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THE RE-(E)MERGENCE OF NATURE IN CULTURE II When: Thursday 11 – Friday 12 July, 2019 Venue: The Sutherland Room Holme Building, Science Road, University of Sydney

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The Re-(E)mergence of Nature in Culture Day 1: Thursday 11 July, 2019 Sutherland Room | Holme Building, Science Rd, University of Sydney

Guest Wifi Details Username: reemergence Password: 90026618

8.30 – 9.00 Registration and refreshments 9.00 – 9.15 Welcome to country – Yvonne Weldon, Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council

Welcome to conference – Christine Winter, University of Sydney 9.15 – 10.45 Session 1: New Law

Mary Graham, The University of Queensland Michelle Maloney, Australian Earth Laws Alliance Future Law: How ancient and emerging ecological law can be a foundation for Australian society

10.45 – 11.10 MORNING TEA

11.10 – 12.40 Session 2: Woven Law/Weaving Spaces

Eddie Synot, Griffith University Woven Law Catherine Donnelly, University of Sydney Weaving inclusive spaces Jakelin Troy, University of Sydney TBC

12.40 – 1.30 LUNCH 1.30 – 3.00 Session 3: Valuing Indigenous Science

Virginia Marshall, ANU Indigenous Australia and Post-truth Climate Change: The value of Indigenous Science Mitchell Gibbs, University of Sydney Parents Know Best

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The Re-(E)mergence of Nature in Culture

Day 1: Cont. Sutherland Room | Holme Building, Science Rd, University of Sydney

3.00 – 3.30 AFTERNOON TEA 3.30 – 5.00 Session 4: Reconfiguring Relationships

Alice Te Punga Sommerville, University of Waikato “I have to produce the background:” the edges of Indigenous lives. Huhana Smith, Massey University Te Waituhi ā Nuku: Drawing Ecologies – Artists and Climate Change Transition Action Planning for Coastal Māori Communities.

5.00 Close and Refreshments

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The Re-(E)mergence of Nature in Culture

Day 2: Friday 12 July, 2019 Sutherland Room | Holme Building, Science Rd, University of Sydney

Guest Wifi Details Username: reemergence Password: 90026618

8.30 – 9.00 Coffee/Tea at Courtyard Bar 9.00 – 10.30 Session 5: Film Screening: River of Life

Anne Poelina, Madjulla Incorporated River of Life – A Film

Venue: Old Geology Lecture Theatre, Science Road

10.30 – 10.45 MORNING TEA

10.45 – 12.15 Session 6: Relentless waves of violence

Juanita Sherwood, University of Sydney A fresh wave of colonial violence: Climate Change, Health & Australia’s First Nations Peoples. Sophie Chao, University of Sydney Mapping More-Than-Human Worlds in an Age of Mass Extinction: Indigenous Cartography in West Papua.

12.15 – 1.00 LUNCH

1.00 – 2.30 Session 7: Waves forward: resisting (neo)colonialism

Jess Pasisi, University of Waikato Resisting colonial ideologies - Niuean Women’s perspectives on and experiences of climate change Christine Winter, University of Sydney Te Awa Tupua, Te Urewera and Taranaki: entangled representation

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The Re-(E)mergence of Nature in Culture

Day 2: Cont. Sutherland Room | Holme Building, Science Rd, University of Sydney

2.30 – 3.00 AFTERNOON TEA

3.00 – 4.30 Session 8: Closed Roundtable Discussion (Speakers) – Outputs 5.00 Event Close

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The Re-(E)mergence of Nature in Culture

Thursday 11 – Friday 12 July, 2019 Sutherland Room | Holme Building, Science Rd, University of Sydney

Abstracts (in order of appearance)

Future Law: How ancient and emerging ecological law can be a foundation for Australian society Mary Graham, The University of Queensland & Michelle Maloney, Australian Earth Laws Alliance

Western: What is the meaning of life? Aboriginal: What is it that wants to know? The failure of modern human societies to effectively govern our relationship with the natural world requires a systemic analysis; an analysis that enables us to see the underlying causes behind our insatiable consumption of nature and to rethink the very foundations of our legal, political, economic and cultural worldviews. This systemic analysis requires us to focus on the structures we create in human societies, and the logic and power imbalances that have brought us to where we are. We write from the perspective of two very different cultural traditions: a Kombumerri woman, whose people have lived on their land and sea country, their ‘traditional estate’ on the East coast of Australia for millennia, and a woman who is a descendant of the Irish convicts who were sent, unwillingly, to Australia less than 200 years ago, as part of the British imperial and colonial project. We come from extremely different cultural backgrounds, but we are passionately interested in similar questions: how do we respond to the ecological crisis in Australia? How do we create a culture where all Australians care for the environment and for one other, and build a sustainable future? And how do we build this future in a nation-state that has not yet dealt with the horrors of its colonial past, or the ongoing violence of its colonial present? A sustainable future for Australia must be built on justice for the First Nations Peoples who have endured colonisation since 1788, when the British Empire claimed the continent as its newest penal colony. In Part I of our presentation we use Earth jurisprudence to critique the underpinning governance structures of industrial society. In Part II we introduce some of the foundational concepts of Aboriginal law and ethics, including the key concept that the land is the source of the law. In Part III we discuss how core elements of Aboriginal law and ethics and emerging ecological law (Earth jurisprudence) can inform the creation of a new way forward for Australian society.

Mary Graham is a Kombumerri person (Gold Coast) through her father’s heritage and affiliated with Wakka Wakka (South Burnett) through her mother’s people.

Mary has worked across several government agencies, community organisations and universities including: Department of Community Services, Aboriginal and Islander Childcare Agency, the University of Queensland and the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action. Mary has also worked extensively for the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action, as a Native

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Title Researcher and was also a Regional Counsellor for the former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

Mary has been a lecturer with The University of Queensland, teaching Aboriginal history, politics and comparative philosophy. She has also lectured nationally on these subjects, and developed and implemented ‘Aboriginal Perspective’s’, ‘Aboriginal Approaches to Knowledge’ and at the post-graduation level ‘Aboriginal Politics’ into university curricula.

Michelle Maloney holds a Bachelor of Arts (Political Science and History) and Laws (Honours) from the Australian National University and a PhD in Law from Griffith University. She has more than 25 years experience designing and managing climate change, sustainability and environmental justice projects in Australia, the United Kingdom, Indonesia and the USA, and this includes ten years working with indigenous colleagues in Central Queensland on a range of community development, sustainability and cultural heritage projects. Michelle met and fell in love with Earth jurisprudence and Wild Law in 2009 and since 2011 has been working to promote the understanding and practical implementation of Earth centred law, governance and ethics in Australia through her work with AELA.

Woven Law Eddie Synot, Griffith University

Weaving, or the weave – similar to a tie that binds or a relation that links – provides the methodological principle and practice of Woven Law. Weaving is a fundamental practice in many Indigenous cultures, playing a key role in maintaining and producing life and order according to, and within, Indigenous societies and cultures. This importance is represented in the practice of collecting the different grasses used in weaving. This practice places and situates Indigenous peoples within their environments as relational beings. This placement is further demonstrated by the life, social and cultural endeavours supported by woven objects such as carrying children and food, to being used in housing, to further use as ceremonial instruments and clothing. The weave and weaving binds and layers Indigenous peoples and communities in different ways, connecting and holding people and place in differential ways together and allowing for those binds and layers to be rediscovered, produced and healed through weaving. The weave is not easily destroyed due to its layered and interwoven nature. Separate binds touch and relate to hold each other together in their differential and often incongruent roles as producing and maintaining patterned and relational being. Indigenous jurisprudential traditions emphasise the place, space and relational based nature of their production and life. Within this understanding, the weave is not static and neither is the law. The weave is law and the practice of weaving is not only productive of law but is living the law of relation. To be lawful is to live in relation, as the weave binds Indigenous being in this relation. Indigenous interactions with settler colonialism demonstrate the ways in which continuities and discontinuities are woven into the experience and event of settler colonialism as experienced by Indigenous peoples. These events and experiences are carried through Indigenous lives, as woven beings, where the past is intimately woven with the present and future. Woven law has implications not only for the way we understand the issues we face, but also for the proceeding responsibilities and obligations that we have from being situated as relational beings. Understanding this produces different and potentially more responsible ways of being together.

Eddie Synot is an Indigenous academic lawyer and researcher at Griffith University. Eddie also works in Indigenous higher education providing support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students studying at Griffith University through the GUMURRII Student Support Unit. Eddie is currently completing his PhD with the Griffith Law School focusing on a critique of Indigenous recognition and the liberal rights discourse of Indigenous recognition. Eddie has also taught Indigenous Studies at Griffith University, teaching Reconstructing the Aboriginal Australian, Aboriginal Political Histories and Contemporary Aboriginal Issues.

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Weaving inclusive spaces Catherine Donnelly, University of Sydney

Weaving is a practical art – producing goods to support everyday endeavours of survival – and a powerful metaphor. Here weaving in both senses is explored through participatory design specifically focusing on notions of reciprocity and mutuality. I draw on experiences within a weaving workshop to examine the equalisation of power structures when dialogue circle and connective art (Sheehan, n.d.) techniques are combined. A traditional Indigenous weaving workshop becomes the connective art practice employed to collectively manifest hope through co-envisioning with First Nation non-architects. Sheehan's work with the Healing Foundation and + Cultural practitioner Joanne Selfe will be explored within this context, inspired by the work of Dorris Sommer and the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard (Sommer, 2010).

Catherine Donnelly is a PhD candidate in the University of Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning.

Jakelin Troy, University of Sydney

Jakelin Troy is a Ngarigu woman from the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, and Director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research at The University of Sydney. Professor Troy’s research and academic interests focus on languages, particularly endangered Aboriginal and ‘contact languages’, language education, linguistics, anthropology and visual arts. She has extensive experience developing curriculum for Australian schools, focusing on Australian language programs. She studied in Mexico and Japan, developing her interest those countries’ art, culture and languages. Professor Troy is Editor in Chief of ab-Original: Journal of Indigenous Studies and First Nations and First Peoples’ Cultures.

Indigenous Australia and Post-truth Climate Change: The value of Indigenous Science Virginia Marshall, Australian National University What role governments engage with Indigenous Peoples across Australia as First Nations leaders and collaborators on climate change policy and law is not extensive. Australia’s neo-liberal approach to the impact of climate change and climate adaption is akin to fake news and post-truth science. Equally, can Indigenous science and knowledge facilitate a collective discourse and practice? Complaints to the United Nations have been made by a group of Torres Strait Islanders Peoples, as well as calls from leaders of the Pacific Islands region to the UN Secretary General for immediate action on climate mitigation, and the actual threat of rising seawaters. Will the political paralysis of post-truth climate thinking create opportunities for Indigenous alternatives?

Virginia Marshall is a practicising lawyer and legal scholar, her research doctoral thesis won a prestigious award and published as a ground-breaking Aboriginal water rights book titled "Overturning aqua nullius: Securing Aboriginal water rights" and launched in Sydney by the Hon. Michael Kirby. Honoured by the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria, Canada, Virginia recevied the award of 'Distinguished Woman Scholar'. She is recognised by the Department of Primary Industries 'HiddenTreasures Honour Roll' of outstanding rural volunteers, contributing to the well-being and unity of regional communities. Virginia's Indigenous Postdoctoral research position with Australian National University's School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) and the Fenner School of Environment and Society will focus on leading law reform for Indigenous peoples in Australia, by critically anaylsing international Indigenous water use, to develop Indigenous cuturally appropriate mechanisms for national water frameworks and ethical water use within domestic water regimes.

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Parents Know Best Mitchell Gibbs, University of Sydney

Molluscs will be vulnerable to ocean warming and acidification, yet by exposing parents to these larval offspring can be improved. To determine the impact of climate change on energy reserves of larvae , we measured the amount of energy in the form of lipids passed from adult M. Gigas to their eggs at ambient and elevated pCO2 (340, 856 µatm) and temperature (24°C and 28°C). Lipid reserves, survival and growth of larvae were measured for nine days. At ambient temperature, larvae had greater lipid reserves, survival, and faster growth when in the same treatment as their parents, even when this treatment was at elevated pCO2. At elevated temperature larvae in the same treatment as their parents had slower metabolism and greater survivorship compared to larvae in treatments different to their parents. Overall, larvae whose parents are exposed to elevated pCO2 were more likely to survive when also under elevated pCO2. This may not be due to extra energy in the eggs, but perhaps rather the ability of larvae to use energy more efficiently

“I have to produce the background:” the edges of Indigenous lives. Alice Te Punga Sommerville, University of Waikato What do Indigenous biographies tell us about the edges of Indigenous lives? In his 1951 publication The Autobiography of a Māori, Māori author Reweti Kohere writes about the impossibility of describing a single Indigenous life: “I may, perhaps, explain to readers, particularly those of my own tribe and race, that, in the narrative, I have gone back a few generations and have introduced the history of the Ngati Porou Tribe, as far as it fits into my story. I feel that when I claim some standing for my grandfather in the tribal history, I have to produce the background.” In this presentation, I am interested in biographical texts by Indigenous authors in which the “background” of a single Indigenous life is not only biographical or even collective but ecological. Specifically, I will talk about the methodological questions and opportunities that arise from a cluster of Indigenous-authored texts from the Pacific that include sections of writing on traditional knowledge about seasons and the environment. How do these sections, that can feel like random additions or diversions in relation to the rest of the text, challenge me as an Indigenous scholar of biography? How do they nudge me to decolonize reading practices that are unconsciously but deeply invested in lines where Indigenous lives end and the environment begins?

Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Ātiawa, Taranaki) writes and teaches at the intersections of Indigenous, Pacific, literary and cultural studies. After receiving her MA from University of Auckland and her PhD from Cornell University, she has taught in New Zealand, Canada, Hawai’i and Australia. She is currently Associate Professor, and Associate Dean Academic, in the Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Waikato. Her first book was Once Were Pacific: Maori connections to Oceania (Minnesota 2012) and her current project ‘Writing the new world: Indigenous texts 1900-1975’ explores published writing from Aotearoa, Australia, Fiji and Hawai’i. She also writes the occasional poem. alicet@waikato.ac.nz

Te Waituhi ā Nuku: Drawing Ecologies – Artists and Climate Change Transition Action Planning for Coastal Māori Communities. Huhana Smith, University of Massey In May 2019, with the Phase 2 Deep South Climate Change National Science Challenge, Vision Mātauranga research wrapped up, more national and international indigenous and non-indigenous artists are converging with proactive Māori communities. Together, they are working alongside designers, geomorphologists and climate change scientists. As contemporary artists expand the Kei Uta Collective’s efforts, hapū landholders and Māori researchers continue to forge new patterns of hapū interrelationship

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and interdependency to place, whilst renewing economies that are based on deep, ancestral/hapū experiences.

Huhana Smith is a visual artist, curator and principle investigator in research who engages in major environmental, trans-disciplinary, kaupapa Māori and action-research projects. She is co-principle investigator for research that includes mātauranga Māori methods with sciences to actively address climate change concerns for coastal Māori lands in Horowhenua-Kāpiti. Huhana actively encourages the use of art and design’s visual systems combined in exhibitions, to expand how solutions might integrate complex issues and make solutions more accessible for local communities.

River of Life - a Film Anne Poelina, Madjulla Incorporated Dr Anne Poelina, Chair of the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council in partnership with the PEW Charitable Trust will share the film ‘River of Life’ in a two-way conversation. The message of the film and the voices of Aboriginal people is that there is more than an environmental aspect to the National and Aboriginal Heritage Listed Fitzroy River. The meaning is shared through a deep understanding of water, how and where it flows. The film showcases the relationship to this knowledge which is both ancient and relevant today. It will show the responsibility that people have as custodians through their ancient law. It will show that these responsibilities are built in the fish traps, stone circles, paintings, songs and stories that are passed from generation to generation. It will also juxtapose what happens when this responsibility is taken from the hands of the custodians and placed in the hands of others as found in the recent South Australian Royal Commission Murray-Darling and the Ord River.

Anne Poelina, Managing Director of Madjulla Incorporated, is a Nyikina Traditional Custodian from the Mardoowarra, Lower Fitzroy River in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia. Through her wide experience from working in Indigenous health, education, language and community development for over 30 years she has developed a deep understanding of issues impacting on Indigenous Australians living in remote locations. Her childhood growing up in Broome, Derby and out on country has given her the love and respect for land, law and culture particularly in relation to creating industries that are culturally affirming and environmentally sustainable. Dr Poelina has studied the historical colonial context of development in the West Kimberley and how it impacts on contemporary Indigenous participation in decision making, governance, land and water reform. Dr Poelina explores the characteristics of different models of development in relation to the impact and outcomes for Indigenous people in the West Kimberley, particularly in relation to developing green collar jobs in the culture and conservation economy. Dr Poelina is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow with Notre Dame University and a Research Fellow with Northern Australia Institute Charles Darwin University, and a Councillor with the Australian Conservation Foundation.

A fresh wave of colonial violence: Climate Change, Health & Australia’s First Nations Peoples. Juanita Sherwood, University of Sydney Climate change is an extremely dangerous determinant of poor health and wellbeing for Australia’s First Nations Peoples. It has been ignored and tolerated by those in seats of power because those at greatest

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risk are those with the least political power and because of this the poorest health status on this continent. Climate change will cause harm to the health and wellbeing of Indigenous Australians by increasing the impact of chronic morbidities, which will result in fatal mortalities. This is another wave of colonial violence, furnished by greed and inhumanity, just like the first. We must challenge this genocide.

Juanita Sherwood is a registered nurse, teacher, lecturer, researcher and manager with a depth of working experiences of some thirty years in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and education.

She has an extensive track record specifically in the area of Indigenous research spanning over 3 decades. Her career has encompassed the health and education government and non-government sector, as well as the academy. She has been involved in, and ran a number of State-wide and National projects, developed policies and strategic plans that have required wide-ranging consultation; in-depth literature reviews; data collection using government and non-government sources; and negotiated their implementation strategically and informatively.

Her research experience has been in the areas of Indigenous health, education, and social justice; lecturing in the spectrum of Indigenous social justice issues and Indigenous research approaches; mentoring and building the capacity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander postgraduate students within an National Indigenous research development agenda; working with Aboriginal communities to assist in developing their research agendas and methods for undertaking research; establishing a National Indigenous Staff / Researcher Network within the University Departments of Rural Health across Australia; fostering “a how to rollout cultural competency” and safe learning environments for students Indigenous and non-Indigenous, academic and health staff; and the development of a unique Indigenous health resource websitehttp://utsindigenoushealth.com/.

Mapping More-Than-Human Worlds in an Age of Mass Extinction: Indigenous Cartography in West Papua. Sophie Chao, University of Sydney Indigenous communities are increasingly using maps to defend their rights to customary lands in the face of state and corporate development projects whose ecologically destructive effects are a key driver of climate change. This paper examines the epistemic, political, and practical opportunities and challenges faced by indigenous Marind (West Papua) in producing and deploying participatory maps as part of their grassroots anti-palm oil campaigns. Marind criticize government maps and their ‘straight lines’ because they represent the totalizing control of the state over the landscape and its inhabitants. Marinds’ own mapping practices, in contrast, are guided by the sounds and movements of human and non-human entities within the forest. I describe these maps as ‘living maps’ in two senses – first, they represent life within the landscape, and second, they change in line with the movements of lifeforms within it. Producing maps that won’t sit still, I suggest, is a way in which Marind resist the hegemonic gaze and control of the state. However, maps that won’t sit still also have limited legitimacy in the context of negotiations with the government and corporations. Furthermore, conundrums and contestations within Marind communities over how maps should be produced, by whom, and of what, provide important insights into their own divergent conceptions of space, and of themselves within it. Maps as cultural resources and advocacy tools thus reveal themselves critical entry points into the contested politics of space and its visual representation. In particular, they point to the need for more-than-human reframings of perspective, participation, and perception, as fundamental shapers in the production and depiction of multispecies landscapes.

Sophie Chao is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry and the Charles Perkins Centre. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Oriental Studies (First Class) and a Master of Science in Social Anthropology from The University of Oxford and a PhD (Cum Laude) from Macquarie University. Sophie’s research explores the intersections of capitalism, ecology, and indigeneity in Indonesia, with a specific focus on changing interspecies relations in the context of deforestation and agribusiness development. Her current research deploys inter-

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disciplinary methods to explore the nutritional and cultural impacts of agribusiness on indigenous food-based socialities, identities, and ecologies.

Resisting colonial ideologies - Niuean Women’s perspectives on and experiences of climate change Jessica Pasisi, University of Waikato This paper utilises hiapo, a Niuean bark cloth, as a metaphor and culturally imbued way of privileging Niuean knowledge, Niuean women and Niuean culture. In a larger project, I use this cultural and gendered Niuean lens to explore perspectives and experiences of climate change. In order to understand the implications of climate change in Niue I will focus on a cultural Niuean story, a photograph and perspectives from a Niuean woman. A hiapo methodological approach honours Niuean perspectives and is a way of expressing the cultural, gendered and political complexity of how my people frame climate change. Informed by Pacific and Indigenous studies and Management and Communication studies, my interdisciplinary research offers a uniquely Niuean perspective of how our women resist colonial ideologies, drawing instead from herstories, histories, ancestry and cultural archives that empower our Niuean voices.

Jessica Lili Pasisi is of Niue - Mutalau, Palagi descent. She was born in Aotearoa and raised in the Waikato. She is currently a Teaching Fellow and PhD candidate at the University of Waikato working in field of Pacific and Indigenous Studies. Jessica’s current research relates to the cultural practices, knowledge and lived experiences of Niuean people in relation to climate change.

Te Awa Tupua, Te Urewera and Taranaki: entangled representation Christine Winter, University of Sydney

Aotearoa New Zealand acknowledges Matauranga Maori in the two Acts and one Memorandum of Understanding recognising the ‘personhood’ status of three geographical regions – Te Awa Tupua, Te Urewera and Mt Taranaki. These legal moves blend the legal fiction of corporate personhood with the already always understanding of human-nonhuman kinship and entanglement of Maori philosophy or Matauranga Maori and the epistemological framing of whakapapa. Through kaitiaki, guardians or trustees - appointed to think like these geo-regions and to act as their voice - these three entities now have volition in their ongoing maintenance, development negotiations, and ‘land-use’. Furthermore, they have ‘the rights, powers, duties and liabilities of a legal person’. These latter attributes seem to grant something more than mere volition in self-management and protection: they suggest agency. This paper explores the implications of Te Awa Tupua, Te Urewera and Mt Taranaki’s potential for political agency. As representatives of entanglement for all being - animal (including human), vegetable and mineral - and as a matter of justice they, through their kaitiaki, are, perhaps, obliged to participate in democracy and the nation is, perhaps, obliged to give them a ‘seat at the table’. As political agents with equal status to human and corporates Te Awa Tupua, Te Urewera and Mt Taranaki could decolonise Aotearoa’s politics and challenge the imbalances of the anthropocene.

Christine Winter (Anglo-Celtic-Ngāti Kahungunu) is a lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on decolonising political theory, and more specifically looks at the moves required to decolonise environmental and intergenerational justice in the context of Mātauranga Māori. Her current research is focussed on the implications for political theory and political representation of the Te Awa Tupua and Te Urewera Acts which grant legal personhood status and iwi oversight to significant geo-regions in Aotearoa.