Dr Jo Anne Rey, Dharug community member and Research Fellow in the Department of Indigenous Studies, completed her doctoral thesis in 2019, presenting the voices and perspectives of seven Dharug women about Dharug continuity when Country is a colonised, cosmopolitan city. Now, Dr Rey is undertaking her post-doctoral work, continuing her focus on weaving Country across the city as she embarks on a historical journey.
1. What is your background and what brought you to Macquarie?
I am a Dharug community member most closely linked to Wallumatta, and I did my undergrad years here, so Wallumatta campus was the most relevant place to undertake my doctorate and post-doctoral work on Country.
2. How did you originally become interested in your area of research, and what keeps you interested in it?
Discovering my Aboriginal identity, as well as my First Fleet Black African heritage later in life activated the passion to understand how we can care for Country when Country is a city of over 5 million people.
3. Tell us a bit about your current research and what makes it so important?
My post-doctoral work is focused on weaving Country across the city, and how that activation can be undertaken – the opportunities and the challenges. One such opportunity arose through external funding from the Department of Planning and Environment’s, Cultural Fire Management Unit, who gave myself, and other Dharug women the chance to undertake the journey towards a Dharug women’s led cultural cool-fire burn. This is historic. It's the first time since 1788 that such an activation has been made possible so close to the inner city.
4. Is there something you would like staff to know about?
Yes. I would like staff to consciously appreciate that the University is on unceded Dharug Ngurra/Country, and that if they walk down the hill to the Brown’s Waterhole (BWH) Turrumburra/Lane Cove River, they will meet Ngurra/Country and when they return and reflect on their experience, they will understand how Ngurra gives back to us in return. I would like the Macquarie University community to understand that Macquarie is a Neighbour to the River, and being good neighbours is to care for the River’s wellbeing – healthy Country, healthy People.
5. What is something you have recently accomplished?
Recently, with the assistance of NPWS, the Faculty of Arts Learning & Teaching team, and CACHE knowledge support, we had our first Dharug women’s field camera training session to monitor the BWH other-than-human residents so that we can prepare our cultural burn site and ensure they are protected. This is the huge difference from hazard reduction thinking, fire for healing, not for annihilation.
6. What do you need to do your best work?
Time, no COVID, reasonable weather, and cultural sensitivity by people not familiar with Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing.
Oh, and $14 million would be good, so we can buy the ‘Namaroo’ Conference Centre (Lane Cove River – currently for sale) for future Dharug and other Indigenous cultural, caring for Country training and accommodation facilities, so they can afford to live on Ngurra. As a neighbour to the river, Macquarie University aligned with NPWS and Dharug Custodians could be a major change-maker, setting a precedent for building alliances for sustainable futures through our cultural practices and relationality values, taking future generations towards localised climate-challenging solutions.
7. What do people always ask you when they find out what you do for a living?
Who are Dharug?
8. What is something you’ve read recently that has had an impact on you?
Aboriginal Biocultural Knowledges of South-Eastern Australia (Cahir, Clarke and Clarke, 2nd edition) – It provides colonisers’ perspectives on our ways of knowing, being and doing from the 19th century.
9. What is your definition of success?
Being able to give back.
10. A bit about where you live and what you like about it?
I live on Gammeraigal/Dharug Country, just across the river from Wallumatta. It’s convenient.
11. A personal quality you value in others?
Patience and a wicked sense of humour.
12. A moment you felt proud?
Getting my Doctorate at Macquarie University. I’m the first in my generation in my family, and achieved it much later in life, so it proves life-long learning as feasible and interesting.
13. What would people be surprised to know about you or your work?
I never bought the narrative of ‘career’. I just have always believed the purpose of life is to learn.
14. What is on your agenda for the remainder of 2022?
To get to 31 December, intact.
Yanama budyari gumada,
Walk with good spirit.