[Intro]: Sonic Snippets: from the Sonica Botanica archive

[Lenka Vanderboom]: My name's Lenka Vanderboom.  I'm a Yawuru descendant from Northwest Australia, so growing up I had the privilege of being in nature a lot.
For me as an Aboriginal person, you know, traveling across Australia, across the world, I guess everyone has that, you know, desire to know where they are. And understanding that I'm on Boon Wurrung, Wurundjeri, Bunurong Country wherever I might be around Melbourne is really important. This is a living space, and I guess biodiversity – the word itself – it's just part and parcel of First Nations’ culture across the globe really and inbuilt in the connection to the Country that you're in. 
We have totem systems in Australia, and that means that you are legally obliged, you are connected deeply to a particular column of your world. You have a whole part of your environment that your family is connected to through story. Some call it dreaming stories, creation stories. So First People see their totem as themselves. How does that connect with biodiversity? It's a beautiful thing, isn't it? If you are connecting with a part of nature as a part of yourself, then you see it as just as valuable as yourself, and you see its health, as important to your health and the generations going forward - your children and those who are also connected to that totem. You are obliged to look after that part of nature. Your brother or your cousins might be obliged to look after something completely different. 
And that's the exciting thing about us starting to value Aboriginal systems of looking after Country. Our science systems, our societal systems, our law, our legal systems are all charged with knowing everything and naming everything in our world.