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I lived for a couple of years when I was 9 years old on beautiful Aboriginal sacred land in a town of a thousand people in northwestern Australia. It's where the Aborigines are still very connected to their culture, the Dreamtime culture. It was really quite a special experience.

I had spent some time in the outback, but to meet Aboriginals and work with them was wonderful. It gave me a great appreciation of how tough life is and about the indomitable spirit that the Aboriginal people have always possessed.

I have Aboriginal roots on my father's side, and have always indentified with that spirit. I feel a lot of my music comes from that place.

I was shocked when I moved to Sydney how very few indigenous people I came across. And so when I go to places like Maroubra or Redfern or Waterloo or Erskineville, I feel more at home because of the people I'm around - anywhere I can see a face that reflects someone that looks like my family, I feel much more at home.

A lot of my identity as an Aboriginal person is about family.

There are people all over Australia who use their homes as hubs that they travel from, and they encourage their indigenous people to continue to stay there.

My best friend was Aboriginal. She taught me about 'bush tucker' - the food of the land, the different things you could eat if you got lost in the bush, like grasses and berries. There's this tree called the billygoat plum - the fruit is quite nice.

My dad is from India, my mom is from Russia. Fortunately, we moved a lot. I went to a lot of different schools and completely different cultures, so that's my background.