"Historical truth-telling is increasingly seen as an important part of restorative justice in settler-colonial contexts."
After 50 years of the ‘great Australian silence’ don't ask why didn’t I know? But how can I find out?
‘Why didn’t we know?’ is no excuse. Non-Indigenous Australians must listen to the difficult historical truths told by First Nations people, The Conversation
“Research found that fewer than half (43%) were aware Australia had one of the highest rates of mammal extinction in the world and just more than half (54%) knew most of Australia’s forests had been lost since colonisation.”
"Samuel’s 2020 review of national laws found Australia’s environment was in unsustainable decline and successive Australian governments had failed to protect the country’s unique species and habitats."
“Half of Australia’s economy relied on natural systems...The loss of biodiversity would have serious consequences for clean air, food and water, human health, Indigenous culture and national identity." The Guardian
Remarks inspired by three sessions at the Bellingen Readers & Writers Festival
The sessions were by the following authors that presented their books:
A) The photographer and writer Jon Rhodes, 'Whitefella Way', 2022
B) Anastasia Guise, (collaborative authors) Fire Stories: Reflections from Northern Rivers locals on the 2019/2020 bushfires.
C) Sarah George, Gamu: The Dreamtime Stories, Life & Feelings of Big Bill Neidjie
Moderation: Ross Macleay
Storification of the life of others might sum up the common thread
for these three presentations.
Anthropological enthusiasts with a gaze of an outsider curate and frame encounters of lived lives and experiences of others.
The mostly narrative form in text, image or audio is to make the stories 'more accessible'. It is to meet the longing for the unambiguous, a clarity of meaning, a search for orientation.
The literary device of narrative storification of the others' lived lives seems to have a contemporary ring of 'authenticity'. People open up 'first hand' about their lives and 'confess' to their trauma. The presently popular genre of autofiction blends autobiography and fiction.
Ever since the "narrative turn" (Peter Brooks) “storification” is en vogue and sells. The craft of narrative fiction or storytelling has also been seized by PR, medical communication, council spins and generally narrates corporate 'stories'.
In the age of attention deficits, the failure to actively listen seems ubiquitous. Distracted and overloaded, one has to relearn to listen, read and observe again. Forests of books and public mainstream broadcasters (ABC feeds) consist of 'stories' and no longer claim to be 'news'.
The genre of the first-person recount is said to easily connect with the interlocutor's emotions. Data visualisation or pictorial representation of information aims to 'bring the message home'.
The demand for authenticity in uncertain times is apparently met by the trustworthy first-person narrative. It is alluding to an immediate, direct, true and uncomplicated reciprocal exchange of meaningful experiences.
Communities of experience and practice can find a social anchor in a 'we'. For the consumer the stories appear more emotionally engrossing as the narrative appeals to an ingrained and familiar enculturated pattern of a narrative arc/structure.
There seems to be a difference if the interlocutor's “stories” are the literary confessing, retelling or bearing witness of an individual narration or a socially curated autofiction.
The 'story' of a representative/member of a First Nation sharing collective knowledge appears to be on another level of transmission. The ‘Indigenous cultural capital’ which is shared comprises the material and symbolic goods, the knowledge that functions as a social relation within an economy of practices.
For a long time cultural assets have been dealt with by members of another culture or identity. The curation of these cultures and traditions have been undertaken by members of the dominant culture (settlers/ anthropologists/enthusiasts) for too long.
It is time to refrain from voicing the concerns of others and start to face up to one's own mode of relating, then and now.
”The decolonizing practices by Indigenous scholars have outlined contours of critical Indigenous praxis that seek to liberate Indigenous communities from colonial and settler hegemonies of knowledge production, dissemination of knowledges, and the ongoing constraints colonial systems of systemic racism have imposed on Indigenous peoples as a global phenomenon.” (source)
Indigenous knowledge-holders have cared for Country for 65,000 years sustainably. The story of our 'Grand Narrative' has collapsed into an apocalyptic horror fiction 'story' with respect to the state of the environment and our social interrelatedness.
Time is long overdue for 'Whitefella Way'/settler colonial society to remember, reflect, and face up to the 'story' of their ongoing encounters. Self-reflexivity is needed to critically interrogate ourselves about our self-understanding and our decolonising practices.
There's a story in “truth telling” in the treatment of relationality and Country from the settlers' perspective. There's so much postcoloniality waiting to be unearthed, so much unlearning to be done. Nothing less than a reset in relation to self, land and people.
LINKS:
Jonn Rhodes, Whitefella Way
“In the final chapter Rhodes investigates the mass killing of Warlpiri, Anmatyerre, Kaytej and Warumungu in the Northern Territory – the 1928 Coniston Massacre – and again asks, when will the fundamental truth of the 140-year-long Australian Frontier War be wholeheartedly acknowledged and memorialised by the government of the Commonwealth of Australia?”
In Jon Rhodes' 'Cages of Ghosts' he is tracing the vandalism of iconoclasts in NSW.
Cage of Ghosts, Jon Rhodes
Rhodes documents rock engravings and carved trees in NSW. "It is a photographic exploration of the destruction of cultural heritage by an iconoclastic system. Sacred sites today 'only exist as ‘caged’, places that are now imprisoned by development. Rhodes creates a subtle, challenging narrative of the ambiguities and complexities of non-Indigenous relations with Indigenous culture over more than a century."
Anastasia Guise, (collaborative authors) Fire Stories: Reflections from Northern Rivers locals on the 2019/2020 bushfires. Collaboratively curated rich media stories about traumatised
survivors of the climate induced bushfires in NSW, 2019/2020.
The Dreamtime Stories, Life & Feelings of Big Bill Neidjie, Sarah George
Further links:
Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology.1999
(Deconstructing the intellectual paradigms of colonialism)
Mapping Colonial Frontier Massacres, Australia, 1788 to 1930
Koala habitat conservation and Bellingen.
Road 'upgrades' and logging impacting koala survival.
Is there a gap between strategy and reality?
The NSW Koala Strategy
sets out to improve koala conservation. “Koalas in New South Wales face a range of threats, including habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation, climate change, disease, declining genetic diversity, vehicle strike, bushfire, and dog attack”.
https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/animals-and-plants/threatened-species/programs-legislation-and-framework/nsw-koala-strategy
The Bellingen Shire Council Coastal Area Koala Management Strategy
sets out the threats to koalas as:
“1. Clearing of koala habitat for urban and rural residential development, roadwork, forestry and agricultural activities.
2. Fragmentation of koala habitat, which isolates individuals and populations, impedes gene
flow and the ability to maintain effective recruitment levels.
3. Mortalities caused by dog attack and vehicle strike.
4. Mortalities caused by random events such as wildfire and/or extreme weather conditions.
5. Disease, mainly associated with Chlamydia.”
https://www.bellingen.nsw.gov.au/files/sharedassets/public/files/plans-amp-strategies/bellingen-shire-council-coastal-area-koala-management-strategy-and-plan.pdf
The Bellingen Shire Council Coastal Area Core Koala Habitat Comprehensive Koala Plan of Management (the CKPOM)
https://www.bellingen.nsw.gov.au/Services/Planning-and-Development/Koala-Plan-of-Management
Koala Habitat mapping tool, Bellingen Shire Council
https://bellingen.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=8cd1d74a9e964e92a75df624863b2b85
Gleniffer Road 'upgrade' using Roses Road to detour heavy traffic through "Core Koala Habitat"
https://www.bellingen.nsw.gov.au/Services/Major-Projects-Capital-Works/Major-Projects-RoadBridge-works/Roads/Gleniffer-Road
You might not have noticed it, because of the road diversion (Roadwork resurfacing/ heavy trucks)
You might have noticed numerous logging trucks racing through town.
Not a good start for the The Great Koala National Park of the Mid North Coast.
Doing our best to eradicate biodiversity habitat, increase fire risks and heat up the climate.
Make Bellingen a carpark! More roads, wider roads and more parking Pt. 2
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| Pedestrian access to the toilets, Church St. |
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| Parking on tree roots and garbage, Church St. |
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| Bellingen car park, Creek Ln, still with trees. Google image 03.2023 |
Sprawling suburbia is deprived of public forms of transport. Private fossil fuel mobility is encouraged and choosen. The town runs on petrol, plonk, meat and timber. Motorists' expectation is carpet to carpet mobility to not get their R.M.Williams muddy. In between there is a lot of AC idling and cruising to find a big enough parking spot. Monstrous SUVs speed though town to fight for parking. Tree roots are crushed by the weight of 2,000 kilograms of vehicles. The oversized tanks park right across the access route to the toilets as well.
With the growth of the obese-sized vehicles grows the hunger for more and wider roads. It is insatiable. Above all parking, getting stuff or dumping the kids or dogs is the most important issue in town.
Roads are congested and aggressive, frustrated motorists harass non motorised living entities and smaller, slower vehicles. The jam-packed CBD roads are rich in ambient particulate matter pollution. The Al fresco crowds seem to suffer from anosmia and look the other way when large bull haulers and timber trucks fly through the narrow main street.
There are already many free car parking opportunities to store private vehicles in public spaces. But now there is a brand new car park smashed into the landscape. Residents seem blissfully unaware that in the middle of a climate emergency many native mature trees magically disappeared and the soil surface was sealed. One just smeared asphalt over the 'dirt'. A very large area of impervious surfaces has been constructed after months of heavy fossil fuel equipment made a racket next to the adjoining park and creek. The new treeless hardscape will not provide any shading canopy and there will be no extra cost of blowing nasty leaves from the car park.
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| New car park adjoining creek and park, Bellingen |
This diy urban heat island will increase temperatures, leading to heat stroke and heat exhaustion. Deprived of shade (which previously existed) in a concrete, tar and asphalt environment it will directly influence the health and welfare of residents and wildlife. Rain and runoff will run over the hot surfaces, drain into the creek and increase the water temperature there. Biodiversity will exit, despite the beautification of three lomandras.
Leafy affluent neighborhoods are shady and have resilient mental health. Bare degraded surfaces go with deprived neighborhoods. They do harm to all people and other animals.
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| Car park beautification, 03.2023 |
Car centric culture demands more of the same: 'Fix the roads' (lobby), free parking everywhere and no speed checks OK! It is desperately hanging on to dinosaurian ways.
Elsewhere in the civilised world they are phasing out private fossil combustion mobility in urban centers. They are creating equitable public spaces that are safe for all participants. Enforced speed reductions are now widespread. Shady footpath (What's that?) and cyclepath infrastructure joins sustainable public transport. Bicycle parking racks encourage pollution free mobility. Road trauma in the form of 'the daily death toll', maiming and roadkill could even be eliminated as well.
It is not called ’ man-made climate change' for nothing.
Community Climate Action Plan
https://www.bellingen.nsw.gov.au/Community/Sustainable-Living/Community-Climate-Action-Plan
"We are now in a critical decade for urgent action with the window to keeping global warming to below 1.5°C and to averting devastating climate impacts rapidly closing."
Bellingen Shire Climate Emergency Program, 2020 – 2030
https://www.bellingen.nsw.gov.au/files/sharedassets/public/files/environment/adopted-corporate-carbon-plan-final.pdf
“Are we building harder, hotter cities?
https://pce.parliament.nz/publications/are-we-building-harder-hotter-cities-the-vital-importance-of-urban-green-spaces/
Update: Residents elsewhere swap parking spaces for extra trees "We are really starting to see trees become essential elements of streets”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-25/trees-replace-parking-spaces-hobart-street/102135698
