The dreaming: Indigenous Australians are making an embassy in the Metaverse

One of the world’s oldest living cultures is meeting the world’s newest emerging tech as Indigenous Australians begin to take part in the Metaverse.

“First movers need to be there. Indigenous Australians have a culture about dreaming. So, we need to do it.” Professor Vanessa Lee-Ah mat, a cultural broker focused on wellbeing through Australian Indigenous traditional culture, told Cointelegraph. Lee-Ah mat and co-founder, cultural brokers, artist and lawyer Bibi Barba and lawyers Joni Pirovich and Angelina Gomez, publicly released a discussion paper this week entitled “First Nations Culture in the Metaverse.”

The group is seeking support to set up a pilot project to achieve the aims in the discussion paper and create a First Nations Cultural Embassy in the Metaverse.

Lee-Ah mat of the Yupungathi and Meriam Nations and Bibi Barba of the Darumbal, Biri Gubi, Gadigal and Yuin Nations are in the process of setting up an independent entity with First Nations ownership and governance to negotiate with relevant stakeholders and establish and run the operations of this pilot project.

In November 2021, Barbados launched its embassy in the Metaverse. In February, another Indigenous Australian group, the Sovereign Yidindji Government in Queensland — a first for the country — launched its own digital currency as a way to further foster self-sovereignty that it has claimed since 2014 and plan its own policy planning priorities.

“This Australian Indigenous Cultural Embassy is seen as an MVP,” said Lee-Ah mat. But, how do indigenous cultures view the Metaverse?

Indigenous culture and the Metaverse

At first, the connection seems tenuous: An ancient traditional culture deeply connected to the natural world and to the land and dreaming connected with a new virtual world built on computers with pixelated imagery, avatars and imagined places. But, the link is clear and logical.

“The virtual world does impact the physical world. The Metaverse mirrors the earth, using the earth as the mirror in the gaming realm. The virtual world plays out features from the physical world,” explained Lee-Ah mat. These worlds are connected.

Indigenous culture is built on the dreaming, as Lee-Ah mat explained:

“The dreaming is an inadequate English translation. The dreaming is a non-static and non-linear past, present and future and integrated in the ground of the earth itself. Part of the kinship system and lore, pivotal to identity.”

She argued further that the Metaverse is a future deeply connected to the present, stating that “the process of creation gives identity and connection to people. During creation, the ancestors created sacred worlds between the land and the living. From birth, we are taught to connect with the physical and spiritual worlds, past the present, future — The Metaverse is a future realm.”

So, the Metaverse, according to Lee-Ah mat, is a “new paradigm of digital living, which currently lacks social structures but impacts the real world.” Indigenous lore explains that past, present and emerging futures are connected. Lee-Ah mat believes that the Metaverse is an emerging spirituality and meeting people must have a presence there as a symbol of welcome and recognition.

Why an embassy? Native land title in the real world

In Australia, the legal concept of “Terra nullius,” or an empty land before European settlement, has meant no native title land rights and no treaty with indigenous people. Lengthy legal land rights battles have ensued over the past few decades. Australia is the only Western country without a treaty with its indigenous people.

So, for Lee-Ah mat, it is important to “understand custodianship and past and current approaches to native title. Regarding land claims in the physical world, there are 240 years of catch-up. Part of the motivation is cultural healing. It’s…