Wiyi Yani U Thangani Institute for First Nations Gender Justice Chair June Oscar has called for remembering and respect for the matriarchal knowledge systems that have cared for whole groups of people, where individualism wasn't part of the thinking.
In this way, strength-based enabling systems in their own image, through their own wisdom, can transform the future into what First Nations peoples want, she explained.
"Old knowledge that we must make new, and bring into the now, making old knowledge new ... deep knowledge handed down over thousands of generations," she says.
Oscar said her strength to rise against injustice comes from her grandmother, mother and aunties, who resisted domination so they could protect and transfer what they know.
Now, genuine intergenerational policy needed to consider all living generations as well as those not yet born, she told university executives, academics and students at a recent panel event with the ANU Global Institute for Women's Leadership (GIWL).
A proud Bunuba woman from Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley region, Oscar has served as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, published the landmark Women's Voices report in 2020, and launched the Institute in 2024.
The tools for system change, within the bigger story of our existence, were shared alongside GIWL Deputy Director Dr Elise Stephenson at the event supported by the First Nations Portfolio.
GIWL and Wiyi Yani U Thangani Institute are both dedicated to gender justice and are doing globally unique work to change the ways in which people live and work to bring about fairness and peace.
"Yes, we're looking back 80 years in the context of the ANU, but we're also looking forward," Dr Stephenson said.
"And what the Global Institute for Women's Leadership wants future generations to know is that we tried, we didn't just let history echo forwards."
Professor Peter Yu, ANU Vice President (First Nations), said the unique collaboration between the two Institutes enabled them to challenge the status quo in current policy, or lack of it, and have a major influence on governments.
"It demonstrates the continuing barriers and the challenges that are there ... the reality of what happens on the ground and in the daily lives of women, and how that impacts all of us,” he says.
As well as influencing national policy, Professor Yu said there was an opportunity to embed the advice of the Institutes into how the ANU by 2030 strategy played out.
Dr Stephenson called for an end to "policrastination", where critical decisions are dodged by decisionmakers – often at the expense of future generations.
"We're right at the start of what can be a really transformational change for society," Dr Stephenson said.
"We have to end policrastination in our research, in our policy making, in all of these other domains."
The Wiyi Yani U Thangani Institute at ANU hosts peacebuilding camps in Western Australia's Pilbara region to empower First Nations women and girls to share practical peacekeeping wisdom.
"In the context of ongoing conflict from colonisation, the pressures are enormous," Oscar explained.
"It is a time for women and girls and trans members of our community to find peace in themselves, away from crisis and the constant work of supporting families.
"We're creating more people who carry the mindfulness of gender justice, equality and peace, and I think we're helping women remember and see themselves."
