Right.

(on Wanta Jampinjinpa of the Walpiri Community)

I briefly heard an Aborigine,

watched his face and felt his timbre,

how he softly told of moving and acting,

thinking and feeling with the earth of

this world, the surroundings...

And invariably every second phrase or sentence

he would end in all but a whisper with, "... right."

Mild, sovereign, humble – but reflective, not self-conscious,

rather like an afterthought, matter-of-fact.

As he spoke before the camera,

punctuating his simple and generations-rich

statement with that barely audible "... right,"

he was doing more than talking, he was giving Teaching.

He could have been Native American,

Native this, Native that, but he's Australian,

Native of there – and whether they all do this

or just he does this, what came across

were all those thousands of generations

of living in close Wisdom with the Earth and her creatures,

all the Knowledge and Heart and Being, in that "... right."

And all that he wanted was, for us to finally get it … right.