If you don’t have various forms of knowledge in memory, how can you identify new patterns and ideas? All you are capable of doing is regurgitating the information that has already been neatly written and indexed for you. Creativity – the way to see things in new ways and construct new ideas – depends on being able to see and understand from different directions. Secondly, as you burrow down to specific information, you can’t connect it to the bigger picture. So why bother memorising anything? This worrying question is asked far too often.įirstly, you can’t look up something if you don’t know it exists. If you start incorporating some of the ideas in this book into your personal knowledge system, you will experience the power of Songlines.Īlmost all human knowledge is now available on the internet – you just have to search for it. It’s time to go beyond learning about Indigenous cultures and start learning from them. You don’t have to give up anything to add to your toolbox of memory aids and learn from the knowledge technologies that Indigenous cultures have been perfecting for millennia. So why not use these knowledge methods alongside the techniques you already have? You don’t have to give up writing or technology. All Indigenous knowledge techniques reflect the way the human brain stores information – the way your brain stores information. If Indigenous art forms such as song, story, dance and ceremony are so similar and so effective in cultures around the world, why aren’t we using them in contemporary Western education? Why can’t we all benefit from Indigenous techniques for learning and storing knowledge?

The second and third books on Design and Country will be published in 2021. Songlines is the first in the First Knowledges series of six books that will give an in-depth understanding of Indigenous expertise in six areas.

Songlines margo neale