Wash My Soul in the River's Flow - A Celebration of First Nations Music and Legacy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Curated, organised and delivered by Gamilaraay woman and Lecturer in Music Industry Kat Nelligan, this creative work features a panel discussion and live music performances alongside a screening of the documentary film Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow (Philippa Bateman, producer/director). This performance celebrates the lives and legacies of Uncle Archie Roach (Gunditjmara/Bundjalung) and Aunty Ruby Hunter (Ngarrindjeri/Kokatha/Pitjantjatjara) and seeks to understand their ongoing influence on emerging First Nations songwriters and musicians. It asks the following research questions: 1) To what extent does legacy shape the creativity and opportunities available to First Nations songwriters? 2) To what extent can music support truth-telling in Australia while offering First Nations people meaningful ways to connect with culture? 3) To what extent have Aunty Ruby’s and Uncle Archie’s legacies influenced the careers of emerging First Nations songwriters? Contribution Indigenous research methods of yarning, as well as storytelling via song, were used to explore these questions in a live performance setting. The panel featured First Nations musicians from the mentorship program Singing Our Futures, and songs were performed by Uncle Archie and Aunty Ruby’s son, Amos Roach, and Kat Nelligan. Together, they offered unique perspectives on the importance of legacy in First Nations music and contributed to Indigenous Australia’s ongoing projects of truth-telling, voice, and self-determination through storytelling. Moreover, the event highlighted the importance of connection, representation and recognition of First Nations contributions to arts practices in Australia. Presented during NAIDOC Week, the performances and panel spoke directly to the 2025 NAIDOC theme: The Next Generation: Strength, Vision, Legacy. Significance In collaboration with RMIT Culture, the work was presented on 8 July, 2025, at The Capitol Theatre during NAIDOC Week. It was funded by the City of Melbourne (Quick Response Arts Grants) and was further promoted by the official National NAIDOC Organisation. The work received significant media attention on ABC Radio, 3KND Radio, Triple RRR, PBS, and Joy Media, and was promoted by International Women’s Development Agency and the Australian Conservation Foundation. It contributes in important ways to a growing body of creative works that honour the legacies of Uncle Archie and Aunty Ruby through film, music, and art, and represents a significant contribution to the celebration of First Nations creativity and storytelling in Australia.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".