Beyond Heritage Michael McMahon and Jack Isles

Beyond Heritage

Words by Michael McMahon and Jack Isles

We are in the Anthropocene: a geological era characterised by measurable human impact on the Earth's geology; an era of increasing instabilities and scarcities, in which geopolitics and design are both shaping and shaped by the unpredictability of environmental fluxes.

The climatological instabilities of the Anthropocene have prompted a cataclysmic destabilisation of anthropocentric preconceptions of an environment, beyond the remit of human influence. Crucially, this brings into question the socio-political industrial complex upon which the contemporary settler-colonial project was founded. Like many settler-colonial societies, Australia’s colonial existence is typified by the suppression of Indigenous knowledge in favour of a Western science that is often co-opted by the mechanisms of capital growth. However, the escalating climate and biodiversity emergency calls for us to revisit these values. We are on the precipice of a social and cosmopolitical transformation – one which at its core must reconfigure a future divested from the extractive racial and environmental practices of our recent colonial past. Imperative to this future is the need to shift away from the historically Eurocentric conception of a natural and human world. Our world is an entangled network of human and nonhuman stakeholders: yet, the othering of places not considered to be urban has embedded and emboldened extractive actors and processes. Within First Nations ontologies, our entangled world is referred to as Country, which is all within a place: all landforms, waters, air, trees, rocks, plants, animals, food, minerals, medicines, stories, and significant sites; as well as all peoples – past, present, and future. Country is a cosmopolitical, intergenerational mixture of metaphysics, in which kinship and care remain the primary currencies of all social and environmental exchanges. Those who care for Country cannot harm Country. Governed by caring for Country as a cultural responsibility, First Nations culture, knowledge, and

expertise is vital to our reorientation towards an inclusive and sustainable future; towards a cultural responsibility and an effective means of both transgenerational and interspecies communication. This notion of care must be embedded, emboldened, and supported within clean energy transitions if we are to reconfigure a sustainable and inclusive anthropogenic future. One in which First Nations culture, knowledge, and expertise may catalyse paradigmatic shifts within our conception and design of the built environment.

Towards Indigenous sciences

While Indigenous knowledge has been central to Australia’s colonial project through the (often uncredited) adaptations of First Nations culture into Western science, it remains largely auxiliary to Australia’s current environmental planning. The continued use of terminologies such as Indigenous ‘voices’ in place of ‘expertise,’ for example, illustrate the long-standing and continued colonial violence of scientific misattribution and misappropriation. Indeed, this is a violence that has been instrumental in perpetuating defunct preconceptions about the agency and value of Indigenous knowledge within contemporary technocratic environments and landscapes of design. Importantly, First Nations knowledge has always been both scientific and technological. In a study,1 traditional stories – from across 7000 years – all referring to sea-level rise along the pre-colonial coastline of Australia were tested for empirical accuracy. For each of the 21 stories, the minimum water depth (below the present sea-level) depicted in the narrative was tested to be true. This was then compared with the sea-level envelope for Australia, considering the possible date range that these details could have been observed. Indeed, the findings verify the existence of an Aboriginal-led, transgenerational data network that spanned over 300 generations of continuous occupation. It is here that we urge a shift in thinking beyond purely historical interests in Indigeneity and towards the widespread recognition of First Nations technological expertise. In recent years, projects such as the 10 Deserts2 and Fish River Fire have further exemplified the potential for First Nations-led environmental initiatives to transform the landscape of Australia’s zero-carbon future. The 10 Deserts Projects, for example, are a collaboration between Indigenous experts working throughout Australia's deserts, instrumental in the conservation and design of an arid area roughly the size of the European continent. Similarly, the Fish River Fire project is an Indigenousled land management initiative, embedding Indigenous-based carbon sequestration and trading techniques within Australia’s local and international carbon markets.3 Projects such as these – of which there are many more in operation and development – have generated resources and strategies that, if engaged with in earnest, could inform how we think about and design our built environment. Within the vector of environmental measurement, international interest continues to grow in incorporating Indigenous environmental knowledge and data within global information systems (GIS) and remote sensing technologies (Robbins, 2003).4 Such approaches promote dialogue between normative scientific and Indigenous worldviews, while also evidencing the efficacy and relevance of First Nations knowledge within both emergent quantitative environmental analysis methodologies and the design of sensory systems for mediating responses to the climate and biodiversity emergency. Additionally, increasingly ubiquitous inclusions of Indigenous perspectives and expertise within international reports – notably, the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)5 – have marked an increase in global recognition of (and dependency upon) Indigenous expertise to provide politically efficacious and financially viable responses to the climate and biodiversity emergency. Indigenous-led initiatives in mangrove and coastal ecosystems, for example, demonstrate the critically important role that First Nations expertise can play in dissipating wave energy, lowering flood risk, and minimising coastal erosion.6 Collectively, these projects, studies, and reports offer ways to reduce both the volatility of financial insurance markets and the displacement of multispecies communities. We are hopeful that the sustained support of these projects and studies – along with the development of new Indigenous-led and cooperative projects – will prompt a burst of recognition for First Nations excellence and expertise, as well as the emergence of a new generation of First Nations designers, thinkers, and technologists. A vital step towards the establishment of a racially and environmentally inclusive future Australian continent.

Futures of care

What are the lessons learned from such projects and studies, and how can we better integrate Indigenous expertise into planning and design? It must be noted that, while interest in First Nations environmental design techniques – and their capacity to provide low-impact, high-yield approaches to environmental management – have gained traction in recent years, comprehensive studies outlining the spatial, environmental, and socio-economic benefits within the fields of architecture, planning, and design are either difficult to access or, in some cases, conspicuously absent. Construction and planning related disciplines must urgently recognise and celebrate First Nations knowledge, expertise, and culture as both credible and vital frontline responses to the climate and biodiversity emergency. Crucial to this process is a need to shift beyond heritage – and it is from this need that our project, Beyond Heritage, finds its name. We must shift beyond a purely historical interest in Indigeneity, so that First Nations expertise can co-create the invariably technocratic future of our cities and continent. And beyond an arms-length, referential treatment of Indigenous perspectives and people, towards the inclusion of First Nations knowledge and expertise, across all environmental management, built environment, and design professions and practices. Beyond Heritage is an Indigenous future building project that aims to celebrate, recognise and support the development of First Nations design as front-line responses to the climate and biodiversity emergency. Taking the form of a platform and design practice, Beyond Heritage is also a call to centre intersectional, intercultural, intergenerational, and interspecies dialogues in planning and design. Dialogues which are critical bridges for discourse between both Western and First Nations spatial sciences. Through Beyond Heritage, emergent sensorial systems and practices coalesce with the extraordinary depths of over 60,000 years of both data and knowledge. We believe that accessing, caring for, and expanding upon this knowledge is key to upholding the cultural rights and recognition of First Nations people as experts within the entangled fields of architecture, design, and environmental planning. And, we call for a collective shift towards new visual and spatial cultures which celebrate First Nations expertise as a foundation upon which to (re) build social and environmental resilience, within an increasingly volatile climate. Michael McMahon is a designer, researcher and curator working between Australia and the United Kingdom. He is a descendant of the Bundjalung people of North-East New South Wales, Australia and his work investigates how Indigenous ontologies of land can inform the built environment. He holds a BArch from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and a Masters of Arts in Architecture from the Royal College of Art, where he studied as a Roberta Sykes Scholar.

Jack Isles is a designer, researcher and curator based between Australia and Spain. Jack holds a BArch from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and an MArch from the Architectural Association. His recent work has focused on the environmental agency of sensory technologies, and their application in resource management, conflict resolution and architectural design.

Notes

1 Lewis, Stephen., Craig Sloss, Colin Murray-Wallace, Colin Woodroffe, and, Scott Smithers. 2013. “Post-Glacial Sea-Level Changes around the Australian Margin: A Review” Quaternary Science Reviews 74:115-38, https://doi.org/10.1016/j. quascirev.2012.09.006. 2 10 Deserts Project. “About – 10 Deserts Project” Accessed 23, June 2022: https://10deserts.org/about/ 3 Australian Government Clean Energy Regulator, 2016). “Fighting fire with fire in Fish River” www.cleanenergyregulator.gov.au/Infohub/Media-Centre/Resources/ erf-media-resources/fighting-fire-with-fire-in-fish-river. 4 Robbins, Paul. 2003. “Beyond Ground Truth: GIS and the Environmental Knowledge of Herders, Professional Foresters, and Other Traditional Communities.” Human Ecology 31, no. 2: 233-53. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/4603469. 5 Moggridge, Bradley., Gretta Pecl, Nina Lansbury, Sandra Creamer y Vinni. 2022. “IPCC reports still exclude Indigenous voices.” The Conversation, https:// theconversation.com/ipcc-reports-still-exclude-indigenous-voices-come-joinus-at-our-sacred-fires-to-find-answers-to-climate-change-178045 6 Beck, MW., Heck, N., Narayan, S., Menéndez, P., Torres-Ortega, S., Losada, IJ., Way, M., Rogers, M,, McFarlane-Connelly, L. 2022. “Reducing Caribbean Risk: Opportunities for Cost-Effective Mangrove Restoration and Insurance.” The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA.