Blood and Soil: nature, native and nation in the Australian imaginary (original) (raw)
Related papers
Geoforum, 2018
Western environmentalism and conservation are deeply entangled with histories of colonialism. This entanglement has marginalised Indigenous and migrant perspectives on the environment to protect settler norms and interests. This paper approaches those two types of othering together in the context of environmental debate, using the lens of a mainstream conservation magazine. We analyse representations of indigeneity and migration in a shifting settler-colonial discourse on the environment, throughout the 45 volumes of the Australian Conservation Foundation’s magazine Habitat (1973-2016). The Australian Conservation Foundation was Australia’s first nation-wide conservation organization. Its magazine exemplifies a settler-colonial discourse that initially aimed to conserve pristine nature but that over time has responded to increasing awareness that environmental crises have transnational causes and consequences, and require intercultural and international cooperation. We found that, while contributors to the magazine increasingly represent Australian conservation issues as connected to international processes and closely collaborate with remote Indigenous communities, they continue to assume the settler as norm and prioritise the protection of wealth and lifestyles. These goals are achieved through the conditional inclusion of others and through the treatment of environments as having zero-sum limits. The colonial imaginaries of ‘wilderness’ and carrying capacity are repurposed to frame migration as being at odds with Australian people’s wealth and wellbeing. The reiteration of settler-colonial environmentalism as a dominant way of protecting the environment stands in the way of the greater pluralism of environmental relationships that will be needed for coping with environmental change.
Ecological restoration, cultural preferences and the negotiation of [] nativeness' in Australia
Geoforum, 2008
The paper addresses cultural assumptions about 'nativeness' and 'belonging' to place as they are implicated in notions of 'ecological restoration'. Given the centrality of complex notions of 'indigeneity' to the issue of what ecological 'restoration' means in Australia, this is a rich area for cultural and historical analysis. Case materials illustrate the negotiated and ambiguous nature of Australian ideas about what 'belongs' ecologically and culturally across the broad continent of this relatively young post-Settler nation. We seek to foreground these issues through consideration of what 'restoring' nature might mean in the context of debates about native plants, the re-introduction of an iconic species of ground dwelling bird, the removal of cane toads that are demonised as highly 'alien', and the multiple ways in which the dingo is regarded ambiguously as both native and a 'pest' that needs to be controlled and culled. By showing how 'restoration' can be understood and mobilised in a variety of ways -in terms of the 're-naturing', 're-valuing' and/or 'repatriating' of indigenous species, as well as impassioned rejection of 'exotics' -we emphasise the importance of social science for building a well-grounded sense of how environmental management priorities and approaches are informed by a wider set of cultural assumptions.
The paper presents original material drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a conflict situation over the construction of a AUD $45 billion liquefied natural gas facility on top of an Indigenous heritage site: Walmadany / James Price Point, at the Indian Ocean coast of Northwest Australia. It discusses, from an emic point of view, the inadequacy of western science terminology to represent Indigenous knowledge about the environment in question. To overcome related shortcomings in assessment processes of natural and cultural values, the paper argues for ways in which western law und science can be better equipped first to recognize Indigenous knowledge as ontologically different but equal, and second to overcome the impossible task of expressing Indigenous world(view)s in modernist terms.
Landscape as Metaphor: Myths and Reality in Australian Post-Colonial History
Who owns Australia's past? Is it the victors of a genocidal race war? Can we disentangle myth from fact in the legacy of assumed sovereignty and violent displacive occupation? Should we be honouring our First People in the way we write history? With recognition comes identity and authenticity, the capacity for self-awareness, the hope of validation. The history of Australia since 1788 is caught up in the tension between invasion, resistance, and racially targeted extermination, us, and them. Why have we written out Aboriginal society from colonial history? Is it guilt? The guilt of Stanner's 'great Australian silence'? What we are is determined by what we were. Our emergent reality is circumscribed by the choices we make and have made. The question is: can we change? Can our mutating rulebased order accept the lessons of truth-telling and embrace inclusion, the rights of otherness, the rights of the biosphere?
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 2013
In her Epilogue, Kylie Crane discusses the roots of this project, her first book. It began with an essential question: What is nature? This is not an easy query, of course. As demonstrated by ecocritics like Timothy Morton in Ecology Without Nature, as revealed in many theoretical debates (deconstruction, gender studies, and so on), and as famously recognized by Raymond Williams, as Crane notes (11), the word "nature" stands in for vastly complex, conflicting, and important sets of ideas. "Wilderness" functions similarly. In Crane's case, a college instructor had asked her and her undergraduate classmates (mostly German) about their ideas of nature. Crane's answer involved "imaginings of vast, unexplored spaces, devoid of human traces," but that "was not the answer the teacher was looking for." The instructor, Crane writes, instead had in mind notions of "recuperation, regeneration, […] and pleasant seasons," conceptions more familiar to a continental European context. Crane thus began to recognize her view as distinctive, borne in large measure from her Australian background. In short, by way of ideas of nature, she faced a cosmopolitan's problem of cultural difference, and this challenge led Crane to investigate the source of her views. She came to understand that her "ideas of nature were ideas of wilderness nature, and not pastoral nature" (182), notions particular to specific geographies, cultures, and histories. This scenario reveals one of the most important strengths of Crane's book. Although ecocriticism and other related discourses have done much to reveal the "constructed" character of wilderness and nature more generally, such arguments have little influence in the broader world. We cannot pretend that a set of scholarly publications have ended the power and impact of ideas of wilderness while SUVs named "Yukon," "Denali," and "Outback" rumble down our streets. Further, even among scholars cognizant of the constructedness of ideas of nature and wilderness, much work remains to be done to tease out the meanings of specific, real-world situations. It is one thing to recognize, in general terms, the historical and contingent reality of ideas of wilderness; it is something else to describe what roles ideas of wilderness play in specific places and times, especially outside the much-studied United States context. Crane's book helps to fill this void, offering readings of texts thoroughly infused with questions of wilderness and nature. More particularly, Crane has selected a body of texts written by members of settler and post-settler cultures in Australia and Canada, working to unpack how writers in such positions deploy ideas of wilderness. She has deliberately avoided focusing on indigenous-authored texts, partly to clarify how settler discourse works (9). Crane's
Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 2018
Colonialism has challenged Aboriginal obligations and relationships to the natural world. This article describes the efforts of First Nations on the continent now known as Australia to maintain their authority and existences in the face of neoliberalism and colonialism, which the British initially inflicted and under which we still survive. The colonial policies of Australia denied our existence and at the same time attempted to demolish our languages and cultures, and to assimilate the consequences. This article asks the questions: what underpins state claims to the title to Aboriginal lands? Does Australia renounce terra nullius and the racist principles and beliefs which make up such a doctrine? And finally does Australia acknowledge and support all ‘Peoples’ as having an inherent right to self-determination, and as a component of such a right, that all ‘Peoples’ have a right to collectively care for their country and to benefit from a relationship to the land which sustains futu...