I've acknowledged the people of this land, past and present, and this sacred land that we now find ourselves. And I thank them for allowing me the opportunity to come here and speak about my country and my people. It's always protocol when you're an indigenous person traveling to someone else's boundary. And so to begin, I grew up in two different worlds.
My father was a really traditional cultural man. He lived and breathed his cultural identity. My mother, on the other hand, was raised in a Catholic mission. She was raised with the values of middle-class white Australia.
And I guess for me, I had an opportunity to experience and to learn about life from these two different worlds. For the first few years of my life, my siblings and I, only with our parents, lived on a small isolated island off the remote coast of the Kimberleys, called Ungalgun. In this island, I learned to understand the unique symbiotic relationship I, as a human being, had with the natural world, purely because our survival depended on it.
Our lifestyle and our choices weren't influenced by politics. It wasn't influenced by economics. It was influenced by nature. The tides, the seasons, the weather.
And so we started to appreciate this really fundamental concept is that we can't have one without the other. We all need each other to depend on one another. And so when it came time for my education my parents made a decision to move into Broome.
I was then sent to an all-boys private school in Perth where I was the only indigenous student amongst 2,000 non-indigenous children. And it was there that I really started to face my challenges that were going to obviously present itself throughout my lifetime. Challenges around misunderstandings and misinterpretations about who I am as an indigenous person and the value that my culture actually has as part of the fabrication of this country.
And so I've, coming from such a beautiful, natural, untouched, unspoiled area of the planet, I was able to witness... The impacts of capitalism, the impacts of consumption, extraction, greed. And I could come to this understanding in my life that... I need to do something about this because the Kimbleys was not only important to me or my family or my tribe, but somehow I feel that the Kimbleys is going to be important for all of us.
And so I started to learn, I guess, how different people interpreted what is it that they call knowledge. Western science tends to refer to indigenous knowledge as traditional ecological knowledge. And that's a really great interpretation.
Take my hat off to whoever came up with that. But for me, I refer to it as indigenous science because it is the foundation of knowledge that was developed through the same principles as western knowledge. observation, experimentation, analysis, you know. And so when you look at those aspects of how that knowledge was created, sounds like science to me. And so I feel that we as a nation...
are still growing in regards to how we bring these two knowledges together. And I recognize that there are researchers and scientists all over the country that really appreciate the value that indigenous knowledge can have in regards to sustainable management practices, in regards to sustainable social architecture, in regards to what political and governance responsibility should look like. And for me, I think there's an incredible opportunity in that as a young indigenous man. Because we all are now facing a fundamental threat, which is climate change. Nobody knows enough about it.
Nobody knows the implications. But I can refer to my mob that has witnessed for thousands of years floods, droughts, ice ages. And so the knowledge that was collected and developed was then, in order to adapt to those changes, in order to become resilient to those sort of changes, was passed on and embedded in my indigenous people's cultural practices.
In their management practices, in their social systems, we hear this term songlines. It's all there, baby. And I think now we're at a really important time because one thing to understand about the Kimberley region is 94% of the region is indigenous-owned. It's subject to native title, which is a significant investment on behalf of indigenous people.
So we now see that as a valuable opportunity to use this knowledge to creating long-term solutions that not only benefit us, and not only protect the principles and values that are important to us, but it gives an opportunity to extend that onto everybody. And this concept of separatism about the indigenous, non-indigenous. When you start to look at the reality and roll back the time of evolution, 3,000 years ago, we were all indigenous from somewhere.
And so that instinct, that common ground about our indigenous makeup is in all of us. And we can connect on that level. We need to seriously appreciate and integrate indigenous knowledge as part of mainstream operating processes. not only in conservation and land management, it has to be in so many other industries, in other aspects of our life. And the only reason why I say that is because this is a system of management that has existed for 60,000 years.
And incredibly, in Australia, it still exists in certain parts of this country, including the Kimberleys. And so I think... You know, there's a really great opportunity here for science and indigenous knowledge to create a real force to be reckoned with when it comes to stabilizing our planet, when it comes to stabilizing our existence as Homo sapiens.
And I don't think you can have one without the other. And they will both complement one another. If we be serious about integrating that knowledge as part of mainstream awareness and practice. I've dedicated the last 20 years of my life as an indigenous educator. Because I genuinely believe that the solution lies with all of us.
And capitalism, oh my goodness, which is driven by politics and economics, it's killing us. And what we really need to do is make a really strong decision and shift in our minds about what are we going to do with the legacy we leave behind. And that's a really important concept because legacy is embedded in our culture. It is the epitome of who we are is what we leave behind.
And so if you really would like some sort of reference or a guideline into what a positive legacy may seem like in the next hundred years, I genuinely believe the answer lies with indigenous knowledge and Western science coming together and educating everybody about what are the most important values to us as human beings. I'm really lucky to be able to stand here and share this story on behalf of all of my people that are so isolated and remote and give them a voice of hope hope that with this world really wants change and hope that This world is going to achieve that change. Thank you.
I'm Albert Wiggin.