June 26, 2025 • 23 mins
In this episode I sit down with respected Wakka Wakka/Wulli Wulli Elder, author, academic, and leadership expert Dr Tjanara Goreng Goreng. Recorded in Naarm at the Indigenous Leadership Summit, this yarn dives deep into the meaning of sacred leadership, emotional intelligence, and the importance of First Nations ways of knowing, being, and doing within modern systems.
Aunt shares her journey from growing up in Longreach to working in public service and academia, and how she has applied First Nations knowledge to leadership development through her PhD and mentoring programs. She unpacks the foundational cultural laws of reciprocity, responsibility, and respect — teachings passed down through generations — and how these values shape authentic leadership today.
Together, we also discuss supporting the next generation of Blak women, breaking free from limiting belief systems, and empowering young mob to lead in their own right — not by assimilating into dominant systems, but by centring cultural integrity and lived experience.
Resources & Links
• Aunty Tjanara Goreng Goreng – Personal website
https://www.tjanara.com/
• The Leadership Institute – Indigenous Leadership Summit:
https://www.theleadershipinstitute.com.au/indigenous-leadership-summit/
• BlackCard – Aboriginal Terms of Reference (via About Us page)
https://www.theblackcard.com.au/about-us/
Website: www.blackmagicwoman.com.au
Follow us on Instagram - @blackmagicwomanpodcast
The Black Magic Woman Podcast is hosted by Mundanara Bayles and is an uplifting conversational style program featuring mainly Aboriginal guests and explores issues of importance to Aboriginal people and communities. Mundanara is guided by Aboriginal Terms of Reference and focusses more on who people are rather than on what they do.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Black cast unite our voices.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
So if somebody lent me fifty dollars, I don't have
to go and say when you give them me that back,
They're going to give it in return somehow, whether it's
by giving the fifty dollars or by sharing something that's
worth it. And that's a natural way of being in
our culture. You know, we're not greedy in that sense
of you know, we're going to step on everybody to
get where we want to go.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Black Magic Woman Podcast acknowledges the traditional owners of the
land we have recorded this episode on. We also acknowledge
traditional owners of the land where you, the listener of
youer are tuning in from. We would like to pay
our respects to our elders past and present and acknowledge
that this always was Aboriginal land and always will be
(00:52):
Aboriginal land.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Welcome to the Black Magic Woman Podcast with Mandinara Bail.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Hey you mob, Welcome back to another episode of the
Black Magic Woman Podcast. I am here on the beautiful
land of the Orrew peoples on the Cooler Nations, and
I'm pretty sure the woy Wong as well a part
of this mob here aka Beautiful Melbourne and it's pretty
cold right now. Let me tell you I've been privileged
(01:25):
enough to be able to travel around the country and
attend different kinter professional development opportunities or leadership conferences or summits.
Mainly where there's mob, I see an opportunity to then
bring Clint, my deadly producer, and smash out a few episodes.
So today I've got a beautiful Auntie that I've had
(01:46):
the pleasure of yarning with, having lunch with, and some
of our work has crossed over, but more more so,
aunt connected to my elders and has been connected to
a lot of my family from before I was even
thought of. So it's an absolute privilege to have you
on the pod cast. Can you share with my listeners
and also our viewers on YouTube your name, your mob
(02:09):
and a little bit about where you grew up?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Okay, so my name is Gennara Goringeren. My mob is
Woka Wocka Woolly Woolly clans or Central Queensland.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I live in.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Canberra, my grandmother and a mother where I came from.
I was born out in Longreach, which is western Queensland.
Grew up there was a champion swimmer. As a child,
loved music, love Sport, went away to boarding school for
high school and then off to Teachers College in Brisbane
and eventually to Canberra to the public service in the eighties,
(02:42):
our late seventies, early eighties, when you know, we had
all of those leaders that were really the politicians that
just got up and ran with it, Charlie Perkins, all
those early people back then, so I kind of worked
with them, learnt a lot with them. Tiger was a
great friend. And Arnie Maureen Watson, your grandma was. My
(03:05):
mother used to always say that two of them grew
up on the same riverbank in theatre.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Yeah, when they were little.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
They knew each other out there in theatre because my
mum's country is just bit south of there, bit south
and a bit east, so they met out there. They
grew up together. And I remember when Arnie Maureen was unwell,
Mom came down to Brisbane to see her. So you know,
we have that long connection. Of course, big connects with Tiger.
Always felt like he was my big brother. And the politics,
(03:35):
you know, that's always been my thing. Having lived and
worked in Camberon, was married to a journalist still, you
know husband, and so yeah, my life's been like that.
In the last five eight years, I've been doing leadership
based on my pH d research aligning First Nations ancient
knowledge systems with a theory of sacred leadership higher consciousness thinking.
(04:01):
So I come to these summits three times a year
to do the pre workshop for the summit for the
Leadership Institute, and I love doing it.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
It's great work. Deadly Well, I just want to big
shout out to the Leadership Institute. Dana and Sam have
been very kind to let us set up here and
to also have access to a lot of the deadly
not just the speakers, but the mob that come here
from all different parts of the country, from different organizations,
(04:31):
different communities. So we get to build these relationships and
make these new connections. So that's pretty deadly in terms
of your involvement with the Leadership Institute, and I love
this sacred leadership. Can you share a little bit about
what you do in these pre workshops because we need
more mob. More mob should come to these events and
(04:53):
they then get the opportunity to participate in some of
your work.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah. Well, Sam contacted me four odd years ago and
he said he was looking for somebody who could do
these leadership workshops the day prior to the summit, and
he couldn't find anybody, and somebody had given him my
name and he looked me up on He looked me
up on LinkedIn, and he said one of the things
that did across him was the combination of the two.
(05:20):
And I said to him, you know, I'd done a
good eleven years of research about what first nations human
development systems look like, family development systems, social and emotional intelligence,
cultural intelligence, spiritual intelligence. And I worked in as a
senior transformational leadership consultant at this white firm, Saphire, back
(05:46):
in two thousand and nine, ten before I went into
academia and started to think what would I do for
a PhD. And it was the vision of some of
the elders I'd been around at the time that made
me think about, well, maybe I should write about what
this means. And then we'd been using the work of
a professor call Robert Keegan from Harvard Harvard, and he'd
(06:10):
spent forty odd years doing research around higher levels of
consciousness and thinking and came up with this idea that
there's levels of thinking that make sacred leaders. And you
can start off with egotistical leadership with then socialized, independent, independent,
and then sacred, and that people can rise up these
levels of leadership according to the way in which they
(06:33):
developed their own emotional intelligence.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
And I aligned it with.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Family systems theory, which I'd studied as a therapist. And
if you're damaged in a family of origin where there's abuse, addiction,
or violence, your level of emotional intelligence and leadership will
stay at what we call the egotistical level. It's all
about me, because you're still dealing with your own childhood
emotional stuff. So in the workshop, we do exercises around
(07:03):
what are my disempowering beliefs? What have I learned from
my development system that keeps me in the rut of
thinking like this? And so to rise up the level
of leadership, you have to develop a value system. You
have to recover your own emotional intelligence. You have to
have a spiritual life, and you have to think about
(07:24):
You have to have boundaries, think about your own boundaries,
be vulnerable, be independent in your own thinking. Know that
you can have your own thoughts differentiated from others. You
don't have to follow others like a sheep. You can
have your own thoughts and you can live with difference
and people. So I did some designs for Indigenous Business Australia.
(07:46):
We did an emerging leadership program for three years with
fifteen of their middle managers, and so I put into
a practical application the study that I'd done for my
PhD to prove that it was possible.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
And what happened was after.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
A year of that work, I discovered that some of
those middle managers were having breakthrough in their emotional intelligence
and rising with their level of thinking, and that by
the end of those two and a half three years
they had changed. Some of them left the organization because
they wanted to go elsewhere and it had led them
in different directions. Others stayed but they got promoted. So
(08:24):
it had quite an amazing effect. So now I know
that what I studied and what I designed as workshops
and as mentoring coaching.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Work actually works.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And it's the First Nation's knowledge that really resonates with
First Nations people because it's something that's in us and
it's something that we do anyway, despite colonization, we still
know how to care and share, We still know how
to look after each other, We still know how to
respect our elders and respect each other, and we know
the difference between what's dysfunctional in the white world and
(08:58):
what functional based on our own value system. So I
utilized that in the workshop so that people can go,
oh yeah, my values are this, this and this, And
I talk about the foundational laws of our culture that
belong with every clan because that was taught to me
by these two ango elders. I knew and wrote about
the PhD and that binds everybody together. So no matter
(09:21):
what you clan, there's always things we do together, like
mutual reciprocity.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
She foundational knowledge there is in that big shout out
to beautiful Honey Mayor and Anililla my orders as well,
but they be my teachers and in a very professional
formal way as well as an informal way, right because
they are our aunties, but they're doctor and professors and aunties.
(09:48):
Any Mary and any Little talk about this a lot
about there's all these different mobs across the country. We're
all different people from different countries, have different languages, different laws,
different dreaming stories. But there's foundational knowledge. And you mentioned reciprocity, yes, yeah,
the law of obligation, the law of reciprocity.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Responsibility coming down to like sharing and caring, giving and
receiving knowing. You know, I don't have to if somebody
lent me fifty dollars, I don't have to go and
say when you've give them me that back, they're going
to give it in return somehow, whether it's by giving
the fifty dollars or by sharing something that's worth it.
And that's a natural way of being in our culture.
(10:30):
You know, we're not greedy in that sense of you know,
we're going to step on everybody to get where we
want to go. We acknowledge and respect people that give
us a lift up.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yes, And it's fascinating to sit here and listen to
someone talk about or unpack our culture at a higher
level because most people that I know, and it's no
fault of our own, but we struggle to articulate our culture.
(11:00):
And a lot of your mob that are listening to
this yarn, I'm pretty I'm sure you're nodding your head
as well and agreeing with me that we're living our culture.
We're not describing it to people. We've never had to
describe our culture to anyone else for our whole existence,
we've just lived it. So it's only been recent history
or more recently that we're in a position now to
(11:23):
describe our culture because most people that are doing it
have not done a good job. People are writing about
us in academia that are non Aboriginal people and they're
writing about our culture, our people, or where we come from.
So a lot of the literature is actually incorrect. A
lot of the it is incorrect. Yes, I read recently.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I found something on the internet that these two people,
non indigenous writers that are one of the universities where
I had worked, had written about a time when I
was giving a talk about culture to all the academics
at the university, and they had picked it apart and
actually said, I'm a liar. I made this up when
(12:05):
actually I heard it from my elders, but I'd apparently
made up this information because they couldn't prove that what
I was saying was the truth. And I'm like, you've
got to accept on those Aboriginal terms, and you've got
to accept that you learn things orally. And nobody's written
it in a book, no, and so they can't see
it in a book, and they and they've written this
(12:26):
article and I wrote to the publisher and said, excuse me,
you need to take that down.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
This is oral history.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I have to dispute what they're saying.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yes, and we have every right to dispute it. But
there's for us as as mob. For a lot of
the mob that are listening. Annie Lilla has always said
this to me is that we operate on Aboriginal terms
of reference, and non Aboriginal people are operating you know,
white terms of reference or Western terms of reference, and
sometimes as black fellows, we were getting drawn over into
(12:57):
their terms of reference, and that's usually when we lose
the argument. So we have to kind of consolidate what
our terms of references for our knowledge base. And Alas said,
when you can consolidate what our terms of references, the
ground beneath you is rock solid and you feel so
confident and so strong. So for people that are coming
to the Leadership Institute, especially where we are the Indigenous
(13:20):
Leadership Summit, they get to engage with your workshop and
your knowledge, your PhD before the workshop and that sets
them up for the next two days. I think that's
really deadly to start off a.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Thing a summit, and it's lived experience, you know, It's
not just that I studied something, It's that I started
being a managing leader at the age of thirty, so
it was lived experience in an organization from then on
and now thirty odd years later, I can actually say, yeah,
it was hard being in this two culture system, but
(13:54):
I actually relied on my First Nation's knowledge to enable
me to navigate that and you can do that too.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
I love it, and this is what we need more
of bringing our own knowledge in these conversations. It's a
leadership summit and where embedding average knowledge or indigenous knowledge
within what we do and how we want to try
and support other MOB. I see a lot of younger
mob here.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, there is this time pretty deadly, pretty nice.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
And you was also talking about a new little venture
that you're working on four younger people. Yeah around leadership.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah. I have two other friends, one who's an elder
of the name for people from Brewarna and another one
from Sydney, Durug Mob and Gilmillroy, and they, as elder women,
wanted to do something about how do we show young
First Nations women how to just go for it. We
do women's business retreats as part of our sort of
(14:49):
healing recovery work. We do them, you know, for people
around the place and doing it for a long time,
and they're like, how do we mentor and help these ones,
whether they're women in business in their middle part of
their business, or whether they're young ones who want to
break out and do something amazing, or whether they're working
in a bureaucracy or they want to start their own.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Swim line or whatever.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
We want to encourage them and mentor them with our
lived experience, our background, our knowledge, but that real First
Nations way of sitting and just listening deeply and allowing
people to come up with their ideas and their inspirations
and encouraging them to move forward and being like a
holding holding the hands underneath them so that they know
(15:34):
that they can have that strength to just go for it.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I love that. And a lot of our young people
want to, you know, take that next step where they
want to go and get that deadly job, and some
of them don't have the confidence of the self esteem.
And that's where we need to as older women and
the elder women be there and support them and guy.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
So we started a First Nations Women's Leadership Company, which
we're just starting to get all branded and so on.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
And the way we'll start. You're working on the we
are working.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
On the website. Now got it done, just got to
get it put up. And you know, I just I
know that. You know, we were sort of we're in
our sixties fifties, so we're the first sort of mob
of people after those initial ones like Lowatshire or Donahue
and so on, we've come up next. And then we've
got all these young ones like I think about my
forty two year old daughter. You know, they had to
(16:27):
get that confidence to keep going. They might have the degree,
but what about working in this world where they are
They are treated differently and often discriminated against. So you know,
we say, step out, step up. You don't have to
be in a system that does that to you, or
you can challenge that and speak to it, speak up
to it and add it. So that's what we want
(16:47):
to do. We'd like to coach and mental them to
just move the way you want to move.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And for any of our deadly young mob that I
listen to this podcast, what would be some I don't know,
words of wisdom, some advice that you would share with
them if they are working king in an organization, could
be in community, could be in government, and they're just
not They're not happy, they're not satisfying. What would you
(17:14):
say in terms of some encouragement to keep going.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Look, it's really good to do some inner work on
what are the things that you value, What are the
things you know about yourself that are great? And where
do you really want to go? Like where are you happy?
Where would you be happy? You know, I want to
work three days a week. I want to work out something.
You know, I want to create something, I want to
run something, whatever, do what's great for you and sit
(17:41):
out and think about those things that disempower the belief
systems you've been told.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
In the system.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
You know, you're not good enough for all of those
belief systems that hang and pull you back. Get rid
of them and transfer them. Reframe them into empowering beliefs.
You know that I can do it. I will do
it and go and do it because I had to
do that for myself. I had to sit down and
do you know that reframe of all those things, all
(18:08):
those people in the past that said you can't do that,
you won't do that, Like, no, actually I'm going to
do that. You know, you don't have to keep me
down like that. So we live in a system that
tends to do that to us.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah, so yeah, go for it.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Sit down and write down what's magic for you, do
a vision board, you know, and create that vision board
and then run with it.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
And I've literally taken on so much just for myself.
I'm not one to do a vision board. But my
eight year old, Yeah, Tiger Lily always she's like, Mom,
we should go and do this, we should go and
do that. And I'm thinking, even for a young eight
year old who's growing up in anighborhood where majority of
her friends and non aboriginal people, she very rarely sees
(18:53):
a person of color and sometimes feels that she's not
It's not that she's not worthy, but I know that
she sometimes questions like why am I the way I am?
Or why do I have dark curly hair? Why do
I have darker skin? So these belief systems and these patterns. Already,
(19:13):
as an eight year old, she's already letting me know, Hey, Mom,
why is this happening? So the vision board were talking
about doing some arts and craft and I said to her, well,
why don't we get this. We'll go to office works
and we'll go and get a few different magazines. And
I wanted her to start thinking about what makes you happy.
(19:36):
You know, she loves tennis. She wants to be the
next ash Party. There you go, ash Barty's fair skin.
So I keep telling her she's still a Murray girl.
So we've been talking a lot about identity lately, and
I think it's so important that we have strong black
women at these summits that other black women can engage
(19:57):
with and learn from with all of your experience.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I went into my granddaughter's room the other day. She
just turned se and she's got her little vision board
sitting up on the glass window, and it's one about
you know, what do I do when I feel sad?
And then she's got all these things with pictures and
drawings that she's done. And actually, every day she sits down,
she says, Nana, this is what I want to do
when I grow up. And she has not wavered from
(20:22):
that thing. She has a vision of what she loves
and what she wants to do, and she hasn't waved
from it yet. And I think, okay, you know, you
might have ten more where you want to do something else,
But whatever it is, we are here to help you.
We're here to hold you and help you get where
you've got to go.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Yeah, but just the fact that these little people are
already telling us, you know, the signs of that. Help
me understand. Let me navigate this white fellow world, black
fellow world? How do I walk in two worlds? And
how did I embrace my blackness? So I said to
and here I am wearing There's Deadly Mums Come Up shirt?
(20:59):
How those I bought this T shirt? I went home
with her and she said, where's my T shirt? I said,
have we got to get a deadly Daughter's club going
T shirt?
Speaker 2 (21:08):
We've always got sets of those. We've got one that's
some aboriginal girl, no deadly Aboriginal girl across the black.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
And there's one laborage magic.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Oh yeah, yeah, black girl magic, black girl magic. So
many great ones were Riga's always buying little sets for them,
yes to wear, you know, especially in the Natock week
or and Riga Willa is very strong at school. You know,
she'll go in there and she talks about her identity,
she shares it. And the teacher you know, write to
me the other day and said, you know, where does
(21:38):
Willi's identic cultural identity line come from? And I explained
it to her, you know, because they didn't know. But
she's very strong about it.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
You know. She she'll say, they'll say, you know, God
made the earth and the stars, and she'll say, no,
you're wrong, Biarmi did that.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
She's hearing our stories and she's talking about her style
culture and it's been so deadly. Thank you so much.
I get to yarn with you and you know, finally
get an opportunity to let people know what you've been doing,
what you're working on, and can't wait to see you
more out there doing what you do. Thank you so
(22:15):
much of our young women coming through the ranks and
being able to kind of step up and take care
of business and not be afraid. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
It's lovely to have the generational thread with us. You know.
I sit here and I think of Arnie, Maureen and Tiger,
you know, and it's all in that story as we talk.
It's very beautiful. Thank you for your time. Oh, I
love you an love you.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Thank you, and I know you would have enjoyed this deadly.
In the show notes, you'll see what Aunt's been working on.
And for the young deadly Black women that are listening,
just remember you know where you come from and who
you are. That's it. My mum always said, don't ever
be shamed about who you are and where you come from,
and don't forget your family when you make it, don't
(22:58):
forget your mob. On that note, Ipe Avenge, I read
this until next time, By for Nat. If you'd like
any more info on today's guest, please visit our show
notes in the episode description. A big shout out to
all you Deadly Mob and allies who continue to listen, watch,
and support our podcast. Your feedback means the world. You
(23:22):
can rate and review the podcast on Apple and Spotify,
or even head to our socials and YouTube channel and
drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
The Black Magic Woman podcast is produced by Clint Curtis.
Black cast unite our voices.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
So if somebody lent me fifty dollars, I don't have
to go and say when you give them me that back,
They're going to give it in return somehow, whether it's
by giving the fifty dollars or by sharing something that's
worth it. And that's a natural way of being in
our culture. You know, we're not greedy in that sense
of you know, we're going to step on everybody to
get where we want to go.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Black Magic Woman Podcast acknowledges the traditional owners of the
land we have recorded this episode on. We also acknowledge
traditional owners of the land where you, the listener of
youer are tuning in from. We would like to pay
our respects to our elders past and present and acknowledge
that this always was Aboriginal land and always will be
(00:52):
Aboriginal land.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Welcome to the Black Magic Woman Podcast with Mandinara Bail.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Hey you mob, Welcome back to another episode of the
Black Magic Woman Podcast. I am here on the beautiful
land of the Orrew peoples on the Cooler Nations, and
I'm pretty sure the woy Wong as well a part
of this mob here aka Beautiful Melbourne and it's pretty
cold right now. Let me tell you I've been privileged
(01:25):
enough to be able to travel around the country and
attend different kinter professional development opportunities or leadership conferences or summits.
Mainly where there's mob, I see an opportunity to then
bring Clint, my deadly producer, and smash out a few episodes.
So today I've got a beautiful Auntie that I've had
(01:46):
the pleasure of yarning with, having lunch with, and some
of our work has crossed over, but more more so,
aunt connected to my elders and has been connected to
a lot of my family from before I was even
thought of. So it's an absolute privilege to have you
on the pod cast. Can you share with my listeners
and also our viewers on YouTube your name, your mob
(02:09):
and a little bit about where you grew up?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Okay, so my name is Gennara Goringeren. My mob is
Woka Wocka Woolly Woolly clans or Central Queensland.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I live in.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Canberra, my grandmother and a mother where I came from.
I was born out in Longreach, which is western Queensland.
Grew up there was a champion swimmer. As a child,
loved music, love Sport, went away to boarding school for
high school and then off to Teachers College in Brisbane
and eventually to Canberra to the public service in the eighties,
(02:42):
our late seventies, early eighties, when you know, we had
all of those leaders that were really the politicians that
just got up and ran with it, Charlie Perkins, all
those early people back then, so I kind of worked
with them, learnt a lot with them. Tiger was a
great friend. And Arnie Maureen Watson, your grandma was. My
(03:05):
mother used to always say that two of them grew
up on the same riverbank in theatre.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Yeah, when they were little.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
They knew each other out there in theatre because my
mum's country is just bit south of there, bit south
and a bit east, so they met out there. They
grew up together. And I remember when Arnie Maureen was unwell,
Mom came down to Brisbane to see her. So you know,
we have that long connection. Of course, big connects with Tiger.
Always felt like he was my big brother. And the politics,
(03:35):
you know, that's always been my thing. Having lived and
worked in Camberon, was married to a journalist still, you
know husband, and so yeah, my life's been like that.
In the last five eight years, I've been doing leadership
based on my pH d research aligning First Nations ancient
knowledge systems with a theory of sacred leadership higher consciousness thinking.
(04:01):
So I come to these summits three times a year
to do the pre workshop for the summit for the
Leadership Institute, and I love doing it.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
It's great work. Deadly Well, I just want to big
shout out to the Leadership Institute. Dana and Sam have
been very kind to let us set up here and
to also have access to a lot of the deadly
not just the speakers, but the mob that come here
from all different parts of the country, from different organizations,
(04:31):
different communities. So we get to build these relationships and
make these new connections. So that's pretty deadly in terms
of your involvement with the Leadership Institute, and I love
this sacred leadership. Can you share a little bit about
what you do in these pre workshops because we need
more mob. More mob should come to these events and
(04:53):
they then get the opportunity to participate in some of
your work.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah. Well, Sam contacted me four odd years ago and
he said he was looking for somebody who could do
these leadership workshops the day prior to the summit, and
he couldn't find anybody, and somebody had given him my
name and he looked me up on He looked me
up on LinkedIn, and he said one of the things
that did across him was the combination of the two.
(05:20):
And I said to him, you know, I'd done a
good eleven years of research about what first nations human
development systems look like, family development systems, social and emotional intelligence,
cultural intelligence, spiritual intelligence. And I worked in as a
senior transformational leadership consultant at this white firm, Saphire, back
(05:46):
in two thousand and nine, ten before I went into
academia and started to think what would I do for
a PhD. And it was the vision of some of
the elders I'd been around at the time that made
me think about, well, maybe I should write about what
this means. And then we'd been using the work of
a professor call Robert Keegan from Harvard Harvard, and he'd
(06:10):
spent forty odd years doing research around higher levels of
consciousness and thinking and came up with this idea that
there's levels of thinking that make sacred leaders. And you
can start off with egotistical leadership with then socialized, independent, independent,
and then sacred, and that people can rise up these
levels of leadership according to the way in which they
(06:33):
developed their own emotional intelligence.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
And I aligned it with.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Family systems theory, which I'd studied as a therapist. And
if you're damaged in a family of origin where there's abuse, addiction,
or violence, your level of emotional intelligence and leadership will
stay at what we call the egotistical level. It's all
about me, because you're still dealing with your own childhood
emotional stuff. So in the workshop, we do exercises around
(07:03):
what are my disempowering beliefs? What have I learned from
my development system that keeps me in the rut of
thinking like this? And so to rise up the level
of leadership, you have to develop a value system. You
have to recover your own emotional intelligence. You have to
have a spiritual life, and you have to think about
(07:24):
You have to have boundaries, think about your own boundaries,
be vulnerable, be independent in your own thinking. Know that
you can have your own thoughts differentiated from others. You
don't have to follow others like a sheep. You can
have your own thoughts and you can live with difference
and people. So I did some designs for Indigenous Business Australia.
(07:46):
We did an emerging leadership program for three years with
fifteen of their middle managers, and so I put into
a practical application the study that I'd done for my
PhD to prove that it was possible.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
And what happened was after.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
A year of that work, I discovered that some of
those middle managers were having breakthrough in their emotional intelligence
and rising with their level of thinking, and that by
the end of those two and a half three years
they had changed. Some of them left the organization because
they wanted to go elsewhere and it had led them
in different directions. Others stayed but they got promoted. So
(08:24):
it had quite an amazing effect. So now I know
that what I studied and what I designed as workshops
and as mentoring coaching.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Work actually works.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And it's the First Nation's knowledge that really resonates with
First Nations people because it's something that's in us and
it's something that we do anyway, despite colonization, we still
know how to care and share, We still know how
to look after each other, We still know how to
respect our elders and respect each other, and we know
the difference between what's dysfunctional in the white world and
(08:58):
what functional based on our own value system. So I
utilized that in the workshop so that people can go,
oh yeah, my values are this, this and this, And
I talk about the foundational laws of our culture that
belong with every clan because that was taught to me
by these two ango elders. I knew and wrote about
the PhD and that binds everybody together. So no matter
(09:21):
what you clan, there's always things we do together, like
mutual reciprocity.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
She foundational knowledge there is in that big shout out
to beautiful Honey Mayor and Anililla my orders as well,
but they be my teachers and in a very professional
formal way as well as an informal way, right because
they are our aunties, but they're doctor and professors and aunties.
(09:48):
Any Mary and any Little talk about this a lot
about there's all these different mobs across the country. We're
all different people from different countries, have different languages, different laws,
different dreaming stories. But there's foundational knowledge. And you mentioned reciprocity, yes, yeah,
the law of obligation, the law of reciprocity.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Responsibility coming down to like sharing and caring, giving and
receiving knowing. You know, I don't have to if somebody
lent me fifty dollars, I don't have to go and
say when you've give them me that back, they're going
to give it in return somehow, whether it's by giving
the fifty dollars or by sharing something that's worth it.
And that's a natural way of being in our culture.
(10:30):
You know, we're not greedy in that sense of you know,
we're going to step on everybody to get where we
want to go. We acknowledge and respect people that give
us a lift up.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yes, And it's fascinating to sit here and listen to
someone talk about or unpack our culture at a higher
level because most people that I know, and it's no
fault of our own, but we struggle to articulate our culture.
(11:00):
And a lot of your mob that are listening to
this yarn, I'm pretty I'm sure you're nodding your head
as well and agreeing with me that we're living our culture.
We're not describing it to people. We've never had to
describe our culture to anyone else for our whole existence,
we've just lived it. So it's only been recent history
or more recently that we're in a position now to
(11:23):
describe our culture because most people that are doing it
have not done a good job. People are writing about
us in academia that are non Aboriginal people and they're
writing about our culture, our people, or where we come from.
So a lot of the literature is actually incorrect. A
lot of the it is incorrect. Yes, I read recently.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I found something on the internet that these two people,
non indigenous writers that are one of the universities where
I had worked, had written about a time when I
was giving a talk about culture to all the academics
at the university, and they had picked it apart and
actually said, I'm a liar. I made this up when
(12:05):
actually I heard it from my elders, but I'd apparently
made up this information because they couldn't prove that what
I was saying was the truth. And I'm like, you've
got to accept on those Aboriginal terms, and you've got
to accept that you learn things orally. And nobody's written
it in a book, no, and so they can't see
it in a book, and they and they've written this
(12:26):
article and I wrote to the publisher and said, excuse me,
you need to take that down.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
This is oral history.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I have to dispute what they're saying.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yes, and we have every right to dispute it. But
there's for us as as mob. For a lot of
the mob that are listening. Annie Lilla has always said
this to me is that we operate on Aboriginal terms
of reference, and non Aboriginal people are operating you know,
white terms of reference or Western terms of reference, and
sometimes as black fellows, we were getting drawn over into
(12:57):
their terms of reference, and that's usually when we lose
the argument. So we have to kind of consolidate what
our terms of references for our knowledge base. And Alas said,
when you can consolidate what our terms of references, the
ground beneath you is rock solid and you feel so
confident and so strong. So for people that are coming
to the Leadership Institute, especially where we are the Indigenous
(13:20):
Leadership Summit, they get to engage with your workshop and
your knowledge, your PhD before the workshop and that sets
them up for the next two days. I think that's
really deadly to start off a.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Thing a summit, and it's lived experience, you know, It's
not just that I studied something, It's that I started
being a managing leader at the age of thirty, so
it was lived experience in an organization from then on
and now thirty odd years later, I can actually say, yeah,
it was hard being in this two culture system, but
(13:54):
I actually relied on my First Nation's knowledge to enable
me to navigate that and you can do that too.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
I love it, and this is what we need more
of bringing our own knowledge in these conversations. It's a
leadership summit and where embedding average knowledge or indigenous knowledge
within what we do and how we want to try
and support other MOB. I see a lot of younger
mob here.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, there is this time pretty deadly, pretty nice.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
And you was also talking about a new little venture
that you're working on four younger people. Yeah around leadership.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah. I have two other friends, one who's an elder
of the name for people from Brewarna and another one
from Sydney, Durug Mob and Gilmillroy, and they, as elder women,
wanted to do something about how do we show young
First Nations women how to just go for it. We
do women's business retreats as part of our sort of
(14:49):
healing recovery work. We do them, you know, for people
around the place and doing it for a long time,
and they're like, how do we mentor and help these ones,
whether they're women in business in their middle part of
their business, or whether they're young ones who want to
break out and do something amazing, or whether they're working
in a bureaucracy or they want to start their own.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Swim line or whatever.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
We want to encourage them and mentor them with our
lived experience, our background, our knowledge, but that real First
Nations way of sitting and just listening deeply and allowing
people to come up with their ideas and their inspirations
and encouraging them to move forward and being like a
holding holding the hands underneath them so that they know
(15:34):
that they can have that strength to just go for it.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I love that. And a lot of our young people
want to, you know, take that next step where they
want to go and get that deadly job, and some
of them don't have the confidence of the self esteem.
And that's where we need to as older women and
the elder women be there and support them and guy.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
So we started a First Nations Women's Leadership Company, which
we're just starting to get all branded and so on.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
And the way we'll start. You're working on the we
are working.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
On the website. Now got it done, just got to
get it put up. And you know, I just I
know that. You know, we were sort of we're in
our sixties fifties, so we're the first sort of mob
of people after those initial ones like Lowatshire or Donahue
and so on, we've come up next. And then we've
got all these young ones like I think about my
forty two year old daughter. You know, they had to
(16:27):
get that confidence to keep going. They might have the degree,
but what about working in this world where they are
They are treated differently and often discriminated against. So you know,
we say, step out, step up. You don't have to
be in a system that does that to you, or
you can challenge that and speak to it, speak up
to it and add it. So that's what we want
(16:47):
to do. We'd like to coach and mental them to
just move the way you want to move.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And for any of our deadly young mob that I
listen to this podcast, what would be some I don't know,
words of wisdom, some advice that you would share with
them if they are working king in an organization, could
be in community, could be in government, and they're just
not They're not happy, they're not satisfying. What would you
(17:14):
say in terms of some encouragement to keep going.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Look, it's really good to do some inner work on
what are the things that you value, What are the
things you know about yourself that are great? And where
do you really want to go? Like where are you happy?
Where would you be happy? You know, I want to
work three days a week. I want to work out something.
You know, I want to create something, I want to
run something, whatever, do what's great for you and sit
(17:41):
out and think about those things that disempower the belief
systems you've been told.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
In the system.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
You know, you're not good enough for all of those
belief systems that hang and pull you back. Get rid
of them and transfer them. Reframe them into empowering beliefs.
You know that I can do it. I will do
it and go and do it because I had to
do that for myself. I had to sit down and
do you know that reframe of all those things, all
(18:08):
those people in the past that said you can't do that,
you won't do that, Like, no, actually I'm going to
do that. You know, you don't have to keep me
down like that. So we live in a system that
tends to do that to us.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah, so yeah, go for it.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Sit down and write down what's magic for you, do
a vision board, you know, and create that vision board
and then run with it.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
And I've literally taken on so much just for myself.
I'm not one to do a vision board. But my
eight year old, Yeah, Tiger Lily always she's like, Mom,
we should go and do this, we should go and
do that. And I'm thinking, even for a young eight
year old who's growing up in anighborhood where majority of
her friends and non aboriginal people, she very rarely sees
(18:53):
a person of color and sometimes feels that she's not
It's not that she's not worthy, but I know that
she sometimes questions like why am I the way I am?
Or why do I have dark curly hair? Why do
I have darker skin? So these belief systems and these patterns. Already,
(19:13):
as an eight year old, she's already letting me know, Hey, Mom,
why is this happening? So the vision board were talking
about doing some arts and craft and I said to her, well,
why don't we get this. We'll go to office works
and we'll go and get a few different magazines. And
I wanted her to start thinking about what makes you happy.
(19:36):
You know, she loves tennis. She wants to be the
next ash Party. There you go, ash Barty's fair skin.
So I keep telling her she's still a Murray girl.
So we've been talking a lot about identity lately, and
I think it's so important that we have strong black
women at these summits that other black women can engage
(19:57):
with and learn from with all of your experience.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I went into my granddaughter's room the other day. She
just turned se and she's got her little vision board
sitting up on the glass window, and it's one about
you know, what do I do when I feel sad?
And then she's got all these things with pictures and
drawings that she's done. And actually, every day she sits down,
she says, Nana, this is what I want to do
when I grow up. And she has not wavered from
(20:22):
that thing. She has a vision of what she loves
and what she wants to do, and she hasn't waved
from it yet. And I think, okay, you know, you
might have ten more where you want to do something else,
But whatever it is, we are here to help you.
We're here to hold you and help you get where
you've got to go.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Yeah, but just the fact that these little people are
already telling us, you know, the signs of that. Help
me understand. Let me navigate this white fellow world, black
fellow world? How do I walk in two worlds? And
how did I embrace my blackness? So I said to
and here I am wearing There's Deadly Mums Come Up shirt?
(20:59):
How those I bought this T shirt? I went home
with her and she said, where's my T shirt? I said,
have we got to get a deadly Daughter's club going
T shirt?
Speaker 2 (21:08):
We've always got sets of those. We've got one that's
some aboriginal girl, no deadly Aboriginal girl across the black.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
And there's one laborage magic.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Oh yeah, yeah, black girl magic, black girl magic. So
many great ones were Riga's always buying little sets for them,
yes to wear, you know, especially in the Natock week
or and Riga Willa is very strong at school. You know,
she'll go in there and she talks about her identity,
she shares it. And the teacher you know, write to
me the other day and said, you know, where does
(21:38):
Willi's identic cultural identity line come from? And I explained
it to her, you know, because they didn't know. But
she's very strong about it.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
You know. She she'll say, they'll say, you know, God
made the earth and the stars, and she'll say, no,
you're wrong, Biarmi did that.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
She's hearing our stories and she's talking about her style
culture and it's been so deadly. Thank you so much.
I get to yarn with you and you know, finally
get an opportunity to let people know what you've been doing,
what you're working on, and can't wait to see you
more out there doing what you do. Thank you so
(22:15):
much of our young women coming through the ranks and
being able to kind of step up and take care
of business and not be afraid. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
It's lovely to have the generational thread with us. You know.
I sit here and I think of Arnie, Maureen and Tiger,
you know, and it's all in that story as we talk.
It's very beautiful. Thank you for your time. Oh, I
love you an love you.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Thank you, and I know you would have enjoyed this deadly.
In the show notes, you'll see what Aunt's been working on.
And for the young deadly Black women that are listening,
just remember you know where you come from and who
you are. That's it. My mum always said, don't ever
be shamed about who you are and where you come from,
and don't forget your family when you make it, don't
(22:58):
forget your mob. On that note, Ipe Avenge, I read
this until next time, By for Nat. If you'd like
any more info on today's guest, please visit our show
notes in the episode description. A big shout out to
all you Deadly Mob and allies who continue to listen, watch,
and support our podcast. Your feedback means the world. You
(23:22):
can rate and review the podcast on Apple and Spotify,
or even head to our socials and YouTube channel and
drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
The Black Magic Woman podcast is produced by Clint Curtis.
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