S3 E7: Ochrepunk with Matthew Ngamurarri Heffernan

Happy New Year friends! To kick off 2026, we bring you a fantastic episode on Indigenous Futurisms, optimism in First Nations storytelling, and 🧡Ochrepunk🧡 with our very special guest, Matthew Ngamurarri Heffernan 🖤💛❤️

Matt is a Luritja man, software developer, board member, creative technologist, playwright, poet, and PhD student at The Australian National University’s School of Cybernetics 💻✍️🎭 He is a developer at Indigemoji – a sticker set of 90 emojis representing life, culture and language of Arrernte Country in Central Australia – and creator of The Robot Dog, an intercultural sci-fi play about identity and technology in the future 🤖🐕

Press play for a yarn about Matt’s work on ‘The Jedda Test’ (inspired by the famous Bechdel Test, and centred around Indigenous representations in media) and ‘Ochrepunk’, his play The Robot Dog, and the interconnections with Solarpunk ☀️

Episode time stamps:

0:00 Introduction

3:28 Introducing our guest, Matthew Ngamurarri Heffernan!

6:08 The Jedda Test and First Nations representation in media

24:42 Ochrepunk - what it is and how it relates to Solarpunk

40:28 The Robot Dog play

48:36 Punk in First Nations music

1:01:42 Is cyberpunk negative?

1:05:28 Good News Stories

1:11:26 Matt’s media recommendations

Watch Matt’s play, The Robot Dog, online (if you’re based in Australia): https://www.mtc.com.au/plays-and-tickets/whats-on/mtc-digital-theatre/the-robot-dog/

Want more? Here are some things that we spoke about in this episode that we recommend:

-Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (2012) by Grace Dillon

-Ambelin Kwaymullina’s Tribe YA book series

-Ellen van Neerven’s Water, from the Heat & Light (2014) book

-Jedda (1955)

-Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)

-The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978)

-Radiance (1998)

-Crocodile Dundee (1986)

-Music by A.B. Original and Warumpi Band

Good News Stories:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/learning-another-language-may-slow-brain-aging-huge-new-study-finds/

https://mashable.com/video/mobile-crisis-construction-in-ukraine

Recommended by Matt:

-The Aboriginal Invention of Television in Central Australia 1982-1986: https://sk.sagepub.com/book/edvol/transmission/chpt/aboriginal-invention-television-central-australia

-Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022-present)

-Ghost in the Shell (1995)