EARTHCHAT: How Indigenous Cultures Remember Everything

And what we can learn from their practices

Listen at noon, Tuesday 18 August on SeymourFM

This week on EarthChat, Tim Budge talks with Dr Lynne Kelly AM, a science writer and Adjunct Research Fellow at LaTrobe University. After a secondary school career, Lynne returned to university to complete a doctorate, astonished by the way Indigenous cultures manage to memorise and teach a vast amount of practical information, all without writing.

Over the past decade, she has focused on the use of story, music, place and art as mnemonic devices for vast amounts of information about the environment. Her books include The Memory Code, Memory Craft, The Knowledge Gene and two books written with Aboriginal co-author, Margo Neale, Songlines: the power and promise and Songlines for Younger Readers.

She uses these techniques herself for learning languages, remembering bird species and has twice won the Australian Senior Memory Champion title.

A lukasa memory board. Courtesy Brooklyn Museum/Wikimedia

On EarthChat, Lynne and Tim will explore the memory methods used by those who depended on their memories for everything they knew: oral cultures including Aboriginal Australian, Native American, Pacific and African societies. We will explore Lynne’s big question, “How the hell do Indigenous elders remember so much stuff?

Read more about Lynne here and here.

Tune in!

Can't listen to the radio show next Tuesday at noon? Catch up on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,  Podbean and the BEAM website. It is easy to EarthChat!