Podcasts

Tune in this week for the first another special episode of Let’s Talk Black Culture, as Elizabeth Walker shares another series recorded on Country in Goompi (Dunwich) with her uncle, her Dad’s eldest brother, Raymond Walker.

Raymond is a Quandamooka songman and youth justice worker who has worked alongside his family and community to keep culture and language alive. In the first of three beautiful conversations recorded on Quandamooka country, Raymond reflects on the choices that his family have made to work on re-connecting and revitalising their culture: from teaching their kinship lore to their younger generations, to rebuilding song and dance, practicing ceremony and law, and maintaining their custodial responsibilities to Country and community.

This week, Elizabeth & Raymond talk about the value of kinship law in shaping their own relationship, as well as the ways it has anchored the broader cultural work that their family have done in revitalising song and dance. They reflect on the generosity of the Brady family, who shared their Kuku Yalanji traditions of song and dance with South East Queensland mobs, and encouraged them to work to rebuild and re-vitalise their own local traditions of song and dance. And they reflect on the powerful lessons that this process of reconnection and revitalisation has left: that nothing that is lost cannot be re-grown; that our collective memory always stretches further than we think; and that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures will always be stronger than the violent colonial forces that try to contain it.