Our Society’s role as a convenor of Victoria’s science community must be reinvigorated and extended to include sectors and knowledge systems beyond academia. This way, we connect Victorians everywhere with expertise that can enable effective decision making – informed, localised responses to issues both global and regional. We are re-examining and refocusing our strategy, structure and scope of activities.

Indigenous cultures have a deep emotional investment and attachment to the landscape that acts as both almanac and encyclopaedia. It’s amazing that different cultures separated by vast oceans and continents have independently perceived the patterns in constellations in strikingly similar ways, despite being geographically and temporally separated. Stories from the cosmos give both practical guidance and spiritual comfort, and this way of telling stories and reading the stars is a way of keeping knowledge constant across generations.

It’s NAIDOC Week, and what better time to reflect on the significance of the world’s oldest continuous cultures and the incredibly complex knowledge systems that have been sustained through the remarkable practice of “orality?” Dr Duane Hamacher and Krystal de Napoli from Monash University have delivered a number of terrific lectures for audiences across Victoria this year for the Inspiring Australia program, and we’ve prepared these highlights from Duane’s presentation to the Royal Society of Victoria in February to share his passion for the science traditionally encoded in story, song, dance, landscape and skyscape by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia.