Dr. Vanessa Lee-Ah Mat, Founding Cultural Chair, Walking Between Worlds
Dr Vanessa Lee-Ah Mat (PhD) is a First Peoples Australian with over 25 years of experience in cultural brokering and governance. Facilitating between the different layers of culture for groups of people, not-for-profit organisations, businesses, government, communities, tribes, clan groups, digital worlds, and ethnic, sex, gender and racial groups.
Through her leadership, Dr Lee-Ah Mat bridges the cultural divide to determine a smooth interaction to achieve outcomes which ensure Indigenous people, LGBT, and women, globally maintain their sovereign rights.
As a practitioner of thought leadership, Vanessa believes that 'through blockchain technology, we can use the future to rewrite the cultural wrongs of the past.'
In 2022, Vanessa was recognised for five years of contribution to suicide prevention, which includes bringing indigenous ways of well-being in culture into suicide prevention, as a non-executive director of Suicide Prevention Australia.
In 2021, Dr Lee-Ah Mat received the Griffith University First People's Health Alumnus Award for leadership in creating social change for indigenous people, LGBT and women globally.
In 2005, Vanessa received an Australian Government award for Outstanding Citizen for leadership in the Torres Strait, creating a collective environmental impact.
Dr Lee-Ah Mat is the founder and director of Black Lorikeet Cultural Brokering; Founding Cultural Chair of Walking Between Worlds (NFTs and Indigenous art); Chair of RUOK? First Peoples Advisory board; founding member of the Australian Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network; Co-founder of the Cultural Embassy (in the Metaverse), and member of Blockchain Australia.
What is your favourite social media platform, and why?
Twitter Spaces because you can choose the spaces to join via live audio and participate with global audiences.
Tell us about you and your current role or area of interest.
In my current role as Founding Chair of Walking Between Worlds, a social impact project, I bring my Cultural Brokering expertise into the NFT space to empower Indigenous people globally. This means that I have educated my non-Indigenous colleagues about indigenous culture and our lores. As a result, when I introduce our team to indigenous artists and communities, the WBW team understand our (First Nations people) cultural ways of communicating and achieving outcomes.
I am responsible for all things cultural in Walking Between Worlds and act as the conjoint between the newest digital technology and the oldest living culture. Recently, we minted the first global indigenous genesis collection of NFTs. As we increase our artists, we will mint a second collection, demonstrating that the oldest continuing living culture can work in the newest digital technology.
What do you like about your career or area of focus?
I love cultural brokering between the oldest continuing living culture and the newest digital technology, the blockchain, as I believe that we are making relevant and necessary changes for Indigenous peoples to be empowered through digital technologies, to grow economically and contribute to creating generational wealth which in-turn could potentially prevent suicides.
What is the best advice you have ever received?
"Teach them [non-Indigenous people] our culture in their language so that they can learn to respect our lores and always follow your purpose. It is the way of our people." My Grandmother said this to me in 2004, and in my culture, it means that she gave me permission to be a Cultural Broker.
What inspires you, motivates you, or helps you to move forward?
Knowing that I come from a very beautiful old and continuous culture that allows you, from birth, to connect with the spiritual and physical worlds, and our lore is clear; hence our culture has survived and evolved for over 50,000 years, is what motivates me.
What are you proud of in your life so far?
I am proud to be able to open doors for other Indigenous and non-Indigenous women to walk through because it's their sovereign right, not because they are being forced to.
What is your preferred way to meet new people/network?
I prefer networking at events, online or in-person, which challenges my thinking so that I can converse with people with similar interests.
What skills or qualities do you feel have helped you?
I am both an introverted and extroverted self-motivated leader who can communicate across and within cultures. My qualities also include diligence, determination, inventiveness, and creativity, and I believe in my work and understand how important it is to have integrity and follow your moral compass.
What do you wish you had known when you started out?
How deeply entrenched racism and inequity against indigenous people is in the system. And it makes me realise how crucial my cultural brokering work is in the blockchain (cryptocurrency, Metaverse and Web 3). Ensuring that the oldest living culture is included with the newest digital technology.
Who do you most admire in business, academic or creative circles and why?
I admire David Uniapon, an Aboriginal thought leader in his own right, a Ngarrindjeri man, a preacher, inventor and writer. Mr Uniapon's invention drew on Aboriginal cultural knowledge to improve the hand tool for sheep shearing (1909), helicopter, based on the boomerang principle (1914). He is the first known Aboriginal author, appearing on the front of the Australian $50 note.
Outside of your professional/work area, what hobbies or interests do you have or what other areas of your life are of real importance to you?
I write, perform and publish poetry. I love yoga as it helps me to centre my thoughts.
Has the pandemic had a positive or a negative effect on you and/or your business, and how have you managed it?
Prior to the pandemic, I had already put much of my Cultural Brokering business online because I work globally. However, when the pandemic hit Sydney, NSW, I made a conscious decision to move closer to my family, ageing parents, in far North Queensland and to continue Cultural Brokering for Walking Between Worlds and other digital technology organisations. So, the pandemic has certainly changed the way that we all do business.
Do you have a mentor, or have you ever mentored anyone?
I continue to mentor Indigenous and non-Indigenous young people and women to enable them to grow their businesses, connect with their wellness and keep their culture.
What advice would you have for someone looking to get into the same area of work or interests?
To be a Cultural Broker, you must come from a place of compassion coupled with knowing, doing and being of your own indigenous culture combined with Western qualifications; for me, I have an undergraduate degree in teaching and two higher degrees from within the field of medicine. Don't steal another person's culture because it's like stealing an identity that was never yours, to begin with.
Don't be afraid to say that you don't know, and listen with the intent of hearing. Avoid assuming or judgement because you don't know where someone has come from before they meet with you today.
What do you feel is the most common reason for people failing or giving up?
They don't believe in themselves or love themselves, and they don't know how to ask for help.
Is there a phrase, quote or a saying that you really like?
"You must release the past to understand the future so that you can walk in the present."
What companies, brands, or institutions do you like or do you think are getting it right?
I think we at Walking Between Worlds (WBW) are getting it right because I have a team who are willing to try and understand First Peoples Australian culture, which essentially lays the foundation for WBW to connect with indigenous people globally.
How do you define success, and what lessons have you learned so far that you could share with our audience/readership?
I think that success is when you can stand in your power, knowing that you have brought others with you and that you have done so from a place of goodness; do not harm. My Master,
"I am the Master of the destiny, creator of my future guided by ancestors powered by connection to land, family, culture preserving my rights to live my sovereignty without penalty on my identity. I am… the Master of my wealth. - Author V. S. Lee-AhMat."