HOTA Yarning Circle: Living Ecology

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The Carbon Dating Yarning Circle: Living Ecology was presented at Nerung Ballun/HOTA (Home of the Arts) Gallery, on unceded Kombumerri Country, Surfers Paradise, Gold Coast on 4/12/22. This public event was hosted by HOTA  in collaboration with the Carbon Dating project. It had a strong focus on Care for Country - especially native grass and grasslands. HOTA's Yarning Circles are led by Indigenous community each month in Surfers Paradise, and are open to everyone to share in knowledge and truth respectfully.

And that's not just for us blackfellas. I want everyone to have a totem in my area so that you help me be caretakers of this Country too. It could be a plant could be an animal, it could be anything.
(Justine Dillon 4/12/22)

The knowledge isn't just from people, the land is our greatest elder that will continue to teach us.
(Leeton Lee 2/12/22)

The day engaged First Nations artists and community and featured speakers:
| Justine Dillon | ranger and emerging artist (Kombumerri/Quandamooka)
| Delissa Walker Ngadijina | Weaver (Kuku Yalanji)
| Mihimai Nakora | Maori weaver (Whatu Manawa Collective)
| Leeton Lee | Cultural Burning expert + SEQld Firesticks Coordinator (Thungutti/Bundjalung)

Date | Sunday December 4th, 2022, 9am - 11:30am
Location | Nerung Ballun / HOTA Gallery, Unceded Kombumerri Country, 135 Bundall Road, Surfers Paradise, QLD, 4217

Special thanks for making this event happen so beautifully:

| Danielle Constance | (Carbon Dating 'Grasslands Community of Care Coordinator' for instigating the event through her networks.
| Sam Creyton | (HOTA Senior Curator)
| Tessa Bergan | (HOTA Acting Public Programs Coordinator)

So we're looking hopefully from this project to plant those grasses, because I just feel like they're adopted, well I raised them a little bit the grasses, but because we're in a duplex, I won't be living there forever. So they're not gonna unfortunately stay with me forever. So my job is to just raise them a little bit bigger. And then hopefully take them to the botanical gardens and they can be in their western, I think they're calling it, the western side of the garden or something like that, or take them to the Mossman State School where the kids can be involved with them as well.
(Delissa Walker Ngadijina, 4/12/22)

The events included a two hour yarn with audience questions and answers. A video of the entire event will shortly be available Highlights will be published soon.

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There were too many wonderful and thought provoking moments to list. Until summary videos can be made, here are a few quotes from the event.

So this plant gives me my whakapapa. It tells me who I am. It keeps the story of who I am. I didn't know all this, I have to say. Just like all of us here, because of all sorts of reasons. I did not have my story. And it wasn't until I went back to the land. I went back to Country, I went back to learn and to reconnect with this plant in particular. And it gave me my memories back.
(Mihimai, Nakora, 2/12/22)

And with some of our grasses, I guess the cleaning of our grasses is that use of fire as well, we have what we call Poa grasses or tussock grasses that grow in a big clump. And the same thing with the kangaroo grass, even spear grass. A lot of our grasses if they're left, and not burned, or not cleaned up, they'll keep growing and they'll keep growing. And before you know it, you've got that much dead material there, no green new shoots can actually come through. So it actually smothers itself to a point where it can't survive, and it will rot. So when the rainy season comes through, it’ll rot. But when we put that fire through, we open it up, we give it room to breathe.
(Leeton Lee 4/12/22)

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The project's featured native grasses were also distributed to the audience for growing on their own local Country.

But that's I guess, that identity of Country, and understanding those sort of things and the values,.. in the context of fire, when we're talking about fire, most of what we hear is about risk and hazard, and danger, and all of these sorts of things, but we're using the wrong language. It's like with our children, if we talk with a negative tone all the time, they're gonna pick that up, they feel that - our sound and our words are very, very powerful. Whereas when we walk through a Country, and we're talking about it, ah thank you for these gifts. Country has so many gifts for us. When we're talking about it, you know, I'm gonna burn your now and you know, and clean you up. When we're doing these things, and we're talking about resilience, and health and identity, and values, when we're talking about all these sorts of things. They're all the good things that we want to focus on ..If we don't we, we can't survive.
(Leeton Lee, 4/12/22)

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