Terra nullius no more

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Terra nullius no more?

• changing Australian geographies through
  negotiation
• Richie Howitt
• Macquarie University, Australia
• Richard.Howitt_at_mq.edu.au

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Terra nullius no more?

• Seeing the Country - towards social, economic and
  environmental justice
• Wik as a window on simultaneous agendas for the
  creation of new geographies
• Terra nullius no more!
• Negotiating about Country - putting justice in
  its places
• Conclusion negotiating new geographies

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Howitt Terra Nullius no more? 3

• Law, politics and the economy are central in
  indigenous peoples challenges to postcolonial
  national identities.

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Howitt Terra Nullius no more? 4

• In challenging postcolonial identities indigenous
  people are negotiating new geographies which
  might decolonise people-people and people-country
  relations.

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Howitt Terra Nullius no more? 5 Country

• Country in Aboriginal English is not only a
  common noun but also a proper noun. People talk
  about country in the same way they would talk
  about a person they speak to country, sing to
  country, visit country, worry about country, feel
  sorry for country, and long for country. People
  say that country knows, hears, smells, takes
  notice, takes care, is sorry, is happy. Country
  is not a generalised or undifferentiated type of
  place.... Rather, country is a living entity with
  a yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a
  consciousness, and a will toward life. Because of
  this richness, country is home, and peace
  nourishment for body, mind, and spirit hearts
  ease.
• Deborah Bird Rose, 1996, Nourishing Terrains,
  Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra p7)

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Howitt Terra Nullius no more? 6 Steps to
decolonisation

• The Challenge to develop a vocabulary and
  repetoire of skills, values and under-standings
  that contribute to decolonising Australian
  landscapes
• Step 1 Ways of Seeing New ways to visualise the
  elements of landscape (cultural and ecological
  complexity, power) that are made invisible by
  dominant visions of landscape.
• Step 2 Ways of Thinking New ways to
  conceptualise and theorise people-people and
  people-country relationships and processes at
  several geographical scales.
• Step 3 Ways of Doing New ways of engaging in
  development (the geopolitics of resource and
  environmental management at micromacro scales)
  consistent with economic, social, cultural and
  environmental justice.

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Howitt Terra Nullius no more? 7

• Australian politics faces an urgent challenge -
  to address the superficially contradictory forces
  of economic, cultural and environmental
  processes. In terms of just and sustainable
  outcomes, this requires visions and skills which
  practically assist in developing strategies which
  simultaneously engage with
• the identity politics of cultural diversity,
• the distributive politics of economic survival,
  and
• the environmental politics of sustainability

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Howitt Terra Nullius no more? 8 Caring for
Country

• The notion of caring for country is
  quintessentially Aboriginal. Nowhere in the world
  is there a body of knowledge built up so
  consistently over so many millennia. Nowhere are
  there so many living people who continue to
  sustain that knowledge and engage in associated
  land management practices.
• It follows that nowhere in the world are there
  greater possibilities for the regeneration of
  ecosystems, and for development of a truly
  coherent relationship between human and
  ecological rights. Caring for country has the
  potential to become an ethos of the settlers as
  well as the Aboriginal inhabitants of this
  continent.
• Deborah Bird Rose, 1996, Nourishing Terrains,
  Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra p84)

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Howitt Terra Nullius no more? 9
Ngaanyatjarra goals

• moving back to country
• looking after the Law
• getting recognition
• security for the communitys future
• getting good services where people want to live.
• From Ngaanyatjarra Council. 1997. Negotiating
  About Country workshop summary, Warburton, July
  1997.

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Non-Aboriginal views of development
ABORIGINAL COUNTRY
ABORIGINAL CULTURE
ABORIGINAL PEOPLE
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Aboriginal views of development
COUNTRY
CARING FOR COUNTRY
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
CARING FOR PEOPLE
CARING FOR CULTURE
CULTURE
PEOPLE
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