We Are The Riverkeepers

Associate Professor of History, Adele Wessell approaches the river a little differently. Having lived in the Northern Rivers for 30 years and teaching history at Southern Cross University over that time, she’s developed a multi-layered relationship with the Richmond in Northern NSW on Widjabal Wia-bal Country. Hers is personal, as well as professional and steeped in stories of the past – Indigenou...

Marc Yaggi is a man brimming with stories.  As the Chief Executive Officer of Waterkeeper Alliance, an organisation based in New York but with members and allies all over the globe, Marc serves as a leading voice for a global movement dedicated to securing clean, healthy, and abundant water for all people and the planet. He is connected to hundreds of people around the world doing extraordinary th...

Mitch King is a Yaegl Bundjalung multi-disciplinary artist with deep connections to the rivers that grew him and his ancestors up. As a story teller he has translated this thread of connection – the rivers that run through his homelands, the creation stories that make clear - and heed the warnings - of the importance of looking after the waterways – through dance, hip hop and contemporary overlays...

Is there a relationship between unwell minds and unwell rivers? Is there a connection between crime and corrupted waterways? Ella Bancroft is a poet, an advocate, an activist, a potent voice full of vigour, love and fury. Most of all Ella Bancroft is Bundjalung, deeply connected to her ancestral lands and the water that gives her home its name. This is a story of weaving ourselves back into the fa...

The aftermath of catastrophic flooding reveals our deepest relationship with rivers. When waters rise unexpectedly, destroying homes and livelihoods, how do communities rebuild not just physically, but emotionally? Elly Bird, former Lismore City Councillor and Executive Director of Resilient Lismore, has dedicated years to answering this question. This tension manifests in Lismore's physical...

This is a podcast about rivers, so why are we talking about the ocean? Well, let’s just say – one thing leads to another.  Is it inevitable when someone falls so deeply in love with the ocean, that love will eventually lead them upstream? Lead them through adoration for marine animals, leads to estuarine animals, leads to river health and to where problems might be at their source?  Having spent t...

  Saundi is a member of the Native Women's Care Circle, a grassroots prayer group based in what is now known as St. Louis, Mo. She is of Cherokee and African American descent. Saundi has taken part in many prayer walks and has supported traditional water blessings for many years. Saundi is a jingle dancer as well as an educator, educational consultant, storyteller and a rock climber. Saundi j...

Rhoda Roberts is from a long-line of patient, powerful First Nations people, innovators and advocates, who have created newspapers, radio, cultural and healing hubs, spaces and services to overcome the profound and ongoing impacts of colonisation. Rhoda holds was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to the performing arts, leadership, advocacy and promoting cont...

When humans harm the rivers, how does that in turn harm humans? What can we do to turn the tides on unhealthy rivers and make them places again to play, fish, work and enjoy? Prof. Amanda Reichelt-Brushett has spent 3 decades studying one of the most significant waterways in NSW, a river with a unique geomorphology that sees the river behave in extraordinary ways during large rain events - the Ric...