As world leaders gather in Paris for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, a strong contingent of several hundred Bega Valley residents took part in Saturday’s Bega Valley Climate Action Festival.
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A performance by Fling Physical Theatre’s hip hop dancers kicked off proceedings in Ayres Walkway before the participants crossed Carp St, making their way to the Bega River Reserve.
In fact the river was not just a festival venue but also an example of human interaction with the environment.
In her welcome to country speech, Djiringan elder Aunty Colleen Dixon spoke to those gathered by the banks of the culturally significant and once prosperous river about the immediate need to prevent further environmental degradation of the region’s ecosystems.
Djiringan man David Dixon then communicated his people’s lived experience of changing Australian environments and the bringing together of cultures to the discussion table.
”We are very conscious of what is happening around the globe in regard to climate change and climate change action,” Mr Dixon began.
“We need to look at our ancient knowledge systems and not let them be destroyed because those knowledge systems come directly from the land.
“Before the Greens there were the blacks.
“The blacks are still here and our people are among the greatest environmentalists this planet’s ever known, so we should be working together.”
He spoke of the benefits of an open discussion on the topic between the Djiringan people, Yuin people and the rest of the community, a discussion he feels is more often than not suppressed by “governments and corporations”.
“They know we hold the true values of this land and that’s what it’s coming down to is a value conversation,” he said.
“Our cultural seed is the land and we must go back and look at how Australia was created and the foundations of it and what those values were.
“Revolution is not violent, revolution is critical thinking, that we think for ourselves and we don’t allow governments or corporations or elites to think for us.”
“And, through that we might be able to get some meaningful change,” he said.