Australian Indigenous community DRR

 Much online discussion about the Australian bushfires – outpouring of sympathy etc. – and within that a growing role for First Australian knowledges on, well, survival.

And lest we lose sight of the contributions from Australian academics, let me remind colleagues and peers of a prescient paper by Dr. Heidi Ellemor who in 2005 published a work arguing for Indigenous voices to be heard in the strategies and tactics of environmental management in their territories (Ellemor, 2005). Dr. Ellemor’s work builds on that of John Campbell (J Campbell, 2006; John Campbell, 2010) who flipped ascriptions of Pacific vulnerability (a colonial hangover) to one of resilience.

In the time of takeaways, I cut and paste this from the paper:

“The recognition and inclusion of indigenous peoples’ knowledge can help to destabilise the hegemonic status that certain understandings or preferred readings of a situation have gained.”

Page four for the pedantic.

I’m sure back in the early days of the 1992 Mabo Decision, Australians of all mobs could expect to see a more environmentally just and survivable landscape, and that even the most diehard Ozzie racist (and they can be a frightening beast) would accept a collaboration (alignment? acceptance? trust?!) in any knowledge that would help the very survival of what you claim and cherish is at mortal risk?

Dr. Ellemor articulated all this very well, a generation of Australians (and geography grads) ago.

I follow Aussie politics more than most not from the Lucky Country, and for two reasons: 1) the remarkable endurance of myriad Indigenous communities (see the Uluru policy change); and 2) if the metaphor of ‘frontline’ is to mean anything in this instance, then Aussies are in the trenches again.

Now to Kiwi’s, the imagery of brutal trench warfare is closely linked to our Aussie mates and neighbours; I’m sure the ‘ANZAC spirit’ has been invoked. And with the orange haze over Aotearoa, and people goggling PM25, we realize that if we’re not in the trenches just yet, we can smell the carnage from the assembly point in godszone…

Bibliography

Barnett, J. (2017). The dilemmas of normalising losses from climate change: Towards hope for Pacific atoll countries. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 58(1), 3-13. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/apv.12153. doi:10.1111/apv.12153

Barnett, J., Lambert, S., & Fry, I. (2008). The hazards of indicators: insights from the the Environmental Vulnerability Index. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98(1), 102-119.

Campbell, J. (2006). Traditional disaster reduction in Pacific Island Communities. Retrieved from Lower Hutt:

Campbell, J. (2010). An overview of natural hazard planning in the Pacific Island region. Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies, 2010-1. Retrieved from http://www.massey.ac.nz/~trauma/issues/2010-1/campbell.htm.

Ellemor, H. (2005). Reconsidering emergency management and indigenous communities in Australia. Global Environmental Change Part B: Environmental Hazards, 6(1), 1-7. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1464286704000294. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hazards.2004.08.001

Lambert, S. (2014a). Indigenous Peoples and urban disaster: Māori responses to the 2010-12 Christchurch earthquakes. Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies, 18(1), 39-48. Retrieved from http://www.massey.ac.nz/~trauma/issues/2014-1/AJDTS_18-1_Lambert.pdf. doi:http://www.massey.ac.nz/~trauma/issues/2014-1/AJDTS_18-1_Lambert.pdf

Lambert, S. (2014b). Maori and the Christchurch earthquakes: the interplay between Indigenous endurance and resilience through a natural disaster. MAI Journal, 3(2), 165-180. Retrieved from http://www.journal.mai.ac.nz/sites/default/files/MAI_Jrnl_V3_iss2_Lambert.pdf.