Living Together Network

THANKS to All Contributors to all the LTG Programs thus far!

Painting by Lois Cook

WELCOME TO COUNTRY 5th LTG Bundjalung Cultural Representative Lois Cook is a vibrant and learned Nyangbal/Ngybul Bundjalung Culture woman. She and her colleague, Ricky Cook, are the Principal Consultants of Aboriginal Cultural Concepts (ACC) through which they run a diverse Program for NSW Schools that connects children with historical/cultural knowledge and understanding about Aboriginal heritage, as well as insightful Aboriginal Cultural Tours for the general public.

Lois’ illustrious career includes working as Sub-editor of Aboriginal Islander Message Newspaper [1978-1982]; as the state branch secretary of the National Aboriginal Secretariat (NAC) [1982-1983]]; as a trainee administrator for the Bundjalung Tribal Society, then as a NAC field officer for Pastor Frank Roberts and as founding secretary of the Far North Coast Regional Aboriginal Land Council (FNCRALC) [1984]; as Administrator of Jali Local Aboriginal Land Council(LALC) [1985-1988]; as administrator, tour manager and performer of / in Bangara Dance Theatre Australia [1989-1990]; (returning home) as field officer for the FNCRALC [1991]; as Co-ordinator of Jali LALC [1992-1994]; as a Performing Artist in and founding member of Goobah Goobah Koori Theatre Company [1994-2002]; then as Managing Director as well as choreographer, actor, traditional dancer, film maker, tour manager, Co-ordinator and Production Manager in and of Goobah Goobah Koori Theatre Company [20003-2010].

Gabi Bohnet

NEW SUSTAINABLE SETTLEMENTS IN GERMANY    3rd and 5th LTG
Multi-media Presenter Gabi Bohnet has been a sustainability advocate and consultant for the last 15 years. Her background is architecture and town planning, fields which she also expanded into culture and eco-systems studies, community building and education. One of her passions is to work together with the community as she believes that without the support of the wider community we won’t achieve sustainability.

Gabi was part of the ‘Ya basta’ collective and co-ordinator of a self-funded community house on the Atherton Tablelands. The collective put into practice the values of caring for the environment and people, as well as making resources and knowledge available to everybody.

She has extensive knowledge in passive solar house design as well as in master and land use planning for sustainability. The latter is an urgent and hot topic now in the light of climate change and peak oil. Gabi has been part of the community working groups for the technical advisory committee for input in the FNQ 2025 Regional Draft Plan and has worked as a consultant for environmental organisations as well as the Regional Councils in Cairns, the Sunshine Coast and the Tweed Shire.

She has toured extensively with a presentation on ‘Showcase Sustainable Settlements in Germany’ which have been an inspiration to many planners, architects as well as the local communities alike.

Her latest projects are a ‘Sharing Practical Knowledge’ Collective on Wilson’s Creek and promotion and participation in Footprints for Peace.

Steven Strong and son Evan Strong

ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL ORIGIN of HOMO SAPIENS and WORLD CUTURE  5th LTG
Presenter Steven Strong and son Evan Strong have spent over 20 years assembling facts from archaeological finds the world over, explorers’ accounts, genetics information, traditional Australian Aboriginal mythology and many more sources to develop one coherent, rigorously backed and controversial theory: Aboriginal people exported civilisation to the world-at-large. They expound their theory, and its multi-discipinary bases, in their first two books, “Constructing a New World Map” and “Mary Magdalene’s Dreaming”, published through the prestigious University Press of America.

Steven Strong is a secondary school teacher with a background in Archaeology and Education. He was involved in the formation of a Graduate Diploma of Aboriginal Education for the NSW Department of Education, writing units on Traditional Law and Contemporary History. He currently collaborates with various Indigenous Knowledge Keepers in teaching a Traditional Values Program at Mullumbimby High.

Steven also co-authored the highly successful “Aboriginal Australia: A Language and Cultural kit”. Steven has spent many years learning and living with the Bundjalung and Gumilaroi people of Northern New South Wales; he has applied himself “to prov[ing] through scientific fact that which the Elders insist is true”.

Website: www.forgottenorigin.com [Your LTN admin offers some edits from Steve’s website — to wet your appetite. Please see below.]

Even Dawnsong

MAYAN MOVEMENT AND SYNCHRONIC ORDER OF NATURAL TIME  5th LTG
Workshop Presenter and Facilitator Even Dawn Song is an artist, designer and singer-songwriter who lives in a tree-top sanctuary near the border ranges. She has 6 years of experience studying the mayan calendar and dreamspell synchronometer and has developed a fun and interactive way of learning the dynamics of the Synchronic Order of Natural Time.
Website: www.mindheartmedia.com

Ricardo Johansson

WILL OF THE PEOPLE PROJECT  Every LTG thus far
Presenter Ricardo Johansson is the developer of the 1062.org on-line decision-making system that is now used on the United People and Will of the People sites.

He has recently authored and published “Emergence from Illusion” - which is currently available in pdf form for free on the WPP site. www.willofthepeopleproject.com

SCIENCE FOR LIFE    4th and 5th LTG
Presenter Professor Robert Pope is a ‘Science-Art Artist’. His laurels include being a Recipient of the 2009 Telesio Galilei Academy of Science (London), a Gold Medal Laureate (Philosophy of Science) and the Director of Science-Art Research Centre of Australia Inc. Professor Dr John D Frodsham, founder of the School of Human Communications at Murdoch University in Western Australia, wrote a letter, published by The Bulletin, in which he said, “Pope’s work is important not in artistic terms alone but sociologically. What he is trying to do, in an age of divided cultures, the humanist and the scientific, is to interpret science aesthetically”.

Robert’s talk refers to the inadmissible transfer of pure physics theory to the fields of research in Humanities, which transfer fails to take into account regenerative energies such as creativity, music and the arts, love and friendship, a smile between parent and child and the replenishment of the human soul. He argues that ‘pure physics cannot describe reality as experienced within the compass of human emotion’.

Dudley Leggett

A SUSTAINABLE WAY FORWARD  Everu LTG thus far

Presenter Dudley Leggett - following graduation in Chemical Engineering at RMIT and employment in the Petro-Chemical Industry - travelled widely studying simple living technologies and cultures.

In 1972 Dudley, with his wife and first baby, began his exploration of sustainable community living, establishing near Lismore a community still growing today. Food production, gravity fed irrigation, solar and hydro electricity contribute to the sustainability of the community. Family homes and the common facilities have been built by community members with recycled and innovative low cost construction methods. It has been noted by researchers as one of the most successful in the country.

Dudley has worked extensively with all levels of government, developing sustainable settlement policies and was employed as a consultant and project manager by the NSW Department of Housing for an innovative affordable housing community settlement project.

In 1996 he established the Sustainability Research Institute, the first institute in Australia dedicated specifically to sustainability research, three years later it was approved by the Australian Government’s principal scientific organization, CSIRO.

Dudley’s passion is worldwide peace and justice, open genuinely democratic and spiritually based communities and wholistic sustainable practices.
THE GLOBAL CONTEXT : THE GRASSROOTS TRANSFORMATION OF THE WORLD

Multi-media Presenters Narada Das and Katharie Dawn  Every LTG thus far

Narada Das

Narada Das (Dan Vantari) is a computer artist, musician, visionary, and website maker. He was part of the team that created 9 festivals over nine years at the Homeland community in Thora Valley NSW.

He is creator and webmaster of www.oneearth.ws an online multimedia community dedicated to facilitating a harmonious transition to a sustainable and compassionate society.
His art works include the Universal Yoga Mandala at www.yogaverse.com which brings the energy of 2012 into the present, and the Time Traveller hypercube pendant at www.sacredpatterns.com which he offers as a geometric symbol for the new consciousness awakening on the planet.
He is committed to doing whatever is most efficiently effective to use this window of opportunity to transform the nightmare that we call history into the dream of planetary awakening.

Katharine Dawn / Feathers the Dawn

Katharine Dawn’s planetary service - in the interests of peace, justice, grassroots empowerment and a sustainable and uplifted life for all - spans decades and has taken a great variety of forms:

On the front line - for the preservation of nature, sacred sites and Australian Aboriginal custodianship and the cessation of the nuclear and military industries [Jabiluka Camp, World Bike Ride for Peace, Peace Convergence (Yepoon), Timbarra Gold Mine Protest Camp, Walking the Land (with Uncle Kevin Buzzacott), Nightcap Forest, Beverley Uranium Mine, Earth Dream, etc].
As co-creator of numerous festivals and special events for World Peace and the awakening of humanity [Venus Transit, Joyfest, Byron Peace Carnival, Byron Social Forum, Living Together Gatherings, etc]
As a ceremonialist – working the causal, morphogenetic fields of existence [Solar Wave Ceremony Welcoming the 5th World, Sacred Earth Ceremonies, Peace Events, Turn the Tide, Rainbow Around the World, Grandmother Drum (2nd Australian Tour), Participating in Central Desert Inma, Representing the Rainbow Tribe on the Red Earth Corroborre Ground at the Nyamma Festival, 11 11 Doorway Link Ups, Fire the Grid (Byron Bay), etc.]
As an artist of both the performance and visual arts – making music, performing dance, creating installations, making films, scripting a play (yet to be produced) [Sundiata Marimba Band, Sacred Earth Acknowledged Dance Duo, Zen Mango Bird Woman, Sacred Earth Gallery-Temple, Zero Point, ‘O Gaza! Herald the end of war’ short film, etc]
As a networker –articulating the vision, creating the website and co-organizing the regular gatherings for the Living Together Network – a grassroots organization that provides online and ‘on the ground’ opportunities for communities to come together in the interests of political empowerment, sustainability and peace www.livingtogethernetwork.net

REIKI ATTUNEMENT [LEVEL 1] AND REIKI GROUP HEALINGS   5th LTG

Facilitator Supi was born in Central Kalimantan. Supi has lived in Australia for 10 years, studying and practicing various esoteric/healing modalities. Whilst living in Bali, Supi was introduced to Reiki. He has continued to pracitice all traditions up to and including master level.

MORNING YOGA AND MEDITATION   5th LTG
Facilitator Joseph WAP Norton is the Founder and Director of “IAMYA” the International Ascended Maters Yoga Ahram. Joseph guides Initates, Disciples and Chelas through the 1t levels of Initiation and beyond. Joseph has been a Yoga Student and Teacher for 8 Years.As a keen student, practicioner and teacher of Yoga, Joseph incorporates most yoga systems into his Planetary Focus and is highly commited to make the Transformation of Yoga Sadhana available to the people through group classes.

www.iamya.com

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LTN Edits from Steven and Evan Strong’s website : www.forgottenorigin.com
“Our claim is supported by genes, mtDNA, blood and many experts, that Aboriginal people set sail from Australia, not to, 50,000 years ago.

“We claim that Aboriginal people sailed to and settled in America over 40,000 years ago, and visited many other places including Egypt, Japan, Africa, India etc. They were the first Homo sapiens who evolved before the Sapiens of Africa, and who gave the world art, axes, religion, marine technology, culture, co-operative living, language and surgery.

“Many may not know that Professor Alan Wilson, the person responsible for the claim that we evolved from Africa, recanted his theory and now believes a small group of Homo erectus got to Australia 400,000 years ago. He believes they evolved into Homo sapiens and then spread from Australia well before the Africans.

“The debate over whether they were the first people in America is virtually a closed case. Hundreds of bones and skulls have been discovered that are undeniably of “Australian Aboriginal” origin. What it all means has had even the experts mystified. Professor Clive Gamble claims we “have to construct a completely new map of the world, and how it was peopled.” We are responding to the call and attempting to clear up the confusion.”