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Read the full transcript here.

Morag Gamble:

Welcome to the Sense-Making in a Changing World Podcast, where we explore the kind of thinking we need to navigate a positive way forward. I’m your host Morag Gamble, permaculture educator, and global ambassador, filmmaker, eco villager, food forester, mother, practivist and all-around lover of thinking, communicating and acting regeneratively. For a long time it’s been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life, we first need to shift our thinking. The way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature, self, and community is the core. So this is true now more than ever and even the way change is changing, is changing. Unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace. So how do we make sense of this? To know which way to turn, to know what action to focus on, so our efforts are worthwhile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection? What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation.

In this podcast, I’ll share conversations with my friends and colleagues, people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking, connecting and acting. These wonderful people are thinkers, doers, activists, scholars, writers, leaders, farmers, educators, people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post-COVID, climate-resilient, socially just future could look like. Their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to compost and digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas, connections and actions. Together we’ll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design, regenerative thinking, community action, earth repair, eco-literacy, and much more. I can’t wait to share these conversations with you.

Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face. I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. I’ve seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural, from refugee camps to suburbs. It helps people make sense of what’s happening around them and to learn accessible design tools, to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration. This is why I’ve created the Permaculture Educators Program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching. We sponsor global Permayouth programs, women’s self help groups in the Global South and teens in refugee camps. So anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the Permaculture Education Institute and our Permaculture Educators Program. If you’d like to find more about permaculture, I’ve created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and also how you can make it your livelihood as well as your way of life. We’d love to invite you to join a wonderfully inspiring, friendly, and supportive global learning community. So I welcome you to share each of these conversations, and I’d also like to suggest you create a local conversation circle to explore the ideas shared in each show and discuss together how this makes sense in your local community and environment. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land in which I meet and speak with you today, the Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

My guest on this episode of Sense-Making in a Changing World is an award-winning educator with more than 25 years of experience of educating in universities, professional organizations and community. Her passion is teaching people their potential agency in contributing to a thriving future. In her career, she’s been a consultant, a collaborator, a researcher, an academic working in regenerative development, placemaking, biophilia, urban greenery, sustainable development, and all areas that look at the messy complex problems in our cities with degrees in botany engineering, architecture, and a certificate in governance. She brings an interdisciplinary approach to all her work and is also now a member of the Permaculture Education Institute. My guest is also the chair of the board of Greenfleet. She is a strategic advisor for the Hunter Diversification Program. She’s an adjunct fellow of the city’s History Research Institute at Griffith University and honorary fellow of the Melbourne Sustainability Society Institute at the University of Melbourne. Both those universities where I studied too. And she’s co-author of Designing for Hope: Pathways to Regenerative Sustainability, and as well as that to Dominique and I are part of something called the Regenerative Songlines Australia project which you’ve heard me talk about on previous shows. So it’s my great pleasure to welcome to Sense-Making in a Changing World, Dr. Dominique Hes. Just ask you the first question about what is it that’s maybe concerning you and motivating you to do the kind of work that you do in the world? Is that a place to start?

Dominique Hes:

Yeah. Look, my mind goes off in all sorts of various directions. It all surrounds potential and the loss of potential and as I say, the impact of the current things are not going well in our world and how they’re impacting the future potential of young people, increased suicides, increased kind of turning to escapism, the anonymity of the screen and kind of hiding and the loss of some of the relationality of the face-to-face and the accountability of the small village and so forth. Those are the things that concerned me. I loved what Jonathan Dawson said in one of your earlier podcasts around the shifts, that we need to shift from that transactional mentality to that relational mentality. And I see that in this period of COVID has, we’ve longed for that relationality, but it has supported the transactional nature, the hiding behind our screens and so forth and so that concerns me. I’ve seen the increase in extreme aspects of people. So the people that have been neurotic have been more neurotic, the people that have been outspoken have been more outspoken, it just seems to have made everything more. And so, I worry about that, but most of all, it’s around that loss of potential, that loss of potential of connecting, of listening, of spending time together and celebrating and really feeling the impact of what’s happening in the world, the good and the bad. What gives me the most hope is the increase in indigenous voice in the conversations that we’re having. And I don’t know how we support that, the capacity for them to be part of the conversation is that there is so much need and stretched so thin, and there’s so much trauma to overcome. I hope I can play a role in that. So that gives me a lot of hope, there is a general sense of, because the way we were always doing things has been disrupted and disrupted of quite a lot of people reevaluating what’s important. That fills me with hope. But what we haven’t been that great at and again, this is where I was listening to a previous podcast with Millie. And is that imagining of what the future could look like creating that longing that Rob Hopkins talks about? What do we long for? What future can we create that we just long for? And therefore, of course, we’re going to go in that direction and we haven’t been really good at that. It’s very hard to imagine how things can be different. And so the other thing that fills me with hope is all of the little experiments that people are doing to try and see what that could look like, a little placemaking activations that are happening, the permaculture stuff that’s popping up everywhere and where people are retreating from the nine to five, 5, 6 days a week and going, no, actually I’ll just do three days or four days, and I’ll spend time in the garden and now do more locally. So those things fill me with hope. And what we need to do is create a momentum around that experimentation of what the future could look like to kind of come together into this story of the future. I’ve been listening to Rob Hopkins from what if to what’s next? I don’t know if you’ve listened to those podcasts, but something like that is grounded in how it’s already happening. So I love the Paddock Project, for example, which is a project at Castlemaine where there’s 27 homes designed on that one and a half hectares and we’ve designed it at their kind of terraces and by putting them quite close together, you leave that room for nature, you leave the room for food growing and so forth. And we initially did a citizen science project where we looked at what’s the land, how’s the soil, how’s the water, bird survey, plant survey, soil survey, water survey, did the quadrants and counted the weeds. And we did that across three seasons. And then we’ve done the development that’s halfway complete. And with the landscape architects designed to bring back five epic species, the growling grass frog, the powerful owl, the sugar glider, the legless lizard, and the growling grass frog, and that’s kind of our measures for success. And the communities reported three of those back, including a six, which we hadn’t designed for the echidna now has decided to move in. So the powerful owl has been spotted, the growling grass frog and the golden sun moth. The latter was already there. We just improved, we’re just working on improving its habitat, securing it.

Morag Gamble:

That’s one of the things that really is, so I live in Crystal Waters, that eco village has been designed along permaculture principles for about 30 odd years. And I go for walks every day in the afternoon, along the river. And I’ve noticed over the years, how much more like a forest it’s become, it’s this beautiful place. I take it the same track just about every day, but every day it’s different. And I noticed those seasonal changes and the new animals coming through. And there’s, I think we’ve got 170 species of birds that now call this home and 30 odd species of frogs, and yeah, the echidna and the platypus, but it was just a degraded paddock before, it was like a paddock as well. And this transformation, this kind of something that you described about this, I guess that word thriving, something that you’re using. I know you’ve, I’ve seen your work talking about placemaking, but also this thrivability like how do we, like, what is the essence of designing places where people can thrive in this world in a way that’s nourishing people and nourishing the planet simultaneously. And I think these are some of the key questions as the population continues to grow. And as we need to be working desperately on regenerative work, not just sustainability work.

Dominique Hes:

Yeah. So the thriveable, so we can create the conditions for thriving, but whether you thrive is your own choice, it depends on where you ask them, how enabled you are to have agency in partaking in that and I guess I haven’t thought of this before. It’s just popped into my mind, but there is a healing of trauma that could be a blockage to allowing ourselves to thrive, that is something that I’ll just need to spend more time looking into. But so the first thing is to have a system of niches, lots of different ways where people can find where they belong and where they can be their best selves. There was a lovely podcast with Food Connect at Brisbane and how their business model changed when they looked at how they were doing their leasing agreements. And as soon as they gave people the capacity and the trust of changing the leasing agreements in a way that helped them to be innovative and so forth, and they felt nurtured, they blossomed and so much more came from that trust. And that opening up, that was completely different, and then it’s those sorts of things, but that model may not work somewhere else. And it’s sort of that sort of small scale, relational negotiation, where you find what enables somebody to really turn up, to be themselves, best selves. And it’s, you know, it’s realizing a friend of mine, Elena Bondareva says that the irresistible future is not a future where everybody lives at Crystal Waters or everybody lives in Hong Kong or Singapore or wherever it is that you can find a place where you can contribute to the world in a way that is thriving for you. So you may like to work 60 hours a week and party hard. But you are enabled to do that in a way that nourishes you and you may be a bookworm that just wants to do the minimum amount of work and just hide at home reading books and pottering around in your garden and that’s okay too. And you may want to have a lively, crazy family of, I don’t know, 20 kids, I’m being crazy here, or you may want to choose not to have children and there needs to be an ecosystem where that whole myriad of ways of living and I don’t know. And then the other part of me goes, oh, Dominic, they’d be so crazy. We need rules, we need, you know,this is the Dutch coming out of me, not everybody can’t go have 20 kids. That’s ridiculous. What are you saying?

Morag Gamble:

But not everyone would choose to, that’s the thing though, isn’t it? But I wonder, like drawing, so as an architect and as someone who has looked deeply at the built environment, how do you see us being able to bring about those changes in conditional patterns that enable more of that kind of way of moving forward, of engaging people in re-imagining their spaces? Where does that change start to happen? Like we can imagine sort of start to think what it might look like, but where is the change? Where is that happening?

Dominique Hes:

So as we spoke about earlier, part of it is to have the models of what change could look like that we can turn to, part of it is building the capacity to see the changes needed, and part of it is holding a safe space for critiquing the current ways that are insufficient. And again, that is all, there are so many people thinking about this and this is by no means the truth, if there is such a thing. But from my research and my work, the last sort of 500 years, industrial revolution sort of time has been a time of trying to control the world to keep ourselves safe, trying to understand the world and using the best tools that we had to do that and that was all about breaking down and controlling the bits, putting in the rules, making people behave, taking away agency because, you know,if people will just follow the rules, then we will be okay. And that works fine if the world is a linear mechanistic type system, but it is a living, changing, unpredictable complex system. And that’s what we’re seeing right now. We’re seeing that the way that we were trying to keep ourselves safe, trying to prosper, wasn’t aligned with how the world is really working. And so we’re seeing the limitations of the last 500 years of how we’ve worked. And when I say us, I’m talking Western industrialized, educated kind of people, certainly not our first nations people who have always held on to the understanding of the complexity of life and nature and Gaia, the world. But you know, us, industrialized Westerners, out of the best of our intents, I don’t think anybody sets out to destroy the world. They set out to stay safe and to help their families eat and thrive and be successful, it’s just, because of that. Our measures of success have oversimplified and because their measures of success have oversimplified, it means that we haven’t considered the whole implication of everything. And so your question was, where do we start on this journey? And partly it is to see that what is happening now is a completely normal part of human development, which is, we thought something would work, we tried it, we’re starting to see the limitations of how it’s working and now we’re negotiating what the new thing looks like. It’s not saying that what’s come past is wrong and evil. It’s just saying it was insufficient. And in 20 years time, we’ll be looking at this conversation now and saying, it’s insufficient. You know, this is just the way of smart, intuitive, innovative, creative questioning intellects, trying to make sense of a complex world. So I think it’s having the case studies of what difference could look like, feeling safe to critique the way things are working now and having ways to kind of innovate and explore new ways of being. And for me, it starts with the simple mind flip of, instead of what can I get from this situation, so what can I give to this situation? And it’s just that, that simple reframing of, if I take from a system, it weakens and I need the system to survive, so if I give to the system, it strengthens and therefore it’s better for me as well. And it’s just that systemic thinking, which isn’t new, it’s just something we forgot, you know, want to stay safe and to control. So that’s a long answer to your question.

Morag Gamble:

Oh, no, thank you for that. So I want to come back to this concept of design as a designer, as a designer of human settlements. I’m fascinated by this because I came also out of Melbourne University doing landscape architecture and urban design and environmental planning, but moved very quickly into permaculture to look at ways of how we can be looking at that whole system. I saw it as a very accessible way to share this way of thinking, but I wonder from the design profession in a way seems to be something that is about, you know, mapping out a territory or controlling something like how do we shift the narrative on design to open it out into something that is so much more accessible when you’re designing a suburb or a settlement or a new urban space? Like how do, how is the profession of design, as you said, because you’ve been so much more in the actual profession of it than I have, I’ve sort of been around the community edges of it. Where do you see the leading edge from a professional stance of design, human settlement design in a way that brings nature and wellbeing right into the heart of the conversations.

Dominique Hes:

So, I have to say, I don’t have a design degree. I have a PhD in architecture. My master’s is in engineering and my undergrad’s in science. So I have a botany undergrad, I have almost a master’s in engineering. I was just doing my thesis and it turned into my PhD, and then they wouldn’t let me graduate with the masters because they couldn’t be doing two at the same time cause that would, you know, explode the rules somehow. And so I have a PhD in sustainable buildings, within the architecture faculty at RMIT, having said that, I have been teaching into the design profession for the last 15 or so years. So I do have a bit of an insight but I tend to support designers more than, well, I would argue that we’re all designers. I think permaculture is an ultimate act of design in that I see designers are bigger, a bigger toolbox than just creating urban built habitat environments. I see it as a way of harmonizing various flows and opportunities and potential of place into mostly yes, a physical artifact but sometimes, the outcome doesn’t have to be a physical artifact. It could be an intention and a way of working with a place. There’s a great example of an environmental education group that wanted to build an environmental education research center building and then realized after going through the process that they didn’t need that, they just needed to be able to bring people to the site, to engage with the site and actually do the work, not have a building to sit in and learn about the work. And so, I see design actually, so my botany degree helped me to understand ecological systems and my engineering degree helped me to understand human design mechanistic systems. And then I think the design degree enables you to see how our creativity can be the harmonizing factor between how we as humans and our way engage with nature. And it’s way as much as saying that we are nature as well, but, you know, it’s one of those funny things where I think, we are nature and where at some point along the evolutionary path and who knows what comes, what we’re evolving into, but at the moment, and nature moves towards complexity and so forth. And so why are we here? Why has nature created us? What is our role? And I think that design, that creativity, that ability to look back and learn and trial things means that we’re a bit more responsive than nature is. We’ve taken that too far, where we tend to do things too quickly without actually testing. And we try to do things all at once, and, you know, there’s urgency, let’s fix it all at once. It leads to solutions like, let’s see the atmosphere, you know, global, which, that’s not, that’s, you test it in small little bits and you see how that works, and you see how the system responds because we are in such a complex system that no modeling will ever let us know what the consequences are of big things. But that’s where I see the hope, I see the hope in design, so I thank you for that question. To answer the question of what are some good examples in sort of built environment? So I’ve been working on the idea of bringing regenerative development and placemaking together, and that’s where regenerative development allows you to understand the context and potential of a place that helps you to look at the history. It brings together the narratives and looks at the flows. What brings a place to life? What’s the, just like a child, what was the potential in the child? What is the potential of the site? And then the placemaking is where you bring the stakeholders of a place, nature included, and you say, will that work here? And if it works here, what do you want to do? You know, does this inspire you? And how would you like to see this manifest itself here? And so that’s, for me, very hopeful. So you work from the potential of a place, and then you work with the people of the place to say, well, what makes sense for you here? Well, let’s co-create what that could look like here. And so that’s the placemaking is the, where it touches the ground geographically, and the regenerative development is that bringing together the understanding of a place, being able to, it’s like when you meet your partner, you have to build a relationship, you need to understand that partner really well before, you know, whether you want to walk together into the future. I see that a little bit as regenerative development, giving us the tools to sit down and have that cup of tea with the partner of this place and work out together who this place is. And so I give the example of my daughter, she’s kind of quirky and arty, and I may want to make her a tennis star and spend a lot of time and effort and coaching and bribery and tears and anger, trying to make her be a tennis star. But at the end of the day, she just wants to pot her away in her art room. And so I can have a lot less energy, frustration, money loss, time loss, by just letting her, giving her the tools, the paints and the space to just be in the time to just be arty. And so I think I see that’s the same kind of thing, but at a scale.

Morag Gamble:

I guess, I mean, it’s what you said early on, it’s about that relationality of it, isn’t it? It’s the relationship that we have with each other, with things that we love and care about and how that connects with place. I wonder whether you could just kind of unpack, placemaking a bit more for those who are listening, what does, how does placemaking, how do we support more placemaking to happen? Because I think one of the things that we see a lot is this complete disconnection of place, we’re moving from, you know, when you come into a new era, it just gets, you know, like I see that around here in the Sunshine Coast, is just areas, just getting absolutely cleared of anything that could be recognizable and just cookie cutter, settlements being plunked on the landscape. There’s no sense of place whatsoever. So what is the essence of place-making and how is it possible to inspire people to engage in that when they’re in the midst of something like that, or is it something that needs to happen before that even happens so that there’s a bringing together of people in connection with place, so that, that grading of the landscape doesn’t begin in the first instance, maybe just explore that idea a bit, because I’ve often thought I wish I had a possibility to be part of a team as much as I don’t like those developments that are happening. I would like to be part of a conversation before that all happens to explore that.

Dominique Hes:

There’s a lovely development called Brolga Lakes. I don’t know if you know of it, up your way, where the development was created in a way to restore the lakes, and the bird habitat and so forth. Michael Myers is the developer, and he also developed another area where he bought back the sand mining rights as part of the development, so that he could protect the beach for the turtles and so forth. And so you know, that there are some developers out there that are, and he worked with PlaceAgency, the organization I was part of a few years ago and a bunch of students to do placemaking work there. But just to answer the fundamentals of placemaking. So there’s a practice that started here in Melbourne to a certain extent, and in New York to a certain extent, building on the work of Jane Jacobs and Alexander, just looking at patterns of place and looking at New York and activation and here in Victoria, [inaudible] and the laneways and things like that, that’s kind of how it started. And it was that idea of, if you can work with people to have some agency over where they are, then they will come up with the ideas and they will drive the ideas that can bring life to a place with all of the social benefits of decreased crime, eyes on the street, care for place, belonging, attachment, and all of those sorts of things. But it’s always been a practice more than a kind of academic field that’s been written about and so forth. So it’s just been people that tend to be from the planning, tend to be from landscape, tend to be from development, local councils that are really wanting to work with their communities. And it is sometimes driven by, you know, a down run part of town, main street dying, unsafe part of town. Sometimes, it’s led to gentrification and things like that. I would argue that in those cases, placemaking, that has done, that was short term rather than thinking of placement. And this is where place making and regenerative developments coming together. Placemaking tends to be the short-term, regenerative tends to be about the long-term thriving and capacity building of everyone. Place-making tends to be little activation things that bring things together, and sometimes, in your attempt to reduce crime and so forth, bringing in more greenery, and so forth, you end up increasing property values and you would end up attracting development and investment, which then pushes out the lower income people. And so, that’s not ideal. What you want to do is create a system through which everybody is enabled and that whole idea of niches to stay and thrive and be continued part of the community. But you know, within the critique of the current system, in which we’re working often the time and money pressures and the way profits and returns and so forth are driven, it stops the ability to have that nuanced engagement with place. It means that developers come in and scrape clean the land and start from a blank slate because that’s quicker and therefore cheaper. And therefore there’s more reward at the end and so it is part of the system that isn’t serving us. People are doing it with the best of intents and to achieve what they see as success. It’s just that success is not a service to life, it’s a service to something that was simplified to help us manage the complexity of the world within a mechanistic way of thinking.

Morag Gamble:

That’s a really good point there, you know, what is it that we’re in service of, and I think that, that intent, I guess, that’s to why I like things like permaculture, because right upfront it’s going on earth care, people care, fair share. It is like that clear intent at a different outset that you’re in service to the earth, wellbeing people on the planet and in a social and ecological really just way. And then everything kind of flows from that. So I suppose that is a really important part of it. You could take place making, like you’re saying, and that can have different effects depending on what the, where the essence of your drive for engaging in that is. But I love the way that you’ve described how, including it with regenerative development, is shifting the narrative around that as well or bringing it into the kind of the realm that we need now. And I wonder whether maybe we can kind of shift around because there’s something about a different place that you’re working with now, with the Gubbi Gubbi land up here. Can you talk a little bit about what’s happening there because that’s a different kind of place altogether? That’s a phenomenal new project that you’re involved in.

Dominique Hes:

Mm. I wonder whether we almost need to make a separate one for that, so I can prepare the comments and make sure that what I say I’m allowed to say, because there is everything I know. And then there is the bits that I’m allowed to say, because all of, you know, we haven’t got it signed off by the state government. But I can say in a high level, and you can cut out that bit in between and have a longer session, that describes that there, so the stuff that’s online, obviously the videos and the Gubbi Gubbi talking through their reaction to being invited to be part of this project is all public and the intense to, well, the fact that we’re working together with Queensland Trust for Nature on a piece of old pine plantation, to restore the ecosystems of the place with the Gubbi Gubbi in such a way that they can bring their cultural practice back to the land and that they are an integral part and an integral beneficiary to the restoring of this land through carbon offsetting. So we’re taking the carbon offsets to revegetate this land together with the Gubbi Gubbi. So I can say all of those sorts of things. And it’s placemaking because it is about a place and it’s connected to the stakeholders through which it has cultural and social meaning, the Gubbi Gubbi. It is, and that partly is regenerative too but then when we come to the ceremonies and the abilities to share the story on the land and do the work that that’s where the place and the negotiation of the details. So the intent is the regenerative bit, which is how do we bring vitality back to this land? How do we bring capacity socially and ecologically to this place? That’s the regenerative bit that the placemaking is the, come and sit with us and let’s dream forward how we can do this here, the seeds, the seeds we need to plant in the soil, the waterways, the weeds, we need to remove, the songs we need to sing, those sorts of conversations.But the details on what might need to be [inaudible].

Morag Gamble:

We’ll come back to that, we’ll come back to that one. So that’s kind of something that you were involved with, as the chair of the board of Greenfleet. And also you’ve been talking about it in the Regenerative Songlines Australia, which you were a co-founder of that, is that right? Or a group that kind of launched it.

Dominique Hes:

It emerged. If there were a mommy and daddy to it, it would be Jason Twill and Charles Marshall, and if there were some grandparents there, some old fellows that keeping us in line that would be Anne and Mary, and a whole swag of country behind. So yeah, auntie Mary Graham, and, auntie Paulina, I don’t even know if I have permission to call them auntie,I don’t know them that well, but I hold them in the hugest of respects and they’ve kept to sound honest. And Michelle Maloney, who has really held it safe through its development, also it’s supporting the website, organizing the meetings, herding the cats, and

Morag Gamble:

It described a bit about what it is to you and what does that mean for the work you’re doing.

Dominique Hes:

It’s still evolving. The intent came from an International Directorate from the Commonwealth of Nations, which was to develop Regenerative Songlines throughout its colonies. You can imagine that that came to Australia and the elders went, right, okay, let’s not call it a roadmap, let’s look at this from what it could mean for us. And so, I think it was auntie Paulina who suggested Songlines and it’s the intent, and this is my understanding of where the potential that I see in it, is to create a network of people that are working on regenerative projects, on country and sharing what they’re doing. Many of them are indigenous led or co developed with indigenous people, some of them aren’t. And we’re still negotiating because it’s only just emerged. And so it’s still kind of that wobbly chick trying to hold this wobbly head up, I think. And I hope with lots of care and nurture and big fat worms, that you know, and being held safe by the elders, we will find a role for it, but it’s that intent, the song lines were the way to dance and sing around country and understand country and share the stories. And this is my limited white person’s understanding of it, but it was the library and the university and the journals and the textbooks of the first nations people here in Australia. And we broke those song lines through our fences and our borders and so forth. And so if I’m to dream forward around its potential is to bring back the new song lines, which are that bringing together of the ancient knowledge of this place with the future potential of this place. And we’re sharing that in a network where people can find and support each other, as we have found and are supporting each other. I think that’s where it’s potential is. As with any fledgling bird, there are many dangers and many opportunities for things to go in lots of different directions, so keep doing what I can for support it.

Morag Gamble:

There’s something also about, for me anyway, coming to those sessions, because I often also feel like, well, I feel like, I mostly listen when I’m there, like deeply listening, because I feel there is so much to learn. And when Mary speaks or where Anne speaks, it just sort of floods over me. And there’s a lot of, you know, breaking of perceptions about particular things. I kind of, my sense of who I am and where I am and in this place and what I understand about being here reconfigures itself, when I hear them talk deeply about the work that they’re doing and the stories that they share and is hugely inspiring. I feel like I’m learning and growing so much by being part of that group. And, then what that does to me and how I then take that into the work and into the world that I’m connected with. Something has changed in that. And so it’s a lot of the unseen things that happen when you’re in a conversational space like that. It’s really hard to describe, I think the value of coming together as a group that is even in its wobbliness, there is so much that is kind of coming out of it. I think that’s how I feel anyway. And I couldn’t quite tell you, I couldn’t give you a checklist and tell you what it is that I find the value of it, and what I think is its purpose, but I keep coming back every time, because, there’s this something, there’s an essence about what happens in those spaces and the relationships that are forming that is incredibly special.

Dominique Hes:

Yeah, exactly. It is hugely exciting and hugely scary. And I’m hugely grateful to be part of it and able to sit at the table and learning. And sometimes I get so excited, I start blurting things. I’m like, quieting down and listen, it’s just so exciting. And I have this great sense of wanting to hurry it up and contribute and so forth, but it has to happen in its own time. And there are so many other things going on for those amazing women. So no, it’s exciting, but it is really just starting. And it’s intent is to create the connections for learning and conversations. And hopefully through that collaborations that then help everybody to do their projects from a more grounded, supported way, I guess, creating acupuncture, possibly, that’s not even the right term, creating, bringing together as nodes of energy and potential and thinking and people so that, just like you and I, Hey, I’m doing this thing in Noosa. Is it useful for what you’re doing? What can I do to help? here’s the information creating those opportunities. I don’t think we’ve quite worked out how to do that. Is it a monthly catch-up? Is it a quarterly catch up? Is it an annual get-together around the fire or something? I don’t think we’ve resolved that side of things.

Morag Gamble:

I quite like just the regular conversations that happen and that people are coming together to share what it is that is taking place in their communities, the insights that they’ve had, the new things that are emerging and that it is through that constant connection and stories. And I, you know, we can’t be sitting around in a circle because we’re all across Australia, but if it’s kind of in a way that, and I think it was kept to just a once a year, it would seem like it’s just a conference, whereas this, it is an emergent process and an emergent conversation. And that we’re all kind of learning together how to be in that space together simultaneously. And yeah, that’s how I would love to see it continued that way, if that’s possible. And that sort of feels like where it’s going and how it is happening.

Dominique Hes:

Yeah. We’re all catching up, I think in August, whenever that is next to our diaries to have a bit of a debrief. And I think that’d be very, very worthwhile to say those words to the group, because there is a sense of wanting to do things and there are jobs to be done around the website and around the approvals of who and what projects and so forth and sort of those details, as well as just the getting together and chatting. So I guess having some clarity around how we work with that,

Morag Gamble:

I think it’s interesting though, that when I share the stories of what’s happening in this group with some of the people I know who are part of the global networks they’re hugely inspired by what’s happening here. So the kind of the ripples or the field of influence is going well beyond what’s happening, even if it’s in its infant state. And I was thinking too, as you were speaking about Nora Bateson who talks about how a shift in perception is action, and as we’re together, we’re having constant, well, I know I am anyway, there’s constant shifts in perception that are taking place. And that is a powerful action, like I was saying before in how everything else happens as a result of that. And so I wonder, it’s easy to get stuck in that thing about the doing isn’t it, as opposed to the being, being together and being in deep conversation with incredible leaders across Australia, in such a range of regenerative projects that I don’t know whether we could necessarily see what its value is right now, as sometimes when you kind of look back in history, certain groups that are having conversations and you point to that as being an important moment where something else happens. Like it kind of feels a little bit, you know what I mean? But it’s sort of, there’s something indescribable.

Dominique Hes:

It feels though that Mary and Anne and others are contributing to this because they would like to see some doing, but I don’t know if they know what they’re doing is what they’d like done. Well, that sounds terrible. But it does feel like there is work to be done and that work might be the listening, but I do, and this might be the impatient Dutch person in me who just wants to get my hands in the dirt and start planting things and building things and testing things and learning from doing rather than just sitting around and talking. And I’m so, my roots are so deeply in the old way of being in control and imperialism and all of that sort of stuff that I’m learning and learning. But I do feel like there is a need to heal country relationships and so forth. And maybe it is just listening and maybe I should be more patient.

Morag Gamble:

But I wonder, like when you’re listening, I don’t know when, and then when you, I guess that’s what I’m trying to communicate. And I think I’m being very clear like that. The next thing that I talked to, like with the next group of people that I talked to, or the next conversation that happens like this, that by raising the conversations that happen in there, something shifts and that it does grow. So the action is the perception shift. The action is the deepening of understanding, the deepening of compassion, the deepening of a relationship in so many different ways. And I think, oh gosh, you know, it’s hard. I was also challenged with it. I’ve managed to raise a few grants for a number of different projects, but it’s like, no, it’s not ready yet. Just step back. So I just kind of put things aside and think, okay, I’ll just wait on that.

Dominique Hes:

Right time. I think we’ve got the right people. It’s just like auntie Ruby Sim says, my mentor, she’s kept saying, right time, right place, right people. Yeah, I do know though, that being clear about that, just listening and learning and that perception aspect of it being the work would help the people that are frustrated, who just want to do. So I had a conversation with one of the people that attend sometimes, and she’s like, you know, I worked for this big organization that needs to engage with indigenous people, and I want them to feel agency over this project. And I’m just coming here because I want someone to help me do that. I can’t find the right people to talk to. I can’t find the right ways of doing it. We don’t have the time within these projects at these scales, talking billion dollar projects. And there isn’t the way of, and so they attend with, I guess, an extractive mentality. Yeah and because we’ve not had the conversation of this is what this is about, they aren’t able to be their best selves. Maybe that’s a little bit of, yeah. And then I think from the Commonwealth, they’re probably in that same box where they want to see the doing, not them being, maybe that’s how we can, that’s the lesson we can take back up of this. This is not turning into a very good podcast.

Morag Gamble:

No, there’s lots of gems, lots of gems. So anyway, maybe we should sort of come back in and sort of think about, well,

Dominique Hes:

Because they say things, you know, people listen to them because they want to find the answers.

Morag Gamble:

But you know, I think that is a really big part of the answer. We are so conditioned to have to assess things by their use value or what I’ll be part of this, because I can get that and that will help me make me do that. Whereas actually engaging in a conversation for, to be part of like this spaciousness, the can kind of start to crack open or peel off some of the layers that, you know, how do we begin to decolonize if we don’t step out of the spaces that we’re accustomed to being in. And I think somehow the sort of disruption and the unsettled nature that a number of us feel is we’re kind of trying to find our way into what it means to be part of this group that I guess that’s where I’ve come to this point of this deep, the deep listening and listening, not just with my ears, but listening with my whole body. Like, where am I feeling that, you know, when they say something like, where does that actually land in me? And I don’t know if I’m talking this way, but that’s kind of how I ended up finding myself in that space. And I always feel that I walk away changed in some way. And I noticed that I draw from those feelings of change. And somehow too, it helps me to make sense of where it is that I’m trying to move towards. Like how do I unpack and, and peel off all those crusty layers that are just stuck, because that’s just the system that we’re in and what we’ve grown up in that it just and it is part of the healing. And if we can begin as people who have a voice in many platforms to be able to start to communicate with a different language, with a different heart, with a different sensitivity, with a different relationality and to propose different ways of moving forward, to encourage that same level of relationality, that when we’re entering into developing a project or designing, or some process, or forming organizations that we take something of that with it. And that is action.

Dominique Hes:

Absolutely. I wonder though, as we sit there and I take that mindfulness, that whole body mindfulness into the listening, I, again, I wonder what my whole mind of I’m taking a lot from this, but what can I give, I don’t want to turn up to just take and, you know, what can I give? So for Mary, and for Anne and for Tyson and for all of the others involved chills, I keep wanting to honor what I’m getting from the experience. And I am going to be more mindful next time. But I guess my anxiousness and some, maybe a little bit of the block of being able to be completely present is that incredible need to give back.

Morag Gamble:

Mm yeah.

Dominique Hes:

Whatever that looks like.

Morag Gamble:

Exactly. And you know that just on that too, that I sit there too often with the exact same thoughts. Like, I feel like I have so much to give, and I’m often someone who is speaking a lot and I find myself incredibly quiet in there. And in a way it seems like that is the right way to be entering into that space, particularly in these beginning stages, particularly as we’re saying, it’s not going to be led by people who were the leader in this field or leader in that field would come in and start to sort of say, well, this is what’s happening, this is what’s going on. But actually to create that spaciousness in which the other voices can come in and create the shape of that set of relationships there. And that I’m feeling that there will be a time when I just start to speak and that time will, I will know that time when it’s time. And it’s a huge shift too, for me in terms of wanting to go into one and help wanting to offer things, wanting to share what I feel like I know, but it just never feels right. So I just sit there and be.

Dominique Hes:

Thank you. Yeah. Indeed. I will be practicing that in August, It’s just that there is this sense of urgency that I have and I try not to.

Morag Gamble:

There is urgency in everything in the world at the moment. I mean, I get caught up a lot with feeling the urgency of absolutely everything. Every time I open up the news or every time you see whatever’s going on, it’s so hard not to feel this sense of absolute urgency and overwhelm about so many things. So I wonder, maybe if we could sort of come back into that, like where is it that you feel sort of the new directions for hope and where are you placing your energy in terms of trying to amplify the good work that we know needs to be done in the world.

Dominique Hes:

This is a shift that the urgency and acknowledging the urgency and the impact that that has, has been a shift for me. And that if we don’t work on the relationality, then it doesn’t matter that we’re doing the doing without the deep understanding, then we’re just creating problems we don’t know yet. So that for me has been a big journey and just as you were wrapping that up and moving onto the hopeful side of things, I’m just listening to Braiding Sweetgrass and she’s just talking about the pond and how she’s wanting to clean up the pond. And the first thing she did was jumping her kayak to go and pull out all the weeds and fill in. And that’s just like, yes, we have to spend the time to build the relationship. And so where am I seeing hope, I guess, is that we are being given the time to really build relationships and to really think about our role in the world, don’t necessarily think that we’re at the pinnacle of that time yet. I think there’s more coming and possibly how do we support people to take that opportunity, to build that relational understanding with today, the past and the future is hopeful and scary because it’s also a place of unknown and it’s easy to have a transactional relationship because there’s no deep meaning in that, there’s no self invested in that. Whereas the relationship, it’s me in my naked glory, turning up and saying I’m here to be completely part of this. So one of the things that I’m doing, which is fascinating to me is, and I don’t know where this is going to go, and neither am I an expert in either of these, but I’m looking at oral knowledge and the transmission of oral knowledge and the relational relationship. There’s my brilliant English. The way that you need to build the relationship with what you’re learning, the knowledge that you’re receiving, because you’re listening to a story, you’re participating in dance. It’s that embodiedness that you speak to compared to our literate way of knowledge holding, which is in books where the relationship really is with the author and who’s written it, most people who read it, read something to look for a fact, to look for a bit that there is no bringing yourself to that. There’s very few non-fiction books where you are completely absorbed by the content where you build the same relationship that the author has. Whereas with the oral knowledge, you have to be completely present. You have to be, you can’t be skimming through that bit of story to find that little bit, you’ve got to know the whole story, and that whole story needs to become part of who you are. There is no book, there is the song and the dance and the place and the songline there. And so investigating that and the consequences of that, and through the understanding of that, being able to potentially inform how we build knowledge into the future, I think is really exciting. I don’t know what that looks like, but I feel that there is something there.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. Do you want to feel something quite, there’s something about what you said that I relate to in the garden, for example, that in all the decades that I’ve been working in permaculture the most fascinating and important pieces of knowledge, I feel that I’ve gained has been through the conversations that happen while you’re out in the garden, doing something together, or you’re sharing a meal together. And I’ve learned so much about plants, in their history and their uses and the way that they grow in particular places and the ways that all the different aspects of the plants can be either used for clothing or cooking or dying or all the different parts of it. And there’s this sort of rich understanding of this world. And the way that I’ve tried to share that is through, through film, like, I’ll tell a story about a plant or be in my garden, trying to share a story about a plant and this, but it’s just, it hasn’t been through this ceremony or ritual or song or art. And I’m realizing now, you know, myself through all the work that I’m doing, that that seems to be kind of part of the missing bit when we say so much in our head, and we’re talking to each other about things about ideas, we’re abouting, is what Nora Bateson says. You know, I spent a lot of time in the last year with her, her work too, as well as the Regenerative Songlines group work with Nora has also had this fantastic effect of shifting my whole way of being. Yeah, but instead of that abouting, it’s the, what else is going on? How are the multiple different ways that you can describe that, and maybe it’s through art, or maybe it’s through the sensory experiences or maybe it’s through the celebration of it. And there’s something so powerful about that way that we’ve often discounted, I think, and I was just feeling that this morning, I met a 90 year old man who spent his lifetime in film, and he was talking about all his lessons to do with the whole world of film and communication and storytelling. And I had this essence that it was the key messages that he was trying to share with us. It was about the unseen parts, the stories, the connections, the relationships, the meaning, all of that was, and he was so passionate, like, he sparkles. And it was just kind of like, I felt like I was being covered in the sparkles from his joy of understanding of that. It was what the meaning of life is, you know, it was like, oh my gosh. So yeah, the unseen, the in-between, the warmth, the multiple descriptions, the story, the celebration.

Dominique Hes:

They’re immeasurable.

Morag Gamble:

Exactly. And if we are to try and make sense of this and to communicate this in a way that we do enter into different ways of being in relation that we can form more regenerative ways forward, that it needs to really embody so much of that way of being, and to value that not as a marginal, fuzzy, warmy edge, it is the warmth, but that’s where we need to of embrace so much more of, that was my insight from this morning’s little expedition anyway.

Dominique Hes:

It’s a great point to end, I think.

Morag Gamble:

Yes. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to yarn with me today. We talked about so many different things and I think there’s, I think this time that we’ve taken during all these lockdowns, you know, so many of us are having deep moments of questioning or times when we just sort of feel like I don’t even know. I dunno what anymore. And having conversations like this across the planet have been so healing, I think, in terms of unpacking some of that and stepping into those uncertain spaces there and I actually don’t know what do you think about that because I’m not quite sure anymore, or, i had this thought about it. What do you think about that? And it’s those kinds of conversations rather than stepping out as an expert thinking, okay, this is what I know. And I’m going to tell you what I know, and then you can kind of critique it or whatever, but that’s that, you know, it is about just stepping into the space and being completely human and sharing our deep questions about our love of life and the planet and the future and the beings that surround us every day. You know, it’s all of that all packed in one. So thank you for being here and exploring in that way with me.

Dominique Hes:

Thank you for having me. It is really lovely to be sharing space with people who just want to be, and don’t need to be the experts, don’t need to be the hearers. Just want to be part of a conversation that explores things. It’s lovely, so thank you.

Morag Gamble:

So that’s all for today. Thanks so much for joining me. If you like a copy of my top 10 books to read, click the link below, pop in your email, and I’ll send it straight to you. You can also watch this interview over on my YouTube channel. I’ll put the link below as well, and don’t forget to subscribe, leave a comment. And if you’ve enjoyed it, please consider giving me a star rating. Believe it or not, the more people do this. The more podcasts bots will discover this little podcast. So thanks again. And I’ll see you again next week.