Regenerative Songlines Australia

Regenerative Songlines Australia is a network that connects regenerative projects and practitioners across the continent now known as Australia.

The network is:

• led by First Nations peoples and inclusive of all Australians;
• focused on amplifying local and bioregional initiatives, with a view to maintaining
  diverse approaches, while strengthening interconnections, mutual learning, and
  real project collaboration and outcomes;
• multidisciplinary and includes regenerative economies, societies, ecological
  stewardship and design practices; and
• connected to international “regenerative roadmap” partners.

Goal of Regenerative Songlines Australia

A fundamental goal of the network is to transform the extractivist, colonial mindset and practices of the dominant industrialised society, economy and culture of Australia, towards regeneration and restoration, so that we can live and thrive within bioregional ecological limits and planetary boundaries.

Regenerative means able to or tending to regenerate—to regrow or be renewed or restored, especially after being damaged or lost. Regeneration recognises that human and planetary health are deeply interwoven, and actively seeks to enable the flourishing of human and non-human life, on an ongoing basis, forever.

What are Songlines?

“In the Dreaming, as in Country, there is no separation between the animate and inanimate. Everything is living – people, animals, plants, earth, water and air. We speak of Sea, Land and Sky country. Creator ancestors created the Country and its interface, the Dreaming. In turn, Dreaming speak for Country, which holds the law and knowledge, Country has Dreaming, Country is Dreaming.

It is this oneness of all things that explains how and why Aboriginal knowledges belong to an integrated system of learning … Songlines, related to Dreamings or Dreaming tracks, connect sites of knowledge embodied in the features of the land. It is along these routes that people travelled to learn from Country.”

“… songlines are foundational to our being – to what we know, how we know it and when we know it. They are our knowledge system, our library, our architect from which all subjects are derived.”

“Songlines: the Power and Promise”, by Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly (pages 1, 3)