“Unwritten, unsaid, just known”: the role of Indigenous knowledge(s) in water planning in Australia

Law is a powerful influence on people and place. Law both creates and is created by the relationship between people and place, although it rarely acknowledges this. Law frequently operates as if space does not matter. Law and legal processes, therefore, deserve greater attention from geographers. Legal geography is an emerging field of inquiry that facilitates much-needed attention to the interrelationships among the environment, people and social institutions, including formal laws but also informal rules, norms and lore. Legal geographers seek to make the invisible visible: to bring the law into the frame of geography, and space and place into focus for the law. Both critical and applied in approach, legal geography offers descriptive, analytical and normative insight into economics, justice, property, power, geopolitics, governance and scale. As such it can enrich most areas of geographic inquiry as well as contribute to current policy debates about the regulation of space and place. Legal geography is a way for enlarged appreciations of relationality, materiality, multiscalarity and agency to be used to interrogate and reform the law. This introduction to a special 'themed paper' section of Geographical Research provides a window on legal geography scholarship, including its history, contribution and ambition. The papers in the collection explore issues grounded in the legal geographies paradigm, variously analysing matters empirically detailed while engaging in broader, theoretical debates and using both Australian and international case studies.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legal Geography: An Australian Perspective

Bartel

Graham

Jackson

et al. 2013

“…The interface of state-driven planning with Indigenous peoples is strongly marked by colonial relationships (Howitt et al, 2012;Porter, 2017). The marginalisation of Indigenous perspectives can be sustained through planning practices of language and decision systems, mapping, and boundary-making, and in the prioritisation of land and resource use (Ayre & Mackenzie, 2012;Porter, 2017). Climate adaptation planning with Indigenous peoples triggers many such risks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Protecting what is left after colonisation: embedding climate adaptation planning in traditional owner narratives

Lyons

Hill

Deshong

et al. 2020

In this case study, Traditional Owners in the Great Barrier Reef identified that protecting what is left of Indigenous material culture and socio-cultural relationships provides the best approach to climate adaptation planning. Protecting what is left supports decolonising and strengthens Indigenous customary practices and governance, thereby supporting their strategies for cultural renewal and survival. AbstractClimate change is disproportionally affecting Indigenous peoples' livelihoods across the globe. Despite this fact, climate adaptation planning and responses are not immediate concerns for most Indigenous people, whose key challenges are deeply embedded in colonial history. Through collaborative research centred on climate adaptation planning with the Yuibera and Koinmerburra Traditional Owner groups on the Great Barrier Reef catchments, we demonstrate that Traditional Owners' primary concerns are in aligning the climate adaptation opportunity with their own strategies for Indigenous cultural renewal and survival. Their Indigenous identity generates a responsibility to protect cultural landscapes, sites, and their connections with these places. In this case study, to "protect what is left" of Indigenous material culture and socio-cultural relationships emerged as the best approach to climate adaptation planning, providing both the decolonisation narrative and the means to strengthen their Indigenous practices. Planning for climate change adaptation is useful for Indigenous peoples when it supports decolonising, strengthens Indigenous customary practices, and recognises customary governance.

“…In the Northern Territory (NT) Aboriginal people are owners of almost 50% of the land area and 85% of the coastline. Yet inadequate government resources for Indigenous engagement in decision‐making processes, unrealistic planning time frames, and a lack of knowledge about to how to effectively engage with Indigenous people, interests, and knowledge have contributed to a lack of meaningful Indigenous participation in water planning (Jackson et al ., ; Jackson, ; Ayre and Mackenzie, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transforming cross‐cultural water research through trust, participation and place

Woodward

McTaggart²

2015

Indigenous voices in government-led natural resource management planning processes are often marginalised, misinterpreted, or excluded. Third parties, including government-employed geographers, can act as knowledge brokers in defining Indigenous values and interests so they might be included in government planning processes. This paper reviews and assesses a research partnership that evolved to document the complex and diverse ecological and hydrological values held by Ngan'gi speakers about the Daly River and connected water places in the Northern Territory, Australia. The development of trust through the slow building of a relationship based on place-based dialogue, a key aspect of participatory action research (PAR), created the foundation from which a mutually beneficial and respectful research partnership was able to, and continues to, evolve. Both research partners' perspectives are revealed here to articulate why the research partnership was deemed a success. Key lessons learned from the research partnership include the importance of trust, respect for place-based learning, researcher and institutional flexibility, and awareness of the intricacies of relationship building and the benefits that research engagement can bring to Indigenous people and communities. We aim to further dialogue among geographers and interested disciplines as to the potential for PAR methods to foster mutually beneficial Indigenous-non-Indigenous research partnerships.