Published in November 2022, “sustenance” is edited by Talei Luscia Mangioni and Katerina Teaiwa. It has contributions from Brenda L. Croft, Joy Lehuanani Enomoto, Hineitimoana Greensill, Natalie Harkin, Kate Harriden, Lisa Hilli, Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, Jen Mason, Jess Pasisi, Emma Ngakuravaru Powell, T. Melanie Puka Bean, Niroshnee Ranjan, Janelle Stevenson, Sam Provost, Ray Tobler, Mary Spiers Williams and Robert Williams.

Click the following link, to download an e-copy of “Sustenance“.

Before the Oceania Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography’s “Australian South Sea Islander and Melanesian Life-Stories” workshop namba tu with Dr Melinda Mann, Kim Kruger and Imelda Miller, Talei Mangioni sat down with (Waskam) Emelda Davis to talk about her personal connections to Canberra, Black Power and new directions for Australian South Sea Islanders (ASSI) recognition in New South Wales and support with ASSI – Port Jackson and the City of Sydney.

Talei: We are here on unceded Ngambri/Ngunnawal/Ngunawal lands, however, this isn’t your first time here. I was wondering, could you tell us a little bit of how you came to find yourself here for eight years, many years ago?

Emelda: I know, right? No one would think that I would end up in Canberra, but I was. I was. I was born in Brisbane and raised in Chinderah, a small town on the border of New South Wales and Queensland. I grew up with my nanna, when my mum went to Sydney to pursue her career in nursing. I followed her to Sydney and as soon as I got there,  I got into a bit of a humbug with the people. So what happened? My mum sent me to Aunty Naru in Canberra who was here working for AIATSIS doing reception work. So what happened was she took me on. It was a bit of a “get this girl under control” situation because I was a bit of a tomboy growing up. I used to hang out in the mango trees, pinch money and go get chocolate at the corner store and other things like that, defiant.

My aunty Naru was renowned for being very strict. So I lived with my cousin, Houkje, who was Aunty Naru’s daughter and uncle Yelta. I can’t say anything other than “Alcatraz” in terms of how she ruled the household. I went to AME, the Association for Modern Education, and then I went to Narrabundah College after that. While I was going to school, I thought to myself, well, once I’ve done this time with Aunty Naru, I’m out of here when I’m 18. I just really wanted to break free. My friends at school, who were actually whitefellas – introduced me to musicians like Bob Marley and Bob Dylan which was very political for me. I resonated with that music.

I passed my Higher School Certificate, I turned 18 and I went to live at the Ainslie Aboriginal Girls Hostel. And that’s when I guess I stepped into my identity. My blackness. If I can say that, like it was a whole different vibe from Aunty Naru was a very closed off upbringing without anything too political. And I find that interesting because if my family’s a family of activism like they brought about working with Faith Bandler and Aunty Phyllis Corowa, with people who were at the helm of the Australian South Sea Islander recognition, human rights and equal opportunities report like they drove that from Tweed Heads. But I’m grateful for being sent to live with her, for the discipline and giving that foundation. I remember, the thing I looked forward to was driving home in an Old White Ford Falcon to Chinderah every year for Christmas to see my Nanna. Aunty Naru would give us elocution lessons on those drives, telling us to say things like “the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plane“. So it was sort of like assimilation practices, the manner in which she was bringing us up.

When I broke away from that whole scene and went with the mark, it was just freedom. So we all went and lived at Ainslie Aboriginal Girls hostel with a bunch of girls. I shared a room. I’ll never forget Sheree Oliver, a Torres Strait and South Sea Sailor family, and Trudy Warcon, Rhonda Jacobson, and Joy Williams. It was just all us girls and we had a blast. It was just like the knockout would come around and we’d go down to the Ainslie pub and just get reckless. I remember my boyfriend saying to me, then he said: “Oh my God, you’re so black now.” And, I thought, “Are you serious?” And I was his “African queen” and all that kind of carry on. So I was just like “Oh see ya”. It’s so sad.

And then we got involved with just so many other mob, like the Coe family and many different activist types. And it was around about the 70s and then that the Tent Embassy started and we would get involved and just hang out, and talk and get to know the community and people who came from everywhere.  It was really nice to connect and identify with family, protest and march. It was really an exciting time.

But I still just did what I had to do and survived it. We jumped around all over the place, share-houses here, there and everywhere. Woden, Belconnen, places like that. But then I thought, now there’s got to be more because we kept going to Sydney. That’s when I got a job working for film and television or ABC in 1983. I ended up going to Sydney permanently and we again hooked up with my family – Mum and Aunty May who were working as matrons, managing convalescent homes and doing hospital work. Before that, in Canberra I was at the Aboriginal Development Commission working in administration. But then getting involved in politics and everything that sort of transitioned me because it was all happening then for civil rights and blackfellas.

I was coming into my own identity. Yeah, and sort of understanding who I was because growing up, even with my nanna, it was very much about just “getting on”. Kids were seen and not heard and we weren’t engaged with in the capacity that I engage my kids today. So it was very much they did the hard yakka and then basically I navigated my own way in sort of researching and trying to understand things in terms of how do we identify? And also, my father, because he’s from the Caribbean, he came here in the late 50s and met my mum, so I didn’t grow up with him, but he was very much present in my thought process. When I first came to Sydney, when I was a 14 year old and mum took me from Canberra, that was eye opening because I was at the Black Theater. I think going back to Sydney then was like a reconnection with all of that scene in Redfern and just local communities, the Black diaspora. And it wasn’t just about Aboriginal and Torres Strait either, it was also the South Sea, Pacific, West Indians, Africans and just different mob, more because of that kind of era where you all congregate, all mixed up.

Talei: This is what Tracey Banivanua-Mar has explored in her book Decolonisation and the Pacific, whereby the notion of Black power in this era empowered different oppressed peoples, from the Black Pacific, in Australia, the greater Pacific and all over the world. Is it continuous with where we are today, or what’s changed?

Emelda: Today, I find it really sad and it’s really challenging, but then we talk about black power or black determination because there’s so much separatism. Like the mob, Aboriginal and Torres Strait will stay with Aboriginal Torres Strait, South Sea may be mixed with Torres Strait, but sometimes others would be separated out from Africans, West Indians and Pacific Islanders. So it’s really challenging. And also how people identify with being Black. I think we get caught up in that colonial framework where it’s really groomed us in our subconscious to be able to have that separate thinking, like if we’re really going to talk about decolonizing, if we’re really going to talk about, you know what that looks like, then we need to, first of all, get rid of that federation border thinking because we are where clans were a group of clans or cultural identities were not all New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. Yeah, because we weren’t brought in like that, we just brought in under people of colour, Blackness.

Talei: Totally, and I think for me as a Pacific settler, doing Oceanic or trans-Indigenous solidarity work, there is always so many tensions and collisions. It’s super hard work that I think these conversations can be really generative. And I also think your master’s thesis “Children of the Sugar Slaves” made mention of these enclaves of Black joy and creative experimentation, whether it be the Harlem Hideaway at Coogee Beach or the Black Theatre in Redfern really excited me to begin to think that my relationships are part of a greater genealogy of these political solidarity networks in this place here. Same goes for your personal history in Canberra just before.

Emelda: Exactly, but we found and recreated our own within. So that’s the decolonizing. You know, we didn’t think of it then as decolonizing, but we just did it organically because that’s who we are. We naturally gravitate and come together and create our own, you know, or navigate our own way forward rather than being controlled or guarded by others. So that natural ability and you know, and yes, look that that whole conflicting thing with all the talk, this mob and the need for positioning and power and all of that stuff, you know, we’re all guilty of that in a lot of ways. But how do we create a movement that’s going to overcome all of that?

Talei: Congratulations too on the amazing notice of motion put forward to the City of Sydney on recognition and support to Australian South Sea Islanders earlier this year. Reflecting on our recent conversation, I wanted to finish by asking: what are your future hopes and plans going forward with the City of Sydney and ASSI Port Jackson?

Emelda: I think look for us at the city of Sydney, the hopes and plans are for Australia to know and understand the impact and the history that Blackbirding has had for both our Pacific island states and Australia, and also how it built the success of the Australian economy. You can’t deny the foundation that this country was built on South Sea Islander labour. We need to get that recognition, to see it included as a mandatory part of the curriculum. If the Australian government is truly talking about improving our relationship with the Pacific, well we have Pacific families, we’ve got the original ones right here. There are some 70,000 descendants living in this country who are still unrecognised for the contribution of their forebearers. And that needs to be included across our education programs and services. Paramount health and incarceration issues need to be addressed. There’s also the fact that public structures, public narratives and public art need to be at key locations for ASSI communities.

Perhaps starting with Sydney Port Jackson acknowledging that Sydney Harbour has been a receiving port since the 1790s for all Pacific labour. It’s not even a small thing that we’re talking about, and it’s still today a continuum of receiving our people. Australia is home to the largest Melanesian population outside of their island states. When are we going to recognize that and include that? You know, Australian South Sea Islanders have contributed through the 60,000 plus people in building the economy and there needs to be representation at all those locations and sites and as we do for First Nations. And how do we build that relationship and work better together with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait, Australian South Sea Islander and  Pacific people because we are one family? What does that look like?

For the City of Sydney, what is the point of me being here if I can’t put this motion forward today? I represent my mob first. I’ve only been there two months, but this has to go forward before I can even think about helping the city because no one’s helped us. That’s my mantra. That’s my foresight for our city of Sydney, is for everybody to understand and include us.

*

(Waskam) Emelda Davis is the first Australian South Sea Islander (ASSI) Councillor of diverse indigenous heritage to serve on the Lord Mayoral governing team to the City of Sydney Council in its 180-year history. Emelda is a passionate resident of Pyrmont with strong links to her local community, as well as a strong advocate for cultural diversity and greater inclusion for her First Nations, Pacific, Caribbean, CALD and Australian South Sea Islander communities. Emelda is a second generation born ASSI and is Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander heritage of the Santo families across far North QLD, Cape York, Bamaga and Erub Island as well as Caribbean descent. In recognition of her leadership Emelda bears two important skin names Waskam of ni Vanuatu as a descendant of Australia’s Pacific Slave trade and Lumbuman of the Wadeye Aboriginal women’s group from Port Keats Northern Territory these names are customary recognition of her community standing. For well over a decade Emelda has spearheaded a voluntary social justice campaign as one of the founding members/chair of national body ASSI – Port Jackson which consulted widely the National ASSI Association constitution supported by Gilbert + Tobin Lawyers. Having worked for federal, state and grassroots organisations Emelda exhibits a deep respect and culturally diverse insight with sound expertise and lived experience in community capacity building, education, and training. Holding a Master of Arts degree from the University of Technology Sydney, Emelda completed the first ASSI oral history research doctorate by an ASSI person through the Networking Tranby ARC Scholarship titled Children of the Sugar Slaves – ‘Black and Resilient.’ Under Emelda’s leadership ASSIPJ have revived the focus on ‘The Call for Recognition’ for the descendants of Australia’s Pacific slave trade through the coordination of seven ‘Wantok’ national workshops between 2012-2015, the development a National ASSI Association constitution adopted at Tweed Heads (NSW 2015). NSW Parliament Recognition in 2013 and 2014 Federal Parliament Recognition of slavery.  In response to climate change natural disasters with support of local Sydney first responder organisations ASSIPJ procured the necessary resources to rebuild Pacific nation communities in Vanuatu and Fiji delivering 2Mil worth of national disaster resources for cyclone devastated communities while working on the ground with culturally specific women’s groups stationed across island provinces. Emelda has been an active member for the COVID-19 to 2022 response Health Directory for Pacific Communities coordinated by NSW Council for Pacific Communities and Multicultural NSW. Recently (2022) Emelda distributed 500k worth of national sanitiser resources across states to Indigenous, Pacific, Seasonal Worker’s and broader communities. In combating Modern Slavery after ASSIPJ 2017 federal government submission Emelda continues to work with Government and community representatives as an advocate for genuine change across Department of Foreign Affairs, State and Pacific nations to foster culturally specific and community led solutions for the Pacific Labour Mobility Scheme (PLMS). 2022 ASSIPJ board completed a per review for the Pacific Island Forum Secretariat consulting 17 Island states, New Zealand and Australia Pacific Labour Mobility. Emelda was a key advocate in 2019 in the establishment of the Australian Museums – Pacific Cultural Collection Advisory Panel to one of the world’s largest collection of relics, appointed to the Board of Trustees for the International Coalition Sites of Conscious (ICSOC), Sydney NSW committee – International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). Emelda has worked extensively as a producer, event manager, film, TV, media, and marketing practitioner as well as across sports, music, and arts platforms. Her continued advocacy builds on existing relationships as a global leader for First Nations, Australian South Sea Islander, Pacific, and Broader community cohesion. April 2022 the City of Sydney Council adopted Emelda’s notice of motion to recognise and support for the ASSI community and to raise the ASSI flag at Sydney Town Hall annually on the 25th of August. Some 500 Councils (August 12^th) across Australia received a co-signed letter by Lord Mayor Clover Moore and Clr Davis calling for their colleagues to adopt all or part of the resolution. Elected in 2021 Emelda serves the City of Sydney as the Deputy Chair of ‘Resilient Communities Committee’, is the Lord Mayor delegate on the ‘Indigenous Advisory Panel’, LMD on the ‘Multicultural Advisory Panel’ and is the Alternate Chair for both Local Pedestrian Cycling & Traffic Calming and Central City Planning Committees coupled with Council representative to City Business events and Community Advocacy Groups.

Extract of our community engagement on Vanuatu/Pacific/ASSI:

Over the past decade, the success of our Advocacy and Pastoral Care services in providing the necessary culturally specific support and local community management framework is evident in the strength of our grassroots ASSI network organisations and the number of instances where we have furthered the employment opportunities of our peoples through the operation of our compassionate care networks.

ASSIPJ have worked effectively and collaboratively where we assisted our female and male workers in coping with mental wellness and health issues, soft skills education, 24-hour outreach through local leaders and grassroots associations, national disaster resources, covid response distribution and receiving country culturally specific networks, translation services, emergency housing, sustenance and troubleshooting broader communication with authorities.

We have been recognised for this work and awarded by federal, state, local and grassroots community organisations and testimonials.

Board:

http://www.assipj.com.au/assipj-board-members-2020/

Wantok strategy Team:

http://www.assipj.com.au/wantok-strategy-team/

Testimonials:

http://www.assipj.com.au/testimonials/

Website:

http://www.assipj.com.au/

*

This event is supported by the Oceania Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, the ANU Gender Institute and the Decolonial Possibilities/Decolonising the Academy: Trans-Indigenous Possibilities, School of Culture, History and Language Flagship for College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.  It was organised by Katerina Teaiwa, Talei Luscia Mangioni and Nicholas Hoare.

The Oceania Working Party is chaired by Katerina Teaiwa and supported by CHL since 2020.  The Oceania Working Party is one of ten specialised working parties at the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) tasked with drawing up lists of individuals for inclusion in the ADB and giving advice on appropriate authors. The working party consists of 22 experts in the fields of Pacific History and Pacific Studies and uses Pacific Biography in Australia as its platform for disseminating news, research and other findings. Talei Luscia Mangioni and Nicholas Hoare are the research officers for the Oceania Working Party.

For more information goto: www.facebook.com/PacificBiographyInAustralia or email: OceaniaWorkingParty@gmail.com

In April 2022, the Oceania Working Party held their second workshop focused on “Australian South Sea Islander and Melanesian Life-Stories” with Dr Melinda Mann, Kim Kruger and Imelda Miller. The workshop brought together Australian South Sea Islander/South Sea Islander (ASSI/SSI) women from across what is now known as Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales. The focus of this workshop was to discuss the importance of familial and community life-stories, the ethics and community protocols on work with ASSI communities and strategies for doing Pacific Biography in Australia.

Chair of the Oceania Working Party, Professor Katerina Teaiwa opened the session with an acknowledgement of Country followed by a more general position statement outlining the Oceania Working Party’s commitment to Pacific Studies in solidarity with Aboriginal, Torres Strait and South Sea Islander sovereignties and life-stories. She said:

Professor Melanie Nolan, Director of the ANU’s National Centre of Biography, then introduced the audience to some of the work that the OWP in collaboration with the Australian Dictionary of Biography has been doing:

To properly begin the workshop, Dr Melinda Mann, Kim Kruger and Imelda Miller introduced themselves to the room and those on Zoom through their family genealogies with connections to their South Sea Islander forebearers from the Pacific Islands, specifically Vanuatu and Kanaky/New Caledonia. This was followed by a moving speech by Dr Mann to help workshop participants understand the critical need for accountability from Pacific peoples living and settling on unceded and stolen Aboriginal lands, relating the story of her own Darumbal and South Sea Islander ancestors. She highlighted:

This was followed by a presentation by Imelda Miller who spoke about her experiences working at the Queensland Museum and doing ASSI community outreach and engaging with archives. She stated:

Kim Kruger then gave an overview of South Sea Islander life writing over time from individual autobiographies of Faith Bandler to Noel Fatnowna as well as community histories from Mackay and Rockhampton. She highlighted that these were important in challenging the narrative that “slavery didn’t exist” in Australia.

This was then followed by two entries that both Melinda Mann and Kim Kruger had been working on about their relatives: Mabel Edmund and Lisa Bellear. Melinda Mann considered writing biography as “cultural, relational and liberation”. She talked about her Aunty Mabel as an Indigenous leader, writer and artist, appreciating the impact that she had on herself, as well as acknowledging that “her legacy belongs to her children and her children’s children”. Similarly,  Kim Kruger’s entry on her cousin, Lisa Bellear, will be an important “narrative authority” of community members by community. She emphasised the need for community control in these spaces:

Kruger’s entry was commissioned by the Indigenous Working Party of the ADB (IADB). The OWP is following the lead of IADB in terms of codifying protocols and ethics on doing Pacific biography. These two biographies were important in paving the way for a wonderful conversation on what the Oceania Working Party and our members can do in these spaces. We were fortunate to have the chair of the Australian South Sea Islanders (Port Jackson) and City of Sydney Councillor (Waskam) Emelda Davis as well as the Vanuatu High Commissioner to Australia Samson Fare in the audience for the day. Their insights about working with local governments on the question of recognition and connecting back to Pacific communities in the islands were appreciated by all. Overall, the workshop was a valuable milestone for the OWP and their work in considering how to engage both ASSI and Pacific communities around these issues. We look forward to continuing this work!

*

This event was supported by the Oceania Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, the ANU Gender Institute and the Decolonial Possibilities/Decolonising the Academy: Trans-Indigenous Possibilities, School of Culture, History and Language Flagship for College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.  It was organised by Katerina Teaiwa, Talei Luscia Mangioni and Nicholas Hoare.

The Oceania Working Party is chaired by Katerina Teaiwa and supported by CHL since 2020.  The Oceania Working Party is one of ten specialised working parties at the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) tasked with drawing up lists of individuals for inclusion in the ADB and giving advice on appropriate authors. The working party consists of 22 experts in the fields of Pacific History and Pacific Studies and uses Pacific Biography in Australia as its platform for disseminating news, research and other findings. Talei Luscia Mangioni and Nicholas Hoare are the research officers for the Oceania Working Party.

For more information go to: www.facebook.com/PacificBiographyInAustralia or email: OceaniaWorkingParty@gmail.com

School of Culture, History and Language PhD scholars, Matthew Adeleye in dialogue with Talei Mangioni

Edited by Niroshnee Ranjan

Featured Image: Matthew arriving at the southeast coast of Cape Barren Island, Bass Strait, for sample collection for their PhD research. Photo taken by Feli Hopf.

Talei: From 2019-2020, the unforgettable Black Summer bush fires engulfed unceded Ngunnwal/Ngambri Country in a smoke-bowl of toxic haze for several months. For those living in the settler-colonial nation-state’s heart, otherwise known as Canberra, this was for many settlers their first direct experience of catastrophic climate change. For Aboriginal peoples who were among those most impacted, this was yet another chapter in a long legacy of environmental plunder, which can be directly attributable to the government’s appalling mismanagement of lands and waters and unsustainable economic dependence on resource extraction. 

In this piece and Q&A, Mathew Adeleye explains his research and considers his relationality to Indigenous knowledges and Country, highlights the importance of meaningful Indigenous-settler collaborations in research and the need to center Indigenous voices in the process. 

Matthew: Traditional knowledge is now increasingly gaining attention in many parts of the world to inform ecosystem management strategies under the current changing climate and never-seen-before wildfire regimes. Traditional historical knowledge is being promoted in South America, North America, and Australia to preserve ecosystem biodiversity and minimize impacts and rates of damaging wildfires. In particular, the Indigenous traditional fire management approach in northern Australia is considered one of the best and most successful globally, demonstrating how valuable traditional knowledge is in informing effective management strategies. 

The application of traditional knowledge begins with researchers recognizing Indigenous legacies on the landscape and conducting research in partnership with Indigenous communities. This helps to better interpret research findings, especially in the context of anthropogenic roles. Personally, I have found this to be invaluable in my Ph.D. research. My research focuses on understanding past links between ecosystems, climate, fire, and anthropogenic land use in southeast Australia, especially in the Bass Strait region.

My research involves visiting truwana (which is also known as Cape Barren Island in the Bass Strait) for sample collection. The results of my research could not have been achieved without the field assistance, local expertise, and hospitality provided by truwana and Pakana Indigenous communities. Aside from the field assistance and hospitality provided, the conversations I had with some of the community members and my supervisor regarding the island’s history really helped interpret my research results. Some of these conversations include Indigenous plant use, human occupation history, and traditional land management strategies. After the fieldwork, it was exciting to find out that my research findings were consistent with these Indigenous oral accounts. 

For instance, Indigenous people are believed to have used frequent, low-intensity fires to maintain open woodlands to increase resource availability. This burning practice, in turn, reduced the likelihood of climate-driven mega-fire occurrences in southeast Australia in the past. My research results similarly show (empirically) that Indigenous frequent burning maintained open woodland on truwana, reducing the likelihood of climate-driven fire spread in the past. Conversely, periods of reduced Indigenous cultural burning promoted denser woody vegetation and widespread fires, which was exacerbated after European colonisation. Furthermore, I found that periods of frequent Indigenous fire usage in woodlands specifically promoted peppermint eucalypts, which are gum trees (Eucalyptus) that mostly occupy open vegetation on truwana today, reflecting Indigenous people’s role in the maintenance of Australia’s biodiversity for millennia.

Matthew on truwana (Cape Barren Island) in Bass Strait carrying a sediment core during sample collection on the island, with the truwana Indigenous community’s assistance. Photo taken by Feli Hopf.

Even though climatic changes have played a role in past fire regimes in southeast Australia, the consistency of my results with Indigenous accounts provided the opportunity to make multifaceted inferences and robust conclusions in my research, which will assist in informing future ecosystem management in Australia. 

In summary, sparking engaging dialogues with the Indigenous community in a research study area goes a long way in helping to shape research questions and result interpretations, especially when conducting environmental, ecological and historical research. Hence, integrating Indigenous knowledge with scientific research makes for better science.

Talei: How did you become interested in this particular field of study? How does your positionality as a Nigerian scholar who is an international student studying on stolen land shape your research and engagement with Indigenous communities and to Country?

Mathew: During my undergraduate years back in Nigeria, my course advisor, a palynology lecturer (Prof. Peter Adeonipekun), through series of undertaken paleontology courses (study of plant pollen and spores), helped me develop an interest in pollen studies, particularly in their usage in past environmental reconstructions (palaeoecology). This facilitated me to obtain a master’s degree in palaeoecology. During my master’s degree in Canada, my supervisor then (Prof. Terri Lacourse) further helped not only in sharpening my skills in palaeoecology but also exposed me to research possibilities and increased my passion for the field, prompting me to further explore the world of palaeoecology at the Ph.D. level in Australia under Prof. Simon Haberle’s supervision. I have no regrets choosing this field.

Being an Indigenous person (Yoruba tribe) myself in my home country (Nigeria) has helped me connect with the history, significance, and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples in Australia, especially in terms of their connections to the landscape (plants, animals, waters, mountains, rocks and so on). For instance, in Nigeria and in many parts of Africa, many people depend largely on the environment for medicine. Personally, I have only visited the hospital a few times in Nigeria and have mostly used plant-based medicine. Rivers and mountains are also associated with cultural and spiritual beliefs in many parts of Africa. This is similar to Indigenous land usage for livelihood, cultural practices, and well being in Australia for millennia, and European colonisation may be translated to ripping Indigenous people off their livelihood, well being and culture, which is devastating. 

Talei: Indigenous peoples have a complicated relationship to Western science, especially since its implicit racial bias has justified their subjugation. How can we action this solidarity between Indigenous and settler scientists in Australia? 

Mathew: That is a good and complex question. I think a good starting point may be to admit the limits of Western science and the need for Indigenous knowledge. Thereafter to encourage settler scientists to partner meaningfully with Indigenous communities in countries where their research is being conducted. By involving the local community representative/body in every step of their research projects, there is a better opportunity to forge solidarity. 

I believe Indigenous-settler collaboration in research can be generative and can produce beneficial results to non-scientific Indigenous and settler communities, as well as, scientific and academic communities. Such collaboration, for instance, can provide Indigenous students access to educational materials that could help in understanding Indigenous history, culture, art and craft, music, language, and so on, and at the same time aid in understanding the contributing roles of science in helping to reveal this information. 

Western science and Indigenous knowledge are both important for development in the society and none can be discarded. Creating awareness on the importance of these knowledge facets will help eliminate potential negative outcomes. This means making Western setters understand why Indigenous knowledge and expertise is paramount to achieving a better and sustainable Australia, and vice versa.

Talei: How do you ensure accountability to the truwana and Pakana communities that you work with? How does this study intend to serve these communities to reach a vision of Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous ownership of fire-management practices? 

Mathew: The truwana Indigenous community (which is part of Pakana) is involved in every step of my research, including their approval for manuscript publications. An ongoing conversation is also maintained regarding research findings and potential future research. At the end of my research, the scientific and plain-language versions of my findings will be presented to the truwana community, including the local school students. These documents will also be provided to the community for future use, especially for teachings in secondary schools. 

The confirmation of Indigenous fire-management practices in the past in my research supports current cultural management practices, which will further affirm the necessity of using Indigenous cultural burning strategies to protect Country. 

Matthew Adeleye, an international student and temporary settler of Nigerian heritage, moved to Australia to undertake his Ph.D candidature in Archaeology and Natural History at the School of Culture, History, and Language. Adeleye’s research focuses on understanding the environmental history of South-East Australia over the last 35,000 years using fossil plant materials. Adeleye’s research has become increasingly pertinent in the time of severe climate crisis. Indigenous peoples across Australia are grieving the loss of (in)tangible cultural heritage and calling for the healing of Country and environmental justice through the re-assertion of Indigenous land management such as cultural burning practices. 

Talei Luscia Mangioni is currently a Pacific Studies PhD candidate in the School of Culture, History and Language. Talei was born and raised on Gadigal land of the Eora Nation and is a settler of Fijian and Italian descent. She is currently a Research Officer on the CHL funded Indigenous Remix and Decolonial Possibilities flagship. Her PhD research charts the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement through historical ethnography and creative works.

Featuring: Katerina Teaiwa, Janelle Stevenson, Talei Luscia Mangioni and Bianca Hennessy. Edited by Trish Tupou. Images by Talei Luscia Mangioni and Akil Ahamat. 

In this introductory blog post, we talk to some of the original organising committee behind the “Decolonising the Academy” project and ask each member to reflect on their learnings, a year on.  In tandem with the film, “Decolonising the Academy: Trans-Indigenous Possibilities,” we hear how being involved in this project manifested slightly different musings, though ultimately bringing everyone together through a shared drive to “unsettle” themselves and others within the academic space of the Australian National University (ANU). 

Katerina Teaiwa has led the project from its inception in 2018, with an aim to draw attention to the movement of Indigenous scholars across Oceania doing work to decolonise and reclaim space and knowledge. As an Associate Professor in the School of Culture, History and Language (CHL), and one of only a few Pacific Islander academics at the ANU, it was important to create deeper connections between work being done by Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) academics locally with those across the region. Through this flagship workshop, Katerina was able to create a place for academics and artists to come together and nurture the broader genealogies that connect Indigenous scholars across Australia and the Pacific. 

Janelle Stevenson is also from the School of Culture, History and Language and is an Associate Professor in Natural History. After connecting with Katerina at a workshop focussed on education delivery, the idea of the flagship was born. The vision of the project has grown and changed considerably since late 2018 and as a person of privilege, Janelle acknowledges the need for herself and others to make way for BIPOC voices within the academy.

As one of the film maker’s, Talei Luscia Mangioni reflects on what it was like to experience the workshop through the double-bind of being both physically present but also seeing everything through the lens. She meditates on the labour of Pacific Islander women in the academy and the often subtle violence of editing, whilst also contemplating what the goals of the project will mean for her as a Pasifika woman journeying through her PhD. 

Bianca Hennessy joined the project in 2018, when it was still in the proposal stages. She sets the scene for us with some sensory memories of Uncle Wally’s welcome to Country and brings the overall workshop into conversation with broader conflicts of organising within a settler colonial space. Asking, how do we learn to let go and surrender when the structures that are in place demand the opposite from us? Importantly, Bianca reflects on her positionality as a white woman within the workshop and how this experience was challenging yet crucial. 

On the 27th of October 2019, several Indigenous artists, academics, activists and other interested members of the community gathered at the Kambri Amphitheatre to be led on a welcome to country by Uncle Wally Bell, of Ngunnawal Country. This was the beginning of a three-day event of workshops and community building. Originally titled “Indigenous Peoples and the Regional Remix: Trans-Indigenous Approaches to Decolonising the Academy,” the CHL flagship event was made up of four main goals. Firstly, to foster trans-Indigenous conversations across the ANU and other institutions in order to share decolonial ways of thinking, teaching, and doing research. Secondly, to strengthen the potential of transdisplinary Indigenous studies; thirdly, to emphasise the importance of Indigenous wellbeing within the academic space and finally, to create a short film bringing these conversations together in an accessible way.  

Reflecting on these goals, what were some ways that you were able to foster trans-Indigenous conversations with attendees? What did this look like for you and how did it feel? 

Bianca: To tell you what I learned from our workshop, I’d tell you to think about how it feels to be in the warming October sun on Ngunnawal country. How it was a dry spring that preceded an achingly dry summer. How we walked slowly, how we hushed gently to listen, how we moved our bodies, how we wept. How Uncle Wally’s voice slid over a calm creek and how the morning light caught Natalie’s basket of woven archival paper. How it feels to be proud of something like a project and a place that was never really yours to begin with. 

I think a lot about the ways that coloniality breathes in our actions and non-actions, behaviours, language and norms. In academic gatherings we try to control everything, to make sure we know what’s going to happen. We curate who’s invited or accepted, we pre-approve what they will talk about, we plan for metric-friendly outputs like publications or keynotes. If we’re feeling really bold, maybe we’ll have a public forum. Ironically, while our ostensible purpose might be to learn and to share what we learn, the conditions of our universities – in which scarcity and competition reign – preclude us from standing back to let that happen. I think that if you dig deep enough, these tightly controlled knowledge practices have a lot to do with the ways that settler colonialism operates. Settler colonialism thrives under our desire to control, to know, to predict, to classify, to stratify, to disenchant, and to silence. 

I think it’s significant, then, that our workshop deliberately eschewed such attempts at control. We spent over a year thinking over our plans and goals, and hit roadblocks whenever we tried to plan too rigidly or elicit specific outcomes. This is not to say that we expected less of our participants because of who they were – if anything, we knew them well enough to expect more – but that a crucial part of running this workshop was to surrender, as much as possible, our sense of control over what could happen, and what would come out of it. Through the creation of such a space, we were able to spend our time getting to know one another. We gained a deeper sense of the different ways each person related to their academic and artistic work.  

What happens in this type of space can (and perhaps should) create challenges for white settler scholars like myself. Being white within structures of white supremacy lulls one into a kind of complacency that is as slow as it is violent. Not acting is acting, but passivity makes you feel absolved of wrongdoing. To reckon productively with whiteness, to begin to rattle its calcified bones from the inside, you need to feel uncomfortable. Viscerally, bodily, and emotionally ill-at-ease. Moments of our workshop did that, and I’m grateful for it. I’m learning that in such discomfort, acts of care towards myself and towards others are crucial for sustaining the marathon of decolonial work.  

Indigenous wellbeing was an important part of the Indigenous Peoples and the Regional Remix gathering. What does wellbeing look like for you and how is it a part of your own practice as a member of the academy?  

Katerina: Wellbeing should be a cornerstone of any research, teaching and learning institution and it’s particularly critical for indigenous teachers and students. Structurally and historically, places of higher education have lower numbers of Indigenous peoples from Australia and the Pacific Islands region. When you’re a minority within such institutions the pressures are often higher than other groups as you balance traumas and stresses that you’ve inherited from your ancestors with structural marginalization in the present. Culturally, we’re often raised to put others before ourselves which means our own wellbeing is deprioritised. This makes it even more important to pay attention to physical and mental health issues and support other groups in similar positions in the academy.  

My main approach to wellbeing is to de-link my personal identity from my scholarly one. Family, my husband and children, my parents, sisters and their families, and the communities I come from are prioritised. I avoid working on weekends or after hours, if possible. I helped found an ANU Family-friendly committee to bring attention to the needs of diverse carers in our campus community. I also have a visual arts practise that is an important outlet for my research that challenges the norms in humanities and social sciences to produce knowledge primarily for ranked scholarly journals and books. Creativity and spirituality are a major source of wellbeing, as is my regular fitness regime. 

My background is in Pacific Studies where you’re regularly in trans-Indigenous and “remix” mode. By that I mean, Pacific Studies is a regional area studies space where you’re thinking on and between disciplines, islands, cultures, states and territories occupied by many indigenous communities and more recent migrants and settler-colonial groups. It’s a transdisciplinary, multi-sited, and trans-Indigenous space where you need to understand not just one place or culture but what the region is as a whole, and how the different peoples, places, events, kinship and other networks fit and relate to each other across time and place. There’s a constant remix of approaches, ideas, methods and ways of being, knowing and doing.  

Scholars often produce texts that others outside their disciplinary circles don’t engage with. How can we talk about decolonising anything if we continue to operate in exclusive circles? What we do in the academy needs to be accessible to diverse audiences. For this reason, I’m glad we went with a film rather than another kind of output for our flagship project. Producing films or similar media content is something I’ve always wanted to do in the academy as I feel that this is one of the main forms of storytelling that the general public consumes. I’ve produced visual studies and films in my own research and visual arts practices. Years ago, while heading Gender, Media and Cultural Studies in our School, I produced a video called “ANU Happy” linking to all the global remix videos of the popular Pharrell Williams song. It went better than planned and I’ve been hoping for another CHL opportunity since. As a school, however, we aren’t experts at this, our film is experimental and we’re interested in people’s feedback. I’m so grateful to Akil and Talei, Janelle and Bianca, the whole organising team, and to our workshop participants for being willing to work on this and share their stories and knowledge through this format.  

It was great to be able to bring in early and mid-career scholars and others to participate and build a network thinking about decolonising the academy. This is something that Indigenous, scholars of colour and many others are thinking and writing about across the world. We hope our film contributes to that broader conversation and that the website provides a forum for and resources in support of decolonial possibilities in and beyond Oceania.   

Janelle: Being part of this initiative was challenging and uplifting and I am so thankful to all the participants. Like Katerina, I attempt to prioritise family and friends over work, but often fail. While we know that women in particular still struggle with the workloads imposed by our respective institutions, what became apparent over the course of the event is that this is so much greater for our Indigenous colleagues and in particular Indigenous women. This is where relieving some of this burden and at the same time making room for others is so important for those of us in positions of greater privilege. Something I am still learning to do with more elegance and grace. Bianca spoke eloquently of the need ‘to let go’ but how numerous institutional impediments make being generous toward our fellow co-workers so difficult. Those of us who consider ourselves allies need to feel uncomfortable and reckon with our ‘white fragility’ from time to time. Breaking the mould and learning to give up some of our privilege is a path to greater wellbeing for everyone. 

What are some of your reflections after making the “Decolonising the Academy: Trans-Indigenous Possibilities” film? How does this relate/shift/build upon your experiences of the flagship project as a whole?  

Talei: As a Pasifika woman with limited experience of the academy, it was both inspiring and terrifying to talanoa earnestly with established artist-scholars about the institutional challenges they had endured during the flagship event. The 1-on-1 and group interview formats we used during the workshop were good because it set up an intergenerational dynamic where I was able to ask my (mostly unsophisticated, rarely on-point) questions. Then editing the film led me to unwittingly memorise some of the responses people gave in the interviews. A few times this year, things would happen in the academy and it would bring to mind some of the interviews, and I would be like, “Oh… that’s what Alice meant when she said X Y Z” or “Faye was so right there”. My relationship to the film is complicated in a way because I felt like the edit was a subtle violence in itself since it cut out so much of the lengthy and rhythmic conversations that were had. 

In particular, the film made me think a lot about labour in the academy. It serves as a reminder to me of all the amazing Indigenous academics who often wear multiple hats inside and outside of institutions. Watching the film has made me reflect on the unequal distribution of labour that tends to burden Indigenous women in the academy. It made me think of how I can best be an accomplice to Indigenous peoples on lands that are not my own and how thoughtful and complementary relations can be made between Indigenous studies and Pacific studies, both of which have their unique intellectual genealogies. 

For me, trans-disciplinarity is meaningful in Pacific studies because it encourages alternate and creative forms of knowledge production that move beyond tedious texts and honour our heritage and ancestors. I remember reading somewhere that Albert Wendt once said that “all art is research” which I believe to be true and often unacknowledged. It reminds me that most academics certainly don’t think the opposite and believe that “all research is art”. This definitely shows in the type of research that is considered valuable and authentic by today’s standards that earns you academic points. I agree with Greg Dening who said: “imagination is an act of solidarity” and those are words that I live by in terms of my research outputs and storytelling form. Even if this type of labour and research is not unacknowledged by institutions in Australia, I believe it is more powerful and accessible to people from all walks of life.  

Indigenous wellbeing is something that I feel like is going to be a question that I try to answer for the rest of my life (or as long as I am in the academy). What I do know is that the competitive nature of the academy and the work-life routines it encourages, often has debilitating impacts and it takes us away from our bodies and relationships with each other. I think for me, wellbeing is and will be in future an ongoing reassertion and revaluing of my body. It’s not locking myself in my office all day, it’s talking to people around me, moving around beyond campus and giving myself time-off for pleasure in my daily life. It’s also about feeling part of a collective, or a recipient of a genealogy of scholars before me, with the intention of trying to leave the academy in a better state than I originally found it in for future Pacific scholars.  

*** 

This blog is supplementary to the film “Decolonising the Academy: Trans-Indigenous Possibilities.” We will feature opinion pieces from BIPOC writers as we continue to think about how to decolonise the academy and what that means for us as learners, educators, activists, artists and Indigenous peoples. Next month’s dialogue post will work through what it means to teach about blackness in the Pacific and Australia during the current momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement.