An Integrated Perspective of Indigenous Territories in Ten Canoes
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Seção especial: Técnica e Ambiente Vol. 51, agosto 2019. DOI: 10.5380/dma.v51i0.62803. e-ISSN 2176-9109 DESENVOLVIMENTO E MEIO AMBIENTE An Integrated Perspective of Indigenous Territories in Ten Canoes Uma perspectiva integrada dos territórios indígenas no flme “Ten Canoes” [Dez Canoas] Aline FREY1* 1 University of Queensland, Australia * E-mail of contact: [email protected] Article received on November 13, 2018, fnal version accepted on May 20, 2019. ABSTRACT: Indigenous knowledge can challenge liberal and anthropocentric defnitions of water as human property. In this article, I examine the close relationship of Indigenous people with their waterscapes as portrayed in the Australian feature flm Ten Canoes. Keywords: cinema; Australia; environment. RESUMO: O conhecimento indígena pode desafar as defnições liberais e antropocêntricas da água como propriedade humana. Neste artigo, examino a estreita relação dos povos indígenas com suas paisagens aquáticas como retratada no flme australiano “Ten Canoes” [Dez Canoas]. Palavras-chave: cinema; Austrália; Meio-Ambiente. 1. Introduction My primary objective in this article is to examine the relationship between Indigenous people and wa- terscapes in the Australian feature flm Ten Canoes Drawing on Indigenous knowledge research (2006) (directed by Rolf de Heer and Peter Djiggir). and decolonising theories, I explore diferences Ten Canoes is a flm set in Australia, a “highly between Indigenous and Western perspectives on water-scarce continent” with extremely variable the theme of water preservation, as well as their and unpredictable rainfall, which has led to diverse consequences for the local and global environment. weather conditions and unstable surface water Desenvolv. Meio Ambiente, v. 51, Seção especial: Técnica e Ambiente, p. 127-140, agosto 2019. 127 availability (Burdon et al., 2015). Before European frst, but the consequences are broader for the com- arrival, these local diversities were respected, as munity and their longstanding natural and cultural Indigenous social and economic ways of life were resource management (Weston et al., 2012; Gorman adapted to natural resource systems. While the U.N. et al., 2007). Declaration of Universal Human Rights regards water as essential for human survival, Indigenous 2. Aboriginal people and Australian water populations continue to struggle to access and resources protect their water resources. Climate change has increased these struggles by, for example, reducing water accessibility (Altman & Jackson, 2008). In To enhance my study of the Yolngu people’s this sense, Indigenous people knowledge can play relationship with their environment in Ten Canoes, a fundamental role in the process of raising aware- I rely on Deborah Bird Rose’s extensive anthro- ness of the necessity of sustainable uses of natural pological research on Aboriginal Australians and resources. hegemonic western perspectives. For the purposes Ten Canoes portrays the connection between of this article, I engage with Rose’s analysis of the Yolngu people and the centrality of their home- Australian Aboriginal notions of human and animal land to their culture, history and cosmology. Yolngu connectivity in relation to the work of Australian means “Aboriginal person” and refers generically eco-feminist Val Plumwood on “Philosophical Ani- to the inhabitants of north-eastern areas of Arnhem mism”. Plumwood criticises the “hyper-separation” Land. As Yolngu is a generic label, there are spe- of Western philosophy that results in simplistic cifc names to acknowledge diferent clans, such dichotomies, such as “nature/culture, female/male, as Manggalili and Djapu. The challenge in the use matter/mind, savage/civilised” (Rose, 2013, p. 94). of any generic name is that it can homogenise a In this sense, the ideology that underpins nature’s diverse group of people. For Morphy (1991, p. 40), inferiority also subjugates disadvantaged social a more accurate defnition of Yolngu is as “a form groups, particularly women and Indigenous people, of social organization, a culture area, a linguistic thereby inevitably entangling social with ecological entity, or a social universe rather than to a named justice. Plumwood adds that this hyper-separation group of people”. The Arafura swamp is a large and further favours a subordination of one term by the diverse inland freshwater basin belonging to and other: the dichotomies render inferior all terms re- managed by Yolngu people. They are renowned lated to nature. In response to this hyper-separated for expertly deriving part of their subsistence from worldview, Val Plumwood defends “interspecies land and natural resources while, at the same time, communication” as key to the recognition and en- preserving the ecosystem of the region (White, gagement with “earth others” (Plumwood, 2002, 2003, p. 187). However, climate change global p. 176). threats such as the rise of sea levels, the spread of Rose takes up Plumwood to support her non-endemic organisms and the introduction of analysis of the Elder Aboriginal Steve Meredith’s grass-fed cattle present a contemporary challenge discourse on the impossibility of hyper-separation to the Yolngu people’s practices of land and water between humans and nature. Meredith (as cited care. Aboriginal ranger groups in the area were hit by Rose) argues that studying animals apart from 128 FREY, A. An Integrated Perspective of Indigenous Territories in Ten Canoes humans is an impossible task, even at highly spe- and swamps, are not exclusively human domains but cialised university studies. To understand birds, for have rights of existence and perpetuation. Altman & example, it is necessary to study the plants they eat. Jackson (2008) argue that Indigenous sustainabil- Of course, these are connected to the soil and water, ity in Australia is demonstrable in the remarkably while both are related to human activities. Meredith preserved and biodiverse areas managed by them, also argues that while one might feel superior for containing the most undamaged forests, streams going to university to do research, another activity and reefs of the country. The history of Indigenous might be underway simultaneously, i.e., once re- management is often linked to a key term: TEK searchers go to sleep (or once they die?), the ants (traditional ecological knowledge), which Hunn studied might carry out research on humans. Rose (1993) describes as: 1. ‘Traditional’ meaning that it (2013, p. 99) concludes that this animist perspective has been tested and transmitted through Indigenous is based on the connectivity between all animal life generations; 2. ‘Ecological’ emphasizes Indigenous and earth beings and “tells us that humans are not interaction with the environment; and 3. ‘Knowl- only acting upon the world, but that others are also edge’ that could be taken with them, i.e., even when taking notice and acting upon humans”. Rose’s they were hunter-gathers, knowledge served as a studies re-examine the environmental consequenc- portable technology, thereby breaking the colonial es of a sentient world in which mindfulness is not link between the lack of tools/technology and restricted to humans. primitivism. Berkes (1993, p. 3) defnes TEK as “a The term ‘animism’ is not of Indigenous ori- cumulative body of knowledge and beliefs, handed gin. It is a 19th century colonial construct developed down through generations by cultural transmission” by E. B. Tylor (1958) to convey the Indigenous prin- regarding the connection between all living beings ciple that non-humans have souls/spirits. Current with each other and their own environment. Thus, “new animism” studies focus on the social relation- TEK is a collective knowledge based on long-term ship between humans and non-humans, pointing to mutual observation, understanding and interaction the relational ontology of animism (Harvey, 2005). with a specifc territory. For example, Tim Ingold (2006, p. 14) argues that Studies with Aboriginal groups demonstrate Western dichotomies are historically contingent and that flexibility is key for their water resource only one of many possibilities of interpreting human management. In contrast to constructing dams, for and non-human relationship. He adds that although example, Indigenous fexibility guaranteed their traditional Western thoughts tend to undermine stocks of water supplies. “Indigenous people’s main human-environment connections, humans perceive adaptation to uncertainty was to develop social ties their environment primarily because they are situ- that enabled people to move to resources as they ated in it, within a “domain of entanglement”. In became available” (Rose, 2005, p. 41). Another this sense, he concludes that Indigenous animism water resource strategy was centred on rainmaking can work as a generalization not based on a way of rituals. This low-scale intervention is not intended knowing but rather as a way of being in a world of to completely transform the landscape or the water continuous fux. supply but to improve water resources at a specifc A consequence of this paradigm shift is the space/time thereby nourishing life (Rose, 2005, proposition that all living beings, including rivers p. 45). This practice is occasional and limited, Desenvolv. Meio Ambiente, v. 51, Seção especial: Técnica e Ambiente, p. 127-140, agosto 2019. 129 not afecting a river’s course or fow. It radically Indigenous people’s connection to their traditional contrasts to the enterprises of dams and mining territories based on their use of and relation