A Future That Remembers

Diary Entry 5 - Date: ??/??/????

I am a man removed in future, in time, of space.

Something feels different… like I’m suddenly where I'm meant to be, with my community, my family, my knowing, my Country.

This morning, I stepped outside, eager to explore this place. Everything is different here. The buildings and homes, a seamless blend of environment and technology, are unlike anything I've seen before. They seem to breathe with a life of their own. And the people… well, the people look like me. Like my family. Like us.

What is this place?

The city – or whatever it is called ­– seems to have been designed through a Blak lens, guided by the principles of Community and Country. Natural boundaries flow where the land dictates, and Songlines remain untouched, unbroken. Vast zones for ceremony and tradition encircle sacred places, their roles in life as vital as ever. Here, technology doesn’t dominate; it harmonises. Each house, each skyscraper has a heartbeat, their materials drawn from their surrounding environment. Every pulsing breath gives back to the Land and to the people inside.

As my eyes wander, I notice the details in these structures: I can see influences from my culture, Aboriginal designs, ways of working with Country. Homes meld with trees, buildings are cloaked in greenery that could have only grown over centuries. Shield motifs, stories, knowledge from my time, my Earth, my community.

Each design, each structure carries the mark of the Peoples who shaped it, the Country and their knowledges.

The technological advances here are unlike anything I've seen. Trees send commands to artificially intelligent machinery. It feels like the Country has been restored to an untouched time, but machines now answer to the Land. Even the flowers are embedded with tiny blinking lights, each with a purpose.

At the heart of this place is knowledge, a library. This is where I find the answers I do not have. Time, I learn, is measured differently here. It flows with rhythms of the Land, dictated by ecosystems… a construct which shows the criticality for Community and Country to view each in order to measure time by… Interesting.

This library is alive. It is a Geodesic Dome, cradling an ecosystem of wisdom. Trees projects holographic information when asked, while the waters act as rechargeable batteries, dispersing life and energy to each unit of greenery to convey their knowledge. Elders walk among them, guardians (or bookkeepers) of this living archive.

Diary Entry 6 – Date: 10/06/3045

I understand now – this place is not meant for me. Mum always taught me to walk with purpose and respect. And though this land feels like Home – like drifting to sleep to the sound of family murmuring over cups of tea, like waking up to a loungeroom full of my cousins fighting over what to watch on TV – it is not mine. I must walk with respect, accepting that my presence does not grant me rights over this place, only responsibility. My footprints here must be delicate, gentle.

Today’s adventure: a visit to my Ancestral grounds – or at least, where they should be (if my navigation system is correct). What should be a two- or three-hour journey on my Earth happens in an instant here, thanks, I’m sure, to a complexity of organic and technological advancement. I’d like to keep thinking it’s just magic. I stare at the busy transit map (which looks like our PTV map). If only this map was clearer, I think – and as though it heard me, the map promptly declutters. I point to my destination.

Suddenly I am there, my Home.

But different.

The Country is lush and full. Red Gums rise like sentinels, some hosting inorganic machinery – melded, not imposed. Others have grown into towering structures, Mega-homes sheltering many, like giant apartment skyscrapers.

The River teems with life. A cross section of robotic and bio-organic beings, each one working for the health of their ecosystem, the waterways. As I draw closer, I hear the knowledge coursing throughout the River. Another library, perhaps?

This spot, this spot on the River. I recognise it as our swimming spot.

As kids, I remember coming down here to swim during the peak of summer. Mum, dad, my cousins, Aunties and Uncles. Our Family Days spent by the River, our medicine.

And now, ironically, in its place, a hospital. Not the kind I remember from my time, but a sanctuary of care, both above ground and beneath it. A mix of technological machinery and organic medicinal items…

Diary Entry 7 - Date: 11/06/3045

I’m not sure if I’ll ever find a way back… I’m not sure if I want to. If I went back what would be different, what would change?

Would we continue to rip through the environment to the point in uninhabitability? Using the Land to serve the people only, and discarding it as soon as that service stops?

I think I’ll stick around here a bit more…

– Cienan Muir is a Yorta Yorta/Ngarrindjeri man and Founder of INDIGINERD, a platform that celebrates the Indigenous artistry of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the pop culture world.