**1. Acknowledging**

So much begins with acknowledging. Where denial narrates absence, silence and closure, acknowledging opens possibilities. Acknowledging invites relationships, engagement and connection. It challenges difference and invites conversation. In our era of denial—of climate change, human rights, identity, connectedness and mutual dependence—acknowledging is important. Acknowledging Indigenous peoples' rights and the rapid environmental changes currently occurring across multiple places, multiple scales, and multiple species and systems opens opportunities for learning, collaborating, understanding and surviving across boundaries of difference.

Dharug Nura is the place now known as Greater Sydney, on the east coast of the southern continent. I was born and have lived and worked in this Country for most of my life. It was, and remains, the traditional Country [1] of the Dharug-speaking clans who faced the first waves of British settler colonialism on the southern continent of Australia in the late 18th Century. In Dharug Nura, it was always customary for guests and visitors to wait to be welcomed by the people of that Country, and to acknowledge the Country and its people, places and stories. In the customary law of many of the First Nations of the southern continent, the Welcome to Country not only introduces a visitor to the current inhabitants (human and non-human) of a place to offer recognition and protection. The

Welcome also invites the guest to recognize their own obligations towards the Country and its people, and its inhabitants and its pasts, presents and futures.
