Cultural Reconnection: Live with Dr Amanda Cahill, Jade Miles & Isira Aunty Jinta at the Reconnection Festival

We head over to the eastern-most point of Australia this week, for the largest gathering of the regenerative movement in this country to date. Join us at the Reconnection Festival, staged by Farmer’s Footprint Australia in November last year. We sit with a panel of three visionary women, for a conversation on culture that laid a foundation for everything that followed. Two of our panellists are previous podcast guests: Dr Amanda Cahill, CEO and founder of The Next Economy, and Jade Miles, CEO of Sustainable Table and farmer and author at Black Barn Farm. They were joined here by Indigenous elder Isira, known as Aunty Jinta.

This was one of my favourite conversations last year, and in many ways lays a foundation for this year too. There are profound insights shared here into the cultural bedrock necessary for nurturing life on Earth. Our guests faced some wrenching dilemmas at the time too, providing a powerful launching point for exploring what might actually offer ways through our most trenchant impasses, to beneficial transformations.

Head here for automatic cues to chapter markers (also available on Apple and some other apps, and the embedded player on the episode web page), and a transcript of this conversation (the transcript is AI generated and imperfect, but hopefully serves to provide greater access to these conversations for those who need or like to read).

This was recorded live in the northern rivers of NSW on 11 November 2023.

Title slide L-R: Anthony, Amanda, Jade & Isira (pic: Olivia Katz).

See more photos on the episode web page, and to see more from behind the scenes, become a member via the Patreon page.

Music:
Green Shoots, by The Nomadics.

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden, from the film Regenerating Australia.

The RegenNarration playlist, featuring music chosen by guests (with thanks to podcast member Josie Symons).

Find more:
Amanda Cahill also features in conversation with Anthony at her home on episode 134.

Jade Miles chats with Anthony at her farm on episode 128 (and with Rachel Ward live in Margaret River in episode 180).

Transcript

Amanda: 0:25

And the really crunchy crisis points I keep thinking are five, maybe ten years away are here now. A nd how quickly the response at one end of the extreme is to leap onto solutions that actually strengthen the systems that created the problem in the first place.

Anthony: 1:05

G'day. My name's Anthony James and you're with The RegenNarration exploring the stories that are changing the story for the regeneration of life on this planet. It's ad-free and freely available, thanks to listeners like John Macpherson, clocking up two years of being a subscribing member of the podcast. Thanks, john. If you're also finding value in all this, please consider joining this great community supporting listeners with as little as $3 a month or whatever amount you can and want to contribute. Members get footage, photos, invitations, tips and the chance to engage with other listeners and me. Just head to the website via the show notes RegenNarration. com/ support - and thanks again.

Anthony: 1:57

We head over to the easternmost point of Australia this week for the largest gathering of the regenerative movement in this country to date. Farmers Footprint Australia staged the Reconnection Festival in November last year, and this panel conversation on culture laid a foundation for everything that followed. It featured three women, two of whom are previous podcast guests Dr Amanda Cahill of The Next Economy, and Jade Miles of Sustainable Table and Black Barn Farm. They were joined here by Indigenous elder Isira or Aunty Jinta. I t was my privilege to host. This was one of my favourite conversations for the year and in many ways lays a foundation for this year too I think. Our guests faced some wrenching dilemmas at the time too, providing a powerful launching point for exploring what might actually offer ways through to beneficial transformations. I introduced the conversation and our guests in more length at the outset, so let's get straight into it and head over to the Green Room stage at the Blues Fest venue in the northern rivers of New South Wales.

Anthony: 3:11

There's an old saying in business and sport has really taken this on of late, that culture eats strategy for breakfast. In other words, this isn't an unconventional or fringe understanding. Is it in first in turn, that a fragmenting culture, one that doesn't prioritise relationships, honesty, vulnerability and connection, is a fragile one? We've seen this in the most successful football teams of late, for example, and even tennis players like Ash Bhati and Hayash, if you happen to be in the bleachers somewhere. We see it too in our most admired organisations, the communities previously working with fossil fuels in their transition efforts and, of course, in the enduring societies like those that have been on this continent for tens of thousands of years. So if culture is the foundation for everything and, as Charles talks about so well, reconnection is the foundation of healthy culture. This dialogue here had to be first today and to go at it. We've got what the farmers footprint team described as three formidable Australian female voices.

Anthony: 4:16

Isaira, or Aunty Jinta, is a spiritual teacher, wisdom keeper, author, speaker and cultural educator. She is an elder of Merning Adyamatsana heritage, with kin ties to Pichangera and Yunkangera country, and has mixed heritage of Scottish, welsh and Spanish background. Isaira is also ordained by his Holiness the Dalai Lama, and she integrates the wisdom teachings from Eastern spiritual traditions, her Australian Indigenous heritage and the profound, transformative experiences of her own life. She is produced a film too, called Nala Gamara. We Are One which you can stream online. It's a calling to reconnect the diverse and sometimes fractured aspects of modern Australian society by reconnecting us with our common roots From the northern beaches. Please welcome Isara Anijinta. Thank you.

Anthony: 5:09

Jade Miles is a farmer, author, podcaster and CEO of Sustainable Table, another not-for-profit working to regenerate our farming, food and finance systems. I first came across Jade's podcast Future Steadying back when it started. Then was introduced to her visual extravaganza of a book by the same name, subtitled Live Like Tomorrow Matters Practical Skills, recipes and Rituals for a Simpler Life. It draws on Jade's family life at Black Barn Farm in Central Victoria, which features an incredible orchard of around 100 varieties of heritage fruit and berries, along with the nursery and workshop space in the Black Barn. And Jade is stepping up with everything she didn't get to say in Future Steadying in her next book, huddle. Please give her a big welcome.

Anthony: 5:57

Jade Miles and Dr Amanda Carl is the CEO of the Next Economy, a not-for-profit again, supporting communities, government, industry and others to develop regenerative economies. You might recognize Amanda from Damon Gammos' film 2040, or Tim Hollow's book Living Democracy or ABC TV's Q&A. That Q&A was filmed before the 2022 federal election last year in Gladstone in Queensland. Commonly regarded as a politically conservative coal powerhouse in this country, it then became one of the poster regions for navigating its way to a renewable energy transition plan guided by Amanda. After that, having risked so much to start the Next Economy, the phone ran off the proverbial hook, and not just for assistance on energy transitions, but related systems in food, agriculture and more. But things have got very interesting from there. Please give her a hand, dr Amanda Carl. Applause]. Nice to sit down. I'm sorry. Can I throw to you first? Let's just go straight out of the blocks With a sense of. I guess in a sense, we could blend two things what's burning for you right now, what's really current with what you've heard or seen or felt so far today?

Isira: 7:22

Well, absolutely a reconnection, and how it's relevant to every single one of us, and, as an Indigenous woman, I'm so inspired by this upsurge and acknowledgement, respect and appreciation for our ancestral culture and its place in regeneration here now, today, and the truth that we all have if we dig deep enough in that Indigenous heritage. We're all Earth children. We're reawakening to that, and so I'm very passionate about what's happening here.

Anthony: 8:07

Here here, jade and Amanda. One of you guys like to pick that up too.

Jade: 8:12

Sure, I feel like we're undergoing some kind of deep remembering, and you just said we're Earth children and we have heard from everybody else that's spoken already that as ancestral beings we've got this ability to not just use our heads, and for so long, during this industrial era that we're all sucked into that's largely the thing that's been heralded, and so let's find a way to reconnect with our hearts and our deep instincts, and our hands can continue to do the work, but let's make that united, and not just with those in our own being, but the animals and the plant life and the ecosystem that sits around us.

Amanda: 8:54

Amanda Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I can't get the word humility out of my head. I feel really humbled by the sessions that just came around and the connection of that word about humus, about being grounded and coming back to Earth and being part of something that's bigger and letting go of control so that things can find its own balance and you can find your own place, because the energy in this room is amazing. So, yeah, how do we find our place in the flow? To let go, and what does that mean? For that true humility to be grounded and to be part of the Earth?

Anthony: 9:39

Well, that's a great launching point, isn't it? Because in a sense, I'm wondering how that then relates to what you're doing and finding on the ground in your daily lives and what you're trying to pull off. Who wants to go with that?

Amanda: 9:53

Can I? Yeah, yeah. So it's really interesting. I'm in really really different rooms. To give an example, beginning of September I was in a room with mining executives and heads of big agricultural companies who are freaking out actually about climate change. Now they acknowledge it's a thing now. The previous version of the conference they didn't, so it was interesting seeing that shift. And from there to also then sitting with elders in the Northern Territory who are already seeing impacts, like they're seeing their native foods and the trees not being pollinated because they're seeing the flying foxes and the insects have gone into town where they can get water and it's cooler.

Amanda: 10:36

So sitting with very different and everyone in between being in Canberra, being with local governments, and there's this tension around. People are like there's something here, but how do we react to that? And this old paradigm of we've got to control it, we've got to find a new technology to come in over the top and put nature back in its place, as opposed to the elders who are like nature is telling us that this is a sign. How do we work with it? What's the way through and I think that's the challenge in any of these conversations is to, because we all have that within us.

Anthony: 11:09

We are in trouble, aren't we? When we retreat to towns for that? Yeah, and this is what we are saying. I say this because it's a very real pattern in the regions and not just the ones who tend food systems, but the ones who just tend functioning landscape and oceanscape being increasingly neglected. Like our comfort is in getting to where there's a shop with diverse supply on these tenuous supply chains and aircon and I've seen it even in the Kimberley, with people trying their hardest but because it's getting so hot, they do retreat to aircon themselves just to get through. So you'd hate to be getting on that compounding cycle. Hey, you might come back and pick that thread up, but Che, what about you? Was it really hitting the road for you?

Jade: 11:56

On any given time. A bit like you, amanda, my days can be quite different. I can be in the dirt, literally running a women's circle, or weeding at the moment it's spring, so we're, and I'm one hand down, so I'm only using one hand to weed our three kilometres of berries and our thousand apple trees. And then, on a day-to-day basis, I'm working with Sustainable Table to try and really bring the financial system to a regenerative place that can meet a farming system that is so desperately in need of rapid change. That is tumultuous, because some days I think we've got it, we've cracked it, we're speaking the right language and we've got the right model. Whoops, or maybe not.

Anthony: 12:41

The breeze is welcome.

Jade: 12:42

I'll take it that breeze is lovely, though up here, but I think the reality is that every one of us has got a whole lot of turning to do in order to reframe what success looks like and reframe what enough actually is. And I think when you really put that at the centre of the decisions that we make and you imagine the people that sit at the other end of those decisions the people, the animals, the insects, the mycelium it really reframes the way you make your decisions. And so I think, on a day-to-day basis, you know you keep talking the language that others understand, but slowly but surely we're inching to a different place that is more hopeful and more united, because a siloed existence from one another, from this need for control or from the ecosystem that holds us, isn't actually the solution. And I think, one by one, individual by individual, we're finding a way to recalibrate and reframe that.

Anthony: 13:53

Interesting. I'm sorry. Does that speak to you? What if that echoes?

Isira: 13:58

Absolutely, I guess, in my own experience. Well, I've been really dedicated to shifting consciousness for many, many years but what I'm really noticing is how it's becoming part of popular culture. You know, it's no longer something weird for us to really consider the deeper spiritual essence of our self and that relevance to our systems the way we're living, what are we cultivating, why are we driven by a consumer mind, et cetera. There does seem to be a collective awakening, these surges and shifts of consciousness through so many different sectors, whether it's corporate and industry, and, I guess, navigating the way when we're still dealing with systems that are so deeply rooted in the centralized mindset, and to shift that centralization back into the collective mindset where we really acknowledge and recognize everything is interconnected and interdependent. And I remember something one of my elders said when the whole topic of you know the conflicts we're facing environmental conflicts and the fracturing socially, et cetera and he just lent down to the ground and he picked up a handful of soil. He said you want reconciliation, Reconcile, with this first Powerful APPLAUSE.

Anthony: 15:48

It's something I take real note of. What you're saying, I'm sorry, and I guess you all, because I test. I mean it's consistent with what I'm finding to and then what I hear a lot right around the country and the world for that matter, from people who've got a portal to that through the programs they run or the stuff they're doing. But I'll consistently find the need to test that for myself. Is it a delusion in your little microcosm type of thing? But well, I'd say, and what I find is there's plenty of reasons to think that. But there's also just constant backup to suggest this shift is a foot, this cultural shift is a foot. But let's back up a bit to what confronts us, what might make us think, geez, maybe not at times. I know you all experience it. Amanda, we just finished a phone call about this last night. Do you want to pick up the thread? Let's get real and then we'll navigate ways out, potentially, hopefully.

Amanda: 16:49

The thing that's confronting me is the climate science that's mostly where I sit has been around for a long time and we kind of the scenarios of how this could play out have been mapped out for a long time, and the really crunchy crisis points I keep thinking of five, maybe 10 years away are here now. And how quickly the response at one end of the extreme is to leap onto solutions that actually strengthen the systems that created the problem in the first place. So, to give you an example, and how do we, how do you intersect with that? Because a lot of the money is flowing to strengthen and further embed the status quo. So, to give you an example, that conference in Darwin. They mentioned climate change.

Amanda: 17:43

I was like, oh wow, amazing, in this room they're going to talk about. You know, this is something we need to tackle and it's an economic opportunity. And they jumped straight to Australia has the top five critical minerals we need in the world for things like batteries and renewable energy revolution. And immediately to how many jobs and how many billions of dollars were going to be made. And you know we need to sort out some land tenure issues. And I was like, oh my God, in Northern Australia, which is so where was the discussion then around land rights or around doing things differently? Or is this an endless growth model? Or can we embed circular economy principles? Can we start mining the tailings of existing dams, existing mines that have never been cleaned up, as a starting point before we start digging new holes? So there's an opportunity there. But because there's almost this panic growing across the spectrum, people grab onto what they know. So that's the confronting thing.

Anthony: 18:40

Yeah, and this is so interesting out of a context where you seemingly were on the precipice of enormous breakthrough, so it's been retreat to the devil. We know that you've observed.

Amanda: 18:51

It's, there's steps. There are other people who are taking steps forward. But it's this where are we going to land is not not a given.

Anthony: 18:58

Yeah, that's what I'm saying too. Let's come back to it. Jade, you were sort of I mean, I know you were. You feel that too in the context that you immerse yourself in. Can you speak to that a little bit for us?

Jade: 19:09

Yeah, that intersection between regenerative farmers and regenerative finances is fairly fragile and there's a few who totally understand it and they leap in and boots and all but there are very few. Yeah, I think also there's more than that too. There's this language barrier, and I'm about to go to Cannes tomorrow, maybe the day after, to have a conversation with farmers and stakeholders up there, and I have very, very clearly been briefed not to use the word decolonisation, not to use the word regeneration and not to talk about bioregional ideas.

Anthony: 19:43

I was like Jesus where do I Everything we know to be there need to go.

Jade: 19:47

I know this is where we actually need to begin. So what do I do? Do I just change my language, or is it actually a cultural thing? So there's definitely hope, because there's conversations happening and there's, you know, there's partnerships in place and the stakeholders coming to the table. But actually let's talk about the stuff that's bloody real. Let's actually stop pretending that there's a lovely facade that can continue to carry us into perpetuity. It can't. It's cracked and we need to actually find a way to to renavigate. And if that is through another language, then let's find out what it is.

Anthony: 20:18

Yeah, and I think it's something we should probably run with for a second, because I think this probably comes back to your situation, to a man. I wonder if we're going to find another language and maybe we should. Maybe we should Because perhaps we need to arrive at one together as opposed to different. Say no, stick with mine, no, stick with no. Minds. That minds the way ahead.

Jade: 20:43

Maybe. And then there's this truth also in the fact that every culture you go into, every community you go into, has a different language, and they need that.

Anthony: 20:52

Well, we celebrate that.

Jade: 20:53

And that's where safety sits and that's where evolution comes from. But finding a way to navigate through it together is the challenge, and maybe it's not through words, maybe it's through dance, maybe it's through song, maybe it's through movement, maybe it's through food.

Anthony: 21:07

It always was.

Jade: 21:08

It always was. So let's go back to those first principles and actually find a way to connect in a really deep way that actually evaporates the need for the bullshit that's holding us.

Anthony: 21:17

How do you do that with financiers?

Jade: 21:21

Yeah, no, well, you take them to country.

Anthony: 21:25

There we go.

Jade: 21:26

Yes, stick them on the dirt and you tell them to close their eyes and breathe deeply and feel it.

Anthony: 21:32

Let them speak to it Because you've done this.

Jade: 21:34

Yeah, we've done this, and it draws tears and it raises heartbeats and it puts goosebumps on people's skin. It doesn't yet flow to signing checks, but the conversation has started.

Anthony: 21:50

Yeah, no, we'll come back to this, the impasse point, but I sorry, first do you run programs like this too? Hey, what do you see and who goes, and what do you see?

Isira: 21:57

Yeah, well, like I said, I've seen this huge shift into more popular culture over the years. You know, I have executives turn up and get asked to speak at corporate kind of events and, like you, just don't know who's going to turn up. But I love, like you said, just sit them on the, you know, sit them on country, get them there. And that's a lot of the work I do. It is immersive. And I just want to pick up on the point about the language. And do we need to find a new language? Or is it about language?

Isira: 22:31

If we dig deeper, the thing that drives our shared narratives are actually our values. So if we dig deeper into the values and the principles behind these mindsets, what we start uncovering is, I guess, the either endemic kind of culture, the cultural mindset, or an intentional culture and mindset. So once we move into an immersive space and we get that real connection for ourselves, we have the capacity to truly listen and truly reflect and recognize the values that are driving us, and only then can we reassess those values to consider a new narrative and a new culture. And so all of the principles that we share collectively, our principles, our values, our practices, our habits it's all of these things that creates a collective culture. Our opportunity now is to ask do we continue doing that unconsciously, whereby corruption is able to have a very strong foothold, or do we do it intentionally? And this is why I am so passionate about working with organizations like this, because this is our job now. Let's make it intentional.

Jade: 23:56

Mm good deal Inter-ritual Can I talk to Ritual and so those values really are this sort of invisible version of what we need to embody, and we can embody it and take those values out of some esoteric form and put them into really practical, landed rituals, and that also then combines with the intention. So it's really about taking that intention and applying it to all of the things that we do every day, and doing it in community and doing it on country and doing it in, you know, the same psyche as the ecosystem that's holding us and actually creating repetition. Yeah, so we take something that's esoteric and invisible and we turn it into something that is tangible and real and repeated and incahesion.

Anthony: 24:47

Again, like we always did, yeah, Historically, as humans and beyond even so, people turn up. So the cohorts that we would like to connect with to shift these mainstream dynamics, if I'll just call it that they're willing to come to contexts like this. Then and yeah, well, this is it. Yeah, we're coming back to your manner, hold the chain. So they've had experiences where they come, but then you wonder how it translates. But before that, I want to grab on to the bit that's for us, in a sense, like for us, yeah, the nature of ritual that we might literally experiment with. And if we are talking about communing, maybe new language, but yeah, maybe transcending it as well then what are the things that we, the work, if you like, that we can do?

Isira: 25:40

Well, I guess everyone here is doing the work. You know our self-reflection, our capacity to question how we are living and what we are doing, and I love what you said. You know taking those values from the esoteric into you know the very grounded, practical actions that we take every single day. Let's not discard that as being not enough or irrelevant. Again, let's really recognize that every single thing we are doing our self individually is connected with the whole. And that is the work. It's us in our small circle. Yes, we're looking at how does this translate through to the macro level, and that's really important. But it starts right here, with every single one of us, what we prioritise, what we say. Yes, we're going to uphold this set of values and we do that as a collective. We empower the way forward for significant change. Mm.

Anthony: 26:44

Jade, and perhaps in a family context. Yeah, it's on a really practical level.

Jade: 26:48

I was sitting here playing with my leather band. I eat meat that may or may not work in this environment, but the truth is that I've eaten meat all my life because I've always grown my own food from seed to toilet, and this is something.

Anthony: 27:04

There's your next book title.

Jade: 27:06

Feet to toilet. Next book title they're seller this wristband that I've got around my wrist, I put on every day, and it's a piece of leather that I tanned myself from a cow that I culled myself and ate myself, and I eat meat, and so I take that quite seriously and I make sure that I honor the animal that it came from. And while I'm not always eating this particular animal, when I wear this and I put it on, what it reminds me is that I am pretty bloody insignificant and I am but merely one part of a very complex web, and actually I need to honor the tiny role that I have in it, and when I take a life, I need to take that seriously, and so that is something that I do every day. Another thing that I do every day when I put my moisturizer on or my sunscreen on is look in the mirror and say very earnestly life is so bloody joyful, but it is equally filled to the brim with ghastly things. Either of those may happen to me today, and I will be okay and I will be strong enough to hold that, and it's while I put my moisturizer on.

Jade: 28:09

I mentioned a moment ago that we need to redefine what enough looks like. And people say to me all the time what does it look like for you and what it looks like mostly for me? It can be very easily measured by very simple everyday things and we check in pretty regularly as a family. We have enough dinners and the kids will say to me we've clearly got too much of something right now because you've yelled all week. There's too much of that, and so that's a really good mechanism. My husband will say to me we haven't had sex for a very long time. There's too much of something and not enough of the things that actually matter. And we laugh about this. But the truth is, if you're head and your heart and your system and your rhythms and your daily processes are balanced and formed and within the community that holds you, that is enough. What more could we possibly need?

Jade: 29:01

We are well fed, we are in a safe country, we are surrounded by people who can hold us, even as we go into a place of not yet experienced but soon to be experienced, grief. I had this conversation with a friend as we were piling stones by the river on the weekend and she said how's your dad going? And I said I don't know when he'll die. It's any minute, maybe, I don't know. When she said you seem fine, I said I'm completely fine, but I won't be. And she said, okay, it's noted and I'll hold you and I don't have much to do with this woman on a day to day basis, but that is enough. And so let's reframe what this looks like and let's rebuild ritual on the really simple, basic day to day things and let's rewrite what we actually need.

Anthony: 29:46

Well said.

Jade: 29:48

Thank you. Now you're all gonna go have sex more often, aren't you why?

Anthony: 30:04

not, let's just call it Amanda. Back to you, so before we follow up a few threads that have sort of been pointing at you, you too have had behind your enormous success that is undoubtable Was a lot of personal work too. It's not just creating a workshop format that did the do, where things have worked, maybe lead in with some of the work that we're talking about here, and then how it plays out in ways that do work, before we confront perhaps some of the impasses that you're out at the moment.

Amanda: 30:44

So we were talking about this morning. So much the work is actually just how we show up and what we embody in that without even having to say anything. So for me I'm interesting like it's always interesting coming. I spent a lot of time down here and used to work the buyer and counsel. I always feel kind of like a bit of a fraud on stages like this because I'm not actually deeply embedded in a community like this where I'm growing. I mean, we know all our neighbours but we're living in the city. It's not the sort of lifestyle that you're talking about.

Amanda: 31:25

But there are other ways to connect and I think it doesn't matter where you are, there are ways to come back to those first principles around connecting with self, connecting with the earth, connecting with the people around you. So for me that was I did grow up in regional Australia. There's doing a lot of work to heal a lot of trauma from my childhood and owning that and regularly seeing someone to help me process that. That actually works through the body wisdom, not just the talking, and the head stuff, which I spend most of my time in. How do I listen to my body? So, using high-comy therapy and seeing a body worker, for example, meditation is important.

Amanda: 32:05

I've got to admit right now I'm not doing it and I probably should be, because I got sick and that's my body saying you're not actually being present and listening to what this piece of earth is wanting from you. So to be able to show up in very different rooms, I have to make sure I can shop and let go and open at a body, spirit and a mind level. So if I'm not okay and I know I'm not doing the work is when I start getting judgy and I think if they could only just do this or if I could just convince it as soon as I do that I'm completely ineffective. So it's the work we have to keep coming back to self, to home, that allows us to connect open, like the contradiction in that is, and everyone's got to find their own way. With that time in nature, I think we kind of know the sorts of things that work for most people.

Anthony: 32:53

Yeah, yeah, and so you found yourselves in even just Gladstone. If we just take that story in contexts of real tension, where you've then challenged yourself to bring that presence to the room and then seen its effect, is the sense of it.

Amanda: 33:14

The sense of what that feels like.

Anthony: 33:15

No what it does to those people in conflictual or pressured situations like how does it play out for a facilitator to go into those situations.

Amanda: 33:26

Probably the best example was back in April of 2021. We hosted the Central Queensland Energy Future Summit, which was 150 people in a room to have a public conversation to acknowledge that the energy system was changing. Not talking about coal, renewable energy, just the energy system was changing and the reason we had that was because, after the 2019 federal election, when there was a actual violent clash on the ground in Claremont in Central Queensland over the Adani Carmichael mine so a clash between pro-mine and anti-Adani protesters nobody in Central Queensland could talk about energy. You couldn't use the word energy, let alone transition or just transition, and what happened was at the end of 2020, sorry, this is getting to be a long story, I'll get faster. So I was getting asked. I did a workshop with council. I did a workshop. I met with unions in a separate room. I'd met with environmental groups. We were talking about the next federal election this is in 2020 and the coal-fired electricity energy company was getting me to do some strategy work with the board and a renewable energy company and in all of those rooms over a period of two weeks, people said nobody can talk about this. Somebody has to start talking about it because there's economic risks and we're gonna miss out on opportunity if we can't have a conversation about it. So I said to each one of them great, start the conversation. And they're like no, no, no, no, we can't be the ones because if we start the conversation like those people are gonna be immediately turned off. It didn't matter who I was talking to government unions, environment groups, whoever. And so two days before Christmas I sent them an email and said well, you trust us. What if we put ourselves? We were an organization of two and a half people. What if we host an organizer? What if we host you and put you all on stage to say what you're saying behind closed doors but you can't say publicly? And they went sure, if the risks are new, go for it, we'll fund it. So we spoke to 50 people and it laid up to that.

Amanda: 35:24

Every conversation was negative. It was fear. There are people in tears, people worried about losing their jobs, people angry, people, suspicious, saying who are you? What are you trying to get out of this? And on the day that we held it, I walked into a room of 150 people in this auditorium and everyone was nervous. And that nervous energy just hit me like a wave and I thought shit, what have I done? If people bring that negativity to this? This is gonna be. It's actually gonna make things worse.

Amanda: 35:51

And this woman from council walked up to me, grabbed me by the shoulders and said everyone here trusts you. That's why we're here. It doesn't matter what happens, just thank you. Whatever happens happens. And that was all the permission I needed. And I stood up and said look, you all care about this place. You've turned up. Can I ask that you be kind and curious, ask a question before you jump to a conclusion and we'll figure it out from here. And I saw the room relax.

Amanda: 36:20

But it took me to show up and trust myself for other people to trust me. At the end of the day I felt like I'd been plugged into high voltage transmission lines all day and I haven't told people this before. But I actually went, I actually left, I didn't go to the drinks and I got back to the hotel room and I started throwing up and it was like this purging of the energy in the room and I spent all night with Beaver and throwing up and then I'd meditate and my system would come, I'd sleep, I'd wake up, I'd do another purge, but the next day I felt the clearest I've ever felt and the next day everyone else was clear too. Applause, I can't believe you just made me say that on camera. Yeah, that's right, we got the scoop. What do people in Gladstone got to think that's?

Anthony: 37:13

right, it's out of the bag now. So I feel like I have to bring up what Tim Hollow got from you in the book. He said what was the secret ingredient, if anything, could you put the successes down to in these ways? And you had a line that you said to him that's resonated for him since, and my good self to the truth. So let's trot it out here Humility. There we are, back to where we started. Don't ask people to pick a side.

Amanda: 37:42

You know, I don't remember saying that to him. He raises that all the time, like did I say that? He's like, I've got you on record. But I think, actually what I said, I've been thinking about a lot. I said he was asking me about facilitation and you know, you know what do you do when people pick a side? And I think I said, don't, don't put them in a situation where they have to pick a side. I think is actually what I said.

Amanda: 38:04

And you do that by getting back to values, but the shared values. If people are in the room, it's because they're worried about something. How do you get to a point where it's like, well, why are we here together? And in the work we do, it's about the place. So you're all here because you care about this place and you care about this community. You have different ideas about how to do it, but let's come back to this. What do you want for this place? And that's when you get to the values that are shared and you orient people around the problem or the challenge. And I would say play the ball, not the player. This isn't about trying to make other people do something. This is actually how we're going to work together to co-create a different way forward, that we might not even know what that solution is yet, and that's exactly.

Anthony: 38:47

it's a big part. Hey, not not predetermined. Jade, I want to bounce to you for a sec because you're experimenting with I'll just call them similar processes, broadly speaking, where there's tension and paradigm change effectively at play, and you talked before about how it's seeing it come through to rubber hitting road. It's not quite there. What do you think about now? What do you feel like you're embarking on to try and bridge that?

Jade: 39:15

We are actually actively not just thinking, but undertaking a pilot program within our team at the moment that will then be extended to funders that we're calling the regenerative leadership program, and starting with yourselves.

Jade: 39:28

Starting with us. I think maybe that's why I've got a sore shoulder, maybe not. I'm looking at the person that facilitates this and I mean we're not necessarily the best example, because we're fairly open and operating in a way that is a long way along this path already, and our funders those that are close already are, but those that are on the slightly more peripheral are not. I think the reality is, until you get people to change their paradigm, your ability to actually get them on the same page is nearly impossible. You might think you're there.

Jade: 40:06

The other thing that we're discovering is that you might think you're there with the person that can sign the checkbook, but then there are all of these processes that sit behind, and so you've got layers and layers and layers of paradigm that needs to be changed, and so this is slow work, which is difficult when we're looking down the barrel of six of nine planetary boundaries already surpassed.

Jade: 40:26

And so there is this constant balancing act between feeling like you might throw up because you're holding so much energy and so much expectation and so much hope, and you're doing that for people who are facing the reality of the ecological crisis every single day. Our farmers are really feeling this, like other community groups, aren't necessarily having the opportunity to experience, and so you're holding that expectation while you're also holding the hands of people that are undergoing something massive. You know they have generations of people that have told them that success looks like figures in a bank account or titles on a business card, and so you really are changing one person at a time, and that conversation is slow and that conversation requires patience and it requires lack of judgment, and you kind of got to keep coming back to your center. So I don't know what that looks like long term, but we've really got to find a way to expedite the process.

Jade: 41:34

And other than putting them on country and getting them to truly experience it. I don't know how you do it.

Anthony: 41:40

No well, that's right, but we have the kernels here that the processes that are being have been are being experimented with, and the internal preparation for that and the care we need to invest in ourselves and each other in terms to do this, etc. It's like, don't try this on yourself.

Jade: 41:54

Yeah, yeah, the holding of a team that is going through this journey is enormous. My husband said to me two weeks ago you have never really cried a lot and in the last few weeks you've cried a lot. You're just, you're holding the energy of a shifting group and that's really confronting cultural change. Cultural change? Yeah, and it requires the clock.

Anthony: 42:14

But this is the ironic thing, you can't do it by the clock.

Jade: 42:16

Nope.

Anthony: 42:18

It's interesting you can?

Jade: 42:19

you can look at seasons. So as a farmer, I function around seasons every 24 hours, and so you can't help but think we need to actually bring our community with us in that seasonal way as well. And our ancestral knowledge, our cellular knowledge knows this stuff, and so tapping back into that with confidence and comfort is heart led, and even when it's a bit uncomfortable in the beginning, it shifts.

Anthony: 42:52

Well, the all the enormous success stories in regeneration that we know of, or in regenerative agriculture, just to use that terminology broadly here, come that way. They surpass all expectation because they tap. And that's, that's the paradox, almost the riddle. I think that by tapping that things can just form, but it comes from not wanting or expecting the form. Isoara, what's next for you, in a way, is there something next that you're thinking about experimenting with in these contexts that you find yourself with people?

Isira: 43:24

Well, I would say. Next is a continuum. Yeah, so in particular, I work with a model that I teach people and in incorporate into the you know the spaces where people come to talks or immersive retreats, and we go to country and I take it to communities, etc. And it's it's a fundamental model that is relevant to every single human on the planet because it looks at what are the primary elements of our lived experience that tie us all together, that underpin creation and sustainability. So I dug back into my own ancestral history but in doing so I discovered that this particular map, if you like, is what all indigenous people worked with throughout all ages. So it's based on the central tenant that everything is one, and that ties together four fundamental pillars nature, country, our connection with it, where we're born, how we grow with nature. We emerge from earth. We didn't land here.

Isira: 44:43

Number two is the kin ties kinship. Number three is spirit that we're all emerging from what seems like the esoteric, the imaginary realm, from formlessness into form, and we're all a part of that. We all have a unique soul and we're all part of the same one great spirit. And then the fourth pillar is the cosmic laws. No one of us is outside of the laws of creation. So if we have these four pillars well grounded in our awareness and we live in a cord with them on a regular, daily basis, to recognize that every action we have now has a flow on a ripple effect and will impact generations ahead of us, my job is to know am I being a good ancestor? We're talking about how it translates through into reality with systems and communities and governments. What I'm saying is, when we reconnect with those fundamental principles and we see our life and our well-being depends on it, we do have the way.

Anthony: 45:58

Interesting here here. It's a familiar tale too, amanda. Alright, in the few minutes we've got left, we've touched on the impasses that you find yourself with, the bit of a retreat to the devil we know, which we know is entirely normal, lamentable as it might be, but this is what we all do if we're not doing the work, and we know the ways we can go about the work. It's also worth saying you've just been on a church-heel fellowship going around the world looking to where, conversely, people are going to, exactly where they need to go. When I say they need to go, it's where stuff works, it's where transitions are happening well and justly, and so forth. So give us a flavour of what you've seen and what we can. So I should be doing here.

Amanda: 46:40

Yeah, I mean all over the world the systems are cracking. I think that's obvious and it's obvious to people in very high levels of government, who I also have the privilege of working with CEOs of companies. So there's a question around it's not working, so what next? And there's some really great examples where governments are actually going. They're not doing it perfectly, but they are saying, okay, if this is about well-being and not about economic growth.

Amanda: 47:07

So in Scotland they've actually implemented a well-being economy framework, which actually means every single department has to identify well-being like targets around well-being. They have budget line items attached to it. They have to report and monitor it. So it's built into the system. But to give you an example of what that looks like, they also at the same time, have adjust transitions around the energy stuff, around not leaving anyone behind. So every department has to report every year on how are they improving well-being and, if they're not, what are they going to do about it, how they're supporting a just transition. How that's played out is one of the first things they did around the energy transition was to actually improve the households, improve housing for low income households by putting in insulation and switching over heating to low energy options. So that's where you start. You start with a justice lens. It doesn't seem like a big thing, but if that's your logic, it flows through everything. Then you start thinking about the food system differently. So that's happening in Scotland also, spain's doing the same thing.

Anthony: 48:15

And many other places like it. Even I mean our treasury, even for what it's worth at the moment, is embarking on a similar process. It's nascent.

Amanda: 48:22

Yeah, so measuring what matters framework. So at least they're talking about measuring it. We're actually going to be doing some work next year to actually go. What's the next step around actually getting that into the system within the department?

Anthony: 48:34

Yes, which needs to root back to the community processes you know too well. Of course, this is an opportunity to go on and keep well, speak to these guys while they're here, of course, but then, yeah, keep following up on their work. It's awesome. We're really just touching it here, Jade, maybe I'll come to you for a last word. Have you got a few? So we were in Margaret River together at this regenerative agriculture conference, which was awesome. It was another example of a building sense of things over there which really did connect a few dots to in terms of the national movement. You were one of the reasons that could happen, and we had a screening of Rachel's farm the night before the conference. You, Rachel and I, spoke on stage after it and you talked to the culture of the movement. You felt like it was really shifting. So, for everything we're saying and everything we're trying to embark upon, you felt this shift and you went as far as say the tipping point is nigh, or here. Do you want to speak to that?

Jade: 49:33

Did I. Yes, it's on the podcast this week, I think, and it's a little bit like and I think I said this at the time too there's a yellow barina and you've bought a yellow barina. Suddenly, that's all you see.

Anthony: 49:44

You did that's the problem. Are we deluded?

Jade: 49:47

Are we deluded? Are we deluded? I think the reason we've reached a tipping point is because there has been this subtle shift. I then went and did another. I'm a bit like a conference start at the moment.

Jade: 49:58

I then went and did another conference for life, and we heard from all of our grandfathers who said I got into it because there was a crisis of some sort, a health crisis or an ecological crisis, whatever it was. There was something that gave me my a-ha and made me change it. The next generation, who are also in the room, said I got into it because it just makes sense. I've got elders who are showing me the way, and when I sit and observe, I know that this is actually what I'm being asked to do, and so it's also financially viable. And so there's this very subtle shift that makes me feel confident that there is indeed a tipping point underway, and I think it's also that we and now I'm talking food systems but it's also that, when you look at the entire supply chain, there are paths to market that are supported across the supply chain, that are being supported for the regenerative work that's being done, and it is going to come at a higher cost, but the alternative is an ecological cost that actually no one voids everything.

Anthony: 50:56

And we can't pay. We can't pay that cost.

Jade: 50:58

Yes, so the tipping point is inevitable, change is inevitable, so let's embrace that.

Anthony: 51:04

I see those stories everywhere too, like next generations, even in like abattoir settings, and these are musicians and people with prospects. It's like it's completely shifting in this way. That is a great way to end. Please thank our guests Isira Aunty Jinta, Jade Miles, Dr Amanda Cahill. T hat was Dr Amanda Cahill, Jade Miles and Isira Aunty Jinta. For more on these folk and Farmers Footprint Australia see the links in the show notes. I've put a few photos of this session on the website too, while, again, many more are available on Patreon for subscribing members. A nd leading into the festival,

Anthony: 51:45

I felt compelled to release the part of my episode with Tim Hollo that talked about Amanda's work and that line. T hat link's in the show notes too, along with one to the full episode that details all sorts of other outstanding success stories too. Great thanks once again to the generous supporters of the podcast for making it all possible. If you have been thinking about becoming a member or other kind of supporter, please do join us. Just head to the website or the show notes and follow the prompts. Thanks again, and thanks as always for sharing the podcast with friends and continuing to rate it on your favoured app. It all helps. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden off the soundtrack to the film Regenerating Australia, and at the top you heard Green Shoots by The Nomadics. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.