As part of Wagga Wagga City Council’s (WWCC) support for the Wiradyuri and First Nations community in Wagga Wagga we donate money each year to the NAIDOC committee. As a major sponsor of the committee WWCC gets to select and name an award to be presented at the NAIDOC ball. This year we chose the Reconciliation Award and named it the Aunty Yvonne Gilchrist award in honour of Aunty Yvonne who was a highly regarded and well respected Wiradyuri Elder and served as a Councillor for WWCC from 1999 to 2004. When I presented the award, I was also honoured to be joined by two members of Aunty Yvonne’s family: James and Natasha Evans.

The NAIDOC Committee selected two recipients for the Aunty Yvonne Gilchrist award, Colette Geier and Megan Norton. I recently met up with Colette and spoke to her about her work in the Wagga community, and how it felt to receive the Aunty Yvonne Gilchrist award for Reconciliation.

Colette describes herself as someone who keeps busy – between raising her two children and renovating her home with her husband, she is also working on a PhD at Charles Sturt University (CSU) while also lecturing at the university as well.

Colette’s PhD research and journey of community engagement with First Nations people

The journey from beginning her PhD to now demonstrates her engagement and learning with the local Wiradyuri community and Elders quite well. After completing her Bachelor’s in Biomedical Science, she moved onto doing her Honours and looking into Kangaroo Grass Seed as a grain. This led her to approach CSU to ask if she could do further research into the nutritional composition of Kangaroo Grass Seed. However, during her research she was finding it problematic because there was no way to get the seed out of the seed husk, as well as many other issues. Such as, not having much benefit as a food suitable for areas that experience droughts. To address this, she found that a plant like Pigweed seed was a great source of nutrition because it was able to stay fresh for 40 years.

However, throughout this one big issue that she kept encountering was that the plants were being taken off Country. There was no way for her to connect the plants back to the traditional owners of the Country the plants were from.

This lead her to wanting to focus her PhD on working on native plants but maintaining the connection between what Country the plant came from and their traditional owners who could then potentially benefit from any of the research done on the plants. This was important to Colette because she wanted to ensure that any knowledge sharing, and benefits, could go where it belongs. She started looking at plants in Southern Australia but then had the realization that there are many important bush medicine plants that grow in Wiradyuri country.

Having this realization of wanting to research bush medicine plants in Wiradyuri country she knew the next step was to make strong connections to Wiradyuri mob. At CSU she met with and spoke with Lloyd Dolan, Aunty Deb Evans, and Uncle James Ingram, who gave her guidance that a plant like Emu Bush would be ideal for her research. After this, they introduced her to Aunty Flo Grant who was able to give her guidance and her blessings to research Emu Bush.

Colette stresses how important this process is and how grateful she is for the Elders and community support in guiding her to her PhD topic. Not only in finding the right plant to research, but also beginning her journey into correct, proper ways to engage with the Wiradyuri and First Nations communities. One thing she said that really stood out to her was how Aunty Deb would tell her to “shut up and listen” as a way to help get the concept of Yindyamarra across to Colette – which was a hard concept for Colette to get but this approach worked best at helping her learn the concept.

Which leads to where her PhD research is currently. It has two parts – the chemistry side of it about how ngurambang (Country) can affect the chemicals with the plant and what does best practice look like when working with First Nations stakeholders in chemistry research.

As part of exploring how ngurambang can affect the plant she also includes data on how the Emu bush is picked and how the plant is treated. Her early data is showing that this is just as important, if not more so, than where the plant grows.

Being Nominated for the Aunty Yvonne Gilchrist Reconciliation NAIDOC Award

When I asked Colette how she felt about being nominated her response was “Surprised. Very, very surprised. Was not expecting it at all”. She was extremely flattered and wanted to acknowledge that it was especially flattering being nominated by Rachael McPhail who has done a lot of work within the reconciliation space.

This led us to have a talk about what Reconciliation means to us. Colette has mixed feelings about it because when she thinks about reconciliation, she believes a lot more needs to be done. That non-Indigenous people must really get serious about truth telling and being honest about the story, and the truth of what really happened before we can truly reconcile. That reconciliation can be a great thing when both sides work together for the right reasons, but it would be folly to think it can be a curative process without getting to the source of the problem.

We also spoke about how when I was reading out that she had won the award that she was freaking out and started crying because it was such a shock to win, but such an honour. But it also feels disrespectful to win an award for being friends with people. A metaphor she used was “it’s like going out for dinner and winning an award for choosing the tastiest thing off the menu”.

On top of her research and lecturing at CSU, Colette also does assist with the National Indigenous Science Education Program (NISEP). She sees this work as a way to give back with her skills and privilege to help make science fun and exciting for First Nations kids at school. There is a shortage of First Nations researchers and scientists and Colette hopes that with the success of NISEP, and other similar programs, that one day someone like her won’t be needed – that any research on native plants and traditional medicinal uses could be done by a First Nations researcher instead.

Colette also assists the local First Nations community using other skills she has picked up over her life such as flower arrangements and baking. Colette recently did the flower arrangements for the NAIDOC ball as well as the local Wiradyuri Elders book launch for their book Growing Up Wiradjuri edited by Dr Anita Heiss. She finds that this stuff just falls into place. That it feels like it was meant to be because of how easily it happens and really enjoys knowing that skills she developed throughout her life can be useful in a way that helps the community. The community who has helped her, but also the community she considers her friends, and family, now.