The situation for many of Australia’s Aboriginal people is bleak, after two hundred years of land theft and racist oppression.

Visiting the artist Bardayal Nadjamerrek in the small, growing community of Kabulwarnamyu, in the heart of Arnhem Land, was like a breath of fresh air. “Lofty” — as he’s known throughout Australia — and his family were drawn away from the savannah plateau to coastal missions in the 1920s, but the wise elder has returned as part of the Outstation Movement to live off the land in an alcohol-free environment. The de-populated land became overgrown and huge wildfires raged in recent years. Lofty and his community are now managing the land, doing controlled burns in the early dry season, and gaining recognition nationwide for their visionary efforts.

Peter Cooke helps manage the community fire regime and is working on setting up a formal Indigenous Protected Area, or IPA.

As we planned our filming, I asked Peter about sacred sites we might film and he said: “Some places in the landscape have powerful forces, are dangerous, are where people do things that increase the species or resources or whatever they value. But there aren’t any non-sacred places. The whole landscape is imbued with spirit of ancestors. We don’t really focus on specific places. It is a sentient landscape where people call out to ancestors and spirits. So, how do you manage land that people think about this way, where living people interact with ancestors? There are places like that in Lofty’s country. Some of those places he doesn’t like taking visitors to. Some are secret and some are not. There are many classes. But ’sacred sites’ is a western gloss that we put on a differentiated nature.”

Leaving Sydney, we paid our respects to the Rainbow Serpent one last time, and bowed to Lofty’s huge, beautiful painting, which watches over airport travelers and their baggage as they come and go from Oz.