe on the hardest stone.  There's a sense that advocacy was very much a very strong kind of powerful tool to make change for the next generation to kind of come in.  And I think that it's such a great gift, as Nadeena was saying, too, we have our generation now, our 50 year old and thereabouts, we have the generation ahead of us or a couple of generations hopefully ahead of us and we have this multiple generation behind us that are all practitioners and valuers of arts and cultural activity.  And that would not have been possible without those kind of (1) sometimes quite violent pushing against the status quo. 

ESTHER:   Yeah. 

WESLEY:  I remember Charlie Perkins used to talk about the pendulum swing.  You almost have to push the pendulum to the opposite position you are now to find the middle ground.  And it has created the situation where we are now.  Yes, there is still a way to go but there's a sense that sometimes the violent protest, the outrage and kind of emotion also plays a role in advocacy.  And we've got ‑ there's a lot of politeness at the moment.  If anything, this last COVID‑19 on a set of advocacies where we're incredibly polite, we're using logic and we're putting things out in a very kind of logical way and we're seeing no real take‑up from policy‑makers and decision‑makers.  And you go, "Oh, not that I'm advocating for violence but I'm saying, "Where are the kind of big, passionate arguments that happen", because I think that often what we're seeing is very polite forms of advocacy and sometimes we need to fight.  And how do we fight in this future environment as well.  Anyway, going back to that sense of, you know, as a generation of both beneficiaries of the fights that have gone on before, but then also the ones who are being made in charge or passing on, it's a very interesting middle ground.  And I'm fascinated by that.  I'm also fascinated by what are the new arguments that are coming through.  Self‑determination was the massive argument ‑ let's say it took us through from the 70s, say, Whitlam especially gave self‑determination a big boost in the 70s through policy.  Then by the time we got into that late 80s where self‑determination was moving into ideas of reconciliation into the 90s, in particular, the sense of reconciliation for many of us, I think it made it that we had to step back and share and going, "What, we're moving forward", but we started to go at the understanding of the least educated.  You know, in this case a lot of white people in the country.  We had to step back and go, "Right, we have to share and we have to educate so that we can get the next level of change going."  And I'm interested now that I did a play called the Seven Stages of Grieving a very long time ago and we pointed out the seven phases of Aboriginal history in that where we're talking about grieving, invasion, genocide, protectionism, self‑affiliation and reconciliation.  And we may now be in an eighth phase which is now sovereignty.  This idea of saying okay we've tried for generations now to advocate for change and what we might need to do is actually tell you you're wrong.  And you have to acknowledge our sovereignty and our power, not our disadvantage and deficit.  And so this is a big discussion at the moment because I think through the last 15 years the closing the gap conversation, the idea that Aboriginal people are in a deficit mode.  Yes, health, education, housing, yes, all of these issues, therefore all Aboriginal experience is a deficit, is something that we need to rail against a little bit more.  For me I'm just going how do we look at this.  And advocacy is not just the responsibility of those who are the recipients of the change.  It's actually those who are educated who are in a position of power to advocate for those who are the most vulnerable.  And all sophisticated communities think like that.  

Ultimately, in the last let's say, you know, since the Howard years, in particular, there's been a real sense of victim blaming, if you want to call it that, but also this notion of saying, "I'm going to take the victim status because even though I am educated, empowered, incredibly wealth think land owning I want to feel that I'm hard done by."  There's a lot of conversation that blames Aboriginal people for the situation they're in rather than taking responsibility for the political and economic landscape that's been built to privilege the colonised ‑ the colonial project and to disadvantage and disempower the sovereign nation that was here before the colonial power came.  There has been no treaty and that's the big structure we're talking about going forward. 

So I would be interested in how sovereignty starts to take charge in all of our advocacy, both through the arts and cultural areas, but then saying ‑ Miller talked about this he says ‑ he's a constitutional lawyer saying that the constitution of the country is in fact an illegal document because it has no ‑ ‑ ‑ 

ESTHER:   Yeah. 

WESLEY:  No connection with the sovereign nation that was here.  Terra nullius has meant there's been no legal structure.  By the time the title legislation came through in 1993 it already was already starting to say terra nullius was a myth.  We're now finding constitutional dissonance and the only way to actually have a treaty is to acknowledge the sovereignty of Aboriginal Australia.  We're already in a conundrum.  

ESTHER:   Look.  Absolutely Michael McMillan was, of course, yeah, the first person I heard speak about sovereignty ‑ it must be more than a decade ago now ‑ and he was the first person I heard uttered that very, very simple phrase sovereignty was never ceded.  It's ‑ a phrase like that is uttered very simply and you think, "Yes" not only a massive penny that drops but it's something that is so fundamentally obvious and obviously quite frightening to the kinds of people in political roles who prefer to invert values and put themselves into a constructed position of victim rather than think through their privilege.  Nadeena, there's a number of questions that are coming up on the chat but I want to put what Wesley has said first of all to hear your thoughts.  And so that move from self‑determination to reconciliation to sovereignty as being, I guess, three of the key moments in a focus of first peoples advocacy but also the butting up against ‑ I love that line of Kevin Gilbert's sharpening the axe on the hardest stone.  That's beautifully violent and also really quite ‑ really quite strengthening that you can ‑ you know, it's that classic which we've all been telling ourselves over and over again right now, never waste a good crisis.  This is an opportunity.  Who is being focused and how do we focus their minds.  Nadeena, what strikes you about, I guess, if the conversation has now shifted towards sovereignty, we've had the disappointments of things like the Ulura statement, we've had ‑ at the moment we have the first First Nations indigenous Australians minister in Australia's history and yet he is beholden to a party that has certain views that lock him and so many others out of advancing what could and should have been an extraordinarily focusing time.  You know, God, what do we do?  

NADEENA:   Well, I've probably got multi‑layered views on it as well.  Just growing up in, you know, sort of quite distinctly different two cultures from my mother's or three ‑ two cultures from my mother's water side, and then the Gadigal side is all connected to that saltwater, Gadigal... and...saltwater connection that comes from Sydney and goes all the way down to beyond the Victorian border through that country, and then on my father's side Wiradjuri country in the Snowy mountains we have ‑ all of the mountain range we exist in minus 10 minus 12 degree winters.  It's a painful winter.  To sort of go between those two saltwater, fresh water mob back to Sydney for my Gadigal side my connections through the Lock family, my family goes back to Maria Locke and we have that industrial history of my other great grandfather worked in the steel foundries.  There's a lot of layers but I remember the old people in those times it was sort of like a self‑determination because they weren't Aboriginal and they weren't Australian.  They were Yuin or they were Wiradjuri.  And I think I can see that localised cultural identity coming through but it's from a spiritual space.  It's like we don't need other people to name us for us to know who we are.  And it's the practice of being rather than whether the government knows it or not.  And I've heard the elders sort of say that, you know, we've sat back and we've watched every government and this legislation and the white man primacy and then that, and we say we're still here and our sacred mountain is still there, and country is still there.  

So I sort of feel like culture has its own power to, you know, to notice itself and change form and, you know, be like this cultural shield that protects us.  In a way, we have to maintain that insular quality because I've seen that in some ways blackness has become the new commodity as well and things that don't really belong to the government are now being sort of basically hijacked by the government in a quasi kind of "now we put on NAIDOC week", it's like, "How does a white government organisation put on NAIDOC week when they're not a black community."  So I'm concerned about black ownership over our cultural practices. 

ESTHER:   Yes.  Just before Wesley jumps in there's a question on this which I am sure will tie in as well which was Anna would love to know how has Nadeena approached the expression cultural wars.  Increasingly pull that term out as a full stop to so many vital discussions.  It ends discussions yet they're actively engaged in it, but it's this notion you can then as a government appropriate.  Yes, Wesley. 

WESLEY:  The idea in New South Wales in particular that the wonderful thing which is the protection of Indigenous Languages Act also makes the New South Wales government the keeper of indigenous languages.  Like it's an extraordinary kind of appropriation of things within the community as a form of protection.  It's interesting how cultural knowledge works like that.  The idea ‑ there's also a question about fake art which I want to talk about but the idea of culture wars and political correctness there are all these terms that get used as a way of saying this is not a valuable conversation.  This is not a debate to have.  And it's often a protective thing that I go, "I don't quite understand" and it's often because they know they're on the losing side of the debate.  

ESTHER:   Yes.  Yes. 

WESLEY:  They say this is part of the culture wars.  Therefore we can't win it, therefore we will denigrate it and stop it from occurring.  In fact I think the cultural debate ‑ maybe not a war but a cultural debate is not a bad thing at all because no one wants to say, "I don't belong to this country.  I don't have to acknowledge the long occupation of this country by First Nations People."  Everyone understands those basic truths.  Therefore, if you want to play an opposite position to it you end up getting this kind of, you know, you're in a losing side.  So they found ways of shutting down debate so it can fit in their way.  The idea ‑ this earlier question around what I'm going to call fake art or the idea that, you know, you buy a piece of art, how do you know that it's made by a First Nations person, and that they are also the beneficiaries of that sale of that particular art.  And there's a whole kind of ‑ there's been let's say a good 20, 30 years of practice looking at the authenticity label, there's some stuff now around lava technology looking at antecedents of work.  Constantly been the case because again people want to fulfil a market need but not the cultural need.  They only want half of the equation to be fulfilled because it's of their purpose.  Now, as soon as you engage in the cultural need which could be economic, it could be just putting food on the table for their families, it could also be about the generation of art‑making and investing in communities that can make art at a sale and a quality that's ready for whatever the mass market is in that case.  But you don't want to engage in a cultural conversation, only the economic.  I think Nadeena was saying this before, it's like you start to carve up who Aboriginal people are only into these units.  Government are fantastic at doing that.  It's interesting the whole closing the gap conversation.  Pat Turner, love her, she's saying the whole closing the gap criteria is totally arse‑about.  You've got to shift it so that putting Aboriginal people in the centre, not as statistics that say, "Oh, we want to get education up.  You know, education participation up."  Well let's just do these pull some levers over here.  "No, no, no, you've got to make sure those kids have a washing machine to wash their uniform so they don't feel shamed going to school."  That's one particular anecdotal story from where I grew up.  The kids felt shame they couldn't wear their uniform and they wanted to, going to school, because their washing machine broke down.  Again it's a full cultural family environment that you've got to think about, not just about the statistics.  And this kind of commodification, this idea of relationship Australia is only about the product or the economic output and not as the person.  If anything COVID‑19 for me has pushed us back into the idea of actually you've got to deal with the whole person, not just what we can do and how we can contribute to the economy.  You've got to look at the complexity of the human and the spiritual sense of being. 

ESTHER:   And it's been that refusal to look at or even bother to grapple with the complexity that's the whole problem, isn't it, Nadeena?  This sort of, you know, let's just compartmentalise ‑ you know, life expectancy is an abstract thing that doesn't relate to actual people's lives, that it's just a statistic. 

NADEENA:   You know, as what, you know, Wesley was saying about this idea that we can somehow micromanage, move people around and make broad sweeping decisions on, you know, one of those sort of outcomes that I see a lot is this kind of mono‑culture view of who Aboriginal people are.  It's like who are these generic Aborigine people, you know what I mean, that just kind of takes away any individuality or any spectrum of richness, you know.  We have such a broad spectrum of how do you identify this stereo typical Aboriginal that doesn't exist, you know what I mean?  We're so diverse even in our own communities and from our own experiences and everything.  And it's not allowing for us to shape our own ‑ our own practices outside of, yeah, it being turned into a product, and put on a gallery wall somewhere, and then the artist almost being secondary or removed from it and the community having no partnership in place at all with the, you know, with the gallery or the cultural space and it's more about artworks on walls.  And, you know, I've kind of spoken about that and said, well, that artwork is not just a painting or it's not just, you know, a work but it's ‑ a living document of that community's living culture practice. 

WESLEY:  Mmm. 

NADEENA:   Yeah.  So, I mean, the wholeness is not there.  It's kind of there's a we'll put this in that box and that in that box, and then it's ‑ the value system underneath it is completely different to the Aboriginal community to what it is in the mainstream community. 

WESLEY:  I think ‑ the conference talking about the same thing about often people get sated on the artefact, the final thing but in fact it's the process of making it, the process of painting it, the process of sharing it that is actually the cultural knowledge, that this thing at the end is something that's built either to trite us of a process not the end product.  I see this question here about how to identify program development and delivery, how to best engage mob in a support not lead model.  And didn't part of it too that if you actually go to understand the values of a community and say, you know, what actually is valuable, it might be yes we want to sell paintings so we can have an income stream, that's totally okay, but it might also be as my experience has been actually what are we doing for the young people to make sure things are passed on, how do we ‑ how do we develop experiences where ‑ or safe spaces for the elders to spend meaningful time with older ‑ with younger people.  And so for me it's really about saying the first conversation is a cup of tea with the people who you want to work with and that you can't do this in isolation.  You can't create a program in your head and say that is work one size fits all.  You've got to engage with the community.  I often talk about the sideways glance there, Esther, this notion that ‑ I remember doing this show in the river land in South Australia and I went down there and I was talking to this elder and, you know, I was talking away, talking away, and he came and he just went me.  He went bang, bang, da, da, da, right.  And I went back to him and I said this and this and this and this.  And said, "Right, now I can trust you.  I now know you will look after ‑ you will hear it and you will protect it, that he was testing me and giving me this moment of, you know ‑ and some people crumble under that test, you know.  Some will say, that was too hard.  I walked away.  You were not the person, you were not the champion I needed to look after what I value.  So there's often this tension between those who want to do well, do good works and help the community, and those who are ready for the testing environments that many elders put us all through and got us through the other side.  So I don't think it's ever easy along the way as well.  And I think that (1) you don't give up you just keep listening, is my advice.  

ESTHER:   And the ways in which that listening becomes action, that experience of being tested like that, is obviously really confronting but also I imagine in that moment, Wesley, and Nadeena, you would have been in that position too where you just kind of ‑ you're testing in that way someone who you know and respect is putting you in a certain position and you're suddenly finding strengths rearranging those ‑ that, you know, those kinds of values in different ways.  Is that something that ‑ do you like to test people who you want to become champions?  I'm thinking in particular, as we know from our conversation last week, Nadeena was one of the Arts Day on the Hill advocates for last year's adventures in Canberra.  Nadeena I particularly remember the questions you kept asking the other artists in the group.  Kind of putting people on the spot to go, "Okay, you know, what do you believe?  How are we going to ask this question?"  It's important, isn't it, to test each other like that. 

NADEENA:   Well, I've been lecturing for two years now in decolonising methodologies in arts and design in the university spaces and helping to, you know, embed or support embedding indigenous perspectives into these, you know, I suppose historically very colonial spaces, to start to think more broadly about how Aboriginal people relate to space and community and, you know, to help to bring a stronger toolkit to what will hopefully become allies.  And, you know, I sort of talked to them about finding your centre because we have to live through that energy of it's not our job, none of us would do it if it was our job.  So something has to take on a higher precedence, that it's bigger than all of us because it's about that purpose and it's about leaving a legacy and knowing that, you know, your aim is to enrich or help skill‑up mob coming through or, you know, just like the elders did for me coming through, you know, where I was sort of, "Oh, no, that's deadly.  No, we can see you.  We see you and we see what you're doing and we're supporting you."  And then at the other times I'm still being guided and mentored by my senior elders that are well into their 80s, they call me girl.  I'm 50 but I'm that young girl.  So I'm having to also then be neutral and understand that I'm not the centre of all knowledge.  So there's that humbleness that I have to be able to be receiver of knowledge and then at other times I need to be the person that is leading that space and offering the knowledge.  So it's kind of like this duality that you hold and, you know, I also try and ask and connect to spirit to give me, you know, the right balance of it.  And not to gain ego too much, you know.  

ESTHER:   That is ‑ that's such a beautiful and generous way of putting it, and then while you are describing that I got to thinking about the kinds of people who we're sometimes advocating to who are politicians, and the kinds of behaviours and values that tend to be rewarded or tend to become ‑ tend to make the success in political life tends to be far too often, I think, Nadeena, some of the opposite of what you've just described which is terrible when you think about politicians we don't tend to think about vulnerability and humility, we tend to think about ego and a certain kind of forthrightness and not listening.  There's a question which I'm going to struggle to read now.  I'm going to ask Nadeena and Wesley a special favour here which is ‑ this is very personal but as you know I have a brain condition.  My vision has started to fail in the last 20 minutes and I can't see the chat any more.  I'm hoping Wesley and Nadeena can see I know there was a question earlier about relationship between ‑ yeah, thank you, Wesley. 

WESLEY:  The notion too of the do you become a tool for the political outcome that the politician wants, and so often it's been that case too that engaging with a First Nations debate, goal, all that kind of stuff, somehow for others to, I don't know, make their reputation on.  I think there's a lot of criticism in the tertiary education sector and the university sector around this as well where people become experts in our culture, get a PhD on our culture and it becomes a quite challenging thing because other people are seen as the decision‑makers or the experts in things that First Nations people should be part of.  I'm related to a politician.  I know what politicians look like.  But they are incredibly predictable in the way they go about their business but their job is politics.  Don't ask them to do anything that isn't outside of their job.  So it is difficult because ultimately what happens is you need them to advocate on your behalf and then you're trying to find a mutual benefit relationship with a politician, and sometimes that's very hard to find.  One of those other questions that was coming through about decoupling the ‑ political and cultural sovereignty help decouple the politics from the art and therefore, you know, art will be able to be seen for its artistic and cultural value, not just for its political or advocacy value in that way.  I don't know what you think about that, Nadeena.  Do we ever want our art to be decoupled from politics, because as you were saying, the goal of just being ‑ you know, one of the effects of being black in this country is that you're immediately political.  You know, the nature of being who you are.  

NADEENA:   I kind of ‑ you know, I probably have mixed thoughts on this but I think art is its own entity, you know.  It's its own being.  And I think if we try in some ways segment it too much it loses the power of what it is.  And any time we try and... spirit that spark or life energy is diminished.  I always feel like that artists are the best ones to decide what happens with the work that they make and, in a way, sort of the government is having too much control over then what happens or ‑ so, I mean, I think it's important that it exists within multi‑spaces and on multi‑levels.  I'm not really sure what that looks like but that it just maintains its integrity. 

WESLEY:  Yeah.  And I think there's a couple of comments here too Esther just talking about how narrowly defined some things are and you were saying then Nadeena about how things get compartmentalised when they don't really need to be, how we see the whole ‑ there's one more question here Esther, I will read it out as a culturally diverse arts worker who often works with and consults culturally and linguistically diverse youth, young people, sometimes I find it can be hard to engage with communities in a way that they desire to communicate what they want and need.  You know, a roomful of black faces.  Is there something in your experience with regards to your advocacy.  Is there ever something you experience as well, Nadeena, where you walk into a room and you are trying to get people to understand your perspective and they just don't get it.  

ESTHER:   That's a great question. 

NADEENA:   I used to worry about that.  I think when I was younger I would sort of worry about that but I learnt to trust the process, that it's more of a spiritual process.  Like we've spoken about before it's about I'm there to do what I need to, and it's sort of like this saying of I will set your butterflies free.  It will go wherever it needs to go.  And even at the time you might think, oh, I don't know if this is having an impact, the circle will come back and someone will say I was at this talk that you were at and, you know, something resonated with me and a light sort of triggered.  So, you know, I think it's just important that we believe in that innate beauty and magic of art to do its, you know, its role in healing and nurturing and uplifting and inspiring spirit.  Yeah. 

WESLEY:  I love ‑ ‑ ‑ 

ESTHER:   

WESLEY:  Sorry, Esther.  I loved in this moment in COVID‑19 at the end of this, this idea too we have to be values driven at this point.  Let's protect our people.  It's going to cost us $130 billion.  It doesn't matter.  Let's protect our people make sure they're fed and housed and looked after.  It seems like Sarah Miller was saying there, COVID‑19 has shown us everything is connected and in fact this interconnectedness of land and culture, I've personally really appreciated that the Ibis bin chicken has got more and more white, it's got cleaner over the last couple of months feeding in the parks and grass lands.  Suddenly the sense that our removal of our garbage has meant that the ibis has become more graceful, more beautiful, more full of pride in itself.  So the sense of the interconnectedness of our effect on the landscape and its effect on us is really quite beautiful.  Sorry, Esther, I'm going to stop reading questions and head back to you. 

ESTHER:   Who would have thought a time would come when we could be proud of our bin chickens and they would Herald something positive in our life.  It's unbelievable.  I left Sydney for 20 years and came back recently and now back in Melbourne and it it felt like the bin chicken population had multiplied by 10.  Extraordinary.  It strikes me then one of the real conundrums of, you know, advocacy efforts in general then is about how do we have those complex conversations that are about value, that are about appreciating and dealing with things in a holistic way when the ways that we need to go about advocacy politically, in particular, are more and more striated, specific, broken up.  And a lot of the things that we're going to talk about in the next few months especially when we get to things like the media, like political processes, the difficulties of meeting with the politician, the submissions process, there are some very specific ways to engage with those long‑term, you know, policy change processes.  But then there are also really sharp, overwhelming, radical, unexpected game‑changing ways to create change.  And something that Wesley was saying earlier, you know, there's very much this politeness at the moment, particularly in this crisis.  I think so many of us ‑ I think it's that absolute human thing, here we are in our homes, there is this virus that has no cure, that we have no immunity to.  We have no choice at the moment, other than to trust in our governments to make certain decisions, make decisions in Australia's case that are worth $130 billion, and still have chosen to exclude some and include others.  So how do we in the structured ways that we have to go about our advocacy, how do we talk about what we're advocating for as well as advocating for that more holistic approach?  You know, how do we cause that glimmer of change in the politicians' mind to break out of their own structures and draw on the vision that we need them to have?  

WESLEY:  My experience has been left side, right side kind of brain thinking, you know, this notion of how do you give them the logic and the facts and the complexity based in all of that knowledge, but then how do you give them the emotion and the heart.  And often, you know, I'm a story‑teller by trade.  So the idea of creating narratives and passion yet story‑telling seem to be more and more important.  And sometimes that can be actually used as a distraction from the very thing you want.  I mean, I think that a certain American President at the moment uses emotion and radical thought, the lack of logic at times as distraction, as a way of distracting us from the point that he ‑ ‑ ‑ 

ESTHER:   Yeah.  I call that chaos as a means of control.  And I think it's very calculated. 

WESLEY:  Agreed.  Agreed.  So for me, I actually will go in and say, "You know, here is the inverted Aboriginal ‑ the pyramid in terms of population, inverted pyramid of Aboriginal population.  Here is the statistics around homelessness, da, da, da.  Now, here is the story of the person.  You know, here is my story of, you know, even listening to Nadeena talk about, you know, her grandmother and her experience makes it kind of sit in your body in a very deep and spiritual way.  And I think that, you know, sometimes the things that move politicians more than anything else is that kind of deep spiritual thing.  You go, "Oh, what just shocked me from that story?  What made me cry.  What made me understand on an emotional level can sometimes be the fuel they need to push through the change.  The logic can only talk about their own mutual benefit and how they can get through it.  And that's why I think a lot of, you know, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander politics and change are so hard because they only want to deal with the things written down on pieces of paper and the surveys, da, da, da.  But as soon as they meet and understand the story of a family they go, "Well, this shouldn't happen."  So for me it's the right brain, left brain kind of conundrum, the shadow of my face now that I look at it, this idea of how we provide them with that balance right from the very beginning and not to think that you spend your ‑ it could only be 10 minutes of a kind of bloody elevator pitch style delivery.  How do you make sure you always balance your message so you can get the biggest change you can out.  

ESTHER:   I think that's a really valuable approach, particularly given if we're talking about politicians and the kinds of meetings they tend to have, if they're talking just about a sitting time at Parliament House, it's half hour back to back meetings in the same register, in the same language with people who are coming out wearing the same things looking the same way.  Nadeena, what do you think?  How do we shake the politicians out of that structure and back into their own culture and into the world?  

NADEENA:   Well, similar also to what Wesley spoke about, you know, like, we have to ‑ like, you know, I grew up with my grandfather.  So I heard a lot of that political strategising behind what were their approaches, you know, the black caucus and with that whole sort of movement around sort of building this black independent self‑determination.  They talk about things like understanding when you sit at the table, know what you came there for.  So know what you want.  And already have, you know, researched that person and understand what their values are.  So that when you're speaking to them you're speaking their language.  So, you know, I suppose in marketing terms their paying points, you know, what they're passionate about.  So you can sort of tick those boxes and you can talk in their language about things that they're actually ‑ it's like a currency, you know.  They connect through those energies.  Whether it's they have a strong commitment to, you know, social justice or they have a strong focus on education.  So sort of being able to bring about like... my grandfather would say know your facts.  When you go into a meeting, know your facts so that you can rattle off your data and you can rattle off your statistics around it.  But then also solve a problem.  So research a problem that they're having and solve it.  So when they say what do you want, say, "This is what I want and this is the problem that it's solving for you."  So they used to talk about it like being a chess game.  So it's a strategy that you play over a period of time and then I suppose you gradually wear them down, where they start to see what they're doing is not working and if they shift to this other way of operating, these are going to be all the beautiful benefits they will now gain and they will also be seen as the leader or the visionary that could move these new benefits instead of doing the same thing and getting the same results.  

ESTHER:   Makes sense.  Makes sense.  Now, let's ask you both then, because I'm sure it is almost ‑ we must be approaching wrapping up time ‑ what do you want to see from the youngest generation in your communities beyond ‑ among First Nations communities in general but also the younger generation within your immediate communities ‑ what do you want to see from them as advocates but also what kind of Australia do you want to see them greet by the time they are your age?  

WESLEY:  I will jump in there.  I think it's hard to have expectations of young people that ‑ because it's almost their job to rail against us, to do things differently, to think that we have not delivered what they ‑ what the world needed.  There's almost a passion in young people to overtake the ambitions that, you know, because by the time you get to my age, anyway, I feel like I'm way down by the compromises of being in the world and going I'm now reasonable.  Whereas in my 20s, I was unreasonable.  And I want young people to be unreasonable around certain things like this as well, not to accept the compromises.  So for me, I really want this kind of idea of a passionate appetite for shifting and changing, and how we're going to get through all of that kind of stuff as well.  And in many ways, that whatever they inherit from me, that what we need them to do is to find themselves not obliged to it.  To go, okay, that's what you were able to achieve.  In many ways like what our great, great, great grandparents did in terms of their cultural expression is now incredibly different to what we would do.  That's the nature of the adaption and change and understanding of making First Nations culture in this country relevant to where we're living today.  And I want young people to go, "Yep, I'll take that and I'll take that.  That's useful.  I will move that away and I think that's rubbish."  And to get this ‑ to really engage and become unreasonable against us and yet still be respectful of the fights we had to go through.  

So in many ways I want to say this is yours, what do you want to do with it, and then find joy in them, you know, discovering new ways of being wonderful about it as well.  There's a couple of points here I want to raise about the ibis, the bin chicken maybe becoming the mascot for climate change and the mascot for COVID‑19.  So we will see ‑ you know, how do we let young people actually own the world. 

ESTHER:   Yeah.  Yeah.  Love it.  Except for the bin chickens.  I can't imagine them in any direction as long as it's out of the bin.  Nadeena, unreasonableness.  I love that.  

NADEENA:   Fabulous.  Like I was the young girl that lived on the mission as a kid, you know, and I didn't see at that time too many outrageous people in my community.  So I decided I was the black Madonna on the mission.  And I was really outrageous.  I had platinum blonde hair, I pierced my own nose with a needle.  I was out there.  You know, I had this real fire to be seen and I had this fire to be me, be individual, you know.  And like Wesley is saying, you know, it's been such a beautiful privilege and such a beautiful journey to be in this community, you know, in the ‑ to grow up and be born as an Aboriginal person in this country with our wonderful rich culture, you know, and to also stand beside our colleagues like Esther and all of our community.  I mean, what an honour, you know.  We've changed things together.  We've stood beside each other.  So ‑ and I think for the young people to inherit that, as Wesley said, and say, "Here, this is yours now", you know, "Don't be shamed, be game", make your own path, be courageous and daring and say, "This is my creation" and let it guide you and find that path for yourself, your truth. 

ESTHER:   I have such massive respect for you both.  Before I thank you in a big way, because it is almost time to wrap up I want to let everyone know what we're in for next week in the fourth week of the NAVA advocacy program which is quite different to these first few weeks.  Next week will be the fourth week.  That's again that kind of fourth week where we do just a good free‑flowing Q&A of the first three weeks but we invite a politician.  And the three politicians that we're inviting over the next little while are the co‑chairs of the Parliamentary friendship group for contemporary arts and culture that we launched as part of last year's Arts Day on the Hill.  So next week we will be joined by John Alexander who's the member for Bennelong.  He's the co‑chair.  He is a member of the Liberal Party.  He will be with us for a 20 minute conversation.  Nadeena remembers meeting him last year.  And then joining also in the conversation will be Zoe McKenzie.  And I have just ‑ I'm just going to remind myself which of the other colleagues is joining us ‑ it's Darren Rudd.  Zoe McKenzie and Darren Rudd are both independent consultants, they've worked in policy advice, they've worked in global corporate, and international communications, Darren has been the director of a range of arts and cultural and bilateral companies, Zoe is a former policy adviser in arts communication and law.  They are both members of the Australia council but they're going to be presenting in their independent capacities.  And having a broad conversation around the state of arts advocacy, looking back on our last few weeks and then looking forward.  To guide that discussion for those of you who are NAVA members we have released this evening the first part ‑ the first handbook of the program.  That's available on the NAVA website for ‑ in the members section only.  The recordings, transcripts and so on of these workshops are available for everyone.  But those handbooks are for NAVA members only.  It's very easy to become a NAVA member.  As I pointed out last week, it's only 7.50 a month.  That's where it starts from.  That's the cost of a couple of cups of coffee per month.  Or, you know, it's ‑ yeah.  Excuse me.  And so that's just our way of making both something special for NAVA members and also keeping these conversations open for everyone.  The handbook includes a whole lot of practical things and there's some exercises, there's also the advocacy framework that we discussed last week is in the handbook as well.  And then there's, of course, all the information about the future ones.  

This has been such a great discussion.  Can I just thank with all the my heart Nadeena Dixon and Wesley Enoch.  Thank you so, so much for this evening's discussion. 

NADEENA:   And thank you guys. 

ESTHER:   Oh, look, to be able to talk about, you know, the person, the political but also some of the big things that weigh upon us and to end in a way that invites our next generations to unsettle and rethink is one of the greatest gifts.  So enormous thanks, Nadeena and Wesley. 

WESLEY:  Thank you.  

NADEENA:   Thank you.  

WESLEY:  Thank you, Esther.  

ESTHER:   And thank you to everyone who has joined us again.  My apologies, I can no longer see the chat.  I'm going to say a general goodbye.  Then I'm going to have a pause and ask my colleagues how to shut this down because I can no longer see very well.  So goodbye everyone.  Please go away so you don't see the embarrassing time of us trying to shut this down.  And we will see you again next week at the same time for the fourth week of the advocacy section of our advocacy program.  Thanks so much, everyone.  

NADEENA:   Thanks, guys.  Thanks, Wesley. 

WESLEY:  There you go.  I think I shut it down.  

(End)