Ngarra is a word that is known all over Australia. For my mentor and elder Dig Jones, it means Together As One, coming from the Dharug way on the East coast, south of my Home on Wonnorua and Awabakal country. From the deserts of central Australia in Arrernte it means ‘to come together’, a place of belonging. In Yolngu of the north, ‘to be together’, ‘in unity’. In Noongar in the West its ‘to be connected’. For the Kaurna people of the South, it is ‘combining’ in common purpose, and in shared goals. In Wik the meeting ceremonial space and community law and knowledge. In Wiradjuri its the law and gathering of knowledge, to teach and to learn. Wherever you go – Ngarra is the law. A law we all share not only here in Australia, everywhere; an intercontinental common lore, for we are all one people sitting around one fire. Together as one. 

‘You see that river there’, he said, gesturing to the river bend we were camping by. ‘See it winding through the landscape. The surface of the water, rushing, relentless: that is the modern world we are living in. But beneath the surface, the currents of ancient knowledge and lore twist and turn, invisible yet vital, guiding the flow, holding us up. The unseen currents that shape and sustain the river’s path.‘

Dig sat for a moment, his eyes fixed on the flames, as if they held the memory of every story ever told. The fire cracked and hissed, sending sparks upward like ancestors whispering through the smoke. After a long silence, he spoke. “You are not special.” His voice was steady, but there was something weighty beneath it. “There’s nothing special about you.”

The brook babbled softly in the background, a song older than time itself. He didn’t look at me, but through me, past me, into the heart of the earth. “No one is special. No one is better than another.” He paused, poking at the embers with a stick, stirring them as if coaxing out a forgotten truth. The wood groaned and crackled under the heat.

“But,” he continued, “you are a part of something special. That’s what we’ve lost. The remembering. All of us, all equal, all sitting together around the same fire. There’s power in that. Power we’ve forgotten.” His eyes flickered with the light of the flames, filled with a depth that only comes from living in the old ways, the right ways. “We must remember this—because when we all come together, when we all sit around the same fire, that is when we are special. That’s when we can do anything.”

Ngarra.

The word hung in the air like smoke, curling itself into the very marrow of my bones. Together as one. That was the heart of it, the essence of everything we had lost, and everything we needed to find again. We are all siblings, all connected by the same breath of creation, each of us with our stories to share. And it is those stories—those voices around the fire—that will heal us. It’s what we’ve forgotten in this world of disconnection, in the race for individualism. But if we can come back, if we can sit together again, we will remember who we are. All the wisdom, all the strength, it flows from the land, from each other, from the stories we tell and the ones we listen to.

And that, Dig knew, is how we become custodians once again. That is how we heal—not by standing apart, but by sitting together, as one. Ngarra.

By sharing our stories, bringing them all to that fire, all sitting down together, we can all deepen our understanding and love for each other, celebrating the unity in our diversity, and living by the laws taught to us by the traditional owners that hold the current steady as it carves its way through the landscape. This is the heart of the ngarra project. Dig not only redefined the idea that would become the ngarra project, but my entire life’s direction sitting by the river. Its mission and its purpose. All you see of this project, of what I do, I owe to him. That is how the project got its name, after that old man, after that moment, sitting by that river – to honor him, his memory, his teachings, all the ancestors that lead us here, and to hold ourselves accountable to what he asked of us, of all of us. We all need to come sit around the campfire. Ngarra. This is your invitation to join.