Are you struggling financially, on a low income or stressed about affording parking due to the significant increases?
If you have a Low Income Health Care Card (LIHC), you are entitled to support available from the ANU and the government. This list compiles the support services available to LIHC card holders.
A LIHC is used to prove financial struggle. It is a simple process and applications typically take about 30 days to process. Instructions on how to apply for a LIHC can be found here.
To be eligible for a LIHC you must:
Make less than $783 a week.
Be 19 or older (Under 19 eligibility is possible if you’re deemed independent or eligible for Family Tax Benefit).
Be an Australian Citizen or Permanent Resident (some visas are accepted — check here).
ANU INITIATIVES
(For some reason, you must be a domestic undergrad student to access any of this. Ridiculous.)
Students can apply for ANU initiatives here. They include:
Free student life surface parking permit at ANU
$150 textbook grant a semester
$150 student support grant a semester
Free 12 months ANU Sport membership
Free Griffin Hall membership (off-campus students)
Access to Community Connect Food Relief
GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES
Free Ambulances
Free public transport off-peak: on weekdays from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm, after 6:00 pm, and all day on weekends and public holidays
100 per cent off the registration fees of your motor vehicle registration (roughly 50-60 per cent of the total amount)
Greater access to bulk-billed GPs
Access to Canberra Health Services Public Dental
$200 spectacles subsidy from participating optometrists
Access to concession rate co-payments for PBS scheduled medications ($7.70 instead of the usual $31.60 maximum cost)
PBS Safety Net reduced to $277 from the regular $1,694 (this is how much you pay for PBS medications). After you’ve spent $277 with a LIHC — further PBS medication is 100% free.
THIRD-PARTY INITIATIVES
Concession fares for Neuron scooters
P.S.
Services Australia will give you a physical card — it is made from paper. You can access a digital card from the Centrelink App.
Resources like the Community Connect Food Relief and Parking support are likely limited, so bear this in mind if applying without genuine need.
At any given moment in time, there are countless ripples travelling through spacetime, traversing the very fabric of our universe. These ripples are known as gravitational waves, and were first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916 in his general theory of relativity.
Almost a century later in 2015, direct evidence of gravitational waves was finally obtained when the Advanced LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) detectors, located in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana, USA detected the long-awaited signal.
The 0.2 second audible signal, which was described to resemble the “chirp” of a bird, was actually the product of a black hole collision. This event occurred more than 1 billion years ago. Two massive black holes merged into one, warping the fabric of spacetime and sending ripples through the universe which were eventually detected on Earth as tiny vibrations.
The successful LIGO experiment sent its own waves through the science community. The search for gravitational waves had consisted of decades of unrelenting hard work by over a thousand physicists around the globe and billions of dollars of investment, so the news was both extremely exciting and highly anticipated.
Now you might be wondering what is next for gravitational wave research. After all, the amazing detection of gravitational waves was already accomplished in 2015.
However, in reality, the exploration of gravitational waves has only just begun as researchers continue to use LIGO and a growing network of detectors around the world (e.g. LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration) to investigate the nature of our universe. In exciting news, the ANU, as part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), will play a central role in this global venture.
Last year I was lucky enough to get the chance to interview Dr Lilli Sun and Dr Jennie Wright, astrophysicists from ANU’s Centre for Gravitational Astrophysics to gain some further insight into the current field of gravitational wave research and ANU’s new LIGO remote control room.
Firstly, could you explain what a gravitational wave is in simple terms?
Jennie: A gravitational wave is a sort of stretching and squeezing of spacetime itself. When we have mass in the universe, it causes spacetime to curve, as explained in the theory of General Relativity. A gravitational wave is like a ripple instead of just a curve that stays still.
Lilli: You can also think of an analogy like a water wave – for example, dropping a stone in water and then seeing ripples spreading out. When we have something very heavy, like black holes that collide, they trigger those ripples in spacetime.
What are your specific research focuses and what are you currently working on?
Lilli: I do mostly astrophysics; using gravitational waves to study black holes, neutron stars, and even searching for dark matter. I do a lot of data analysis to see what the gravitational-wave signals tell us – e.g. whether it tells us that Einstein and his general theory of relativity is right or if there is something unexpected.
One of my projects is about searching for dark matter particles using gravitational waves – we don’t know if they exist or not, but analysing gravitational wave signatures is one possible way to look for them. I also work a bit on detectors, working with instrumentalists like Jennie.
Jennie: What I work on is somewhat related. I’m an instrumentalist as Lilli said, so I’m an experimental physicist and my job has two parts. Half of my time I spend at ANU, working on technologies that we can use to improve gravitational wave detectors of the future. We’re making them more sensitive so they can see further out into the universe and also can see a wider range of signal frequencies. And so, I work on developing technology that basically tries to distinguish things near the detector that look like gravitational wave sources, but actually aren’t – like a truck breaking near the detector, or just air moving near it.
The other part of my job is to help improve the current detectors. Since we use light in the gravitational wave detector to measure the stretching and squeezing of spacetime, we want to have as much light in there as possible. But, because mirrors and optical systems aren’t perfect, we sometimes lose quite a lot of light, so I look at those diagnostic measurements to try to figure out where we’re losing light.
Now that gravitational waves have already been detected, what is next for the field of gravitational wave research?
Lilli: There are many aspects actually: the 2015 discovery was only the beginning. The 2015 event for two black holes colliding into each other and the famous 2017 event for a two neutron star collision are very highlighted events, but now we are collecting many more of them including some special systems. The large number of detections will bring us important information of the population.
There are other types of gravitational waves. For example, we are looking for very faint gravitational waves from a single spinning neutron star. Neutron stars are not perfect spheres, so when they rotate they can generate very weak gravitational waves, which is something we are searching for. Another example is to probe dark matter using gravitational waves. So, we need more sensitive detectors and more of them in the network.
Moving onto the ANU remote control room, what exactly is a control room and how specifically would the remote control room work?
Jennie: So, a control room is usually a room you have next to a lab with an experiment in it: usually one that needs to be in either a really clean environment, or a slightly dangerous environment. So, you set all the physical parts of it up, so you can obtain electronic signals through to your control room that tell you what is happening. And then you can do all the data-taking and analysis from that control room.
In LIGO, they have the control rooms right next to the detector because they don’t want to be walking around next to the detector while it’s running, as they might introduce noise to it. They also have a whole bank of screens which decipher how each sub-system is working.
About the remote control room: whilst we don’t have a gravitational wave detector in Australia, many Australian scientists have been involved in gravitational wave detection from the start, and so this allows us to participate in improving the detector remotely. So, you can see on some of the screens here, I have a read-out of the different sub-systems and if they’re working correctly. For example, green tells us that they’re observing data and red tells us that they’re down and need to be fixed. And this is all in real time.
That’s really useful, because before we had this, we just had the little screen on our computers, and you had to try to view everything simultaneously and it was quite difficult. My colleagues and I will also occasionally do shifts when the detector is running, because we might have to call up people in other countries. If there’s an exciting gravitational wave event, we sometimes need to announce things to other astronomers, so they can point their telescopes to certain parts of the sky.
Lilli: Although it’s a ‘remote’ control room, you can still control some of the sub-systems of the detector. It’s just that we need to be very careful, especially during observation. There will be someone in charge in the real control room, and we can collaborate with them. The advantage of having the remote control room is that it makes it much easier for Australian colleagues, as we are not close to the detector, but we can read off the real-time information in a much more convenient way, on the other side of the world.
So, the detector isn’t always on all the time?
Jennie: There’s a trade-off between the physicists who work on improving it, and the astronomers who want to collect data using it. If you improve the sensitivity, you’re more likely to see really exciting events we haven’t seen before. But if you increase the time the detector is on for, you’re also more likely to see more events. So, there are sometimes periods where we’re not touching the detector for around 18 months, and periods where there is no data collection for a year, and maintenance and upgrading occurs.
From a bigger perspective, what role is Australia and ANU playing in the further research of gravitational waves?
Lilli: Australia is one of the major collaborators in the large international LIGO-VIRGO-KAGRA collaboration. There is a large group here working on gravitational wave astrophysics and detector science. These days, Australian scientists also want to propose and work towards building an Australian detector in the future, which is pretty exciting.
Right now, we are also thinking about the next generation detectors – like what kind of design and technology is needed that can give us a one-order of magnitude increase in sensitivity, which can get us much deeper into the universe. Australian colleagues are working on both the existing science of gravitational waves, but also the future.
Jennie: In the past, Australia has developed sub-systems which are now used in the detector, contributing mirrors for example. Also, Lilli is in charge of the calibration group for LIGO, and that’s just an example, but we have a lot of staff in Australia who are leading some aspect of the LIGO scientific collaboration’s research. We’ve also been instrumental in the design of something called the Squeezer which is used in LIGO to improve its sensitivity, making the detectors the quantum instruments that they are.
Lilli: Regarding astrophysics and data analysis, there are quite a few large groups from different Australian universities within OzGrav working on the data being collected these days. A lot of studies are carried out in Australia, but we also work very closely with international colleagues.
What are some benefits of these large-scale projects, e.g. do they help bring countries closer together and encourage international cooperation?
Lilli: I think yes, definitely. These days, it’s getting difficult to do small narrow research projects by yourself. With projects like gravitational wave detectors, you have large instruments, and that involves many different aspects: you need to work with engineers on different sub-systems, theoretical physicists to understand how the astrophysics work, software engineers and data analysts for dealing with huge amounts of data, and also astronomers who do different kinds of follow-up observations. All these people are playing important roles, and they come from different countries, different parts of the world. Close collaboration is critical.
Jennie: I think it’s really useful to have these big projects, because any falling out between countries can get in the way. It also definitely broadened my horizons, as I’m from Scotland, which isn’t as multicultural. Without science, I definitely wouldn’t have travelled and experienced different cultures as much.
Last question, what’s your advice for students looking to get into this field or just interested in your research?
Lilli: I think there are lots of chances for students to talk to us and do small projects. If they’re really interested there are lots of ways to get into the field. We do lots of summer/winter projects and we also teach undergraduate courses, where we discuss gravitational waves at a more basic level. Many students are interested, and we have extended discussions and they come to us for small projects or Honours and end up staying for PhD.
Jennie: I think definitely the best way is just to email someone who works in the fields. Academics love students being interested in their research, otherwise they wouldn’t be working at a university and teaching. I’m really happy whenever a student asks me, and I think that’s how I got involved in the field too.
Lilli: Yes, definitely talk to academics and lecturers in the field if you’re interested.
Jennie: And I think that’s the same in all areas of science as well, people are super keen to tell you about their research, you just have to ask them.
Photograph of some of the screens in the control room.
Dr Jennie Wright (left) and Dr Lilli Sun (right) in the remote control room.
A huge thank you to Dr Lilli Sun and Dr Jennie Wright for taking the time to do an interview and for so generously sharing their knowledge.
Comments Off on Eight Years Later: Schmidt’s Legacy
On the last day of the mid-semester break, campus is quiet when we sit down with Brian Schmidt. The brown brick Chancellery building is not a hub of student activity, and as we walk over it appears a bit like ANU’s own Battersea power station. Inside, it has been done up in traditional Australian colours: rusty red, muted orange, yellow here and there, brown wood panelling, and a soft sense of beige. As we wait in the lobby, the building feels a bit empty, except for when someone walks through and jumps into the elevator.
The tranquillity is pierced, but not broken, by ANU’s departing Vice-Chancellor and Nobel laureate, Brian Schmidt. He is not loud, but passionate, and he has a lot to say on a lot of things. But most notably, he is an arm-waver. As he speaks, every concept is given a corresponding gesture. Dwelling on the aim of an inclusive community, he swings his arms out wide, and when he waves off criticism about large capital purchases, he points to where the two purchases sit, beyond the office and the gum trees outside.
In February this year, at his State of the University speech, Schmidt announced that this year would be his last in the role and that he will be returning to research and teaching. It is hard to know if Schmidt’s status as a cultural icon comes from who he is, or from his last name, which has proved endlessly punnable for ANU students.
Having spent eight years in the top full-time position at the University, he is tired of the work.
When we ask him about his pay, which is less than most other Vice-Chancellors in the country, he is clear that he would never be a Vice-Chancellor at another university, and that he did this for the ANU. Of course, he is still paid in the ballpark of $500,000. He argues there would be a “disequilibrium” if he were paid less than the people he hires, and the people he hires are paid around that much.
Schmidt is distinctly American as well. Listening to this thick accent while tall gum trees sway outside, with classic Canberra pollen in the air, feels slightly anachronistic. It extends beyond his accent though. When he speaks of his aims as Vice-Chancellor, it is about putting ANU in the same league as other word-class institutions. The first that comes to him is Harvard. When he discusses inclusion on campus, he does so in a distinctly American liberal tone: disagreeing with what may be said, but defending people’s right to say it.
As we begin to ask Schmidt about his time at the ANU, the first thing that becomes apparent is his candour.
He wants to talk about the areas where the ANU is not doing well.
We open by asking him if he is excited to return to a quieter pace of life, and he is quick to describe the job as relentless, throwing his life out of balance. There is, he says, a lot of unpleasantness to it. To explain further, he uses what sounds like a frequent anecdote: 20,000 people come to the ANU everyday, and most people work 20,000 days in their life, meaning that everyday is bound to be the best day of one person’s life and the worst day of someone else’s. And he estimates they deal with one out of ten people who are having the worst day of their life. Throughout the interview he returns to the issue of sexual assault, and it seems he sometimes has to address events like this. He admits that this includes executing the procedural fairness of the university.
The Long View
With a mammoth institution like the ANU, it is difficult to know what gives it momentum and what can push it to change course. Schmidt says his focus has always been on students, despite the expectation that as an academic he would focus on research. In his eyes, his impact has been to give the campus and the University’s research “the foundation of a vibrant student community,” including a distinctly Australian undergraduate experience. ANU, he believes, may lack the “gold plating” of Harvard, but he maintains that
“if you get a degree from ANU, it’s as good as a Harvard degree.”
Schmidt attended Harvard for his postgraduate and then taught at the ANU, so he is better placed to comment on the two universities than most. But ANU did slip this year in the Global QS rankings, suggesting that the gold plating may not be the only thing ANU is missing. Schmidt has clearly thought about this or at least had this discussion before. He rejects the methodology of rankings, like QS or Times Higher Education, arguing they don’t reflect the ANU’s mission. He says the focus should be on students’ experiences on campus, and that Quilt surveys show that ANU students have good experiences on campus, better than most other Australian universities. He also questions the methodology, asking rhetorically how something like QS can measure satisfaction better than Quilt. The value of ANU lies in breaking people out of their “high school clique” and exposing them to the diversity of Australia. Schmidt believes on-campus life and ANU scholarships and programs achieves this.
Some ANU students may reject this characterisation of the on-campus experience. ANU has one of the lowest enrollment rates for low socioeconomic students, and the interstate move for many students presents a cost barrier not often found at other major universities. On-campus rent is itself more expensive than off-campus, further alienating the people who Schmidt wants to include. But, this may also reflect the growing cost of tertiary education in Australia, as higher inflation means that HECS has now become an important, if not crippling, debt for many young people.
The government, in Schmidt’s eyes, is not doing enough to support inclusivity and diversity across the sector, but to him ANU is doing more than most,
in an area where it matters more.
When he talks about inclusion, Schmidt means more than just making students feel included. He chastises the idea that certain people should not be allowed to speak at the ANU, and he is clearly frustrated when he brings up the example of Michele Bullock’s address. Bullock, now the Reserve Bank Governor, gave an address on campus which was briefly interrupted by students who said that if unemployment had to increase to reduce inflation, Bullock’s job should be the first to go. Holding an enlarged Jobseeker application form, the students walked past the stage, yelling with a megaphone, before being escorted out. As he explains his philosophy on free speech, he echoes historian Evelyn Hall’s famous quote, often attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Schmidt’s line of thinking fits into the broader issue of free speech on university campuses across the anglophone world. In Britain, the US and here, many controversial speakers have had events brought to a standstill by students protesting. The subject matter of the speakers has ranged, from Malcolm Turnbull at the University of Sydney, to transphobic speakers and academics. Schmidt wants students to ask hard questions, not stand up and shout, or to protest outside the event. Of course, a student asking a question gets probably half a minute of airtime, someone like Bullock gets the full hour.
More Recently
Serving as Vice-Chancellor for eight years – two four year terms – Schmidt has gone round the block more than a few times. His second term, though, was dominated by COVID-19, which presented a short-term and a long-term challenge. With one of the largest on-campus populations in the country, ANU administered its own lockdown. This presented immediate issues, from food provision for students living with communal kitchens or eateries, as well as the money spent on Rapid Antigen Tests and personal protective equipment. Part of the ANU lockdown involved Senior Residents distributing food to rooms, something they were not paid for and which led to protests, especially from Burton and Garran Hall. He noted the pay freeze agreed to in early 2020 as an example of a hard decision he had to make about the University’s staff: had staff not agreed to it, he says he would have had to make 90 more staff redundant.
In the long term, COVID-19 tightened the belt of ANU, and Schmidt has found that the financial constrictions stemming from the pandemic have impacted everything they do. “It’s one thing,” he says, “just being flat, but
it’s another thing having pressure to become smaller and… it’s not an easy place to be squeezed.”
There is, for him, no easy way to make things work. With staff enterprise bargaining having concluded this year, one of the centre points of the debate was how much the ANU could afford to pay.
Schmidt, from his own description, was not a diehard unionist before he became Vice-Chancellor, he only took note of union opposition to hiring young researchers, chiefly because he was a young researcher. However, he now sees the value in having the views and values of staff represented, because otherwise “there’s no one to talk to and you can’t actually get a sensible agreement.” But, he follows this up with an admonishment of what he calls “the theatre of the strike…
call it whatever you want, it’s theatre from my perspective.”
He doesn’t see the cause for the half-day strike, which, with around 300 participants, was one of the largest protests on campus in the last few years. He claims that it didn’t matter in the end, as the bargaining ended up where he wanted it to, although he would have taken the first deal: a payrise of about 16% over five years (compared to the 18% in the final deal). He believes that on casualisation, he was offering terms that were “far more exciting” than the language “that the Melbourne union office was using.”
Key Issues
Another recurring challenge for him, and for university administration across the country, has been sexual assault and harassment (SASH). Last year, the National Student Safety Survey (NSSS) found that ANU had the second-highest rate of assault in the nation, and the highest of all Group of Eight universities. This year saw the establishment of the Student Safety and Wellbeing Committee (SSWC), which Schmidt points out is the only committee of its stature – reporting directly to ANU Council – in the country. Last year the University also established the Student Safety and Wellbeing Team to provide assistance for students and to walk them through the often quite complex processes of the University. These are two key student demands that the ANU has met, and Schmidt is now “much more comfortable” with the position and work that the University is doing on SASH.
Sexual assault in the university sector is more likely to happen the more people live on campus, and Schmidt both understands that ANU has substantial work to do, but also thinks that ANU’s on-campus nature contributes to its poor performance. However, this is not an excuse for him, and he believes it only increases the University’s responsibility. With the SSWC reporting to the Council and having both students and sexual violence experts sit on it, it is likely that ANU is entering a new era in reform around SASH. Whether the University takes up the committee’s recommendations, will be the work of the next Vice-Chancellor. Earlier this year, Woroni reported on the ANU’s failure to progress its Disability Access Plan; it remains to be seen if the University has learnt from its mistakes.
Another alleged mistake the ANU, and Schmidt personally, are often charged with is the purchase of large capital assets to be developed in the future. In 2021, he oversaw the purchase of a $17 million disused bus stop from the ACT, and this year he announced another similarly large purchase of a parking lot to build a new health sciences precinct on. Schmidt denies that the purchases are too expensive, noting that the cost of the acquisitions are amortised to be paid over a number of years and that the land will be used to realise the University’s long-term goals. He also says the purchases were a drop in the ocean compared to the pay rises the NTEU demanded.
The conversation next turned to the ANU’s involvement in AUKUS, which Schmidt denies: “It’s news to me.” Schmidt made a point not often discussed by students which is that the ANU, as the national university, ought to meet the educational needs of government policy. Hence, if there is to be a nuclear-powered submarine program, and Schmidt does not express his views on the alliance itself, then the ANU should provide the requisite education. It’s a reason which doesn’t seem to always be applied evenly at the University, which attempted to cut its Bachelor of Public Policy (BPP) last year, a degree which surely aligns to the government’s interests, even if broader society may not care. Of course, the BPP does not map onto any specific government policy, but one can imagine that if any university is to teach it, it should be the ANU, along similar lines to Schmidt’s thinking.
Education and research into nuclear energy and nuclear-powered submarines is also part of successful nuclear stewardship, Schmidt believes. This argument is a bit more familiar to students, with speakers at the student union arguing that there is a space for nuclear research. However, the controversy revolves around the conditions of any AUKUS-related scholarship that the Department of Defence offers. Will recipients be expected to work on AUKUS submarines, and what steps will be taken to ensure the education can’t be easily applied to nuclear armament? Without more details, these are moot questions, and we will have to wait until the scholarship program is formally announced.
No one person can accomplish everything, so what would Schmidt like to have achieved as Vice-Chancellor but never did? An academic overlay in on-campus residences, something he promises he’ll work on after his term, and hence tells us to stay tuned for. The second aim is more equity scholarships. The goal “is that every person who needs a scholarship in first year should get one.” ANU has a growing asset pool, and it may be that, like Harvard, Schmidt wants to fund equity scholarships from this pool. He doesn’t pull his punches though, and says the federal government could do more to fund tertiary education.
Looking Forward
On Tuesday the 26th August, ANU announced that Professor Genevieve Bell would be its 13th Vice-Chancellor. She will be the first woman in the position, and Schmidt mentioned his passion for a more equitable hiring as Vice-Chancellor. Bell, like Schmidt, comes from the ANU, however she has worked as the Director of the School of Cybernetics, a more administrative role than academic. But, her experience in computing and anthropology makes her well-poised to lead the University in the age of AI, or at least the age of paranoia around AI.
Schmidt’s advice for Bell is clear: “Get out and talk to people, talk to students, include the students in the decision making that affects them.” At the conclusion of our interview, Schmidt mentioned that he doesn’t want to be an “alien overlord” believing that Vice-Chancellors must be “a part of the community, not an alien overlord.” Schmidt can be seen around Kambri fairly frequently, including in the queue at Daily Market. Having provided the name of ANU Schmidtposting, the ANU community’s largest online community, he is in a sense, instantly recognisable, and understood to be a part of the ANU. Whether he seems like a member of the ANU community is up to the reader.
I grew up in the Western Suburbs of Sydney, a place not many ANU students are from. Looking back on high school there, even though it wasn’t the best period in my life, it made me feel like I somewhat belonged. There was always a new club for me to join and I had a great group of friends, who never made me feel isolated for the things I found interesting. Maybe it was because of all those American college movies I had watched growing up, and all those YouTube videos I had watched in anticipation, but I believed that university would be the place where I became more confident and grew into myself. I assumed university would make me feel like I completely belonged.
I had two weeks of the ‘University experience’ before COVID-19 hit, but it was nothing like I expected. That first week of uni, I remember printing out my resume and immediately applying for every job in sight. I assumed every student was doing the same. I was sorely mistaken.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, only 40% of people in tertiary education are working part-time. I was surprised when I found out that some students at ANU have never had to work, and will not have to work throughout their entire degree, to take care of themselves. This made me feel like an imposter at ANU, acutely out of place at such a prestigious university.
My first tutorial at ANU also made me feel like I was out of place. The way tutors speak is something that still perplexes me to this day. I felt like I was sitting in a Master’s program for International Relations, not my first ever uni class. I believe lots of ANU students have felt this, as I often see it plastered all over ANU Confessions. Some lecturers do not know how to teach and they can often make the course feel inaccessible. It became even more difficult over COVID-19 when everything was online; it was even harder to learn. For example, I took a French Introduction course, thinking it would be a pretty simple class. I had taken a little French in high school and thought I would have an advantage, – I was wrong. The lecturer attempted to teach a whole year of high school French in a few weeks!
There seems to be a pervasive expectation at ANU that University is our only priority, and ANU continually fails to take into account the complex and busy lives of its students. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in 2017 – 2018, 15% of people ages 18-24 had experienced high levels of psychological distress. With the impact of COVID-19, I know that this would have increased. As a student who works part-time and suffers from psychological distress, I can attest that the help provided by ANU is minuscule. Because of this, it is so easy to feel like you do not belong, or feel out of place. That first year of university impacted how I saw myself. The thing about imposter syndrome is, everything you feel about yourself is tipped on its head. The way you perceive yourself and the people around you is completely different. You internalise it and feel like you are the only one feeling this way – as if you are the only person who is in the wrong place.
Imposter syndrome also makes you feel like you are in a constant race to keep up, and ANU reinforces that toxic narrative.
Have you ever noticed that most tutorials seem to be during the middle of the day, making it difficult to work and study at the same time? Some lecturers, even after COVID-19, still expect students to go to their lectures in-person and you may even lose participation points if you do not attend. I do not have time to go to a three-hour lecture on a Monday morning, especially when it’s a day I work. ANU perpetuates the pressure to keep up with your peers, you need to graduate when everyone else graduates, you need to get HDs, and you need to be prefect, mentally and physically
When you break them down, though, none of these goals make sense. When it comes to graduating ‘on time’, people change their degrees, I know, shocking! When you do that, you often end up extending the time you need to study before graduating. Many people also do fewer courses to work or take care of their mental health, which also extends their degrees. It feels like to finish your degree perfectly in three or four years would mean that you didn’t work, and never had a mental breakdown, ever!
Moving on to pressure to get all D’s or HDs, not all courses are the same, also shocking! Unless you have done the course already, you do not know what to expect. Your tutor might be a harsh marker and maybe the last exam is really hard for no reason. When you take a look again at these societal expectations that make everyone feel like they are doing something wrong, you realise that they do not make any sense. Many students take time off here and there, many students are working multiple jobs to afford to stay in Canberra and many students are simply trying to pass their courses and survive.
The one thing imposter syndrome has taught me was that it is easy to idealise everyone around you and look down on yourself, what is more difficult is to treat yourself with kindness and remember that this path in life is your own and no one else’s. Tertiary systems also need to look at every student as an individual and provide more financial and mental resources. While I do not believe that uni will ever get easier, especially if ANU continues to forget about the welfare of their students, I do believe that the communities students have created, such as ANU Confessions and ANU Schmidtposting will continue to bring us comfort, so we never fully feel alone.
This article will use the acronym of ILM for simplicity’s sake, despite the generalisation and homogenisation that the term represents.
A solution often posed to the challenges of climate change, environmental damage, and habitat loss unleashed by colonialism, is to find ways to integrate Indigenous land management (ILM) into the Western ecological management systems currently used in Australia. In support of this promising solution, ten years ago the Australian Landcare Council commissioned a review of the extent, scope and diversity of ILM practices across Australia, seeking to assess success factors and barriers to its use.
Although this review represented a positive step toward changing how we care for land in Australia, very little has changed on the ground. Australia’s natural landscape continues to suffer from extractive and damaging practices. The review identified that one barrier to integrating ILM into current practices was that “power imbalances lead to western systems playing the dominant role in education and land management practices” and suggests this represents a threat to traditional knowledge and languages and ILM.
While the identification of this barrier gets close to the issue, the reasons Australia’s attempts at ILM integration continually fail are more complex. The underlying barrier is the uneven dynamic of power between Western and Indigenous epistemology and ontology. Epistemology and ontology sound like scary words, but epistemology is really just theories of knowledge, and ontology is the philosophical study of existence, being, and reality. By thinking about ILM and western environmental management through the lenses of epistemology and ontology, we can begin to see where tensions emerge in integration.
Academics have argued natural resource management in Australia relies on ‘whitefella’ separation of cultural, ecological, and social knowledge. Specifically, Western ecological knowledge treats elements of the environment separately, and compartmentalises their management, focusing on quantitative measures, like equilibrium, and notions of ‘maximum sustainable yield’. Moreover, the environment is treated as a commodified resource that must be managed, not a living entity in relationship with people.
We can trace the epistemological foundations of western resource management back to the Age of Enlightenment during the 17th and 18th centuries, and the replacement of religion with science as the primary source of knowledge and normative judgement. From this shift, a tendency emerged in Western philosophy towards positivism. Positivism is a philosophical system that focuses on what can be scientifically verified, or logically proven, and rejects metaphysics and theism.
The dominant scientific paradigm of today finds its roots in this tradition. In this world view, the binaries between mind and body, nature and culture are reified, and many aspects of human life are reduced to biological imperatives. Western philosophy, with its emphasis on reason and science, rejects the metaphysical, and instead seeks to understand reality in ‘objective’ terms. This ‘enlightened’ preference for secular thinking has led to a treatment of any ‘non-objective’ religious or spiritual traditions as beyond the realm of the objective sciences.
In this system, knowledge exists separately from and outside social and historical definitions and processes, and moreover, this separation is the basis for its authority. Western philosophy, in its quest for ‘objective’ knowledge, has sought to exclude any cultural, ontological, or epistemological elements, essentially erasing any link between culture and place, which is the foundation of Indigenous knowledge.
Indigenous knowledge processes are deeply bound to local place, as knowledge is formed through the unique characteristics of ecologies, in which “country tells you what is going on, it calls for action and invites engagement”. In this model, the health of the land is linked to the health of the people. Relationships to land form the basis for all interactions, and a symbiotic relationship exists in which the knowledge that sustains ecological practices, the social roles between people and the living environment, and the environment itself, all produce each other. This system of knowledge stands in stark contrast to the Western tradition, in which culture and nature, human and non-human are distinctly separate categories.
Due to the philosophical origin of Western ecological theory, a tendency has emerged to understand and use Indigenous knowledge in a very specific way. Specifically, it is generally only engaged with or sought out or regarding knowledge that is already considered to be relevant to Western notions of environment, and already within the purview of ‘science’ and ‘reason’. An example of this is the seeking out of Indigenous knowledge around back burning for fire control, in order to improve the current practices and systems. Another tendency that emerges is to view ILM as a timeless, static repository of knowledge to be mined. This perspective emerged during the environmental movements of the 1960s, in which indigenous people began to be understood and portrayed ‘noble environmentalists’ living in harmony with the land.
The consequence of these tensions is that the process of integrating ILM becomes a process in which Indigenous knowledge is seen as ‘content’ to be extracted and used for management purposes, rather than a process itself, a set of practices and symbiotic interaction and relationships between people, other living beings and things. Western ecological management often seeks to extract ILM from its local context which produces it, taking only what is perceived to be of value – that with demonstrable tangible outcomes. This extraction of ILM is completely contradictory to Indigenous culture, in which knowledge is produced in relationship to local places, and through the relationships between the people living on the land.
This tendency for ‘cherry picking’ has been widely discussed in environmental theory as a major obstacle in integrating these systems of knowledge. However, it is not enough to simply recognize that ILM is not static but adaptive, constantly being renewed in local engagement with people and country, and not able to be extracted as a tool for ecological management.
Instead, we must also recognize the epistemic incompatibility between the two systems of thought, because the underlying objectivity of the Western system is derived from its separation between science and culture, people and things, from its rejection of the spiritual and metaphysical.
Indeed, it seems an unlikely possibility that the dominant Western system would be able to understand and view indigenous knowledge as valid for what it is; a place based, ethic of living, that incorporates non-human living things. To recognize this and to recognize the value ILM has, would be to undermine Western philosophy’s authority as ‘objective’.
Frameworks for integration have suggested a re-conceptualisation of the relationship between these two systems. Suggestions include holding meetings about environmental care on country, set through Indigenous frameworks of negotiation, based on Indigenous customs. Other suggestions include the pedagogical tool ‘perspective taking’, where participants are required to engage in the identity and narratives of others, and situate them according to themselves, and examine any connectedness between the two has been posed. These solutions, however, unfortunately, fall short of a suitable framework for integration, as they fail to account for the uneven dynamics of power between the Western and Indigenous systems of knowledge. They reflect a superficial engagement with the ontological divide, and suggest an even playing field in which each perspective is given the same epistemic authority.
Other solutions posed, emphasise that engagement with indigenous knowledge must be ‘equitable’, and incorporate “genuine exchange”, “two-way learning” and “moral reciprocity”’. However, moral reciprocity is an intersubjective exchange, in which each party recognizes the worth of the other. For that reason, I am hesitant to accept that a framework of integration between these two systems of knowledge could involve moral reciprocity, when the epistemic authority of one system relies on the abject rejection of fundamental elements of another.
Indigenous scholars have echoed similar concerns, arguing that when Indigenous knowledge becomes a commodity, it can be appropriated and used by the dominant structures of power to support the existing status quo, and can be appropriated, marginalized, and even used against Indigenous communities.
In this way, we can see we should be sceptical of any attempts to integrate ILM into Western ecological management systems, as it could be seen as is akin to neo-colonial assimilation, in which the context and true meaning of the knowledge is erased, thus perpetuating the constant, gradual dispossession of Indigenous dispossession on country.
A solution often posed to the challenges of climate change, environmental damage, and habitat loss unleashed by colonialism, is to find ways to integrate Indigenous land management (ILM) into the Western ecological management systems currently used in Australia.
Comments Off on Editorial | Support your teachers, support the strikes
On Thursday of Bush Week, the 27th of July, ANU staff will strike for better pay, working conditions, and to reverse the casualisation so rampant in the tertiary sector. The students of this University have an obligation to stand in solidarity with staff: we must support our teachers, we must support the strikes.
One of the most important jobs in society is educating future generations. And yet, our society pays the most socially useful jobs, some of the lowest wages, and lecturers and tutors are no different. They are underpaid, under-supported and overworked. Burdened not by our assessments, questions, and debates, but by the ever-increasing administrative work of the University. They are stretched thin, and to add insult to injury, they are screwed over by the ANU.
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has brought several key demands to the bargaining table. Some have seen success, as Woroni has previously reported. But, where university management remains most intransigent is exactly where change is needed most. Our teachers deserve to be paid more, more because of how valuable their work is, more because of how difficult it is, and more because of the cost-of-living crisis that they must struggle through.
The ANU recently revised its previous paltry pay rise. Despite the overall increase this still includes an administrative pay rise from earlier this year, and ignores the pay rise due from 2022. The University has remained stubbornly opposed to giving casual employees – often fellow undergraduate and postgraduate students marking assessments and teaching tutorials – clear paths to permanent work. Casual research assistants are often paid from research funding grants, and the dilemma between claiming the full hours worked and eating into the research budget of a supposedly research-based university is real. Such casual work is rife with exploitation.
Capitalist ideology preaches the ultimate freedom of the market. The ultimate freedom of the worker is to strike for better conditions, to stand in solidarity and withhold the most valuable part of the production process: human labour. But capitalism does not practise what it preaches, and industrial action is increasingly curtailed, while corporate freedom – from profiteering to monopolisation and downright fraud – remains untouchable. In this climate, every strike reiterates the importance and power of workers, even as those workers are straw manned as “intellectual elites.” ANU staff should strike, so that they can reassert their power as the foundation of this University.
Students are familiar by now with the paradox of apparently being the customer of the University, and yet constantly having their demands rejected, their voices ignored. When we stand in solidarity with staff, we remind the University that it is not run by vice-chancellors or deputy vice-chancellors who want to cut degrees. We remind them that hardworking teachers and students are the lifeblood of this University. The relationship between the student and the teacher is the nexus of learning and education, this relationship cannot exist when teachers cannot live off their wages.
Our University’s status is slipping. We’re no longer amongst the top-ranking universities in Australia, and our research funding has fallen, driving lower revenues. Our University increasingly leans into predatory, exploitative systems of revenue generation. From dodgy financing deals leading to drastic rent-increases to prosecuting students over parking fines, it is creating a conflict between the institution and the person, whether they be student or staff. Higher pay and better support for staff is going to improve learning outcomes, not spending $17 million on a health precinct when the researchers to work there are not paid enough.
The corporatisation of the University goes hand in hand with poorer working standards. As managerial and finance-sector thinking has infiltrated the tertiary sector, staff have seen themselves lumped with more and more administrative work. Even as the genuinely helpful administrative work, such as special considerations and accessibility concerns, is still considered voluntary.
Woroni is a proudly independent media outlet, but on this, we agree with ANUSA: staff working conditions are student learning conditions. If we won’t stand in solidarity with teachers out of principle, then we can at least support them knowing that the better paid they are and the more flexible their work is, the better it will be for us.
Take just one example: assessment marking. Often, casual staff are paid per assessment marked, or paid per hour with the expectation that they mark a certain number of assessments in that time. Both practices drive markers to spend less time on each assessment, increasing the likelihood of unfair marks on students. The NTEU demand for pathways out of casualisation can help ensure markers are not pressured and exploited, and that students’ assessments are not rushed through.
And in turn, solidarity begets solidarity. Rent for next year has increased again, meaning that the cheapest student accommodation now exceeds the average rent one person pays living in a three bedroom sharehouse. We are seeing continued cuts in degrees and changes to the curriculum that remove the flexibility so many students desire. ANU has the highest sexual assault rate of any Group of Eight university. If we stand with staff, they will stand with us at our next protest. Stand with no one, and no one stands with you.
It is unclear how the staff strikes will progress from Bush Week. In other, more corporate universities like the University of Sydney, the strikes continued for months. Since the ANU NTEU branch announced its intent to strike, the ANU has moved forward on some issues. But, if management digs its heel in, we may see strikes throughout Semester 2. We may see picket lines and multi-day strikes and as frustrating as some may find these, it is our obligation to support better standards for educators. Staff will already be under pressure to compromise and give in to the University’s demands. Students have an obligation to stand with staff, to remove the guilt-tripping and emotional argument and say that no, strikes do not negatively impact students, not in the long run.
Support your teachers, turn out to the rally on the 27th of July. Don’t complain when class is cancelled because of industrial action, let your striking teachers know you support them, that you want this too. Remind the University who really matters.
Support the strikes.
The students of this University have an obligation to stand in solidarity with staff: we must support our teachers, we must support the strikes.
Greenwashing, the act of making claims that overstate a company’s actions to combat climate degradation, is deceitful, widespread, and often difficult to detect. While it is routinely criticised, it still remains an effective tool for companies to reap the benefits of positive public relations, while keeping their environmentally destructive business models unchanged. When faced with this force of power, it is important that we as consumers hold companies accountable for their actions. To this end, I have detailed three industries infamous for this technique, some avenues to spot their lies, and alternatives that are genuinely environmentally friendly.
FASHION INDUSTRY
Who could’ve guessed the industry which continually promotes excessive consumption, exploits inhumane working conditions, and advocates for archaic and oppressive beauty standards, would be dishonest about their environmental impact? Being responsible for a tenth of all climate emissions, the largest contributor to microplastics in oceans, and creating one-fifth of industrial wastewater worldwide, the fashion industry has a lot to hide. However, it has been fast to stay on the ‘trend’ of appearing sustainable.
Endless lines of new ‘responsible’ and ‘green’ catalogues have made the industry afloat with new products that appear to be a step forwards but are nothing else than savvy marketing. A 2021 report by the accredited British non-profit Changing Markets Foundation found 59% of green claims made by apparel brands were unsubstantiated or misleading, with some notable key players performing even worse [1]. All but four percent of H&M garments labelled as sustainable were found to be in breach of British governmental guidelines for sustainability [2]. Online retailer ASOS’s ‘responsible edit’ range only used 9% recycled materials for its synthetic products [3]. However, there is a range of legitimate organisations that provide third-party accreditation to genuinely environmentally sustainable fashion labels. Both B-Corp and the Global Organic Textile Standard have websites listing these labels and are a must-see before your next wardrobe update. One final heads up as well, up to 80% of donated clothes never reach op-shops, so while donating clothes still remains the best means to recycle, op-shopping is by no means a sustainable hobby [4]. However, clothes swaps remain a great alternative, as does selling clothes yourself.
FOOD INDUSTRY
Food is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse emissions, natural habitat destruction, and broader environmental degradation. As this was the subject of my last piece, I will avoid detailing what you loyal readers already have heard. However, companies in the food industry have also remained industrious in avoiding real action towards decreasing their environmental impact.
Straightforward claims such as ‘100% recycled plastics’ can be factually incorrect through dodgy wording [5]. Many major non-profits which offer certifications do very little to promote sustainability, such as the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil), the certifier for ‘sustainable’ palm oil used by companies such as Nestle. It has been called a ‘greenwashing’ tool by conservation organisations for its inability to prevent widespread deforestation and land degradation over the last 20 years and thus must be viewed as such by consumers. Other third parties have failed to deliver promises to ease waste, such as Terracycle. Hailed as an innovative means to provide recycling services to some of the world’s largest plastic polluters, it proved mostly ineffective, and instead became a tool to distract from the increasing production of mostly non-recycled plastics.
When shopping from overseas producers, Fairtrade International serves to be the best widely adopted certification for environmentally sustainable food products, which can be found using their website, or on packages of certified products. Domestically, determining what brands are sustainable is significantly harder, however, shopping locally if possible is generally a great way to ensure minimal use of single-use plastics and land degradation.
MINING
Again, no surprises here. The mining industry does happen to provide the fossil fuels that are obsessively consumed, and not-so-occasionally spilled into water systems, and soil. They also extract polluting metals which form poisonous streams, during floods and heavy rains [6]. But the mining industry has not failed to spare some of its current windfall profits, to spread some endearing misinformation.
Many companies refuse to publish data on their own environmental impacts, with only 3 of 56 major global miners reporting dam waste [7]. Furthermore, manipulation of data is common, something mining giant Glencore received international legal backlash over last year. Even barefaced lying isn’t out of the question, with Shell disclosing incorrect information about its renewable investments [8]. These efforts haven’t flown under the radar, with our own ANU publishing multiple articles, which are available to all students, documenting the environmental impact of mining in Australia, and the Asia-Pacific. The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) also publishes regular articles bringing awareness to the underreported impacts of new mining projects within Australia. The ACF also hosts campaigns which raise awareness and combat environmentally damaging mining projects, as well as providing other forms of information including climate rankings of super funds.
While greenwashing is widespread, it can be called out. By staying critical of companies’ claims about sustainability, and knowing the avenues to interrogate these statements, the power of greenwashing can become another failed attempt to prevent our inevitable path to coexisting with our environment.
Sometimes traipsing around Canberra I feel haunted by an unreal ghost. The spectre is an unknowable woman, but one whose presence I feel like a current of electricity always.
The ghost’s name is Kate, and she attended the ANU in 1984. She lived raucously and radiantly, testing limits of appropriateness, in existential opposition to ‘The Man’. She bleached her hair to a frizzy and discoloured bird’s nest, wore exclusively second-hand clothes and was most often accompanied by a misbehaved and clumsily oversized dalmation.
Beyond graduation, Kate had an equally remarkable and passionate life. She eventually had a daughter, who now attends the same ANU, and who lives in perpetual wistfulness about this version of her mother whom she will never meet. I’ve heard many stories centring Kate as protagonist. Through these histories, I know her to be bold and outrageous and someone I think I would’ve liked to befriend.
On the day I was born Kate became Mum. She describes the transition as cataclysmic –suddenly she looked down at the crying, clawing lump of purple flesh in her arms, and knew that this infant was the most precious thing in the world. Where Kate was irresponsible and chaotic, Mum was completely dedicated to the lives and wellbeing of her children. She says the best thing she ever did in her life was her children and they are her proudest accomplishment. The loss of Kate was worth the gain of Rose and Natalie, according to Mum.
I describe Mum’s devotion to me and my sister as selfless in the sense that she sacrificed parts of herself to be our mother. The pressure placed on mothers to deprioritise aspects of their life, like their career, friendships and hobbies, is too frequently dismissed as part and parcel of motherhood. Motherhood is sacrifice – to be a ‘good’ mother you must sacrifice. Mum first, self second. My Mum is selfless in the sense that upon my birth Mum took precedence over Kate.
Whether brainwashed by hormones or not, Mum was completely enraptured with my infant self, and gladly devoted herself to motherhood. I am so indebted to her for her wholehearted commitment to this identity. My childhood was one smothered with love and gentleness. My mother let me try every sport, musical instrument or obscure hobby that I became interested in on a whim, despite my tendency to give up immediately. She came to every school assembly and cheered for me and my participation awards.
Mum is supportive, caring, generous and the most patient and loving person I know. It’s hard to see much of myself in that. I consider that I must be more like Kate, maybe if only for the fact that we both came to the same university, in the same city, through the same years of our lives.
Kate used to sing at Tilley’s in Lyneham, back when it was a lesbian club, while I now order soy lattes from the same venue. Kate had drinks in Union Court with her friends after class, which I do too, and modelled nude for students at the School of Art (another shared profession). She had shitty boyfriends, fought with her parents and sometimes she was reckless just because it was fun. She cycled down University Ave; studied at Chifley and attended classes in AD Hope and Copland. Balancing work and university made her stressed, not that she was particularly studious or dedicated to her work in bars, but she cut loose often and wholeheartedly.
Kate and myself, though we never met, have much in common. While at ANU we both cried in an academic office, both had too much to drink on too many occasions, both failed a course and both found ourselves at times in and out of love and lust. There is a closeness between us which extends beyond the superficialities of two twenty-something women. We feared and hoped for the same things, for ourselves and others, share the same hurts and frustrations.
Kate had the light in the 1980s and she was celestial.
I have the light now and though I think my shine might be dull in comparison to hers, I love my youth. I love coming home at all hours, having spent the night doing whatever with whomever. I love that the only person I have to take care of is myself, and that I can generally get away with only doing that to a passing grade of fifty percent.
When I float through Canberra I wonder if she felt the same freedom. I wonder if she felt the power in her beauty and trappings of youth that I do, or if she would have sneered at my vanity. At my age, like me, she never wanted to be a mother. Like me, she feared the sacrifice of her personhood and the weight of that responsibility. She never imagined losing Kate to Mum and likewise I cannot imagine myself under any other name than Rose. We both could never see ourselves choosing someone else over our own self-absorption and joyful recklessness, and yet one of us did.
The connection I feel to the unknowable Kate is spiritual and I carry her with me through every Canberra moment that we share. It sometimes feels as if I could bump into her at a party at an inner-north share house or sit down next to her in a sociology tutorial. I am enchanted by the woman I’ll never know, simultaneously mythologising and mourning her.
My Mum is brilliant and wild and known for her energy and authenticity. I would never mean to insinuate she became dull when she became Mum. But it’s true that Kate, in a way, died when Rose and Mum were born. It’s not a sad thing but I still long to meet her, the version of my mother who was just like me but brighter.
This distance between mother and daughter is essential of course. Mum says Kate would not have been a good mother and I believe her because I believe I also would make for an appalling and neglectful parent. But at twenty-two years old I would not look to Kate for her maternity. I would look to her in reverence of Mum and all that she sacrificed for me. I would look to her in veneration of youth and its joys. I would look to her and she to me as mother and daughter, seeing each other in ourselves and ourselves in each other.
Originally published in Woroni Vol. 72 Issue 5 ‘Cum As You Are’
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During Semester 1, 2021, a group of ANU students was formed to work with local community organisation SEE Change on the topic of “renaturalising” Sullivan’s creek. The ‘SEE’ in SEE Change stands for Society, Environment, and Economics and these are the “three pillars” of sustainability that underpin the framework used by our group. Our task was to create a report that considered key issues and explored a broad range of ways to approach the idea of “renaturalisation.”
What does renaturalisation mean?
Simply put, it means to return a place to its natural state. One area we focused on were the sections of the creek with concrete beds. How might we go about returning them back into soil and plants, and what are the potential benefits of doing so in terms of biodiversity, human wellbeing, economics, and community sustainability?
These are all important areas we wanted to address, but there’s something largely absent in these sorts of considerations: First Nations peoples and perspectives. I had the privilege of speaking briefly about this project with Dr. Virginia Marshall, the Inaugural Indigenous Postdoctoral Fellow with ANU’s School of Regulation and Global Governance and the Fenner School of Environment and Society, and a Wiradjuri Nyemba woman. With respect to our focus on flooding, she noted that:
“If we look at various concepts of living within an Aboriginal world view, the understanding of the benefits of floodplains and flooding is [that it is] nurturing to the entire environment. Why do we build near rivers that flood?”
She pointed to research into the colonial history surrounding areas like Gundagai, Daly River, and Wingecarribee River – among many others – where Aboriginal people warned settlers not to set up camp near rivers. We at the ANU have certainly set up camp here at the creek.
Referring to earlier discussions about the “three pillars” that began this article, she stated that a fourth pillar – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture – is considered as ‘core,’ adding that the “triple bottom line” employed by sustainability-minded organisations in homage to the three pillars framework would instead be a “five bottom line” in many Aboriginal communities where the fourth area of culture is joined by a fifth – law. These are different frameworks that open up a broader range of considerations.
What does natural mean?
To return a place to its natural state may seem self-explanatory, but what does “natural” actually mean? A state without human interaction? A time before human intervention? The Ngunnawal peoples, among others, have lived in this area for at least 20,000 years. Before colonisation, the entirety of Australia was what you might call an Indigenous constructed landscape. Dr. Marshall echoes these points, noting Bill Gammage’s appropriately titled work The Biggest Estate, as well as the work of Aboriginal authors Bruce Pascoe and Tyson Yunkaporta. Her own award-winning book, Overturning Aqua Nullius takes this same argument of an expanded, managed estate to the waters of Australia – so often forgotten in discourse that places Western words, frames, and concepts like “land” above other more inclusive Indigenous terms like “Country.”
We don’t need to rewind the local ecology 20,000 years to arrive at a time before these concrete blocks were placed, yet we use a word such as “natural” which implies an absence of humans. We could just as easily, and more accurately, describe this process as “re-Indigenising” if what we’re aiming for is the healthy Indigenous environment from just a few centuries ago.
The settler-colonisers who invaded this Country saw nature as something different to and separate from themselves. As early as the 1500s, influential legal thinkers like Grotius enshrined these ideas in frameworks of sovereignty. Later, Blackstone’s 1754 comments around ideas of agriculture and the right to take those civilisations deemed lacking it formed the basis of other disastrous concepts like terra nullius. These legal frameworks prevented settlers from seeing the landscape as something already “deeply shaped by people,” with severe and far-reaching consequences still felt today. We obviously want to avoid repeating those mistakes, but it’s often hard to do from the start when the language we use, and the way we’re taught to understand it, prominently features those same frames.
A similar idea is found in the concept of “wilderness.” In fact, a “rewilding” project for ANU was already raised long before our project began. The ANU Below Zero initiative is exploring ways to reduce campus emissions, and a community consultation document refers multiple times to the idea of “rewilding” campus. Again, this isn’t a bad idea, but perhaps we should be mindful of the framing here too.
A term like “wilderness” implies an absence of humans, perhaps even more strongly than the word “nature”. At the time of the interview, Dr. Marshall was planning to attend COP26 as a Pacific delegate, to engage in discussions around these issues, exploring “how we can learn from Indigenous knowledge and culture in working with an Indigenous environment”. She added that:
“Wild and wilding is a colonial concept that relates back to the colonial discourse of ‘prehistory’, ‘primitive’ and ‘nomads’. Indigenous peoples are very uncomfortable about these terms for good reasons.”
In Carving Wilderness, Tracey Banivanua Mar describes the creation of our national parks system and how it both depended upon, and reaffirmed, the concept of a deserted wilderness. This idea left no room – in the mind, or on Country – for Indigenous landscapes. In a related paper on ‘narratives of dispossession’, Mar continues this line of thought and considers these colonised landscapes as a kind of history text – one read through mere occupation, an act that constantly reaffirms those same ideas.
It’s important for us to appreciate the hidden values in frames like these so that we can work to also include thoughts beyond or outside them. Once we also start framing “nature” as “Indigenous environment” or similar, it opens new and exciting ways of thinking about problems like those concrete blocks.
Originally published in Woroni Vol. 72 Issue 5 ‘To Be Confirmed’
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