You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley and I wanted to be able to... do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage as I like to put it and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa.

I really have created a family. I work with the people I love I travel with them I make films with them and I'm in an office with them. So in a weird way - I know I haven't birthed a child - I feel that I'm a part of creating a family. It's a tribe. I love that word.

The United States have fulfilled in good faith all their treaty stipulations with the Indian tribes and have in every other instance insisted upon a like performance of their obligations.

My mother's family were full-on Irish Catholics - faith in an elaborate old fashioned highly conservative and madly baroque style. I sort of fell out of the tribe over women's rights and social justice issues when I was just 13 years old.

But beginners to the World Economics Forum have to understand there is no single Davos experience and there is no single Davos community either. There are numerous tribes who interact only at a minimal level.

He killed his enemies because he was afraid they would kill him. Amin ordered entire tribes to be put to death because he feared they would rebel.

I always have one or two sometimes more Navajo or other tribes' cultural elements in mind when I start a plot. In Thief of Time I wanted to make readers aware of Navajo attitude toward the dead respect for burial sites.

If government and media and all of us in the Australian tribe got together and the rock industry we'd just be the greatest cultural force the world has ever seen - we're such an amazing race.