About
Why Warriors
Dynamic insights and skills for working with Yolngu and other First Nations groups
Why Warriors is a small social enterprise organisation working in community development and community education in north-east Arnhem Land.
Why Warriors’ Mission Statement:
“To empower Yolŋu and other First Nation people to live out their full potential through restoring their control and freedom, providing access to information, and building capacity and understanding between Indigenous peoples and the dominant culture.”
This Cross-Cultural Learning platform allows us to deliver over four decades of material from face-to-face training in workshops and seminars conducted Australia-wide, to you in your own home or workplace.
The English language, for Yolngu people, is a fifth or sixth language, which means many deep cultural mores and incredible linguistic concepts are difficult to translate. Yolngu elders have repeatedly asked us to share this public information with you.
Their teachings, along with our extensive community development, cross-cultural and community education experience, form the basis of our comprehensive training materials. These training materials will be released here as time and resources allow their development.
Our courses provide a resource for people coming to work with Yolngu and other First Nations people, to become more culturally sensitive to their traditional way of life. Our aim, more broadly, is that the people’s unique intellectual language, knowledge and skills that have allowed them to control their own lives for over 60,000 years, becomes better understood and appreciated.
Yolngu people also hope this will encourage greater appreciation of the issues they constantly face, on a daily basis, as they struggle to coexist with the English mainstream Australian community.
Yolngu also hope they will be better included, rather than excluded, in the conversations that lead to decisions about their future, their daily lives, and in relation to the assets on their yirralka (estates).
Culturally competent communication and interaction require culturally safe relationships.
These courses are designed to allow more people to become truly bilingual and bicultural, or at least create a greater appreciation of cultural and linguistic diversity, leading to much better intercultural relationships.
Profits from the sale of these online courses will go towards:
- Producing more courses for this site
- Building essential resources for Yolngu people (such as Covid-19 information)
- Supporting our Yolngu Matha Online Learning Centre Djambatjmarram
- Creating English learning resources and the meaning of hard English words
- Producing more two-way health videos and health podcasts
- Development of Yolngu businesses and employment on their home estates
- Research and publication of more cross-cultural titles (such as Why Warriors Lie Down and Die)
So please join us on this adventure of understanding a First Nations culture alongside some universal human dynamics! Along the way you will learn a lot about the original Australian society through the eyes of the Yolngu people here, in north-east Arnhem Land.
To read more about our goals, activities and visions, please click here.
Sharing wisdom
Mindfulness and the Ancient Australian Culture
David Malangi from Fidock Collection
These courses will share cross-cultural knowledge and wisdom beyond mainstream conversations and beyond the camera lens.
Our work, in partnership with Yolngu colleagues from north-east Arnhem Land, provides so much for you to discover about Yolngu culture and way of life. We are privileged to be able to share information and knowledge that is not often available in the English language.
By learning about culture you are helping protect one of the last original Australian cultures left in Australia today.
Here on our Cross-Cultural Learning platform, this wealth of information and experience is available at your fingertips.
