Giving Back

Napagi Napagi

Napagi Napagi Give Give

Inspired by the central desert languages of Australia, I follow in both life, and work, the concept of Napagi Napagi, translating roughly to Give Give.

It's not Give and Take, it's Give Give. An idea beyond reciprocity, I know that if I keep giving that somewhere in the system of lore you too will be giving and the giving will come back because of our connection and relationality. 

I understand this doesn’t fit in a western construct where everything is transactional, where we are taught and told that people act only in their own self-interest,

But it's not. That's not human instinct, and not how we are made to be in relation to community, putting the attention on the overarching sense of prosperity for the whole system.

The Lore of the Land

My approach to work as a social enterprise, and collaborations with local, and international nonprofit organizations.

A new landscape, only some 12,000 years old, a volcanic cataclysm made way for a lush rainforest, & big story. The story of the first currency. 

It is in this place that a rare striped shell was discovered, a shell that is only found on this small stretch of coastline. Because of the rarity the local custodians experimented with making these shells have value, giving them a form of monetary value, & trading them across the country.

The first currency. 

The result was that the people started to collect the shells, hold them & hoard them. All of a sudden things weren’t moving, there was no velocity in the community, people gathering shells in piles & keeping them. Things slowed down, community & familial relationships were going wrong, people started getting sick, fights were breaking out. 

Elders seeing this knew it was not the way to live, & warned people, but they didn’t listen.

As part of the dreaming in this part of Queensland at the base of the reef, a form of rainbow serpant was known to come from the sea to the tableland along the waterway.

When serpant came from the sea, the people saw thousands of the shells stuck in its scales, the blackbird people, driven by their greed, dropped a log on him, murdered him, & stole the shells.

When they saw what the shells had done, driven them to do, what this monetary system had done to the community, the experiment was abandoned, & learned from, never to be repeated.

 

Lessons in greed, in sharing freely, in familial currency & equity, value in trade, & so many other aspects are embedded within this lore. 

The most being that this is not the way people are supposed to live.

The rainbow serpent is the spirit of creation. If you live in this way, you will in effect, kill all of creation. 

Isn’t that what we have done? Let’s look at our modern world, & the shells we are all fighting to collect made of paper, or 0’s & 1’s.

Such is the problem with the world. Inequality is systemic.

It’s not coming from peoples hearts, we are not the problem. 

The problem comes from forcing the unnatural situation of having to survive in an economic system that need to exclude groups of people for anything to be priced. All inequality, prejudice, everything is a symptom of a pathological economic system, a system of a growth based economic system. & people are sick of it.

We are going back, all comes back to land, all comes back to place,

These are things we already know, but are relearning. 

It’s been said indigenous knowledge systems, from all over the world, that will provide the path forward in fixing the broken systems that are in place across the globe, & we must all start to seek out, be a part of that conversation, ask the questions, & hear their answers. 

In all of our approach, 

We do not have shareholders or owners who receive profits. All profits made are directed towards achieving our purpose, for we all hvae a responsibility to share, engage, learn, interpret, and protect the stories of all cultures.

Napagi Napagi

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ROLE
Photographer
Date
07 Apr 2020
Location
15 Jul 2020

Title

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ROLE
Photographer
Date
07 Apr 2020
Location
15 Jul 2020

DURA H2O Purified

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ROLE
Photographer
Date
07 Apr 2020
Location
15 Jul 2020

KOOLKUNA HAND SANITIZER

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ROLE
Photographer
Date
07 Apr 2020
Location
15 Jul 2020

KOOLKUNA Australia Cotton Reusable Face Mask

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ROLE
Photographer
Date
07 Apr 2020
Location
15 Jul 2020

CAMBEWARRA .135 FIRE RELEIF WHISKEY​

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ROLE
Photographer
Date
07 Apr 2020
Location
15 Jul 2020

KOOLKUNA Australia Cotton Reusable Face Mask

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ROLE
Photographer
Date
07 Apr 2020
Location
15 Jul 2020

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