Michael Reiley: [00:00:00] Welcome to today's show. We recorded this episode live at the Eternal Song Film Gathering in 2025, and the two guests, Dr. Uncle Paul Gordon, and Joe Williams are also featured in the Sand Film in the Circle of Life, which is premiering on the 20th of January, 2026. Head over to the eternal song.org or find a link in the show notes to find out about these two films.
And now onto today's conversation.
Zaya Benazzo: We are having two incredible guests, guests for joining us live from, um, Lanko today, Australia. And we're so honored to have [00:01:00] with us Uncle Paul Gordon, we who we had the honor to meet in person while we were in Australia and Paul Gordon. Hello, hello. So good to see you again. Um, and Uncle Paul Gordon is a respected gemba.
Uncle Paul Gordon: So, yes, I
is how we say it. I'm also mu, which is another tribe north of. I'm also Bji, which is another tribe south in empire. So my bloodline pretty got pretty much got half of New South Wales covered. Yeah, and there's, there's big stories why these things happen. Um, and it's to do colonization when people were put on missions, but yeah.
But I'm proud of, all my bloodlines. And, you know, I love my countries. Yeah.
Zaya Benazzo: And [00:02:00] what were the languages they spoke? The languages they spoke your people.
Uncle Paul Gordon: Yeah. So they're three different languages, but if you know one really well, you can understand the others.
And easily pick up and easily pick up the changes once you spend a bit of time with one.
Most Aboriginal people in traditional times could speak at least six different languages. But if you walked right across Australia, by the time you got to the other side, you'll be speaking the language of the people in the, in, on the other side of Australia. So it's just sitting down sharing story and connecting with one another is how you, learn the language.
So the more you travel and the more you shut down with people, the more knowledge you got. And a lot more story you got and the more you understood each other's language.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. [00:03:00] We'll come back to that. And we want to introduce our other guest,
Maurizio Benazzo: Joe. Yeah. Joe Williams. Joe, which was a former elite athlete.
Our A health advocate. How our, so nice to see you.
Joe Williams: How you doing? It's good to see you both. Again, it's morning, afternoon, clearly not evening, but uh, it's good to catch up again or be it virtual. Yes.
Maurizio Benazzo: Do you want to, I'm afraid to say Raju. Vlu. You say it in your to, I always,
Joe Williams: I always tell people, 'cause people get afraid or, or be disrespectful.
They, they're afraid to be disrespectful when they're, when they're trying to, to understand or learn or, or even pronounce, uh, the different nations where we're from. But I, I see it as a real learning moment, um, because if we just get or allow other people to do it, then. It's just a lazy way of, of not learning.
So, I'm both Wiradjuri, and Waloo. With Wiradjuri is one of the, [00:04:00] the big inland nations west of Sydney. Um, and Waloo is this tiny, tiny little one that, that in Australia we have this map of of, of all the different nations, which clearly outlines. What would suggest are boundaries, but even Waloo isn't on that map.
But when you talk to the Waloo and you know, the Waloo that Waloo know who they are, where their boundaries are, and, and that, uh, we're a staunch people lost. A very small, small nation come from the, in the snowy mountains. As I said about about four, four hours in land, four or five hours in land of Sydney.
Perfect. Thank you. So,
Maurizio Benazzo: yes. So Joe
Zaya Benazzo: and Joe was a former elite athlete. Athlete,
Maurizio Benazzo: yes. Rugby and then a boxer and an award-winning mental health advocate. So his journey from struggle to healing now fuels his mission to uplift others through cultural reconnection and [00:05:00] wellbeing.
Welcome, Joe.
Zaya Benazzo: Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for being
Maurizio Benazzo: here.
Zaya Benazzo: And Uncle Paul Gordon. I want to go back to where we began. Uh. And correct me. In Australia there were over four, 500 distinct nations with distinct languages. How did people relate across the differences? How did they communicate? How did they maintain harmony? How did they prevent conflicts?
Well,
Uncle Paul Gordon: that's really interesting. Yes.
Zaya Benazzo: And the time, give us a time scale as well, so we have an understanding of that as well.
Uncle Paul Gordon: Yeah. So time, um, we have, uh, definite, definite dates of over a hundred thousand years of Aboriginal occupation in this country, but some archeologists [00:06:00] are now. 2000 years of occupation of Australia still being studied.
So not out in the public arena yet, but as a researcher myself and, and working for Melbourne Uni, I do get to meet these people and see their discoveries. Um, so 200,000, let's say 200,000 years of Aboriginal occupation of Australia. Yet in that time, not one castle was ever built. Not one fort was ever built.
Not one army was ever built. Not one jail was ever built and not one fence was ever built.
Wow.
Uncle Paul Gordon: And that's a really important story for the world to hear. So when, when the colonizers arrived in 1788, there wasn't an army of aboriginal men waiting to kill everybody when they got off the boat. We were there waiting for them painted up.
Indeed Corrobor did dance for 'em and welcomed them to country, which [00:07:00] is, has always been our way. And then the sad story begins. But if we talk about how many nations were in Australia, possibly 500, definitely, definitely two. We're still researching a lot of that type of knowledge and working out well, what are we actually calling a nation?
Because when you, when we think about the way we lived in Australia, we had a word world, which meant people who speak the same language, but inside that word world, there was different people who belonged to very specific parts of country, and they might have had. A dialect that was a little bit different to the next group.
But in all that, all the differences we never, ever had [00:08:00] conflict as a one group of people against another. And that's because we sat down together, shared story, did ceremony together, married into one another, and for a sharing story. And doing ceremony together, we build relationships with one another so that any person if they wanted to, could walk from the east coast of Australia to the west coast of Australia on a journey that might take five years and just sit down with people along ceremonial pathways or song lines as people might wanna call them now, but they were big ceremonial pathways.
Ceremonies was, was had and people would sit down together and share one another's story and build them relationships. And the term songline comes because when we travel these pathways, we [00:09:00] constantly sang to the country and to the ancestors in the country to let them know that we loved them and.
When you do these big walks across the country, you gather knowledge from each group of people that you sit down with. So when when we say something like, see that old man, he's been everywhere. We're actually saying, see that old man, he's full of knowledge because he's traveled all the pathways across the country.
Oh,
Zaya Benazzo: and um, can you say, because for those who live outside of Australia, we might not know what lore is and what was the role of lore? Did each nation has its own law or they were commonalities that were [00:10:00] sharing?
Uncle Paul Gordon: Very, very similar. Stories. So law, LORE is story. And from the story you get the knowledge. So the more stories you, you heard, the more knowledge it was being imparted on you.
And these stories were about our countries, the food in our countries, how to collect it, the medicines in our country, and how to make it how to build a shelter. Our biggest one, our biggest law story that went across the country was, don't be greedy. So we had lots of stories about why you shouldn't be greedy and what would happen to you if you are greedy.
Because if you think about the world today, it's full of greedy people and because they're greedy they want go to war and try and take.
Lot of [00:11:00] stories, whether it's about a frog or AER, or a kangaroo or a gona. Lot of stories about why you shouldn't be greedy, why you shouldn't tell lies and why you shouldn't steal. So them three values, don't tell lies. Don't steal and don't be greedy. If the world could just learn them three lessons, then it would be a much better place.
So even though the stories were completely different, the actual morals of the story were always the same. And rather than argue about which story is right, we looked at the moral of the story went, yeah, a little bit different, but same, a little bit different, but same because the story was about giving us the moral that we've gotta follow.
So when I think about religion. And Jesus said, love one another. [00:12:00] And Ola said, love one another. And Buda said, love one another. And indu say, love one another, and give to the poor and love th enemy rather than just follow the, the teachings of the teachers. We kill each other over the teachers and, and it's just easy.
Just follow the teachings and respect one another, and the world will be a much better place.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. Yeah. Um, in the West, you know, with the arrival of Christianity and all the religion, the religion came with books, you know, was written, the stories were fixed in time. They were not living I think.
Aboriginal people were sharing living stories. So what happened to humanity? When we started learning from books, from stories that were disconnected from the [00:13:00] land, from the elders.
Uncle Paul Gordon: Yeah. We lost our connection to the land. So when you, when I talk about them, the songlines, we're telling the story. We're singing the songs of the story.
We have special places where the story is recorded in art, in caves and on rock carvings, and we dance the story. So we have all these different ways of keeping the story true, but it's all in the country and it keeps us connected to country and it makes us appreciate that everything that we have.
Comes from country, from not from God. That that's a very different way of looking at it. Country gives to us every day, but when you remove yourself from country and build a city or build a, a church or a place of worship, you [00:14:00] are removing yourself from the very thing that actually gives you life.
Country gives you life. Country gives you food, country gives you water, country gives you shelter. And if we don't look after it, then it won't die. But we will, we'll become extinct like the dinosaurs if we, if we stopped, if we don't respect country and love country. And I often say to people, I can, I don't have to believe in a tree.
I know it's real. Yeah. I don't have to believe in the kangaroo. I know it's real. When I sit in country, I know it's real. And I know the country gives me everything that I need to survive each day. And when I die, I go back to country and my body goes back to the land and my water goes back to the water, and then my water becomes a cloud and comes back across and [00:15:00] falls like rain on my body.
Grass grows in me and I become grass and kangaroos to grass, and I become, kangaroo. Tree grows in me and I become tree. So we believe in this eternal cycle of life, which has been going on in the universe for millions of years, and throughout them cycles of life. Sometimes we'll come back as a human, but all my old people would say to me when I sat down with 'em, you know what?
We're all the same. You're not different than me, you're the same as me. We same as kangaroo, we same as dolphin, we same as true, we same as rock. We all same thing. And if we understand that we have to love one another because we.
Native creatures around the [00:16:00] world. All our waterways, all our trees, all our rocks and each other because we're not different.
Maurizio Benazzo: Wow. So simple, elegant, precise, to the point and Absolutely. So beautiful to hear. Thank you. And
Zaya Benazzo: we have forgotten that knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. And Joe can you share with us what led you to meet Uncle Paul Gordon? A little bit about your journey and what is it to walk with Uncle Paul? I.
Joe Williams: I think firstly I just feel like a student sitting here in this room and just listening, uh, because when the awful talks, it just makes so much sense as to everything that goes on and everything that we feel and everything that we do.
And I think how to heal humanity as well. I've been lucky to be connected with the old fellow [00:17:00] for, over 10 years now. And, and how. The story actually, how we got got to meet was, I'd moved to a, I'd moved to a small country town and, and living in a new town and, and not knowing a great deal of people when there was, there was some challenges for me spiritually.
You know, I'd been on this journey as you said at the start through sport and I guess a profile of, of what that looks like and then. The story of, of challenges of addiction and alcohol and drugs and, and where that took me to then a, a life lifestyle of sobriety. And there was one thing that I was always missing, and it was that spiritually knowing who I was, you know, I, I had this facade of who I was because of, of everything that was involved with sport, but I didn't really know who I was.
And there were some challenges that were happening to me spiritually where I. I was getting, [00:18:00] let's say visits at night where they would play with my ears or blow in my ear and, and, um, pull the blankets off me. And I was like, I was, I. Because I'd never been spiritually connected. I didn't know what it was like.
So I talked to a close brother who was fairly connected in this space and he come up and he, he made sure that the house was okay and everything was okay spiritually. And then more or less, I. Over that period. He said, it's time for you to go Bush brother. You know, you've been in the city a long time and it's time for you to go and sit in the bush and start to learn about who you are.
And I was really lucky throughout that period that, you know, over a while of learning and understanding and I. And just sitting down in, in, in country and, and listening and understanding what I'd missed for so long. You know, I, I'd always known that I was an Aboriginal person, but I didn't quite feel like one because of the, the lifestyle that I was living with sport and [00:19:00] profile and, and what that bought.
So. Over that time it really started from being, I guess, let's say, uh, visited spiritually. You know, with the spirit's tormenting me, they said, it's time for you to go bush. You gotta start to understand who you are. And over that time I, I got to sit down with this old fella and over many, many, many, conversations over these, these last 10 to 12 years. It's been profound as to where it, where it's taken me. Um, and it's a journey, as I said, at the top of always listening and always understanding and always learning. I remember, I recall and I speak on this, this conversation a great deal. I don't know if you remember and, but I was, was sitting out west.
Around a fire. And I'd been doing all of this work throughout the US when I was moved away from the sport into the mental health space. And I'd been doing a, a stack load of work throughout the US and talking about mental health and mental illness and, and the, the western modality of what [00:20:00] psychology was and how to get well and, and wellness and, and all of these buzzwords that, that were spoken about.
And the awful has said to me, paraphrasing here, he said. I wanna question what those doctors tell you. He said, because I don't believe that you're mentally ill. And I was like, what do you mean? Like, like I've had countless doctors, countless therapy sessions talking about this thing. I've got mental illness.
And he said, it's not your mind. That's sick, brother. There's nothing wrong with your mind. It's your spirit that's sick and you need to heal your spirit. And how you heal. Your spirit is sitting in country and listening to country. And when you listen to country, country will tell you everything that you need to hear, and it was that journey that just completely flipped.
The way I, I spoke about, because I was in schools speaking about mental illness this entire time because of the, again, the profile I'd built with my sporting. It [00:21:00] was a way to connect with people about understanding and, and talking about the, I guess the stigma of what this thing called mental health that was.
Crippling the our world out here. And he said, it's not your mind. That's sick, brother. It's your spirit that's sick and you gotta heal your spirit. The only way you do that is started by sitting in country and listening to the old people and learning about who you are. So that fast forward countless conversations with the old fellow, whether it be around a fire, over the phone is continuously taking my mind to new spaces, continuously taking my knowledge set.
And I think I've, I get to understand him sometimes and I go, alright, I, I know where he is at now. I, I, I've got the level of what this old man's got. And then he just continuously take me to another level and just blows my mind with, with all of these different let's call it philosophy of, of life and understanding through the old ways.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. [00:22:00] Wow. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. What a powerful journey. And Uncle Paul Gordon. That leads me to, Joe mentioned wellbeing and healing and how. Do Aboriginal people, and I know you can't speak for all Aboriginal people, but from your understanding, they understand wellbeing or healing or I.
I'll add one more piece you spoke to us that we've been talking about in, in this few days about grief. What were the ways the aboriginal people knew how to grieve? We white people, western people have forgotten how to grieve and that's part probably of our modernity's illness.
Uncle Paul Gordon: Yeah. I think people today. Because they're very disconnected to country. So when you look at [00:23:00] the way we look at country, the country is full of ancestors. People who have walked this world way before us, millions and millions of different ancestors. Not just human ancestors, but plant ancestors. All different animal ancestors, fish ancestors.
So everything to us is an ancestor. And we have these big stories that travel across the country, like I said before. And you know, we pay our respects and our love to all these things because all these things have been here before us. And it might have even been us in a.
Time. So when in our traditional way of, of [00:24:00] grief when someone passes away, we have places where you go to grief and cry special places in country. So we get it out of our system,
Quickly where there's lots of love. People are there with you. And because when you're living in a traditional life, you still have to get up every day and go out and get the food.
And you can't, you can't stay in, in grief forever. So it's, and and it's also knowing that when we place them people back in the ground, we place 'em back into a, in the ground, in a fetal position. With the head sitting up to the top of the hole and that's saying, you are gonna be reborn again. You're gonna be born again back from the mother, you're gonna come back from the mother again and live again.
[00:25:00] So in this cycle of life, death is just a new beginning for us. So there's always, it's not a hope, it's a fact. Science can. I can watch a, I can watch a cow die in a paddock, and as it breaks down really bright green grass will grow in that soil that, that, that dead cow just made.
And then I can watch a kangaroo or another cow come and eat that grass, and the, that grass belonged to that cow. So it's living again in a different form. It's fertile. Trees can grow, like I said. So because we have that, it's not a belief, it's a fact. It's evidence based. We know that we're gonna be back.
So when I think about my death, I don't think [00:26:00] about it in a bad way. I just think about it in a new way. I want to come back again and I'm gonna live again. I've been doing that for, I dunno, maybe a million years, maybe 10 million years in the cycle of life.
Zaya Benazzo: No, can you say something about time, because you're speaking in the span of millions of years, and, uh, how do you understand time or what's the relationship to time in your culture?
Uncle Paul Gordon: We have, we know this big long time, this big time that goes way back forever and that's connected to the sky, so.
Our stories here on earth are also up there in the sky. So every night when we look at the [00:27:00] stars, we see stories. And then so we say the sky is like a reflection of earth, or the earth is like a reflection of sky. So law is up there, the law is down here. We talk about connection to them places because we know, we know that we're a part of this big universe.
We're not just here on earth because start us, moon us, you know, all different forms fall on Earth every 24 hours a day. So we're made up of all them things as well, right? So we've got, we've got connection and memory within us of that place. So the old people can talk about their places because they have memory of them places.
And that's a long time of space and time that our people can talk about. But then we also have [00:28:00] our every daytime about when we gotta 10 ceremony, when the different fruits will be rip. Um, when the, when the fish will run, certain fish will run up the rivers. So they're the everyday living times that we, we have a calendar around all that.
It's not a 12 month calendar like the one we we used today. And it's, it's linked to food sources and ceremonial cycles, but we know when we gotta be somewhere at a certain time. 'cause we have these calendars, um, made from rocks that tell us when the d, when the sun hits. These V-shaped rocks, they tell us when things will happen throughout the sun cycle of time.
Zaya Benazzo: And I think when we met, you mentioned that you are working with scientists, that [00:29:00] scientists are starting to come and ask you about knowledge, Aboriginal knowledge of the stars that. How did Aboriginal people knew so long ago about constellations and they had knowledge that scientists are only now beginning to understand?
Uncle Paul Gordon: I think it comes back to living 24 7 in the country. So when we talk about sitting around a fire over nighttime, when we lay down, we look up and there's the stars. You know, we're still home. And when you got hundreds of thousands of years of knowledge being shared and passed down, what the other people were seeing a hundred thousand years ago or 200,000 years ago is different to what we're seeing now.
But they can, they can still point out these [00:30:00] stories. There was an old Starman that I sat down with a long time ago, and he. When different stars burnt out and disappeared, he go, oh, that one's not there no more. It, it disappeared because he understood the sky so well, because that's what, that's what his old role throughout his life was to study and watch the stars every night.
Don't, so we had these sort of people within our community that did that.
So when I, even when a new start to pick, you know, a new star appeared, you could say that's a new one that wasn't there last night. And that's what happens when you live in country. When you're live in country. You people say, how did Aboriginal people know these things? I go, well, country is my teacher country is living just like me and you are living country [00:31:00] can speak.
But you've gotta sit in it and listen and learn the language that it speaks. So everything in country is like us. So that tree's telling me things, the kangaroos telling me things, the fish are telling me things. But the dirt itself, country itself is telling me things. And I often say to people, pick up a handful of dirt.
What have you got in your hand? They go, dirt, go. No. What you got in your hand? Thousands and thousands of ancestors that were here before us in year round is the essences of dinosaurs, of megafauna, of things that have been extinct, but they're still in country and their story is still in country.
And an old aboriginal man from the Kimberley. When someone said, oh them, them aboriginal people in New South [00:32:00] Wales, they've lost all their stories, you know, because of colonization. All that's taken away from them. And he said to the person who said it, you dunno what you're talking about. The stories are in the country, they're not lost, they're just sitting in the country.
All them aboriginal people in, in New South Wales gotta do is walk out in the bush and sit down in country. And country will start to. And that's for any person in the world. If you go back and reconnect to country, country will teach you the proper way of looking after it and loving it. And the, and it'll share and give to you, you know, beautiful stories.
Michael Reiley: now the trailer from the New Sand Film in the Circle of Life
Maurizio Benazzo: [00:33:00] [00:34:00] [00:35:00] in this house, this house is made of wood. [00:36:00] There is metal, there is, there is a lot of material. Is nature as well, is this also, let's say this stable made of wood is also that my ancestor in a way.
Or the fact that they may manipulate them into a form or a practical form. Like the car you are in the chair, is there ancestors that still nature
Uncle Paul Gordon: it's made If it's wood, it's made from a tree. Yes. And that tree was, that tree was living, but then we cut it now and we made a table.
So it's not living anymore. It's a table. We see it as a table, but if we start to see it as an ancestor, we will connect with it better and if, and we'll appreciate that tree that gave us the table.
And the same as the steel. The [00:37:00] steel comes outta the ground. It was the type of rock. I'm, my clan is gu, which means I'm a rock person. So throughout the different countries of Australia, there are rock people in every, every nation. And we connect with people. And I, when I go to a next group of people that I mightn't have met before and I tell 'em, I'm, I belong to the rocks, they go, oh yeah, there's another mob over there that, but also the same as you.
They belong to Ross and straight away we, there's people, there's rock people. Plant people relating to all different species of, of trees and grasses as animal people. So when people say, oh, my totem is when people say my totem is a kangaroo, um, that means that they're actually ancestors. Were kangaroos.
So my answers are we off people [00:38:00] and I have to, my people say things like. Rocks are born. Rocks are born rocks get pregnant, rocks grow and rocks die. Like all things do. And rocks have spirit, like all things do. So we see everything as every spirit, not just humans, but everything in every spirit. Um, so we have a physical life, but we also have a spiritual life for our spirit.
Zaya Benazzo: And Joe, can you say something about what did you had to unlearn in order to learn your ancestral ways of walking in country and being in country? And what was the role of dance and ceremony in this process for you?
Joe Williams: I think unlearn, unlearn is a really important thing. You know, when we talk about learning with, there's a hell of a lot of things that [00:39:00] we need to unlearn, and colonization has done a hell of a job on that to pe to people throughout the world.
I think the things that you need to, to learn, firstly, is about relationship. And I'm, you know, I'm really fortunate to my, who I am now and the relationship I have with country or the relationship I have, even with people with animals, with all things is a very different person to 10, 15 years ago.
So I think unlearning is an important thing where, where you need to question everything. Just question, you know, what, what is the role of different things? What, why is the role of different things? So for me, the, the biggest thing that I can say too is that I've, I've built a relationship with country and that's, that's, it's also something that's continuous.
You know, I, I'm not at the end of that journey. So it's, you know, sitting down and listening to country, being comfortable with sitting in [00:40:00] country, a hell of a lot of us are so used to the comfort of being inside with heating, with, with unnatural light, with, when we understand that, I guess the natural rhythms of the, of the earth when we're supposed to go to sleep, when we're supposed to get up the activity that we're supposed to have, unlearning everything.
That colonization has taught us is a big step and people could be challenged by that, but if you, if you, if you are questioning your teaching, you start to unlearn what it is. And when you learn the right ways or learn more so than natural ways, you start to live in unison with country. And we say all the time when, when country's sick, there's an indication that the people are sick.
You know, just have a look at, you know, the, the context of global warming, the clo, the context of the relationship that we have where we're continuously, mining and [00:41:00] digging country and, and then, you know, not looking after all or burning country even the right ways. Everything is about relationship.
And to have that relationship, you need to sit with it. It's like a relationship with anyone. You can't just walk into somebody's house and then, and then claim to have an immediate relationship. It's something that's built. It's something that's, that is, is ongoing. For me, it took me to a place of starting to question everything.
I'm not, I'm not just talking about Western knowledges, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about questioning why the trees slope a certain way. What's it got to do with the way that the sun rises or where the sun rises? Like everything is, is as, as having relationship with country.
And when we have a better relationship with country we sleep better. We breathe better we heal faster with all that, we are all the who we are [00:42:00] as a, I've done a lot of work in the mental health space right across the world and the billions and billions of dollars that goes into fixing this mental health crisis around the world, around the globe.
It can be healed just by sitting down and listening to people like Uncle Paul sitting down and listening to people like we had on the film. You know, the, the this one conversation that is so prominent right throughout the film is the relationship that in all indigenous peoples have with country.
What it does to us, how it does to us. There's a, there's a brilliant quote and paraphrasing here in the book of, uh, what happened to you with Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah. And Dr. Perry says in that, that book, how ironic that the people who have been most, sorry, how ironic that the people are, what our modern world has marginalized, will be the people that we turn to, to heal our modern woes.[00:43:00]
And when he says that, when he says that, I, I believe that. What he's saying is that indigenous peoples have the answers to hu heal humanity. Like there's, it's no secret. We are sicker than we have ever been. We are more disconnected than we've ever been. We sleep less than we've ever slept. We exercise far less, and we eat for the worst we've ever eaten.
So as a, as a human species, the way we heal. All of humanity throughout the globe is by listening to the people who are here first. And listening to the indigenous peoples and, and, and reflecting on, on, on things that Uncle Paul said where there is so much greed in the world. Greed fuels the wars that we have right throughout the world, whether it be taking ownership of country as we see around the globe now, as we, as we see more power, you believe in you.
I believe in my God, [00:44:00] your God is wrong. And if we look at the commonality between everything is, is about. Loving each other is about looking after country, is about making sure that everyone else eats before we eat ourself. Then we'd be living in a much more healed humanity As a race. Right. Throughout the globe.
Zaya Benazzo: Yes. Yeah. Yes. And um. Can you say something or Uncle Paul Gordon, about ceremony and what's the role of ceremony in restoring balance or healing? And again, something western society has left behind long ago, and we basically live here mostly most of days.
Uncle Paul Gordon: Yeah, so ceremony, there's all different sorts of ceremony.
I guess the big one for, the big one for the boys in our,[00:45:00]
in our society is to be made men. And so we have a ceremony, a man making ceremony and that's, that's about giving boys around the age of puberty. Um, and that's where, where, where, when you're at that age, you start to actually wanna push, push the rules. So we take 'em out the, we take them out on ceremonial journeys and we teach 'em responsibility.
The, the problem with the world today is we talk too much about rights. Everyone wants a right to do whatever they want. But if we took the world right away and talked about our responsibility. Then we will actually do things way differently. So ceremony is firstly in that what man making ceremony is about teaching these boys their responsibility, their responsibility to the country, their responsibility to their family, and when they become married to their wives and when they have children to their [00:46:00] children.
So it's all about carrying out your responsibility. And then some of the other ceremonies we do are around paying respect. Singing, singing for the kangaroo and dancing for the kangaroo. The emu, the trees. We have all these other ceremonies, which is connecting us to country as we travel through the country.
So we might see a big, we might travel through the country and see a big mountain, but we don't see the mountains. We see the animal ancestor laying there asleep, and we'll pull up and we'll sing to it. And sometimes we'll do ceremony to them because we don't see 'em as dead things. We see 'em as sleeping things.
So there's quite a lot of different ceremonies, but it's all to do, again, with that big connection to country. And the other thing that we talk about a lot is when you accept your [00:47:00] responsibility, you find meaning and purpose in life. So once these men go. These boys go out and become men, and they're taught responsibility.
They're all world changes because they realize that now they have a purpose and a responsibility, and then life becomes meaningful. And when life becomes meaningful, you become content. And if we talk about contentment and health. Living a contended life, you're less likely to get cancer or have a heart attack, um, because you found contentment.
When I was a kid, there was lots of old people in my, in my world, a lot of 'em were over a hundred and they'd, they were here and born and walking country before the Europeans arrived here in my country. [00:48:00] So the first 30 to 40 years of their life was living the old way, and they lived until they were more, more than a hundred.
Because even though they lived through massacres, and even though they're seeing all their kids die much younger than them because they grew up on the the mission diets of white flour and. Bad, bad food. They all died. Their kids died at 50. They, they lived until they were a hundred, and they were still contended and they were still happy even though they had all that trauma in their life.
And I often talk to people about, I've got a choice to live in generational trauma, or I have a choice to live in generational happiness. I've got 200,000 years of generational happiness that I can connect with. And they're still out there in the country waiting for me to sit down with them. And that's what I, that's what I teach, is [00:49:00] that what we focus on is what we might change into.
Zaya Benazzo: Beautiful. You echo the, the words of our Maasai brother somewhere who spoke earlier, and also Haida Gwaii James. They both spoke about. Responsibility, respect, age sets, initiation, things that, yeah. Yeah.
Maurizio Benazzo: And also the words of the, in aurora, uh, that, uh, to cure addiction. Somebody's taken in the country and the stayed three days in the country with me and Dan.
We'll talk about your addiction. It's not as bio said, the couch is too small of a place to, to heal. Right. Yeah. And here in the question somebody, Kelly was saying, indigenous boy in Canada, when they come in of age, the same story. If a youth was not in on a good way, an elder takes him to hunt and he comes back and he's an entirely different [00:50:00] situation.
The youth will found this way, it, those are international, universal law. 'cause we are all human. We all have the same, and I remember reminding the same
Zaya Benazzo: mother,
Maurizio Benazzo: the same mother, we are the same mother, the same grandmother, let's say.
Uncle Paul Gordon: Yeah, we separate ourselves and say, oh yeah, you know, they're Chinese, they're American, they're Canadian, they're English.
But if we're really truthful, we're all humans and there's only one race of humans, so we're not different to each other. My blood can be given to anybody else in the world. If it's the right blood type, all my heart or my kidneys, it's not just for the aboriginal person. It can fit anywhere in, in the world, so can yours.
So we're not different.
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah. I remember when we came to film in your territory, you said sat completely in my mind. You [00:51:00] said, if you are here, you are from this land. If you live here, you are of this land. This is your land. And I felt immediately, I, I'm getting emotional saying it now. Three years later, I remember it touched me so deeply because I always feel in, in indigenous territory, I feel like, well, you know, I don't belong here.
And as. You said, no, you're here. You're here. This is your place.
Uncle Paul Gordon: Yep. And that's, that's our law. That don't matter where you are, wherever you are in country, you have responsibility for the place you are standing in, for the place you're sitting in, and you are a part of it. And you gotta take on the responsibility and
will. From somewhere else that think they're not a part of that, that part of the world, they'll destroy it. And that's what we've seen. You know, people have come from different parts of the world to [00:52:00] someone else's part of the world and destroyed it 'cause they didn't feel connected or a part of it.
Yeah.
Uncle Paul Gordon: So when you come to my country and sit with me, you are a part of it and I'm gonna give you a responsibility to love it and respect and learn from it.
Zaya Benazzo: Well, we are very close to our time and I just wanna, there's one question I will bring in and maybe this could be the, you can give us some final pointer. So, uh, Paru Desai is saying, this is beautiful, but not everyone has access to begin to be in country. Please share how can and help people connect more profoundly to the natural world, which is.
Around, uh, even when we are in urban Kenyans. [00:53:00] So for people who feel disconnected from country, from ancestors, anything, where can one begin even if they live in cities, in big cities?
Uncle Paul Gordon: Well, I'll get this question. I get, I get this asked a lot and I go, Sydney, which has got. 6 million people in it is still country.
You know, new. New York is still country. It's just got a city built on top of it. But you go out there and put your hand in the dirt, it's still country. You go out to your backyard and grow some broccoli and cauliflower or cabbage country is giving to you still. You are still connecting to.
You've got a tree in your backyard. There's a little bird sitting in the tree and he's singing a beautiful song just for you. That's connection to country. Just look for them. Special [00:54:00] moments in the city, walk, go for a walk in the park. Country is everywhere. It's all around us. Cities are just built on it, but are still.
Joe Williams: There's a point to that. It was, I was, um, I was over in, in Atlanta back in 2016 and we had a big corrobor gathering back here in Australia that I missed. And I just, I was yearning to be back there so much. But the brother, I, I reached out to a close brother who was gonna be there, he said.
Brother, we're all on the same. Mother. Go outside and connect. You'll still connect with us. You'll still feel us. You'll still heal us. I still hear us. He said, go outside dance if you want, but put your feet in the country and we're all connected by one. The other thing is the water is that we're all connected by that one.
Water. So there, there are people who are in cities that, that can can't and, and feel like that they, they dunno how to do it, but as [00:55:00] Uncle Paul said get somewhere of natural nature. It doesn't need to be surrounded by acres and acres of nature. It can be just that little tree. Put your hand on that tree, connect with that tree, get that natural water source, whether it be the ocean, whether it be the river, and connect to that water.
It's all part of that one country.
Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you
Maurizio Benazzo: so much
Zaya Benazzo: beginning and again, we've been reminded this whole week,
Maurizio Benazzo: all this one
Zaya Benazzo: simple, we just feel that wind. Hear the bird. Put your feet on.
Maurizio Benazzo: On the on the ground. Drink that water with respect. Yeah. Don't expect respect. Leave it and
Uncle Paul Gordon: remember that all things is living that water from the tap is living.
Yeah. And that water in the river is living. It's in you, you are, you are. 85, 90, 90% water. When people, when we, when, when in [00:56:00] our world in. Sometimes we'll say you have to go to the water and sit in the water and let the living water rebalance your water. Go there and sit in the water and your water will start to feel good and happy, and you'll start to feel good and we can do that.
So water and country are the healers for all of us, no matter where we are in the world. That's what we're made up of. So I guess my message to everybody out there is really understand that everything that you receive every day comes from country, not from anywhere else. It comes from country. So you don't have, you don't have to believe in it 'cause it's real, but you should worship it because it gives you everything that you have every day.[00:57:00]
Beautiful.
Zaya Benazzo: Wow. Thank you both so much. You've given us so many gifts. Thank you for sharing simple ways that, you know, our ancestors have worked for forever and yeah, they're here. Thank you. So thank you for your time and generosity of spirit.
Maurizio Benazzo: Thank. Looking forward to come as you invite me and I, I will come, I will come to country with you as a promise I made to job when we were there and I will definitely, that promise I will keep, I wanna be encounter with you.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Joe Williams: Thank you. Love you.
Zaya Benazzo: Deep gratitude. Thank you.
Joe Williams: Thank you both. And, and there's, there's also another way that, that you might be able to reach [00:58:00] you know, if it's not, you know, me, me personally, but Uncle Paul, but all the work that we do at, on the Living Country, um, it's the living country.org.
Okay. So if, if those those people who are, who are trying to search for, you know, a lot, a lot of what we do, uh, it's about, you know, looking after country. It's about getting people to, to access to the right services. And as far as, um, the right cultural teachings, um, by people like Uncle Paul and those who he's teach as well.
So, you look at you know, a lot of the work that, you know, uncle Paul has done with thousands and thousands of people. You know, whilst it, it might look like it's thousands of men, um. As men, we go home and, and we become better, better men in our families, better fathers in our families, and better husbands to our wives.
So, um, a lot of that is all, all through the teachings of the old people and through, through, you know, gifts that, that Uncle Paul has given us and myself and, and, and, and [00:59:00] many other, many other generations that it'll impact many other generations as well. So. Thank you for having us and, and really enjoyed this conversation.
I really enjoyed listening. Uh, more than anything. I didn't have to say a great deal. I'll just sit down and be a student.
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah. Leaving country.com is in the chat.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. Yeah.
Maurizio Benazzo: Dot com.
Zaya Benazzo: And I just wanna say we have also a movie because we couldn't. We couldn't weave all the stories into 90 minutes. So there is a movie where we share more of Uncle Paul Gordon, what he shared and enjoy your story.
And so in the circle of life,
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah, so thank you so [01:00:00] much.
