Respecting Time
In Respecting Time knowledge holders Courtney Marsh, Dr Chels Marshall and Master Simeone Sevudredre discuss the inextricable link between human and environmental health and First Nations time knowledge.
‘Time is imaginary, in my understanding of it. Instead, it’s place.’
Courtney Marsh I want to acknowledge that we meet on Gadigal Country and ask for guidance, protection and the best way to walk on this Country in respect of cultural laws that have existed for thousands upon thousands of years.
Jinnghiwhalu whalu, my name is Courtney Marsh and I’m a Minyungbal woman from Tweed Heads, so I’m a Currie from up there and I’m also a South Sea Islander. I had two great grandparents that came over as a part of the Australian slave trade, they were black birded over from Tanna, Vanuatu and from the Solomon Islands.
I currently work at the Australian Museum as the Manager of Strategic Projects in the First Nations Division. My background’s in curatorial and programming and how working within colonial spaces, like the one that we’re in, how can we interact in ways that respect our understandings of time and breaking down other concepts of time that can be really inhibiting to the way that we understand the way that we should walk through the world.
Dr Chels Marshall I’m Chels Marshall. I’m from Gumbaynggirr Country, North Coast New South Wales. I derive from a family of fish. In Gumbaynggirr Country our totem is gaagal, the ocean. I’ve got cousins that are dolphins and sharks and whales and that’s the realm I exist in. I’ve grown up on Country and through that I had an understanding that there were other ways to be situated in the world. I went and purposely learnt about Western science and got to understand the notions, the paradigms, the processes around that.
