River thinking: Towards a holistic approach to watery places in the human imaginary (original) (raw)
Related papers
Let the Rivers Speak thinking about waterways in Aotearoa New Zealand
This article explores deep underlying assumptions about relationships between people and the planet, and how these translate into very different ways of relating to waterways in Aotearoa New Zealand. In te ao Mäori -ancestral Mäori ways of living -rivers and lakes are the tears of Ranginui, the sky father, mourning his separation from Papatüänuku, the earth mother, and people are their descendants, joined in complex whakapapa that link all forms of life together. In modern ways of thinking, on the other hand, ideas such as private property, resource management and ecosystem services can be traced back to the Genesis story of God's gift of 'dominion' to Adam and Eve over fish, birds, plants and the earth itself, including waterways, in which all other life forms are created for human purposes.
Rivers as entanglements of nature and culture
The general proposition put forward in this introductory chapter is that rivers should be regarded as dynamic entanglements of nature and culture. If considered purely as natural systems, their cultural dimension gets excluded. If considered as cultural artefacts through and through, their wild aspect is neglected. It goes on to argue that those branches of archaeology which take ‘land’ as their subject (whether the ‘landscape’ or ‘wetland’ variety) should encompass dynamic liquid flows – including flows of solid material eroded, carried and deposited by water – within their remit.
Policy Quarterly, 2019
This article explores deep underlying assumptions about relationships between people and the planet, and how these translate into very different ways of relating to waterways in Aotearoa New Zealand. In te ao Mäori – ancestral Mäori ways of living – rivers and lakes are the tears of Ranginui, the sky father, mourning his separation from Papatüänuku, the earth mother, and people are their descendants, joined in complex whakapapa that link all forms of life together. In modern ways of thinking, on the other hand, ideas such as private property, resource management and ecosystem services can be traced back to the Genesis story of God’s gift of ‘dominion’ to Adam and Eve over fish, birds, plants and the earth itself, including waterways, in which all other life forms are created for human purposes. In successive Waitangi Tribunal claims, iwi have disputed these assumptions in relation to fisheries, tribal lands and rivers, and, in worldleading legislation, the Whanganui River has been d...
Re-Imagining Wild Rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand
Land
If wilderness is dead, do wild rivers exist and if so, in what form and in whose construction? This reflective article reviews perspectives on rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand as wild or tamed entities. A historical overview of the socio-cultural and institutional relationships with rivers examines the meanings of rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand through multiple lenses. This includes indigenous Māori knowledge, command-and-control mentalities of a settler society that assert human authority over rivers, the emergence of the environmental movement and associated legislation with a sustainability focus (the Resource Management Act), and recent movement towards co-governance arrangements that incorporate the original intent of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (1840). It is contended that management practices have disconnected society from rivers, and vice versa, creating a sense of environmental loss (solastalgia), especially for Māori. Using rivers in the Greater Wellington Region as examples, prosp...
Developing relational understandings of water through collaboration with indigenous knowledges
WIREs Water 1,4, 401-411, 2014
Scholars around the world are increasingly taking up the imperative of the Anthropocene to develop new epistemologies beyond the nature culture binary in order to address escalating planetary problems. Water is one of the most urgent and extreme cases of global resource depletion and the failure of development to recognize the significance of indigenous water knowledges is cited as fundamental to this dire situation. In Australia, a thirteen year drought that threatened the survival of the Murray–Darling system was believed to be related to changing climatic conditions in the global south and intimately connected to the increasing impact of human species on planetary systems. Natural resource managers in Australia have a history of failing to incorporate Aboriginal knowledges into decisions about the management of water. This article explores how a collaborative study of water with five Indigenous artists in Australia’s Murray–Darling basin can contribute to the development of new epistemologies of water. It identifies the possibilities of thinking through Australian Aboriginal concepts of Country for a contemporary methodology of water based on traditional epistemologies in which human and ecological systems are conceptualised as one. The methodology of thinking through Country was developed in multimodal forms including paintings, translations fromAboriginal languages, and oral explanations assembled in digital format. This methodology allowed shared contemporary understandings to emerge in the space betweenAboriginal and non-Aboriginal knowledge of water. Examples of art forms and stories reveal intimate local ecological knowledge of water embedded in contemporary cultural forms and languages. © 2014Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Geographical Research, 2021
In 2018, a large, coordinated environmental flow was instituted along the Barwon-Darling (Barka) River to connect ecosystems and restore public confidence in water regulation in the Murray-Darling Basin. This article examines the multiple river realities enacted by this event-environmental flow, regulated flow, unregulated flow, shut-up flow-as a conflict over what constitutes the character of water during substantial change in Australia's settler colonial systems of water governance. Geographical analyses of event spaces from military contexts assisted in unpacking the ontological and spatio-temporal matters germane to this situation in which managers needed to heed the dynamism of the river at both material and institutional registers. The article describes the scientific and regulatory practices and visual technologies through which management of an "event-ful" river brought together some waters (but not others) into something ontologically secure and coherent, and therefore governable. It shows how the naturalising discourse constrained and enabled what could be said about the relations deserving of water and who gets to decide what socio-material connections water might make. Aboriginal leaders interviewed during the flow chose to emphasise a wider relational set of connections than did state water managers, and to accentuate dysfunctional and destructive relations, thereby inviting others to think and feel differently about environmental flows.
PhD Thesis Through the medium of artists books, this study explores the re-contextualisation and repurposing of scientific images within visual narratives of freshwater places in Australia. Aquatic fungi are featured in these visual stories as a representative for the more-thanhuman inhabitants of these aquatic environments, that lie mysteriously, like the Bunyip, beyond normal human perception. Appearing as apparitions, these natural recyclers metaphorically de-compose the detritus of the colonial freshwater narratives to assert the presence of the non-human. Many issues arose from the interdisciplinary work as objectivity of science collided with subjectivity of a physical and metaphysical experience of place. In this contested space, preconceptions of scientific knowledge and values were challenged and then reconciled. In this work I was informed by Gaston Bachelard’s deliberations in Poetics of Space and the concept of ‘science as cultural practice’ outlined in the collected writings of Donna Haraway. Yet this was not a Consilience, as EO Wilson would prefer, but a montage layering of intervention and flow within site-specific, placenarratives of fresh water. The study concludes that the visual montage and the narrative offer inclusive and extended potential to deconstruct rigid structures and then recombine or hybridise these elements into an unexpected diversity of ideas. Intentionally, the reader is not offered yet another eco-political environmental narrative of water and rivers. These stories flow from one site to another, from colonial perceptions of progress and production to a natural recognition of absence and presence, and from scientific fact to mythical reality.
Geographies of inland waterscapes: Thinking with watery places
The Geographical Journal, 2024
Humans and water have a complex relationship that includes various dimen-sions such as sociocultural, political, legal and ecological. Considering the ubiq-uity of water, we need a more holistic perspective to help us see water not as a static entity but rather as one in constant movement, physically and conceptually; acknowledging the interplay between water and humans is essential to under-standing societal narratives deeply embedded in places. In this special section, an interdisciplinary group of scholars explore inland waters, taking a water- centric view instead of a land- centric one. The special section delves into the emerging hydro- social connections, diverse forms of expertise, governance models, col-lective and spontaneous actions, and resilience strategies within the context of inland water bodies, exploring how canals, rivers and wetlands are experienced and represented as places. The papers in this collection show that any form of placemaking should take responsible stewardship of water, embrace its dynamic nature, and present a realistic pathway towards sustainable solutions for present and future water challenges.
A tale of two rivers -Baaka and Martuwarra, Australia: Shared voices and art towards water justice
2023
Two of Australia's iconic river systems, Baaka in New South Wales (NSW) and Martuwarra in Western Australia (WA), are described in a narrative that connects Indigenous custodianship, bio-physical features and art, and contrasts settler law with First Law to provide multiple ways of seeing the two river systems. Our narrative is a shared response to: (1) upstream water extractions that have imposed large costs on Baaka and its peoples; and (2) threats of water extractions and developments to Martuwarra. By scribing the voices of the two river systems, we have created a space to reimagine an emerging future that connects the past and present through the concept of 'EveryWhen', where First Law has primacy, and where art connects Indigenous knowledges to non-Indigenous understanding. Through a dialogue process with Indigenous knowledge holders, artists and water researchers, five action processes, or journeys, are identified to guide water decision making towards water justice.