On being told not to see
By Dr. Emily Samuels Ballantyne, Magical Farm Tasmania
There’s a strange silence that descends when certain truths are named.
Recently, I was told, by a leader in policy that to speak of First Nations knowledge systems in relation to law, design, astronomy, plants, Country, or fire was to be “romanticising.” That such tribal systems were “damaging to the land” and even “murderous.” they should not be drawn upon for our reimagining.
And yet: these systems sustained life on this continent for over 65,000 years.
Not as dominators, but as kin. As stewards. As sophisticated systems thinkers grounded in seasonal rhythms, intergenerational responsibility, and ecological ethics.
To suggest that such ways of being are backward or irrelevant is not only incorrect, it is a profound erasure. In my work, I draw inspiration from the extraordinary First Knowledges series, published by Thames & Hudson, which includes:
Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe on Country
“Aboriginal people made the country and managed it, and they did so sustainably.” — Country: Future Fire, Future Farming
Victor Steffensen on Fire
“Cultural burning is not just about fire; it's about looking after the whole landscape, and that includes people.” — Fire Country
Duane Hamacher et al. on Astronomy
“Knowledge of the stars is woven into culture, story, law, and everyday life.” — Astronomy: Sky Country
Marcia Langton and Aaron Corn on Law
“Aboriginal law is a living system, sophisticated in its principles and embedded in the land.” — Law: The Way of the Ancestors
Alison Page and Paul Memmott on Design
“Aboriginal design is Country made visible.” — Design: Building on Country
Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly on Songlines
“Songlines are our libraries. They store knowledge in story, land, and ceremony.” — Songlines: The Power and Promise
Each book is a portal—an invitation to perceive reality through a different lens, one that is ecological, cosmological, embodied, and communal.
These are not myths to me.
They are methodologies.
From Reverence to Praxis: How These Ontologies Inform My Work
At Magical Farm Tasmania, I am not trying to replicate Indigenous culture, I am learning from the ontological patterns they model. These are the patterns of life systems:
In my seasonal farming rhythms, I draw from Aboriginal astronomical knowledge and calendar lore, aligning planting, harvesting, and resting with solstices, moon cycles, and observations of nature.
In my land-based curriculum, fire is not feared, but understood, as Victor Steffensen teaches as part of cultural responsibility, renewal, and dialogue with place.
In my design work, we craft with materials that honour the land’s form and function, echoing Page and Memmott’s principle that Country is not a backdrop it is a co-designer.
In our governance models for Regenera Commons, we embed place-specific listening, consensus, and kin-based relational mapping that challenge Western bureaucratic abstraction.
In my deep green economic vision, I am guided by the knowledge that law does not begin in a courtroom, it begins in the shape of the hills, in the responsibility of care, in storylines that remember.
These knowledge systems challenge us to stop extracting and start listening. They ask: What would it mean to design policy that is not based on ownership, but on custodianship?
What would it mean to build housing, grow food, and generate energy in a way that restores memory to place?
This is not romanticism. It is reality-making.
It is systems change grounded in the oldest continuous cultures on Earth.
Margo O’Neill’s Blind Conscience reminds us that speaking these truths within institutional spaces often invites rejection. But I will keep speaking. I will keep honouring those who carried this wisdom through genocide, dispossession, and denial—so that we might now have the courage to reshape our world.
With Gratitude to Place and the First Teachers of This Land
I live and work on melukerdee Country, in the Huon Valley region, near what is now called Hobart nipaluna on the island of lutruwita (Tasmania). This is the unceded land of the palawa peoples, whose songlines, land practices, and cosmologies continue to guide and inspire.
I pay deep respect to the melukerdee ancestors and to all First Nations people across this continent. Their care for Country, held through fire, law, kinship, and story, offers a greenprint for a future rooted in reciprocity and repair.
To the authors of the First Knowledges series, to the Elders and truth-tellers who hold these lineages with courage and care, I offer my deepest gratitude. Your work has informed and inspired my practice as a regenerative farmer, a systems designer, and a community weaver. Your words are not only teachings.
They are seeds.
May they take root in policy, in pedagogy, in the soil itself.
