Innovation: Creativity as a Renewable Resource for the Eco-City
Cities need new strategies for conservation and climate change resilience that engage global narrators, unite diverse perspectives and mobilise an increasingly despondent public. This chapter examines community arts as a potential resource for the eco-city, including how incorporating creative perspectives into sustainability communication can open up new ways of thinking about how cities are reimagined for an ecological paradigm. Community arts can provide a unique platform for empowering communities across natural, constructed, economic and cultural systems, thereby contributing to the public's knowledge and care of their local environment. Using a participatory design and theatre-making project as a case study (The Bower Stage, Armidale, Australia, 2016), the chapter demonstrates how incorporating both creative and ecological perspectives can enrich environmental citizenship and connection for the eco-city.
Walking Together at Myall Creek: Dreaming Beyond 'a Cult of Forgetfulness'
Against the 'silence' or 'forgetfulness' of the many massacres of Aboriginal people, the Myall Creek Massacre holds a special place due to its detailed presence in the public record. Rather than simply reasserting the truth of the many massacres, this article then records an attempt to move beyond such denials/assertion. Recording testimony to the spirit of the land, the site of Myall Creek becomes significant for both memorial and for memory.
Indigenous Representation at the Eurovision Song Contest: A Quintessentially Australian Identity
The inclusion of Australia in the Eurovision Song Contest since 2015 is both novel and geographically controversial. Even more striking is the predominance of Indigenous performers, Jessica Mauboy and Isaiah Firebrace, among Australia's first representatives. The choice of performers by Australia's multicultural broadcaster, SBS, can be perceived as an attempt to present Australia as a modern, multicultural, and postcolonial nation, that has achieved the European goal of "unity through diversity", by choosing Indigenous performers along with those from other minority backgrounds, Guy Sebastian and Dami Im. However, a perception of Indigenous marginality from a predominantly non-Indigenous white mainstream Australian viewpoint may not be an accurate perception of how the European audience view an Indigenous identity. Indigenous musical performers articulate identities that confound the non-Indigenous binaries of traditional and contemporary culture, manifesting a cultural identity that is dynamic, both ancient and modern, and uniquely Australian.
Reconciliation in Australia? Dreaming Beyond the Cult of Forgetfulness
This chapter explores the history of reconciliation in Australia, the policy framework, obstacles and achievements. It draws on the experience of Julie Collins of Reconciliation in Action at Myall Creek and in the work of the community arts organisation, Beyond Empathy and also shares the experiences of Warlpa Kutjika Thompson, a Wiimpatja, from the western district of NSW. I (Julie) have been collaborating with Warlpa Kutjika Thompson on this chapter on Australian reconciliation and other projects, in an attempt to share power and perspective. Our collaboration has led to many interesting discussions that have deepened my understanding of the complexity of what needs to happen for reconciliation to occur.
Aboriginal owned and jointly managed national parks: Caring for cultural imperatives and conservation outcomes
In Australia, Indigenous people contest the idea that any place, land, sea or sky, can be undisturbed wilderness; everywhere has a story and a cultural context. Aboriginal land management is conceptualised as 'Caring for Country', where Country is home; cared for in the proper way, it is 'quiet'. By contrast, land, sea or sky that is uncared for, where forms of traditional custodianship have been disrupted and denied access, is 'wild', without songs and ceremonies (Rose 1996, 19). 'Country', as an IUCN cultural value, underpins a great diversity of management regimes in Australia, from state-owned national parks to Indigenous lands, owned under freehold or native title. Indigenous Protected Areas comprise 44.6 per cent of the National Reserve System not including Aboriginal owned and jointly managed national parks and other co-management arrangements. This chapter examines Indigenous participation in the Australian conservation estate with a focus on Aboriginal owned and jointly managed national parks in New South Wales, and the caring of land for cultural imperatives as well as biodiversity conservation outcomes. A first-hand account of Aboriginal land management from the Chairperson of the Board of Mutawintji National Park, Warlpa Kutijika Thompson, explores the relationship of Aboriginal Owners to the conservation estate, reinforced through the relational values of Aboriginal land management and through the power of storytelling.
This chapter examines Indigenous participation in the Australian conservation estate with a focus on Aboriginal owned and jointly managed national parks in New South Wales, and the caring of land for cultural imperatives as well as biodiversity conservation outcomes. Aboriginal land management is conceptualised as ‘Caring for Country’, where Country is home; cared for in the proper way, it is ‘quiet’. Aboriginal owned and jointly managed national parks also make a significant, if more modest contribution to the National Reserve System. The pastoralists displaced the Aboriginal owners during the 1870s. Bullets, disease and dispersal greatly diminished the Aboriginal population of the area. The rent that’s paid by the State to the Aboriginal Owners of Mawintjis is paid into three accounts; one of them is land purchase; the other one is for seeding and the third for community development.