November 2001. Irati Wanti is now being run out of a new larger dug-out (the zen den) by Nina B and Emily J. My week here is research-focused, getting to meet people in the Kupa Piti community, learning some of the core ways Irati Wanti works to support the Kungka Tjuta – with respect!, and to develop with everyone there a concrete plan for Stage 2, the project-focus period when I return the following April.

I’ve arrived there with a writer from Rome who spends the week preparing a story on the Kungkas for an Italian magazine. I am continually inspired by Irati Wanti’s way of creating the dossiers and media releases documenting the experiences and voices of the Kungkas. Coming from a background of poetry/art/film my ways of working, of sifting experience and synthesising ideas intuitively, seem so random, ultra time-consuming and even narcissistic. Typically even a relatively small project can take me three or four years, so I’m hoping that a little of the integrity, speed and clarity practised daily by the media activists and space kids I’m becoming friends and working with might rub off on the way I work. I feel like such a babe in the woods much of the time, there is so much to learn in terms of protocols of working within any other unfamiliar cultural context, and specifically within Australian Indigenous culture.

Tread slowly, take small soft steps.