Australia, in common with nations globally, faces an immediate and future environmental and economic challenge as an outcome of climate change. Indigenous communities in Australia, some who live a precarious economic and social existence, are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Impacts are already being experienced through dramatic weather events such as floods and bushfires. Other, more gradual changes, such as rising sea levels in the north of Australia, will have long-term negative consequences on communities, including the possibility of forced relocation. Climate change is also a historical phenomenon, and Indigenous communities hold a depth of knowledge of climate change and its impact on local ecologies of benefit to the wider community when policies to deal with an increasingly warmer world are considered. Non-Indigenous society must respect this knowledge and facilitate alliances with Indigenous communities based on a greater recognition of traditional knowledge systems.
Tony BirchAs a way of making a contribution to this discussion and to think about what we can both build, and build upon, in Australia I want to begin by talking about the production of history in Australia. In doing so I will call on people, intellectuals and writers, whom I feel affiliated with, personally, creatively and politically. I am keenly interested in processes of cooperation and collaboration.I believe such ventures that are central for a new way of thinking in Australia. We do sometimes, through necessity or desire, work individually. But for me this is no longer enough. I want to consider the relationship between political and intellectual solidarity.I am not interested in the notion of intellectual discussion as either an individual or pluralistic model of thinking. The first is for me too isolating and self-indulgent, while the second is too often a strategic comment made by those who only feign pluralism in support of the status quo and the maintenance of their own authority.I will begin with some brief reflections on what I believe were the key motivations that drove the so-called history wars, and the persistent attacks on Aboriginal people in Australia over the past decade, which, of course, are inter-related. As a result of the discussion of colonial history in the last decade, and the concerted attempts to erase or sanitise colonial violence, enormous psychological damage has been done to both indigenous and non-indigenous communities alike. I am also particularly interested in the role of left or liberal historians in this debate, and their failure to engage competently in such a war, let alone win it. I want to end by discussing how we might put creative, political and ethical spaces into being in Australia; places where we can bypass these regressive debates and do something more productive. I want to begin by commemorating somebody who did attempt to think in more creative
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