Video Transcription

I love being a cricket because I love being a cricket. Because a cricket is a member of a family, a clan, and a First Australian with a connection to country and responsibilities to those who have come before and those to follow. I love being a cricket because we have the opportunity to learn, practice, and pass on our culture. We do this by knowing who we are and where we come from. This is special because of the strong beliefs that live in the hearts of all curry kids living in Victoria.

I love being a career kid because I have a huge family who make me laugh until my belly aches. The whole community of uncles, aunties, and cousins help raise me. Curry people live for their kinship group. We are taught from birth to know all our family connections in the communities.

I love being a cricket because my family’s ancestors have lived in Victoria for thousands of years. I love being a cricket because when my ancestors were born, they were given a totem tying them to a local place, a plant, or even a star or planet.

I love being a cricket because a totem makes sure each curry child has a special connection to Mother Earth and their kinship family group. I love being a cricket because, at night, my family can turn the planets and stars of the night sky into a story full of adventures about the animals and places of Victoria. Ngarri, the Mallee Fowl, is one such animal. He appears in the night sky in autumn at the same time the Mallee Fowl is starting to build their nests.

Aboriginal people believe that when the stars are blinking, they are our ancestors watching us and talking. I love being a cricket because my family looks to the local native animals, plants, and the sky world to tell the time of the year. We have many weather seasons. Some Victorian kinship groups have up to six seasons.

I love being a curry kid because we have been celebrating the Victorian landscape for thousands of years through dance, rituals, and ceremonies. I love being a cricket because my family speaks a language that is thousands of years old and the only one of its kind in the whole world.

I love being a cricket because, for thousands of years, my family has honoured the animals and plants of Victoria. Local communities have thrived by listening carefully to the shifting patterns of nature. Curry people know that food is at its most useful and plentiful when it is cultivated in harmony with the laws of nature in its peak season.

Video by deadlystory.com