Praise for Total Reset: Insights and Testimonials
“Total Reset is an exploration of the human spirit. In my Nyikina language we call this liyan; our moral compass, intuition, values and knowing that connects our human being to the universal lifeforce. The richness of Greg’s journey teaches us to see and be in the world a different way. This ‘tru stori’ is a series of diverse experiences, each bringing a new learning to illuminate a deeper understanding of characteristics of the human spirit.
Each experience tells a story that invites us to reflect on our own values, ethics, and code of conduct, to self-regulate our behaviour and purpose in and for life. They are fused together through the wisdom of Nyikina elder Paddy Roe whose guidance provides the opportunity to unite, in a circle of time, connecting past, present and future in the now.
A central message is we cannot keep extracting from the earth energy systems for the profit and short-term gain of the predatory elite. Mother Earth needs the love and care of people to maintain Country, Living Waters, and multispecies justice. The sustainability of all life in our universe requires implementing Indigenous traditional knowledge and law systems. It is time to create peace with Indigenous people and with nature.”
– PROFESSOR ANNE (WAGABA) POELINA
NYIKINA WARRWA GUARDIAN OF MARTUWARRA, RIVER OF LIFE
“In Total Reset, Greg Campbell honours a life-long promise to legendary Kimberley Lawman, Paddy Roe (Lulu) to pass on to the wider world the gift of understanding he received at first-hand from Lulu. Today the true depth of First Nations knowledge and its extraordinary remedial significance for our out-of-balance times is finally starting to be recognized. By way of this precious record of his years with Lulu, combined with his own reflections on the urgent and far-reaching relevance of Lulu’s teachings, Greg adds to this great new awakening to the need for First Nations leadership and wisdom.”
– FREYA MATHEWS
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, LATROBE UNIVERSITY
“Like Lulu, the Goolarabooloo elder who we come to know through Total Reset, this book is the real thing.
Total Reset speaks the wisdom of a people who have lived together in balance with nature for millennia. It speaks directly to us across generations and cultures as author Greg Campbell weaves together a narrative of his own transformation, the challenges of keeping precious relationships with earth and communities intact, and the work of many lifetimes in telling and continuing this story in the dreaming.
More than an exceptional personal transformation story that could stand on its own, Campbell reveals the rhythms of societal continuity and adaptation into an evidence-based examination of how to live better with the Earth and each other as humans have done for ages before.
Beginning with a curiosity upon meeting Jupiter, an Indigenous elder who is stranded in transit temporarily at Campbell’s boyhood home, the author recounts his journey of deep exploration leading to India, back to Australia and big commercial success, and eventually meeting Lulu and other members of the Goolarabooloo mob with whom he spends decades. It is from these relationships and from observing and learning how an enduring way of life is grounded in the living land, that Campbell collects the fundamental principles for human flourishing: what he calls a holistic blueprint for living.
Campbell doesn’t expect us to all live the lives of these remarkable Aboriginal communities - although he shows through his own experience it can be done, leading to profound insights and connections. Instead, he illustrates and draws out core principles that are the base of this enduring culture and invites us all to apply them to the here and now of our own lives.
You can take Total Reset literally as it speaks for a return to ageless principles of human flourishing. But the reset is also contrasted with the faux reset advocates and strategies that have proven unhealthy and disempowering for most, except the wealthiest, including the Davos Crowd and the Great Reset of Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum.
Even, if like me, you don’t agree with parts of the narrative about how modern humanity arrived at the place of rapid degeneration, this is less important than opening our eyes to the evidence in front of us and the continued failed trajectories of each new wave of solutions. The successive failures consummated in ‘successful’ UN summits over the past 60 years provide more than enough evidence that each new wave of reform and business trends is doing nothing to change the modern patterns of human development that are set to cause the next great extinction, perhaps including much of what we consider civilisation as we know it today.
Listen to Total Reset if you can: the audiobook is worth the effort. But no matter how you receive this gift from Greg Campbell, Lulu and the Goolarabooloo people, let it sit with you, hear the wisdom of the people and the land, and try it out for yourself. As Campbell says, it is the small actions of many of us that will lead to the great change: be part of it.”
– ANDREW CROSBY
FOUNDER, THIRD HORIZON EARTH GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
“True wisdom and the only path to survival is found in these pages. Thank You Lulu & Greg for the unselfishness of sharing for the betterment of all.”
– LINDA RYLE
BIRRIGUBBA/KAMILAROI, LAWER, ACADEMIC & FIRST NATIONS EQUITY ADVOCATE & MEDIATOR
“This is the most important work of our time. In decades of activism, research, consulting and University teaching I have not found a more comprehensive articulation and intertwining of the holistic interdependent and trans-contextual spaces from the metaphysical to the physical, essential to the survival of our species and restoration of our world.
Total Reset is a call for the return of deeply respectful relationships with pointers to how we move forward in response to the invitation of The Uluru Statement from the Heart. Its messaging for humanity brings to the surface the deep-time wisdom of the First Peoples, as conveyed by traditional Aboriginal Law-keeper and maban (shaman), Nyikina man Paddy (Lulu) Roe and the Goolarabooloo family in a 31-year collaboration with Greg Campbell.
As soon as my reading was completed, the book was immediately incorporated as a foundational text into the University of Sydney’s Masters Architecture Studio course which I conduct, resulting in a transformative experience for the students. I highly recommend Total Reset be incorporated into every possible curriculum. Its relevance is unquestionable.
Well beyond academia, this work is a foundational text for life, deeply inspiring action for a truly regenerative world. Total Reset locates, grounds and makes accessible sacred activism without diluting its power. Alternating chapters create an energetic charge speaking to all dimensions of existential and evidenced-based inquiry while providing invitations and catalysing insights for a world of abundant restoration.
The criticality of Total Reset surpasses words. The truth resonates. The means is clearly the way.”
– CATHERINE DONNELLEY
PRINCIPAL, LIMINAL NEXUS MASTERS ARCHITECTURE GRADUATING STUDIO 2024
SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN & PLANNING, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
“If you want to gain a deep understanding of the Original People in Australia – Read this book!
Total Reset: realigning with our timeless holistic blueprint for living, was profoundly useful for me as it filled in many gaps in my understanding. The wisdom of the Original People shines through this book, and it is a gift to have the stories shared that show what is possible when we can see life through a new perspective.
Rich stories illustrate points and foster learning, while research in several areas creates a firm foundation for a new way of working together based on Indigenous knowledges and ways of being and doing.
This book should be part of the curriculum in schools as it shows the true wisdom, knowledge, and gifts of the Original People and shares vital information about living on and caring for Country. The contents of this book could create a course and be most valuable in our universities.
For those who prefer to listen to a story, the Audible book is brilliant! The narrator Mark Coles Smith has done a superb job of narrating it and it transported me back to the 1990s in the Kimberley when I had the honour and privilege of meeting Elders like Lulu and yarning with them under the trees in the red dirt.
This book captures the essence of the Original people and Country and shows how we are all connected and responsible for the care of each other and Country – that is the holistic blueprint for living.”
– CINDY MATHERS
AUTHOR, DELVE-ING INTO CULTURAL HUMILITY:
HOW RESPECT AND DEEP LISTENING CAN HEAL A NATION (2023)
“I just finished reading Total Reset and wanted to congratulate you on taking the time and putting all this knowledge together. This is a wonderful book. What a gift to be able to spend so much time with Lulu and to learn from his wisdom.”
– PROFESSOR CAMERON PLATELL
SURGEON
“I am so energised as I keep dipping into your amazing and inspiring 30-year-in-the-making book, Total Reset. I conclude, before even getting halfway, that every house with readers should have a copy. I continue to find gems on almost every page and have little slips of paper tucked into the chapters to mark special passages I want to recall later. I am astounded at the amount of research done and writing skill shown to make your book readable and easy to understand.”
– KERI MOLLOY
ARTIST
“I count myself among the countless many who know the ever-inspiring learning provided through this body of work and most heartily agree that, as you say, “Nothing can extinguish the flame of the spirit of life.” Works such as Total Reset invite all to feel this flame within and around oneself and in all creation. Without a doubt, it is a profoundly important and meaningful work, a precious and timely gift to all. Goodness knows the world needs these wisdom teachings.”
– BARBARA RANDALL
WIFE OF ULURU TRADITIONAL OWNER, THE LATE BOB (TJILPI) RANDALL
“Your contribution, Total Reset, stands as a monumental example of what can and should be done; a return to fundamental earth values and our connections with them.”
– DR JAMES BOWLER