Dadirri
AI governance processes are rarely inclusive: In the run up to the drafting of a new law, policy, or standards document relating to AI and its entire lifecycle, public inputs are either rarely drawn, or if they are, the process is inaccessible, tokenized, and often reductive in that they are brought in after decisions are made. As a result, policies born out of power corridors find ways to reiterate those power structures and run on the same scripts that have long been shaped by colonial and capitalist systems. Offering an alternative pathway is the practice of Dadirri, which comes from the Ngan’gikurunggurr and Ngen’giwumirri peoples from the Daly River region, Northern Territory, Australia.
Before we proceed, we want to name the fact that Dadirri is a sacred practice and living cultural concept belonging to the Ngan’gikurunggurr and Ngen’giwumirri peoples. It was named and brought forward for wider audiences by Dr Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann AM, who first presented it to the world in 1988. Any engagement with this concept must be grounded in her articulation of it, found at the Miriam Rose Foundation (www.miriamrosefoundation.org.au), and the practices of the Ngan’gikurunggurr and Ngen’giwumirri peoples. It should not be abstracted into generic ‘mindfulness’ or corporate wellness frameworks.
Understanding Dadirri
In 1988, Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann, a Ngan’gikurunggurr Elder, educator, artist, and the first Aboriginal person trained as a teacher in the Northern Territory, presented to the world a concept from her people: Dadirri. Dadirri is inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness, and recognises the deep spring that is inside us. It is close to what may be called contemplation.
Dadirri is not merely a listening technique but rather should be understood as a way of being in relationship with the world. It is a practice of deep attentiveness that must precede any speech or action. In the Ngan’gikurunggurr tradition, one does not respond until one has truly heard. Aboriginal culture calls on one to be still and to wait, to let things follow their natural course, like the seasons.
Dadirri is also awareness: of where you have come from, why you are here, where you are going, and where you belong. It is a form of prayer that feels the presence of the Creator in silence, and also a form of ecological relationship: the deep listening that allows a person to read Country, to understand what the land is saying, and to receive knowledge that is not available to those who arrive already speaking. This tradition reflects a foundational insight: that human memory and knowledge are not stored in the brain alone but shaped through ongoing relationship with land.
Dadirri’s offering is not to be reduced to a gentle spiritual experience, but rather a deep and sustained process of conversion: A learning about Indigenous practices of ethical relationality with country, waterways, flora and fauna, and people, and with all of that, an unlearning of practices that ignore and abuse these very relationships. The invitation to listen is an invitation to be changed by what is heard.
What Dadiri unsettles in AI governance
AI governance has a listening problem. The processes through which AI systems are developed and deployed, namely the stakeholder consultations, the public comment periods, the ethics review panels, are structured to produce, not to listen. They have agendas, time limits, output requirements. They are designed to receive input and process it into policy, not to be genuinely present to what is being said. The result is that affected communities are consulted without being heard. Their testimony is registered as data, not as truth.
Dadirri insists that genuine listening must precede any response. This is a structural demand. If we have not truly listened, with stillness, with openness to being changed, with the willingness to wait until understanding has arrived, our response, however technically sophisticated, will not be a response to what was actually said, but a response to what we were prepared or willing to hear. AI governance processes are almost universally of this second type. They consult communities about systems that have already been designed, in timeframes too short for genuine understanding, in formats that privilege the already powerful and exclude those whose knowledge is held in modes the process cannot receive.
The practice of Dadirri suggests a different governance architecture that starts with a period of sustained listening to the communities that will be most affected instead of approaching them after the central policy question is determined. It calls for governance to create space for knowledge to arrive in its own time, in its own forms, and to understand itself as a relational practice. Dadirri invites governance to hold open the possibility of being fundamentally changed by what is heard. This is slow, expensive, and resistant to the quarterly cycles of corporate and governmental planning. It is also the minimum condition for governance that is genuinely accountable to those it claims to serve.
References
Ungunmerr, M. R. (1988). Dadirri–inner deep listening and quiet still awareness. A reflection by Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr. Miriam Rose Foundation.
Tempone-Wiltshire, J., & Yunkaporta, T. (2025). Contributions from Aboriginal Australian psychology: Songlines, memory, and relational knowledge systems. Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia, 13(2).
Brearley, L. (2015). Deep listening and leadership: An Indigenous model of leadership and community development in Australia. Restorying Indigenous leadership: Wise practices in community development, 2, 91-127.
This article draws from the wisdom and work of Indigenous people. While educating ourselves on Indigenous worldviews is important, we understand that our actions can also contribute to and enable appropriation. As part of our ongoing attempts at practicing accountability, we invite readers to consider donating to Indigenous groups, collectives, organizations, or initiatives to support their lives and work.
