“Sustenance: decolonial recipes for wellbeing, self and community care in the academy” is a small chapbook that emerged from an informal workshop and online activity held in October 2021. It serves us now as what Narungga academic and poet Natalie Harkin described as a creative “touchstone” of some of our thoughts in the form of recipes, notes, poems, images, playlists, and other forms, that emerged from our virtual gathering. We come from diverse Indigenous, Pacific and other cultures from across Oceania who now live and work in the Australian settler colony, Aotearoa/New Zealand and, occupied state of Hawai’i. The workshop allowed us to share new and old approaches – ingredients – to sustain emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing within community, family, institutional and work-from-home sites of teaching, research, administration and outreach. We hope that this little offering of “sustenance” provides a bit of inspiration for our friends, communities and colleagues facing similar struggles across the academy. We hope it also lingers in the archival chronicle as a testament to and reminder of how we just get on with things, and how we can return to and expand these recipes for care and creative survival in future iterations of our collective work.
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“.