ALLYSHIP PHOTO: Yarning Online OnCountry Weavers at Maranguka, Bourke, NSW 2020 (Sandra Kelly) L-R: Barbara Kelly, Nancy Kelly, Lacey Barker, Gwen Barker, Gertie Darrigo, Dot Martin The revitalisation and transference of the spiny sedge is reanimated through yarning and weaving online and on Country, promoting better environmental outcomes for people and for Country along the Baaka and its tributaries the Barwon, Ngarntu (Culgoa), Paroo and Warrego rivers. Through such efforts, Yarning Online OnCountry connects to another Taragara project. Songlines of Country is using oral history and multimedia to track three significant Songlines (Baiame, the Mundaguddah and the Seven Sisters) and their travelling routes from the Ikara-Flinders Ranges to the Baaka (Darling River) and into south-west Queensland, across the lands of the Adnyamathanha, Wangkumara, Barkindji, Ngemba, Murrawarri and Kunja peoples, and their neighbours. In other connections, Yarning Online OnCountry has partnered with the Bourke Aboriginal Health Service and filled gaps in service provision during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, supporting the local Mums and Bubs program and the Bourke Preschool’s engagement with Elders, involving artists from New South Wales and South Australia, whose income had been hit by the lockdowns. “The program is able to traverse both space and time,” says Michael Brogan, Taragara Researcher and an academic at the University of New England. “When we are online with the Aunties, we are on Country, in a cultural space.” But funding for the program is a continual challenge, so the group has forged innovative ways of working with allies to keep going and growing. Yarning Online OnCountry is funded by the NSW Government through Western Local Land Services NSW, PHOTO: Michael Brogan and Lorina Barker at the Boat ramp North Bourke ‘Our Bend’, Bourke, NSW 2020 (Eliza Kent) and by Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife through its Community Conservation Grants program Heritage NSW and Create NSW. It has access, thanks to the Maranguka Community Hub, to a culturally safe space and internet connections. The University of New England provides laptop computers, a loan that barely makes a dent in a university’s IT budget, much less its overall budget, but that has a significant community benefit, said Dr Eliza Kent, a non-Indigenous Taragara researcher. It shows universities in particular that they should be engaging and supporting Aboriginal communities much better than they are, and that they can do it in very practical ways that don’t end up in endless budget discussions and vision statements.” Eliza Kent, Taragara Researcher Transforming Power: Voices for Generational Change 41