fire protocol
Not all stories belong to every fire. There are rules. There are laws. Here, we honor the law of story – who holds it, who shares it, and how it moves – ensuring that knowledge is carried with respect, reciprocity, and right relation. This is what we call the fire protocol.
A fire that belongs to everyone
but not just any one.
In the old ways, knowledge wasn’t scattered like dry leaves in the wind – it was held in the right hands, spoken at the right time, passed on with care. Some stories are for everyone, others are for certain people, with certain levels of knowledge. Some are only for men’s business, or women’s business, elders or sexual orientations. Some only belong to a particular mob, tribe, clan or family. Some must only be spoken at dusk, when the right flowers bloom, or when the right stars are overhead.
A story shared out of place, out of context, is not just wrong – it can be dangerous. Right story can heal – but wrong story can kill, and story used in the wrong way can unravel the web that holds everything in balance. That original law still holds, even in a digital world. Just because you can tell a story doesn’t necessarily mean you should.
Here, stories are not taken, but given. They are not exposed, but shared. The people who hold them decide when, how, and where they are spoken. Every story submitted is checked for its relational integrity – does it belong here? Is it told in the right way? Does it honour the people and the land it comes from? If not, it does not belong.
This is what we have called the Fire Protocol – the way we decide what belongs on the network, who holds the flame, and how we keep the fire burning strong without letting it be smothered or stolen, or sharing wrong story.
A living web of relationship, and obligation.
The Keepers of the fire
A fire isn’t tended by a single set of hands. It takes a whole camp, a whole network of relations, to keep it burning right. That is why the VA Network is guided by a council made up of knowledge keepers, filmmakers, storytellers, Elders, uncles and aunties, academics, activists, and community leaders, even kids, from all over the world. These are the people who decide what stories belong here, not based on algorithms or AI, but people, rooted in place, living within kinship systems, held by relational obligation, accountability, and deep listening over deep time.
This council isn’t static; it moves and breathes, just like the stories themselves. Members come and go, passing the responsibility on like the embers of a fire, ensuring that wisdom isn’t hoarded but shared. Decisions are made through wangu, a collective sense making through dialogue, through ceremony, through the slow and careful way that big things should be decided.
No single person decides what belongs here. The fire must be tended by many hands – each responsible for carrying the flame in the right way.
From the ancestors for our descendants. From our past for our future.
Sharing and holding Right Story, Right Way. Always.
A story doesn’t just belong to the teller – it belongs to the people, the land, and the spirits that carried it forward. If a story is about a community, that community must have the final say.
If a film, documentary, or story speaks of a place, that place must speak back. Communities hold veto power over content that misrepresents, extracts, or distorts. They have the ability to flag, remove, or reshape what is told, ensuring that Indigenous voices are not just included, but properly centred, respected, and accountable.
This is about relational accountability over authority – about honouring the responsibility that comes with storytelling. This is a space where communities have the power to decide what gets shared, what gets removed, and what gets reshaped in the right way, because a story told wrong isn’t just a mistake – it’s harm. Right Story can heal, but Wrong Story can kill, and no one should be able to profit from stolen fire.
how stories find their place in the flame.
To sit by this fire is to step into relation, to recognize that stories are not just words or images on a screen, but living entities with responsibilities and obligations that come to being in kin with them. This is not a place for extraction, for taking without giving, for consuming without care. It is a place where the old laws still hold weight, where stories are not commodities but custodians of knowledge, carrying the breath of ancestors and the futures of those yet to come.
To be here is to respect the Fire Protocols – to listen deeply, to honor the voices that have carried these stories through time, and to understand that not all stories are yours to hold. Some must be passed with care. Some must be met with silence. Some will ask something of you, changing the way you see, the way you move, the way you belong.
This is not just another platform. This is a campfire burning across generations, across lands, across cultures, across times – a fire tended with purpose, where stories are given their rightful place, and where those who gather do so with intention.
The flames do not belong to any one person; they belong to the stories themselves. And they burn bright enough to light the way forward – for those who come with open hands, for those who seek with open hearts, for those willing to step into the great web of connection and carry the fire with them.
held in a web of relational obligation.
No one gets to profit from stolen fire
In Indigenous knowledge systems, extraction is the opposite of relationship. The Fire Protocol ensures that every creator, community, and story contributor receives something in return – not just exposure, but real, tangible support. This is done through direct revenue-sharing, funding opportunities, paying-forward and community reinvestment models.
Western industries have long operated on a model of extraction – taking knowledge, taking culture, taking story without permission or return. They call it ‘content,’ they package it, profit from it, and leave the storytellers, the communities, and the knowledge holders with nothing but footprints in the dust.
The Fire Protocol rejects this model entirely. A story told about a people must serve those people. A film, a documentary, a song, a piece of art – whatever it is, it must contribute to the very web of relations that made it possible. Which is exactly why we created the Fire Protocols, and operate the VA Network as a not-for-profit project.
A network that moves like a songline that carries intercontinental common lore across all native lands.
Lore shared between all things, everywhere.
In the old ways, songlines are more than routes across Country – they are law, memory, responsibility, a way of navigating not just the land, but life itself. You don’t just learn them, you walk them, you experience them, you live them. You don’t just listen, you become part of the story. The VA Network follows this law. It is not just a digital archive; it is a relational system, where story is not extracted, but embedded, not removed from its roots, but deeply tied to them.
This means the stories are not just scattered into an algorithm, buried under the weight of endless scrolling. Every piece of knowledge, every film, every story is mapped to land, to language, to people. Stories are honored as part of a greater whole, connected to the Country they come from, to the voices that hold them, and to the communities that sustain them.
To engage with a story on the VA Network is to come into relation with it – to recognize the place it comes from, the people who carry it, and the responsibilities that come with hearing it. This is not consumption; it is a process of deep listening, of ceremony, of being guided along the path that story was always meant to travel.
Walk With Us: Tend the Fire, Carry the Story
The VA Network doesn’t sit still, it moves, flows, and follows the ancient pathways of knowledge-sharing, where stories are not static objects but living entities with their own trajectories, and their own places to be. Like the old songlines, it does not exist in one fixed location, waiting for people to find it – it carries story, follows the natural currents of relational accountability, ensuring knowledge reaches the right ears, at the right time, in the right way.
If you feel the pull of this work, if you understand that stories are not owned but carried, that knowledge is not extracted but exchanged, then we invite you to walk with us. The fire is always burning, but it is tended by many hands. Whether you are a storyteller, a filmmaker, an artist, a wisdom keeper, or someone who simply knows the weight of a story well told, there is a place for you here. If you want to be part of the selection process, to help ensure that the right stories are carried the right way, or if you have a contribution to make – please, reach out. The VA Network is not built alone. It moves because of those who walk beside it, those who listen deeply, and those who know that story is not just something to watch, but something to hold.
