This week I have been at the Woodford Folk Festival with my friend and collaborator Fiona Boyes. Together we performed Blak & Blues and I participated in panels on issues such as the impact of plastics, Aboriginal ecology, and what it means to be human, and I relaunched my poetry book. Between events I sat around the venue painting — trying to catch not just what I was seeing, but the feeling of the space I was in.
Woodford is a gathering of eclectic diversity: all ages, genders, backgrounds, and religions. It is held within a beautiful natural space. Trees surround you. Water wanders and weaves through the site. People move slowly, openly, as though time itself has been given permission to breathe.
For me, it has been healing.
Not in the sentimental way that healing is often spoken about — as though it were a private achievement, a personal improvement project. The healing I’ve felt at Woodford is something else: a re-centring. A reorientation. A quiet restoration of self.
It has helped me discover something I didn’t fully know I needed to discover: the great out there.
The world beyond the church.
For a long time, I have lived within church spaces that claim to be about love, justice, and salvation, but often function as echo chambers — repeating dogma, rehearsing colonial logics, and rewarding compliance. These spaces can become mechanistic systems where people are managed more than listened to, where difference is tolerated only when it stays polite, and where Indigenous presence is welcomed so long as it remains symbolic.
In such a system, you can begin to feel like a small widget — one more useful part in an institution’s machinery.
Woodford has reminded me that I am not that.
Standing on stage with icons of activism and performance, watching them listen intently to what I have to say, and seeing them respond viscerally — not with politeness, not with management, but with deep respect — has shifted something inside me. It reminded me that there are places where my voice is not treated as a problem to be contained, but as a contribution that matters.
There are people who welcome you, value you, and respect you — not because you are useful to their narrative, but because your presence expands the field.
In this case, me.
That matters more than I can easily explain.
Because it interrupts an old story many of us have been taught: that the church is the safest place to be. That the institution holds the moral centre. That outside its walls lies chaos, danger, or emptiness. For some of us — especially those whose survival has been shaped by trauma — the church becomes not just a spiritual home, but a regulating system. A place where risk is reduced, where the rules are known, and where belonging, however conditional, is easier to negotiate than the unpredictability of the wider world.
But what if that belief is not truth?
What if the “safety” of the church is sometimes simply the safety of containment?
Woodford has shown me something else: a space where people of many stories can gather without needing one another to shrink. A place where the natural world is not background decoration but active presence — where trees, water, and ground do something to you if you let them. A place where the human community can hold difference without insisting on sameness.
And in that space, I have felt myself becoming more myself.
Not as a performance. Not as a brand. Not as a cultural symbol. But as a person.
I have painted, listened, spoken, watched, laughed, and sat among strangers who did not treat me as dangerous for telling the truth. I have watched conversations unfold that were not afraid of complexity. I have sat among people who did not need my presence to be palatable. I have felt what it is like to be received without being managed.
And it has done something profound: it has interrupted the internalised idea that I must stay in environments that diminish me in order to remain safe.
Woodford has not “solved” anything. It has not answered every question I have about faith, identity, or belonging. But it has given me something essential.
It has given me a lived experience of spaciousness.
It has shown me that the world outside the echo chamber is not necessarily dangerous. It can be welcoming. It can be respectful. It can be deeply human. It can be healing.
And this is where the call to action begins.
Because if a festival space can hold truth-telling, diversity, ecological care, and Indigenous presence with genuine respect, then so can our institutions — if they choose to.
Churches, governments, institutions and cultural bodies must stop asking First Nations people to bring only the parts of ourselves that feels safe to the dominant culture: the ceremonial, the symbolic, the decorative. They must stop praising reconciliation while refusing accountability. They must stop calling Indigenous presence “welcome” while policing Indigenous truth.
If churches want to claim justice, then they must become places where Indigenous people can speak plainly about colonialism, racism, trauma, and power — without being punished for “causing trouble.” They must stop mistaking compliance for faithfulness and silence for unity. They must stop expecting Indigenous people to carry the institution’s comfort on our backs.
And for those of us inside these systems — Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike — the question is not whether we value culture or ceremony. The question is whether we value truth enough to let it disrupt the structure.
If you are a church leader, don’t ask for Indigenous voices only when they soothe your congregation. Make room for voices that confront you. Create protection for truth-tellers instead of disciplining them. Measure your faith not by the beauty of your liturgy, but by the courage of your accountability.
If you are someone who benefits from these systems, stop waiting for Indigenous people to “bring it up nicely.” Start doing the work before we are forced to do it for you again.
And if you are Indigenous and tired — if you have been made small, managed, tokenised, or told to stick to the “safe” topics — know this: there is a world outside the echo chamber. There are people who will receive you with respect, not management. There are spaces where your full self is not a threat.
Woodford has reminded me of that.
This is a brand new day.
Not because everything has changed, but because something has shifted in how I understand my place in the world — and where safety, belonging, and truth might actually live.
