about us
A digital campfire kept alive by stories, carried forward by kin, and guided by the old ways to remember what it means to be human.
Welcome to the fire.
Imagine yourself beneath an ancient sky, the stars not distant, but close enough to hear the stories sung on the breeze as they rustle through the trees. You hear the wisdom of those who came before, the voices of the ancestors who sit around their fires in skycamp.
The fire in front of you crackles softly, its sparks rising to meet the constellations like messengers carrying the stories from the world of spirit and back again. The warm sand vibrates, the earth hums beneath your feet while the smoke dances around you, moves through you, sings you in, grounds you, and welcomes you back.
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This is where The VA Network began. Under this sky that holds time like a breath, sitting around a campfire. It started with Andrew D Flanagan and his mentor and elder, Dig Jones, the fire light glowing as his hands moved with purpose, carving stories into the earth, patterns of creation drawn into the warm sand. They weren’t stories of the past, but maps of the way ahead, of retrieving forward the ways to guide the path for the future. Symbols drawn to guide not just our feet but our hearts and our spirits. Each mark held the weight of generations past and those yet to come, the wisdom of lives lived in deep relation with the land, and all that call it Home.
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The fire doesn’t belong to you or me. It belongs to the stories. Our role is to keep it burning. To gather the people and make space for the truth to rise with the smoke, to touch as many people as it can, to bring everyone back under the lore of the land, back into our role as custodians of creation.
This is our purpose – there is nothing more important.
What was to become ‘The VA Network’ was drawn in the sand by the fire that night, breathed into this world from the land of spirit and carried back by the smoketo the constellations overhead.
A promise etched into the earth, carried by the flames and held in the space between Us
The VA Network goes beyond what you might expect from a streaming platform or social network. This isn’t just about content. It’s about connection. It’s a relational network, a movement, a living, breathing web that spans lands, peoples, and generations. It’s a space where ancient wisdom meets modern technology, where the voices of the past help guide the decisions we make now for the sake of the ones yet to come. A future rooted in balance, reciprocity, and our shared role as custodians of creation.
This isn’t about centring Indigenous voices for decoration or diversity points. It’s about decentring the extractive gaze, dismantling the structures that keep us apart, and inviting everyone to sit around the same fire. To bring your story, your truth, your piece of the pattern alongside others, and in doing so, come back into relation.
Because the truth is we have wandered too far from camp. As a species, we forgot the old agreements. We broke the relational law that kept things in balance. We turned away from Country, thinking we could live without her. We forgot how to listen to the quiet teachings of land and lore. But the stories are still here. They’ve been waiting, like seeds asleep in the earth, ready to awaken when we remember how to listen.
The stories shared around this fire are more than tales, they are medicine for a world that’s lost its way. They’re maps. Not maps of land, but of spirit, of responsibility, of law. Each film, series, voice, each truth added here is another stick on the fire, another spark that lights up the ancient design, the pattern of creation, survival, resilience, and care.
These stories teach us how to live right. How to care for Country, for kin, for the animals, for spirit, for future generations. They are not just records of what was, they are blueprints for what could still be.
If you forget the story, you forget your place. If you forget your place, you forgot who you are. But we can find our way back. We all hold a piece of it, a piece, a fragment of the pattern. We just need to bring them all together. Share them around the one fire. This fire. And see the pattern that emerges from the sand.
That is why we started this project.
The fire isn’t yours to keep. It’s yours to carry. To tend to. And if you carry it well, it will light the way for generations to come.
Lighting the Way Back to Balance
We are living in a time when this knowledge, these ways of knowing and being, are more important than ever. We see it, we feel it, we know it deep within us. The old people say that when the world starts spinning too fast, when people forget where they stand, it is the stories that slow us down and bring us back into rhythm. Right now, the threads that once tied us to land, to each other, and to spirit are fraying. Some say it’s too late to weave them back together, that we’ve lost too much. But the wisdom hasn’t disappeared. It never does. It sits quiet in the land, in the languages, in the old songs, waiting for those with ears to hear and hearts ready to act.
The VA Network was born because we saw the cost of forgetting. We saw what happens when stories are stripped from Country, turned into commodities, or left to gather dust on library shelves. This project is not about nostalgia or entertainment. It is about survival. It is about remembering that story is law, story is life, and story is how we find our place again. Dig sparked this fire, and together we’ve tended it, knowing it was never ours alone. It belongs to the people, to the land, to the generations yet unborn.
We started this because we knew that without story, we are lost. Without story, there is no meaning, no pattern, no way to understand what is happening around us. Story teaches us to see the world properly, to see the relationships and responsibilities woven through everything. It teaches us to walk gently, to think beyond ourselves, to make decisions that honour those who came before and those yet to come.
Story holds the power to heal, to inspire, and to guide us back to balance. This is a fire we invite you to gather around, because it takes all of us to tend it, to sustain it, to increase its warmth. Caring for this flame is an act of remembering and reimagining – of creating a future where every voice matters, every story lives, and the fire burns brightly for those who will one day sit where we sit now.
A relational network, not a social one. Focused on increase, not on growth.
In a world fractured by disconnection, the VA Network is a pathway Home – a journey to remembrance, to belonging, to the wisdom that still lives deep within us. In this age of noise and urgency, where the voices of tradition, of our true histories are often silenced and mocked, we hold space for the voices that matter most. These are the voices that carry stories passed through generations. They are not irrelevant relics of the past to be in museums behind glass but key compass points for navigating a modern life unmoored from the rhythms of land and spirit. These voices don’t just meet the ears; they warm the heart and awaken the spirit those ready to listen, learn, and to act.
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The stories we share are more than entertainment – they are medicine for a world in crisis. They hold the keys to healing: healing our relationships with the land, with each other, and with ourselves. Within these stories lie the answers to questions we’ve forgotten to ask – how to live in harmony with the natural world, how to preserve the cultures and languages that hold the memory of the earth, and how to re-become custodians of the creation we are a part of, a part of the circle of life, not at the centre of it, for a we one node in an interconnected system, with a specific custodial role. The hubris of man has taught us to forget.
custodians on ways, keepers of the fire, guardians of the present for those who came before, and all who come after
We are the keepers of the stories, the tenders of the flame, the ones who sit at the edge of the fire, listening to the land, to the people, and to the wisdom carried in the spaces between. This digital campfire is a place where voices rise, stories live, and connections are restored and nurtured.
We are not CEOs or executives, creative directors or chief financial officers, titles of a marketplace don’t matter here, for we are all one people, one fire, one community – we are custodians, each tending to a different part of the fire we all share. We do not own the stories shared here – they belong to the land, the communities, the generations that held them safely, and the generations reaching out to grasp them.Â
We are the fire keepers. The storytellers. The custodians of connection. And we are here to help you remember that you are, too.
We invite you to join us around this fire. To sit, to listen, to share, and to remember your place in the pattern of creation. Together we can carry these stories forward, honoring the wisdom they hold and sharing them with a world that desperately needs them.
