In the 1980s a great social movement was sweeping remote Indigenous communities in Australia, in which families were leaving the government settlements and missions of the assimilation era, and taking their children home to their ancestral lands. As part of this ‘homelands movement’, I worked for many years for the Pitjantjatjara people of central Australia. To be able to work for such a great ideal was an honour and an inspiration, as well as a steep educational experience, learning how to interact in a very different culture, to speak a different language, and to raise a family in the harsh conditions of desert living and working. But I was fortunate to have some of the greatest teachers and role models anyone could hope for – the Pitjantjatjara elders who were the leaders of the homelands movement.