Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
Abstract: This essay responds to the environmental and social crises occurring in Menindee, a small town in Western New South Wales. By questioning the role statebased planners can have in planning for its future, this essay establishes an ethical framework for guiding future collaboration with Indigenous planners. It adopts a decolonial frame which privileges Australian Indigenous perspectives over all others. This approach is a reaction to the historical and enduring marginalisation of Indigenous peoples in planning discourse and governance structures. However, it also makes an ethical claim that planning outcomes in Menindee will be strengthened by the recognition of Barkindji knowledge and governance systems. Key words: Murray Darling Basin Plan, Planning, Climate Change, Grief, the Anthropocene, Decolonisation. Introduction During the summer of 2019, millions of fish died en-masse in the lower Barka/Darling river exposing the mismanagement of the wider Murray-Darling Basin (the Basin) by the Australian Federal Government and south eastern Basin states. These deaths took place around the Menindee Lakes, a series of shallow, natural depressions, which were altered in the 1960s for permanent water storage. In addition to supplying water for agriculture and to the nearby city of Broken Hill, the lakes are important breeding grounds for native birds and hatcheries for fish in the Barka/Darling River. This ecosystem is central to the identity of the Barkindji people who, over tens of thousands of years, have developed a complex system of governance, infrastructure and law which is sustained by the waters of the Barka/Darling River. Today, patterns of colonial dispossession continue to rob the Barkindji of their water. This essay begins by situating the present economic and environmental decline in the recent historical context of colonisation. After then analysing current water and planning policy, this essay reviews literature emerging from environmental theory and decolonial studies that challenges contemporary urban-centric planning theory and practice. The crisis in Menindee invites planners to reposition theory and practice by finding ways to engage with forms of knowing and being in the world which have heretofore been excluded. This will require the reorientation of planning away from a false centre, allowing the
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
meaningful participation of Indigenous people to reshape the discourse. The ethical framework outlined in the final section will seek to facilitate the redistribution of resources that is required to plan for Menindee’s future. A note on method: although this study was tasked with planning for Menindee over the next ten years, the critical position it establishes denies any such short-term or paternalistic planning strategies. This essay uses a decolonial lens to analyse the interrelated environmental, historical and political conditions leading to the recent fish deaths. It identifies the conflict over water as the major barrier to wellbeing in Menindee. Taking Barkandji demands and interests over water seriously, and allowing them to remediate the Barka, this essay argues, should be the focus of all planning initiatives involving the town and river. This is established in the ethical framework developed in the final section. 2. The case study: political ecology of Menindee 2.1 Historical context of Menindee Menindee is a small settlement situated in a flood plain by the Menindee Lakes and Barka/Darling River. In the arid zone of western New South Wales (NSW), it bridges desert and grassland climates, having highly variable rainfall (Pardoe, 2003). The population is 414, a significant majority of whom are Aboriginal, living on the traditional lands of the Barkindji nation (46.8% at last Census) (Census QuickStats, 2016). Collapse of the river system in recent years threatens the future of farming in the region (Norman and Janson-Moore (2019). The industries that remain are largely mechanized (like cotton) or generate few jobs (like goat farming).This has resulted in correspondingly high levels of unemployment and very low household income (Census QuickStats, 2016). The prolonged nature of economic decline, it will be explored, is the product of a complex set of political-ecological conditions stemming from colonisation, drought and economic restructuring. The Barka/Darling river is central to the cultural identity of the Barkindji people who self-identify as people of the river: “We are Barka� (Gibson, 2012; Forsyth, 2016). Although Native Title was granted in 2015, their access to water continues to be undermined by the overallocation of water upstream in the settler economy (Hartwig, Jackson, & Osborne, 2018) and Osborne 2018). Gibson (2012) argues the deteriorating
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
health of the river has affected Barkindji spiritual, cultural and physical wellbeing. The loss of the Barka not only constitutes the loss of water, but the loss of dreaming stories which are woven into its texture. This interrelationship between the river and culture, many argue, fosters a mutual responsibility for the natural environment (Gibson, 2012; Norman & Janson-Moore, 2019). It is a way of relating to the world which is distinct from European settler worldviews, which put humans at the centre of a subject oriented universe (Forsyth 2016). Following Norman and Janson-Moore (2019), the deteriorating conditions of the Barka, the lifeblood of Barkindji culture, is a potent reminder that colonisation is a process rather than an event which continues to rob Aboriginal peoples of their land and resources. From the 1830s, Barkandji ways of life were violently disrupted by colonisation (Beckett, 1978; Goodall, 2008). As steamboats advanced, a complex infrastructure of fish traps were destroyed to make way for the coming invasion (Regional Histories of New South Wales, 1996). To establish the settler economy, pastoralists required Aboriginal labour and knowledge of the land (Beckett, 1978). Many people were thus employed in the new economy as cleaners, drovers or shearers. However, the profitability of wool in the region was undermined by inconsistency of water supply from the Barka/Darling. By the 1930s, economic decline had made many Aboriginal people dependent on government welfare throughout the region (Goodall, 2008). During this time, Menindee was the site of further violence, as segregation policies enacted by the Aboriginal Protection Board coercively moved people off country and into confined to missions such as Menindee (Goodall, 2008). Since the collapse of wool farming in the 1970s, governments have failed to offer any economic alternatives in the region. Continued cycles of disadvantage, intergenerational trauma and institutional violence ensure that the “legacy of colonisation is raw and present” (Porter, 2017). 2.2 Water governance in the settler economy In an environmental history of the Murray Darling, O’Gorman (2012) describes how European settlers failed to comprehend the dry nature of the Australian continent due to records of abundant water supply during floods. A sense that water is renewable, or that ‘the rains will come’, impairs a more complex understanding of abundance and scarcity coexisting. In the Barka/Darling river, records of floods by British surveyors supported the establishment of irrigated agriculture belying the reality that it has one of the most
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
variable flows of any large river in the world (O’Gorman, 2012). Changes to the watercourse and extraction of water for agriculture, domestic and stock use has led to significant damage of its ecosystems. Over time, these interventions have exacerbated ‘natural disasters’ including the recent fish deaths in Menindee. It is in this context that the settler state has treated the river as an object of regulation. Seeking to drought and flood proof the Basin, its rivers and tributaries have been made subject to the power of administration and engineering. The Murray–Darling Basin Plan (MDBP) is the main federal water policy governing the use of water throughout the Basin. In the early 2000s, prolonged drought and over-extraction threatened the environmental collapse of the whole Murray Darling Basin system. To address the over-extraction of water for agricultural, industrial and urban uses the Australian federal government established the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) to negotiate between the Basin states and territories to establish a plan for the return of water to the environment (cite). Under the Plan 2750 GL of water was agreed to be returned to the system, constituting a significant revision of the MDBA’s position for the return of between 3856 GL and 6983 GL for a healthy river Submission to the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission 2018) This has since been reduced to 2075 GL as a result of lobbying by agribusiness (Carey 2019; Davies 2018b; 2019b). This further revision has come under the ire of communities, environmentalists and scientists who have raised concern it would endanger the health of the lower Barka/Darling (Wentworth Group, 2019; MurrayDarling Declaration 2018; Grafton & Williams, 2018; Grafton, Carmody, Colloff, Williams, 2019). Indeed the recent fish deaths illustrate a steep decline in the ecological functions of the river, calling into question the latest political compromise and shedding light on a frontier mentality that pervades dominant attitudes to water (Carey, 2019). The death of millions fish in the summer of 2019, brought Menindee into the domestic and international media spotlight (Davies, 2019; 2019b, 2019c; Davies & Allam, 2019d; ). A review by the Academy of Science (2019) found that the conditions which led to the fish deaths were a product of poor storage management, excessive extraction upstream and drought fuelled by climate change. After the Menindee Lakes were filled in 2016, the MDBA released water back into the Barka/Darling until, by January 2018, levels were low enough for management to pass back to WaterNSW. Water continued to be released intermittently but drought meant that inflows into the
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
lower Darling were not restored. Crucially, inflows were also not adequately replenished as a result of excessive upstream extraction for irrigation. Despite being a highly regulated system, parts of the lower Barka/Darling were left almost dry in late 2018. This left fish stressed and trapped in thermally stratified and oxygen depleted pools. The Academy of Science recognises a perfect storm of conditions that then conspired: following a long hot period, a sudden cold snap saw the turnover of the thermal layers in the river, bringing highly oxygen depleted water up from the bed to the surface. In four subsequent events millions of native and non-native fish were killed as the ecological carrying capacity of the river swiftly declined. 2.3 Heads in the sand: planning for a future without water The management of water and denial of Barkandji water rights in the settler economy has failed to support the hydrological systems of the Lower Barka/Darling and challenges the ongoing viability of the town of Menindee. In an article on water scarcity in Australian cities, Dr Ian Wright, an environmental scientist, states there is a sense of profligacy about the way people use water in Australia when it is abundant (Brook 2018) (see also: Simpkins, 2018). This is in conflict with the meaning and value of water for the Barkandji. Well before the recent fish kills, historian Hannah Forsyth, visited the town in 2016 to be told by locals that they were “losing their 'mother'” (2016). Commenting on the drying of the river, one local commented that “the river, for all intents and purposes, is the ‘property’ of the farmers upstream” (Forsyth, 2016). Without regular pulses of water replenishing the ecosystems of the Barka/Darling river, the future of towns like Menindee are uncertain (Wentworth Group, 2019). Recent climate modelling by the NSW government further supports projections that the ‘Far West’ will continue to warm in the future with a long term decrease in rainfall (NSW Office of Environment & Heritage 2014). Nevertheless, while climate change is a significant factor, the Academy of Science’s review demonstrates that the ecological deterioration of the Barka/Darling is the product of the mismanagement of the wider system. There are further concerns that plans to build a pipeline from Broken Hill to the Murray, as part of the Menindee Lakes Project, will reduce the incentive to having water flowing into the lakes allowing Water NSW to justify letting the river run dry more often (Davies 2018a; 2018b; 2019b; 2019c).
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
Strategic plans for the arid West fail to adequately address the ecological destruction of the lower Barka/Darling brought about by unsustainable use of water upstream, poor management and climate change. The NSW Government has published the Far West Regional Plan 2036 to direct future economic growth in the region (2017). Recognising the ecological value of the Menindee Lakes, it cites ecotourism as a potential industry that can be grown. Arguably, however, this is at odds with other state government policies that support irrigated agriculture, at the cost of the ecological functions of the lakes. Further, given its failure to address the causes of deterioration, with reports of a noticeable decline in birdlife at the lake, it is difficult to imagine how this industry can be grown (Timms, 2017; Volkofsky, 2019). This goal is also in conflict with other strategies under the plan to grow the agribusiness sector. Acknowledging that places like Menindee do not have sufficient access to “water, high quality soils, labour and suitable climate” to support “highly productive agriculture”, it advocates for the expansion of goat farming and wild animal harvesting. The local Aboriginal owned Weinteriga sheep station has abandoned sheep farming in favour of feral goat harvesting. However profitable and adapted to the dry conditions, this trade is markedly less labour intensive (Weinteriga is managed by a sole caretaker) and the goats themselves bare significant environmental issues since they eat “anything – and everything” available (Norman and Janson-Moore, 2019). Given the present challenges, it seems policy makers are well aware that current forms of urbanisation are incompatible with the climate and environment of the arid West, without providing any alternative way of inhabiting Menindee. 3. Theoretical Framework 3.1 Challenges to modern planning discourse This overview of the political-ecology of Menindee highlights the problematic history of settler-colonial attitudes to water, which continues to shape water policy and regional planning. Given the preceding survey, this study argues that resettlement is not only unethical but would continue a pattern of colonial violence. To find a way forward, it is important that planners have a comprehension of the knowledge systems that have allowed the anthropogenic disaster in Menindee to pass. The complex economic, historical and political causes of the crisis mean that an appreciation of interdisciplinarity and long term community engagement are critical.
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
Recent scholarship in environmental studies, by way of the Anthropocene thesis, is a useful reference point to begin to grapple with the ecological and human crises that prefigure this essay. The Anthropocene thesis emerges out of a wider academic disillusionment with the Enlightenment project beginning in the midtwentieth century (see for example: Horkheimer and Adorno (2002) It proposes that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch termed ‘the Anthropocene’ characterised by human intervention in the natural systems that support life (Crutzen, 2002). This thesis is draws on scientific evidence of climate change casting doubt of the future of life on Earth. Many scholars extend the analysis further, breaking down the binary between humans and nature to question the stability of categories of nature (for example: Cronon, 1996). The sentiment that Enlightenment understandings of nature have been challenged by the recent science of global environmental change are shared throughout this literature (Latour, 2014; Chakratbarty, 2009; Turpin, 2013; Haraway, 2008). The academic disenchantment with the modern project is further evinced by post-colonial and decolonial historiographies of urbanisation. In a legal history of property, Jones (2018) demonstrates that processes of enclosure (“mapping, navigating and surveying”) used to define property rights were refined in colonial outposts in the service of dispossession. This notion of enclosure serves not only a legal purpose, creating an ontological claim to possession, but is fundamental to the way the modernurban subject experiences, inhabits and perceives the world (see, for example, Deleuze 1992). As a modern academic discourse and practice, planning is not exempt from these critiques. In her research, Porter (2010) argues that planning is discursively constructed to other Indigenous lifeworlds: “planning’s own genealogy is colonial and its work a fundamental activity to the ongoing colonial settlement of territory” (12). Planning, in other words, reproduces ways of knowing which separate humans from the natural world in order to colonise land. Within these power structures, further hierarchies are encoded which orders the world in binary categories of human/nature, subject/object, rational/irrational, rural/urban. Ultimately this discursive order serves to legitimise the claims of dominant groups in the settler state while disadvantaging those on the periphery (Tuhiwai Smith, 2012). In Menindee, processes of spatial and discursive distancing have framed how the disaster was experienced and perceived by policy makers and broader Australian publics. Arguably, its remoteness from urban centres buffered decision makers in
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
Sydney and Canberra from the true reality of the tragedy unfolding demonstrating the spatial disconnect that operates between rural/urban power. Through discourse, this disconnect is further reified with terms like the ‘Far West’, locating it in an ‘outback’ far removed from urban centres of life. These continuing systems of colonial organisation ensure that Barkandji and other local Menindee interests are not adequately represented in water resource management (Hartwig, Jackson & Osborne 2018). Indeed, in Menindee, there is evidence that locals were well aware of the unfolding crisis as early as 2016, however, the MDBA, followed by WaterNSW, continued to manage the lakes at the behest of the agribusiness lobby (see, for example, Forsyth, 2016). It is worth noting that it took the images of fair-skinned farmers crying and holding up the rotting carcasses of mature Murray Cod to finally catch the attention of the broader public and policy makers, raising further questions about the interrelationship between power and representation (See Grafton et al, 2019; refer to image in Appendix A). 3.2 Voices of the Anthropocene Acknowledgment of these power structures exposes planning’s complicity in ongoing structures of dispossession. As Porter (2017) states, decolonising planning will necessarily involve “decentring and de-privileging the centrality of whiteness” (653). To do this, planning theory and practice must reposition itself away from a subjectobject oriented view of the world. One idea present in the literature on the Anthropocene is for agency to be re-inscribed in the natural environment (see: Latour, 2014; Haraway, 2008). Other philosophers call for the development of a form of rationality sensitive to the non-human environment (Plumwood, 1993; Guattari, 2000). However, as Bird Rose (2013) illustrates, other forms of relating to non-human nature already exist. She advocates for a renewed appreciation of animism based on studies of Australian aboriginal cosmologies. In such cultures “plants as well as animals are sentient, and the earth has culture and power within it” (6). The task for planners, in the case of Menindee, is not just to reflect on the imbalance in the distribution of power over water, but to find a way to act on, listen and respond to the various subjectivities that have heretofore been disempowered. But this is no small challenge. Writing from the perspective of animal human studies, Haraway (2008) demonstrates the chauvinistic attitude of Western philosophy to non-human subjectivity, turning the problem on its
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
head by asking not whether ‘animals speak’ but whether the philosopher has the tools to listen. Following Haraway, the question for planners might be whether contemporary state-based planning practice has the tools to comprehend marginalised voices such as those of the Barkandji people. This is a worthwhile provocation since local Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal voices have been marginalised by state-based planning and water policy debates. It generates the question: if planners and policy makers could listen, what would they hear? Research by scholars like Head (2016) and Osborne (2018) suggests that environmental policy makers lack the tools to respond productively to difficult emotions like depression, grief and loss. As Head illustrates, the exclusion of embodied, emotional responses leads to weakened policy outcomes which rely on the most optimistic future scenarios. Oral accounts of the fish death events support this hypothesis: “It’s so sad that it took a million or more fish to die for people to really listen, when we’ve been saying this, we’ve been fighting for this for a number of years now. Well before the fish kill in Menindee. Well before that we tried to get people to listen...” Kevin Cattermole, Wilcannia Local Aboriginal Land Council “It’s almost like when your mum or your dad is laying in hospital sick, ready to pass on and there is nothing you can do about it. And you just sit there with them and watch them pass on. It’s the same way we feel about the river. Our river is dying and we’re dying with it” Michael Kennedy, Wilcannia Local Aboriginal Land Council (both qtd in Norman and Janson Moore, 2019)
The comparison of the drying of the Barka to the death of a family member demonstrates that there is a complex set of rational emotions that are in dialogue with the river. Rather than viewing grief as paralytic, it is important to acknowledge how state-based planning practice continues to reproduce a colonial order which denies other ontologies. Reflecting on Head and Osborne’s work, it is arguable that images of dead fish in the Barka/Darling projected via the technosphere are images of an apocalyptic present. But this is not the first time the world has ended in Menindee. The failure to acknowledge this is at the crux of the problem, which denies a future for Menindee. 4. An ethical framework for planning in Menindee 9
Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
4.1 What if planners could actually listen? As Nayuka Gorrie points out: “colonisation was our apocalypse, and we are already living in a dystopian future, so we are ahead of the game” (qtd in Osborne 2018). It is not a far leap to argue that, without water, it is impossible to plan for a future for Menindee. This favours the resettlement option. But the complex environmental and social issues faced in this region are not unique: water scarcity is characteristic of life in Australia. Resettlement would devastate the metaphysical possibility of future worlds for the Barkandji whose existence is firmly weaved into the whole of the riverine landscape. This case study demonstrates that state-based planning practice lacks the capacity to fully comprehend the needs of people living in the lower Barka/Darling region. From this point of acceptance, this essay calls for a radical decentering of planning theory and practice. The case study clearly demonstrates how theory and practice are disconnected from the ecological and material conditions of life in Menindee. Subverting Hall’s argument that the coherence of planning discourses are weakened by the postmodern politics of “difference, localism and decentralisation,” this essay seeks to instead use these realities to reconnect planning theory and practice to the environment and communities it speaks to (2002). This calls for a new ethical framework to guide future planning. This framework is supported by the research in this essay and is summarised in four points. Planning for Menindee’s future must therefore: 1. Recognize the role of state-based planning in the colonization of territory and dispossession 2. Recognize Barkindji knowledge about, and practices of, planning 3. Represent Barkindji interests in water in all state-based policy including in the water licence market 4. Facilitate collaborative planning between state-based and Barkindji planners Principles 1 and 2 relate to recognition. This study has sought to reposition state-based planning practice in its context of colonization. The ability to work with Barkindji peoples requires that state-based planners are cognizant of, and have respect for, these
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
principles. Matunga (2017) argues that planning is first and foremost an activity of making futures. Recognising this exposes already existing and emerging Indigenous planning practices (Principle 2). The role of state-based planners should be to encourage the establishment of a space where they can meet indigenous planners on their own terms (Principle 4). Although outside of the scope of this essay, there is a building body of literature which deals with the challenge of fostering indigenous planning communities (for example: Matunga, 2017). Principles 3 relates to the Barkindji’s special interest in water. Claims for Barkindji self-determination centre on water: “without this water, we will never survive. We will be all ‘bukali’ . . . we’ll die!” (Barkandji PBC Director A qtd in Hartwig, Jackson and Osborne 2018). It is therefore imperative to bring about institutional and legal reforms which recognise these interests. Although the Native Title Act (NTA) provides symbolic legal recognition of the right to places of cultural significance, the overallocation of water throughout the system means the Barkindji are unable to fully enjoy these rights (Hartwig, Jackson and Osborne 2018; Academy of Science 2019). Notwithstanding the massive financial cost, life in the lower-Basin depends on local Aboriginal people having more say over water management. 4.2 Life after the boom: facilitating collaborative planning Scarcity is a constant in the Australian environment. With the impacts of climate change, the future of life in Menindee and recognition of Barkindji water rights depend on a transition away from water intensive agriculture throughout the Basin. Post-mining boom towns are good example of how resource-based economic transitions can be managed. After the close of its gold mine in 2016, Stawell has undergone a transition from a mineral-based economy with the establishment of the Bulgana Green Power Hub, a wind farm and undercover hydroponics project (Premier of Victoria 2017; ABC 7.30 Report 2018). Providing 270 ongoing jobs, the hydroponic glasshouse is touted as using water and energy far more efficiently than conventional horticulture (ABC 7.30 Report, 2018). Such innovative possibilities are all but absent in the Far West Regional Plan. While any type of prescriptive top-down solution is incompatible with the ethical framework outlined above, there is much scope for planners to open conversations
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
between Barkindji planners, businesses, scientists and policy makers to seek out new industries at an appropriate scale. Through collaboration, state-planners can recognise the legacy of colonization by helping communities to grieve and rebuild, offering possibilities for creative interventions in the landscape. This solution is proposed by Hine, Kirsch & Amizlev (2014) who use the example of post-mining landscapes to show how “long-term community engagement with land reclamation art are the next logical step within an evolving awareness of the remedial role that art can play within the devastated landscape.” The remedial effect of art in processes the traumas of colonisation is suggested by Barkandji elder Badger Bates statements about his practice: “When I carve I feel I am carving new life into my country and I can hear my old Granny and the other old people singing in the language” (qtd in Martin, 2013). One might thus imagine this process occurring at a landscape level possibly through collaborations across art and science but driven by local people. With increasing variability of water supply, it may offer local people a way of connecting to the Barka/Darling across space and time.
Conclusion Current state-based planning and water policy forecloses any imaginative possibility for the future of Menindee. Supported by research into the towns political ecology, this essay situates current planning and water policy in an ongoing history of colonial dispossession. Australia’s water regimes have been designed to serve the interests of powerful agribusiness, while excluding the voices of local and Indigenous communities in the lower Barka/Darling through the denial of representation. This essay has argued that these policies are supported by knowledge systems which reify difference to legitimise the settler-colonial order. In this period of Anthropogenic environmental change, there is a moral imperative to interdisciplinarity for planning theory and practice. In Menindee, Barkandji cosmologies provide an alternative way of relating to nature, which could provide a key to addressing the cognitive dissonance demonstrated by prevailing state-based water governance. This necessitates a decentring of planning discourse by recognising the rights of Indigenous peoples to self-determination. An
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
ethical framework has therefore been introduced to guide collaborative planning with the Barkindji. This framework requires a significant redistribution of resources so that Barkindji communities can remediate the Barka and return to planning their own future. Word count: 4350
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
Works cited:
Beckett, J. (1978). George Duttons country : portrait of an Aboriginal drover. Aboriginal history, 2(1), 2-31. Carey, A. (2019). â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dam nation: tough road to water reform on the world's driest continentâ&#x20AC;?. Retrieved 31 May 2019, from The Sydney Morning Herald https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/dam-nation-tough-road-to-waterreform-on-the-world-s-driest-continent-20190503-p51ju6.html Census QuickStats. (2016). Australian Bureau of Statistics Retrieved from <https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/20 16/quickstat/UCL122095?opendocument>. Chakrabarty, D. (2009). Climate of History: Four Theses. Critical Inquiry, 35(2), 197222 doi:10.1086/596640 Construction Begins On Bulgana Green Power Hub. Online: Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change Retrieved from https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/construction-begins-on-bulgana-green-powerhub/. Cronon, W. (1996). The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature. Environmental History, 1(1), pp. 7-28. Crutzen, P. J. (2002). Geology of mankind. Nature, 415(6867), 23-23. doi:10.1038/415023a Davies, A. (2018). The Menindee Lakes project: who loses and who really wins? . Retrieved 31 May 2019, from The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/11/the-menindee-lakesproject-who-loses-and-who-really-wins Davies, A. (2018b). Large agribusiness gains most from $13bn Murray-Darling plan, report finds (News). Retrieved 31 May 2019, from The Guardian <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/01/large-agribusinessgains-most-from-13bn-murray-darling-plan-report-finds> Davies, A. (2019b). NSW minister altered Barwon-Darling water-sharing plan to favour irrigators Retrieved 31 May 2019, from The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/feb/08/nsw-minister-alteredbarwon-darling-water-sharing-plan-to-favour-irrigators
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Davies, A. (2019c). Hundreds of thousands of native fish dead in second MurrayDarling incident (News). Retrieved 31 May 2019, from The Guardian <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/07/hundreds-ofthousands-of-native-fish-dead-in-second-murray-darling-incident> Far West Regional Plan 2036. (2017). NSW: Department of Planning & Environment. FarWest: Climate change snapshot. (2014). NSW: Office of Environment & Heritage Retrieved from www.environment.nsw.gov.au. Gibson, L. (2012). ‘We are the River’: Place, Wellbeing and Aboriginal Identity. In S. Atkinson & P. J. Painter (Eds.), Wellbeing and Place Taylor & Francis Group Goodall, H. (2008). Invasion to Embassy - Land in Aboriginal politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972. Sydney Sydney University Press. Grafton, Q., Carmody, E., Colloff, M., & Williams, J. (2019). Toxic: what is rotten in the Murray-Darling Basin? (Opinion). Retrieved 31 May 2019, from Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Guattari, F. (2000). The Three Ecologies (I. Pindar & P. Sutton, Trans.). London: Athlone Press. Haraway, D. J. (2008). When Species Meet. Minneapolis,: University of Minnesota Press. Hartwig, L., Jackson, S., & Osborne, N. (2018). Recognition of Barkandji Water Rights in Australian Settler-Colonial Water Regimes. Resources, 7(1). doi:10.3390/resources7010016 Head, L. (2016). Hope and grief in the anthropocene : re-conceptualising humannature relations: New York, NY : Routledge. Hine, A., Kirsch, P., & Amizlev, I. (2014). RED MUD Art and the post-mining landscape. Artlink Magazine, 34(4). Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. (2002). Dialectic of Enlightenment - Philosophical Fragments (E. Jephcott, Trans.). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. How can we encourage migrants out of our crowded cities and into regional towns? (2018). 7.30 Report. John Palmesino, A.-S. R., Etienne Turpin. (2013). Matters of Observation: On Architecture in the Anthropocene. In E. Turpin (Ed.), Architecture in the Anthropocene- Encounters among Design, Deep Time, Science and Philosophy.
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
Jones, H. (2018). Property, Territory, and Colonialism- a legal history of enclosure. Legal Studies, 1-17. doi:10.1017/lst.2018.22 Latour, B. (2014). Agency at the time of the Anthropocene. New Literary History, 45, 1-18. Martin, B. (2013). Carving into Country: The work of Badger Bates (Feature). Retrieved 5 June 2019, from Artlink <https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/3970/carving-into-country-the-work-ofbadger-bates/> Matunga, H. (2017). A Revolutionary Pedagogy of/for Indigenous Planning. Planning Theory & Practice, 18(4), pp. 639–666. The Murray-Darling Declaration. (2018). Retrieved from <https://murraydeclaration.org/contact> Norman, H., & Janson-Moore, J. (2019). Friday essay: death on the Darling, colonialism’s final encounter with the Barkandji. Retrieved 31 May 2019 https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-death-on-the-darling-colonialismsfinal-encounter-with-the-barkandji-114275 Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge. Porter, L. (2010). Unlearning the colonial cultures of planning. Farnham, England: Farnham, England. Porter, L. (2017). What is the Work of Non-Indigenous People in the Service of a Decolonizing Agenda? Planning Theory & Practice, 18(4), 639-666. doi:10.1080/14649357.2017.1380961 Regional Histories of New South Wales. (1996). Sydney Heritage Office and Department of Urban Affairs and Planning Retrieved from <https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/-/media/OEH/CorporateSite/Documents/Heritage/regional-histories-of-new-south-wales.pdf>. Rose, D. B. (2013). Slowly ~ writing into the Anthropocene. TEXT, October(20), 1-14. Science, A. A. o. (2019). Investigation of the causes of mass fish kills in the Menindee Region NSW over the summer of 2018–2019. Retrieved from www.science.org.au/fish-kills-report Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies : research and indigenous peoples (2nd ed.).
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
New York: New York : Zed Books : Distributed in the USA exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan. Submission to the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission. (2018). Wentworth Group Retrieved from <https://wentworthgroup.org/publications/>. Timms, P. (2017). Menindee locals fear loss of cotton grower, Broken Hill pipeline could be town's death knell. Retrieved 31 May 2019, from ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Volkofsky, A. (2019). Fears for future of Menindee's birds as drought continues. Retrieved 4 June 2019, from ABC Broken Hill https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-02/fears-for-future-of-menindee-birds-asdrought-continues/11161210
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
Appendix 1.
It is a Ęťnatural disasterĘź
Water
Water
Water Water
give me some water Moving westward, white settlers in search of new productive land were umptions ries. Early ass Murray Darling and its tributa unable to make sense of the were informed by knowledge of European lakes and rivers. They had never expienced El Nino droughts which donĘźt break for months or sometimes years, . Or floods that rise y channels or cracked earth reducing the rivers to mudd without the presence of rain, regenerating the land. To build the Eastern cities, the irregular flows of the basin had to be controlled. The river was dammed, natural depressions Menindee Lakes are shallow The . ted ga irri ins pla d floo the that were never meant to hold water permanently.While the land sustained the local Indigenous populations for thousands of years, the growing outback river runs towns had an insatiable thirst for water. An ill fitting match when theall its fish gators, killing irri by kle tric a to d ine dra en wh or t, ugh dro of in times through asphyxiation.
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
Image Task D In response to the question: What is critical? Bibliography: Leone, S., Morsella, F., Donati, S., Bertolucci, B., Cardinale, C. Bronson, C., Fonda, H., ... Paramount Home Entertainment (Firm),. (2003). Once upon a time in the West. O'Gorman, Emily. Flood Country an Environmental History of the Murray-Darling Basin. Edited by Corporation Ebooks. Collingwood, Vic.: Collingwood, Vic. : CSIRO Publishing, 2012.
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
Appendix 2.
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Giselle Osborne Student number: 30081807 UPD5201: Critical Debates Assessment Paper 2
Image Task F Bibliography:
Image: ‘ An Aboriginal flag planted on the riverbed in front of the last stagnant pools of water that are now the Darling River at Wilcannia’, John Janson-Moore, Accessed on 19 May 2019 via: http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-death-on-the-darling-colonialismsfinal-encounter-with-the-barkandji-114275 Image: ‘Cotton grower Mark Winter has planted a fraction of his regular crop this year.’ ABC News, Halina Baczkowski, Accessed 19 May 2019 via: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-02/are-cotton-growers-to-blame-for-menindeefish-deaths/10763322 Image: ‘Four tonnes of fish’, Unknown Author, Accessed on 19 May 2019 via: https://www.wellingtontimes.com.au/story/5879351/four-tonnes-of-fish-removed-fromnsw-river/ Image: ‘Local farmers Rob McBride and Dick Arnold’, Unknown Author, Accessed on 19 May 2019 via: https://www.echo.net.au/2019/01/menindee-fish-kill-continuing-horrorstory/ Image: Map of Menindee Fish Kills, Australian Academy of Science (2019). Investigation of the causes of mass fish kills in the Menindee Region NSW over the sum Image: ‘Man walking on a pipeline’, Stock Image, Accessed on 19 May 2019 via https://www.mybulkleylakesnow.com/29431/lng-canada-pipeline-facing-oppositionfrom-local-first-nations/ Image: ‘Menindee 08July18_DJI_0520’, Melissa Williams-Brown, Accessed on 19 May 2019 via: https://melissawilliams-brown.com/longtermprojects
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