Journal articles on the topic 'Hunting Animal rights Environmental ethics'

Faced with the choice between supporting industrial plant agriculture and hunting, Tom Regan’s rights view can be plausibly developed in a way that permits a form of hunting we call “dignitarian.” To motivate this claim, we begin by showing how the empirical literature on animal deaths in plant agriculture suggests that a non-trivial amount of hunting would not add to animal harm. We discuss how Tom Regan’s miniride principle appears to morally permit hunting in that case, and we address recent objections by Jason Hanna to environmentally-based culling that may be seen to speak against this conclusion. We then turn to dignity, which is especially salient in scenarios where harm is necessary or justifiable. We situate “dignitarian” hunting within a larger framework of adversarial ethics, and argue that dignitarian hunting gives animals a more dignified death than the alternatives endemic to large-scale plant agriculture, and so is permissible based on the kinds of principles that Regan endorses. Indeed, dignitarian hunting may actually fit better with Regan’s widely endorsed animal rights framework than the practice of many vegans, and should only be rejected if we’re just as willing to condemn supporting conventional plant agriculture.

The legibility of the inter-relationships between human and seal is what is at stake when Inuit present themselves within administrative discourses at international assemblies in defense of their ontology and the right to hunt seals. In the language of administration and in the narrative practices of international animal rights, seals can only appear in a predetermined categorical framework for what constitutes human ethical responsibility to nature. The seal in animal rights discourse is one type of object that needs saving in the form of protective measures to keep her safe from the rapacious greed of capitalism. However, in Indigenous cultural practices, the seal is another relative, a relation whose presence makes all certainties about hierarchies, use-value, moral exemptions, and human exceptionalism impossible. Using the trending social media phenomenon of the “sealfie” and three contemporary northern Indigenous films, this essay argues that the Inuit use of these media formats showcases their cultural and economic dependence on seal hunting and restructures debates around authority, self-representation, and one-sided environmental protection activities. Resumen El entendimiento de las interrelaciones entre ser humano y foca está en juego cuando los Inuit usan el lenguaje institucional en foros internacionales para defender su realidad y el derecho a cazar focas. En el lenguaje administrativo y en las prácticas discursivas de los derechos internacionales de los animales, las focas únicamente pueden aparecer como un marco categórico predeterminado de lo que constituye la responsabilidad ética del ser humano con la naturaleza. La foca en el lenguaje de los derechos de los animales es un objeto que necesita salvarse mediante medidas protectoras que las salvaguarden de la avaricia agresiva del capitalismo. Sin embargo, en las prácticas culturales indígenas la foca es percibida como un familiar, un pariente cuya presencia hace imposible nuestra certitud sobre jerarquías, el valor de uso, la impunidad moral, y la excepcionalidad humana. Usando la moda de las redes sociales en auge, el “sealfie” y tres películas contemporáneas indígenas del Norte, este ensayo argumenta que los usos inuit de estos formatos mediáticos ponen de manifiesto su dependencia cultural y económica en la caza de focas, y reestructura debates en cuanto a la autoridad, la autorepresentación, y las actividades de protección medioambiental monodireccionales.

A challenge to the validity of the Hunting Act 2004 in human rights and EC law was recently rejected by the Court of Appeal on the ground that the Act's ethical purpose required judicial deference to the legislature. We argue that the variety of ethical perspectives engaged by the blanket ban on hunting and the traditions of liberalism demand that the courts ensure that Parliament has properly taken into account all competing perspectives. Although the proportionality principle is crucial in this regard, its application in both human rights and EC contexts gives rise to significant uncertainties and difficulties.

The paper reviews the recent book edited by Dorota Probucka, entitled The Ethical Condemnation of Hunting (in Polish: Etyczne potępienie myślistwa), Universitas Press, Kraków 2020, pp. 426. Probucka is one of the most prominent Polish experts in animal studies, especially in applied ethics and the field of animal rights (e.g., Probucka 2018a, 2018b, 2017). The discussed monograph encompasses the contributions of 19 authors representing 9 universities from Poland and abroad. Their core issue of consideration was the topical problem of hunting, examined from various perspectives: ethical and legal, psychological, social and cultural, both on the theoretical level and in relation to the practice of hunting. This review focuses on the core arguments against hunting and discusses them in detail.The Ethics in Progress journal had the honour of contributing to the media patronage of Dorota Probucka’s et al. edition.

The purpose of this article is to raise some points for an understanding of the contemporary debate over the ethics of using animals in scientific experiments. We present the various positions from scientific and moral perspectives establishing different ways of viewing animals, as well as several concepts like 'animal ethics', 'animal rights', and 'animal welfare'. The paper thus aims to analyze the importance and growth of this debate, while proposing to expand the academic approach to this theme in the field of health.

AbstractThis paper provides an overview of results from an Australian Research Council-funded project "Sentiments and Risks: The Changing Nature of Human-Animal Relations in Australia." The data discussed come from a survey of 2000 representative Australians at the capital city, state, and rural regional level. It provides both a snapshot of the state of involvement of Australians with nonhuman animals and their views on critical issues: ethics, rights, animals as food, risk from animals, native versus introduced animals, hunting, fishing, and companionate relations with animals. Its data point to key trends and change. The changing position of animals in Australian society is critical to understand, given its historic export markets in meat and livestock, emerging tourism industry with its strong wildlife focus, native animals' place in discourses of nation, and the centrality of animal foods in the national diet. New anxieties about risk from animal-sourced foods and the endangerment of native animals from development and introduced species, together with tensions between animals' rights and the privileging of native species, contribute to the growth of a strongly contested animal politics in Australia.

The environment, particularly, land and water, play a powerful role in sustaining and supporting American Indian and Alaska Native communities in the United States. Not only is water essential to life and considered — by some Tribes — a sacred food in and of itself, but environmental water resources are necessary to maintain habitat for hunting and fishing. Many American Indian and Alaska Native communities incorporate locally caught traditional subsistence foods into their diets, and the loss of access to subsistence foods represents a risk factor for food security and nutrition status in indigenous populations. Negative health outcomes, including obesity, diabetes and cancer, have accompanied declines in traditional food use in indigenous communities throughout the United States.

In this issue of Pacific Conservation Biology, Bob Fox responds to the conservation and animal welfare policies of environmentalists and animal rights activists. It would be easy to dismiss his reaction as those of a frustrated public servant and a person who enjoys hunting. I have sympathy with Bob's ideas and not just because I also enjoy hunting and have had my share of frustrations in working for scientifically based environmental management. I have long felt that too many environmentalists and environmental organizations not only had a narrow agenda, but failed to understand the simplest ecological principles necessary for conserving and managing Australia's biodiversity. Too often the actions and policies of environmental organizations were not only counterproductive, but created an environment within which politicians could grandstand as being environmentally sensitive and concerned, while implementing policies inimical to the long-term needs of biodiversity conservation and ecological sustainability. As for animal rights groups, their actions frustrate the conservation of Australia's native flora and fauna and lead to more animals suffering than are ever saved. They also fail to recognize the simplest of ecological principles, such as the well-known ability of herbivores to increase beyond the carrying capacity of their food supply; the plight of koalas on Kangaroo Island is just one of many examples that could be cited where animal rights and welfare activists prevent essential conservation management causing needless suffering of animals and environmental degradation.

In December 2009, hunting was banned for a few days in Greece following the decision of the Council of State. The decision was issued when an animal rights organization claimed to the Court that there was no updated evidence about the impact of hunting on wild populations. This case prompted the present study, which focused on examining the hypothetical scenario of the possible impact of a long–term hunting ban on local businesses in rural areas in Greece. We carried out face–to–face interviews with entrepreneurs from the accommodation and food service sectors. Our results showed that most business owners interviewed considered the impact would be significant for their annual earnings. This finding should be taken into account by environmental decision makers because rural and mountainous areas in Greece are sparsely populated, and the few small businesses that still operate would not withstand drastic changes in rural tourism.

Abstract This Article contemplates the environmental argument in favor of vegetarianism or veganism, while reviewing its historical development and relevance to the current environmental debate. Today there is an apparent synergy between ecological ethics and animal rights discourse; nevertheless, this presents an inherent paradox. Whereas the moral, environmental and health arguments advocating for vegetarianism and veganism seem to reinforce one another, conflicts may also arise between them. Under certain conditions, the environmental stance may lead to different and perhaps even contradictory attitudes about the raising of livestock and the permissibility of animal-based food. Therefore, this Article first addresses the affinities and conflicts between both versions of non-anthropocentric ethics: biocentrism (individual animals’ rights and welfare) and ecocentrism (intrinsic value of nature and ecosystems). It then examines the historical development and creeds of environmental vegetarianism, and reviews the debates on the precise impact of animal-based food products on the environment. It suggests that recent estimations of the negative impacts underlying the argument for environmental vegetarianism depend on currently unsustainable (and utterly unethical) practices of factory farming and industrialized agriculture. These facts could change if such destructive methods were halted and replaced by sustainable practices which, perhaps, may sometimes tolerate or even require livestock and the ecological services it provides in order to grow sustainable plant-based food. However, many activists still hold both biocentric and ecocentric values, and see them as different facets of their non-anthropocentric intuitions. In order to account for such intuitions, the paper shortly explores two concepts: the mixed society (of both humans and domesticated animals) and virtue ethics. A mixed non-anthropocentric ecological society might not be strictly vegetarian (e. g., semi-vegetarian or even carnistic) and still be environmentally sustainable. In such a sustainable society, caring for nature and non-human animals are considered righteous, even virtuous, and “biophilic” intuitions could be respected and even reinforced, without being committed to strict ethical biocentric principles. Virtue ethics could provide ways to communicate different non-anthropocetric intuitions in such an ecological mixed society, where moral values and intuitions regarding both individual animals and holistic nature is respected, even if certain dilemmas and conflicts between non-anthropocentric ethical positions still prevail.

The anthropocentric destruction of nature can be viewed as a form of self-destruction, which affects individuals and also the human species. It entails active destruction of the natural surroundings that are vital for the preservation of the planet’s biodiversity. But should ecocide, or environmental self-destruction of the life of certain species, be considered an “interruption” to the life of such species, or it is part of their natural life course? Are ecocide and environmental destruction identical, or substantively different, phenomena? Prevention of the death of biotic species, and of the massive destruction of abiotic species, constitutes the ultimate challenge for both environmental and animal ethics. Modern mass extinction of species can be understood as a form of speciesism, and the prevention of such extinction is the most urgent challenge for any ethics centered on the recognition of the value, or rights, of nonhuman species.

Straipsnyje analizuojami žmogaus ir gamtos santykio sampratos aspektai, parodant, kad išplečiama nežmogiškųjų gyvųjų būtybių teisių sfera, pripažįstant gyviems ir negyviems gamtos objektams vidinę vertę, nustatomą pagal moralinius, estetinius ir kitokius kriterijus, ypač matant gyvūnų gebėjimą jausti skausmą, taip pat vadovaujantis nuostata, kad individo teisės laikytinos svarbesnėmis nei visos grupės. XVII amžiuje J. Locke’as teigė, kad kiekvienas žmogus, neatsižvelgiant į rasę ir lytį, turi prigimtines teises į gyvenimą, laisvę, sveikatą, laimės siekimą. Plėtodami aplinkosauginę teoriją ir praktiką, XX amžiaus ekofilosofai moralinių teisių teorijà išplėtė iki natūralios gamtos ir jos objektų, gyviems ir negyviems objektams priskirdami prigimtinų, moralinių teisių kategoriją. Jeigu objektas turi moralinį statusą, tai jis turi ir moralines teises. Apžvelgiami du galimi gyvūnų prigimtinių teisių įrodymai: utilitaristinis ir deontologinis. Apibendrinamos gyvūnų teisių gynėjų pozicijos. Reikšminiai žodžiai: prigimtinė (moralinė) teisė, deontologinis požiūris, utilitarizmas, T. Reganas, P. Singeris. ARGUMENTS ON NONANTROPOCENTRIC ETHICAL NATURE’S RIGHTSJūratė Mackevičiūtė, Skaidrė Žičkienė Summary In this article the authors explore preconditions of nonantropocentric ethical nature’s rights. In the 17th century J. Locke proposed a concept of innate rights, maintaining that every man has innate rights to life, freedom, health, striving for happiness. These rights are different from legal rights, which have legal and moral basis recognized by everybody. However, according to Locke, nature has no innate moral rights. Three centuries later, this theory was expanded to nature and its objects, both animate and inanimate by applying the category of innate moral rights. This was performed by Western ecophilosophers, when they were developing theory and practice of protecting the environment. Nowadays the ecological ethics presents two possible proofs of animals’ innate (moral) rights: utilitarianistic and deontological. According to P. Singer, the main representative of the utilitarianistic trend, every live being deserves attention not because of its reason, but because of its ability to feel. The views of T. Regan, the most prominent representative of the deontological trend, are far more radical, as he demands not to reform human’s behaviour towards nature but to end the existence of animal farms and to forbid both commercial and sports hunting. In the context of ecological ethics, protectors of animals’ rights define their trend as the whole of ideas about moral and legal human’s behaviour towards animals. Keywords: innate moral rights, utilitarianistic trend, deontological trend, T. Regan, P. Singer.

Bioethics is a new scientific branch created over 30 years ago, connecting natural sciences (biology, medicine) with the science of morals in human conduct. (ethics). Bioethics started to grow in the area of ecology, therefore primarily it appeared as a discipline of environmental protection and preservation of the ecosystem (environmental ethics). Later the matter of dispute became limited to problems related to human health and its promotion (medical ethics). However, these problems are closely related to plant preservation and animal life protection. The practice in bioethics is faced with difficulties related to the interdisciplinary character of this branch and axiological pluralism of the modern world. In consequence, in the area of bioethics most important become human being respect and human rights as touchstones universally accepted in social life practice and international law. A favorable fact is that the European Union has recognized and accepted these values as its own cultural identity constituents.

The aim of this essay is to look at the manner in which the philosophical ethics of Emmauel Levinas can be brought into dialogue with environmental ethics and animal rights. Though his work has often been seen as being at odds with environmental concerns is general, I wish to highlight a basic portraiture of what Levinas' ethics of responsibility and substitution might look like within such a context and to point out the deep resonance which his work has with other recent philosophical attempts to develop similar lines of environmental responsibility. In the end, this essay tries to point such Levinasian insights beyond Levinas' own approach and toward a reckoning with a more 'object oriented' approach to our most fundamental ethical concerns today. Though this presentation will certainly challenge the standard Levinasian division between moral subjects and their objects, such reasoning, it is argued, is beneficial not only for ethical quandaries, but also for re-conceiving the nature of the human-being in its interconnectedness to the environment around it.

Through the biotechnology of the force-feeding chair and the hunger strike in Guantanamo, this paper examines the camp as a site of necropolitics where bodies inhabit the space of the Muselmann – a figure Agamben invokes in Auschwitz to capture the predicament of the living dead. Sites of incarceration produce an aesthetic of torture and the force-feeding chair embodies the disciplining of the body and the extraction of pain while imposing the biopolitics of the American empire on “terrorist bodies”. Not worthy of human rights or death, the force-fed body inhabits a realm of indistinction between animal and human. The camp as an interstitial space which is beyond closure as well as full disclosure produces an aesthetic of torture on the racialised Other through the force-feeding chair positioned between visibility and non-visibility. Through the discourse of medical ethics and the legal struggle for rights, the force-feeding chair emerges as a symbol of necropolitics where the hunger strike becomes a mechanism to impede death while possessing and violating the corporeal body.

Long-term studies of whales, dolphins, and porpoises (the cetaceans) in nature abruptly began about 50 yr ago, preceded by several decades of terrestrial animal studies, often of charismatic large mammals. Fifty years ago, intensive whaling was still occurring, and arguments against whaling largely centered around impending extinctions due to over-hunting, not the idea that cetaceans should not be killed due to natural or inherent goodness. In the 1970s, several USA and other government agencies promulgated rules to help control pollution and other insults to nature, often effective in the short term but not in stopping an overall decline in the health of nature. While there appeared a general societal awakening towards greater appreciation of nature and intrinsic animal rights, researchers largely stayed focused on their research, with little attention to using knowledge to increase ecosystem and animal health. Attitudes of direct scientific involvement in calling for environmental action have changed, as it is becoming increasingly (but not universally) appreciated that researchers who know the problems are well-suited to alert governments, industry, and society to them, and loudly call for action. I have no good answers for how to accomplish large-scale rapid reversals of environmental declines. One laudable action is to be an active vocal part of appropriate web-based conservation advocacy groups. Involving the young of all genders and races for a groundswell of support is likely most effective in generating a new world view of so much respect for nature that we radically alter our present ways of subjugating and diminishing it in the name of supposed human progress. Above all, we scientists must no longer dither with opinions on environmental problems and urgent needs for action; we must proclaim them intelligently, forcefully, and as broadly as possible.

Wildlife conservation and management has become a very complex public policy issue in China as concerns over on animal welfare and empathy for animals have grown. Science-based conservation strategies that are oriented toward sustainable wildlife management (SWM) are under threat as these new attitudes and values emerge and take hold. This study accesses the attitudes of college students towards SWM and wildlife conservation, and investigates demographic characteristics influencing their attitudes in China, a country that is traditionally associated with consumptive use of wildlife and SWM, but where new ideas about wildlife conservation are emerging. From October 2018 to April 2019, nine universities (including “Double First-Class” universities, first-tier universities, second-tier universities), and four three-year colleges in China were selected as survey locations, and face-to-face interviews were conducted with 1991 students. A total of 1977 questionnaires were recovered, of which 1739 were valid, with a completion rate of 88%. A Likert seven-point scale method was used to score students’ attitudes, and a classification and regression tree (CART) was used to analyze whether their attitudes were affected by their demographic characteristics. The results show that although students are broadly supportive of the theory of SWM, some are deeply antagonistic about on SWM on issues that arouse strong emotions such as “Animal Welfare and Rights” and “Trophy Hunting”. Demographic characteristics of students affect their degree of support for the SWM with support for SWM lower among vegetarians, freshmen, and students who have taken environmental protection electives. This research suggests that the theory of SWM requires to be refreshed and adapted to appeal to the younger generation of Chinese students, with SWM principles integrated into the environmental education programs of universities and three-year colleges. More attention should also be attached to media publicity by the government about wildlife conservation so as to enhance awareness of the need for SWM.

Abstract Begin with the end in mind. Sounds simple enough. In other words, consumer wants, and needs have to be the major focus of everyone in the food production chain. Today’s consumer has questions about food – where it comes from, who’s producing it and how, food safety, animal well-being, environmental impact, labor and human rights as well as business ethics – just to name a few. A study by the Center for Food Integrity (CFI, 2018) found a "trust deficit" that exists between consumers and food companies, federal regulators and farmers. Only 33% of survey respondents said they "strongly agree" that they are confident in the safety of the food they eat, compared to 47% in 2017. Food traceability is no longer an option for manufactures, it’s a requirement. In fact, this increasing focus by consumers on sustainability, health and freshness has placed significant pressure on the food industry to innovate and communicate. This presentation will overview technologies/programs/efforts that are continuing to play an increasingly critical role in how the food we eat is produced, how it is packaged, how it is delivered, how it tastes, feels and smells and how it is reused and repurposed. After all, we are what we eat.

IntroductionWe are increasingly being told to make ethical food choices, often by high-profile chefs advocating what they view as ethical consumption habits. Some actively promote vegetarian or vegan diets, with a growing number of high-profile restaurants featuring only or mainly plant-based meals. However, what makes food or restaurant menus ethical is not assessed by most of us using one standardised definition. Our food values differ based on our outlooks, past experiences, and perhaps most importantly, how we balance various trade-offs inherent in making food choices under different circumstances and in diverse contexts.Restaurants can face difficulties when trying to balance ethical considerations. For instance, is it inconsistent to promote foraging, seasonality, local products, and plant-based eating, yet also serve meat and other animal-derived protein products on the same menu? For example, Danish chef Rene Redzepi, co-owner of the Michelin-starred restaurant Noma in Copenhagen who recently had an extended stay in Australia (Redzepi), recently offered a purely vegetarian menu featuring foraged native ingredients. However, Redzepi followed this with a meat-based menu including teal, moose leg, reindeer tongue, and wild duck brain. These changes make clear that although Redzepi was still conflicted about serving animal products (Ankeny and Bray), he thinks that options for ethical eating are not limited to plants and that it is important to utilise available, and especially neglected, resources in novel ways.In this article, we argue that celebrity and other high-profile chefs have roles to play in conversations about the emerging range of new meat consumption norms, which might include humanely produced meat, wild meat, or other considerations. However, we contend that restaurants and popular media may be limited spaces in which to engage consumers in these conversations. Ultimately, celebrity and high-profile chefs can help us not only to reflect on our eating habits, but also to engage us in ways that help us to ask the right questions rather than encouraging reliance on set answers from them or other supposed experts.Chefs and New Meat NormsChefs are now key voices in the politics of lifestyle, shaping both the grammars and the practices of ethical consumption, which is further reinforced by the increasing mediatisation of food and food politics (Phillipov, Media). Contemporary trends toward ethical consumption have been much critiqued; nevertheless, ethical consumption has become a dominant means through which individuals within contemporary marketised, neoliberal economies are able to invest lifestyle choices with ethical, social, and civic meanings (Barnett et al.; Lewis and Potter). While vegetarianism was once considered a central pillar of ethical diets, the rise of individualized and diverse approaches to food and food politics has seen meat (at least in its “ethical” form) not only remain firmly on the menu, but also become a powerful symbol of “good” politics, taste, and desirable lifestyles (Pilgrim 112).Chefs’ involvement in promoting ethical meat initially began within restaurants catering for an elite foodie clientele. The details provided about meat producers and production methods on the menu of Alice Waters’ Californian restaurant Chez Panisse and her cookbooks (Waters), or the focus by Fergus Henderson on “nose to tail” eating at his London restaurant St. John (Henderson) has led many to cite them as among the originators of the ethical meat movement. But the increasing mediatisation of food and the emergence of chefs as celebrity brands with their own TV shows, cookbooks, YouTube channels, websites, sponsorship deals, and myriad other media appearances has allowed ethical meat to move out of elite restaurants and into more quotidian domestic spaces. High profile UK and US exposés including “campaigning culinary documentaries” fronted by celebrity chefs (Bell, Hollows, and Jones 179), along with the work of popular food writers such as Michael Pollan, have been instrumental in the mainstreaming of diverse new meat norms.The horrifying depictions of intensive chicken, beef, and pork farming in these exposés have contributed to greater public awareness of, and concern about, industrialised meat production. However, the poor welfare conditions of animals raised in battery cages and concentrated animal feeding operations often are presented not as motivations to eschew meat entirely, but instead as reasons to opt for more ethical alternatives. For instance, Hugh’s Chicken Run, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s 2008 television campaign for chicken welfare, resulted in making more free-range products available in British supermarkets (Johnston). More recently, there have been significant expansions in markets for variously defined categories such as grass-fed, free-range, organic, welfare-certified, humane, and/or environmentally friendly meat products in Australia and elsewhere, thanks in part to increased media attention to animal welfare issues (Arcari 169).As media has emerged as a “fundamental component of contemporary foodscapes, how they ‘perform’ and function, and the socio-material means by which they are produced” (Johnston and Goodman 205), ethical meat has increasingly been employed as a strategic resource in mainstream media and marketing. Ethical meat, for example, has been a key pillar in the contemporary rebranding of both of Australia’s major supermarkets (Lewis and Huber 289). Through partnerships that draw upon the “ethical capital” (290) of celebrity chefs including Jamie Oliver and Curtis Stone, and collaborations with animal welfare organisations such as the RSPCA, ethical meat has become central to supermarket advertising campaigns in recent years. Such campaigns have been especially successful for Coles supermarkets, which controls almost 30% of Australia’s highly concentrated grocery market (Roy Morgan). The retailer’s long-term sponsorship of MasterChef Australia (Network 10, 2009–)—a show that presents meat (or, as they term it, “protein”) as an essential component of most dishes and which regularly rates in the top 10 of Australian television programs (OzTAM)—further helps to emphasise that the solution to ethical problems is not to avoid meat, but to choose (Coles’) “better” meat (see fig. 1). This is promoted on the basis of a combination of ethics, price, and taste, and, remarkably, is able to deliver “better welfare at no extra cost to you” (Parker, Carey, and Scrinis 209). In short, chefs are making major contributions to awareness of ethical norms relating to meat consumption in a variety of settings. Figure 1: An example of a current meat product on the shelf at a major Australian retailer with packaging that makes a range of claims relating to production practices and quality, among other attributes. (Emily Buddle)“The Good Life”Lifestyle media has been a key site through which meat eating is normalised and recuperated into “ethical” frameworks (Arcari 169). Utopian visions of small-scale animal agriculture are a key feature of popular texts from the River Cottage Australia (Foxtel Networks, 2013–) series to Gourmet Farmer (SBS, 2010–) and Paddock to Plate (Foxtel Networks, 2013–). These programs are typically set in bucolic rural surrounds and centre on the host’s “escape” from the city to a more fulfilling, happier existence in the country (Phillipov, “Escaping”). Rural self-sufficiency is frequently framed as the solution to urban consumers’ alienation from the sources of their food, and a means of taking responsibility for the food they eat. The opening credits of Gourmet Farmer, for instance, outline host Matthew Evans’s quest to “know and trust what [he] eat[s]”, either by growing the food himself or being “no more than one degree of separation from the person who does”.This sense of connection to one’s food is central to how these programs make meat consumption ethical. Indeed, the production of animals for food reinforces particular notions of “the good life” in which the happiness of the animal is closely aligned with the happiness of its human producer. While texts sometimes show food animals’ full lifecycle from birth to slaughter, lifestyle media focuses mainly on their happy existence while still alive. Evans gives his pigs names that foreground their destiny as food (e.g., Prosciutto and Cassoulet), but he also pampers them as though they are pets, feeding them cherries and apples, and scratching them behind the ears much like he would his dog. These bucolic televisual images serve to anchor the programs’ many “spin-off” media texts, including blog posts, cookbooks (e.g. Evans), and endorsements, that instruct urban audiences who do not have the luxury of raising their own meat on how to source ethical alternatives. They also emphasise the deliciousness of meat raised and killed in humane, “natural” conditions, as opposed to those subjected to more intensive, industrialised production systems.Some argue that the notion of “ethical meat” merely masks the realities of humans’ domination over animals (Arcari). However the transition from “happy animals” to “happy meat” (Pilgrim 123) has been key to lifestyle media’s recuperation of (certain kinds of) meat production as a “humane, benevolent and wholly ‘natural’ process” (Parry 381), which helps to morally absolve the chefs who promote it, and by extension, their audiences.The Good DeathMeat consumption has been theorised to be based on the invisibility of the lives and deaths of animals—what has been termed the “absent referent” by feminist philosopher Carol J. Adams (14; see also Fiddes). This line of argument holds that slaughter and other practices that may raise moral concerns are actively hidden from view, and that animals are “made absent” within food consumption practices (Evans and Miele 298). Few meat consumers, at least those in Western countries, have seen animal slaughter first hand, and a disconnect between meat and animal is actively maintained through current retail practices (such as pre-packaged meat with few identifying cues), as well as in our language use, at least in English where most of the names of the meat are different to those of the animal (Plous; Croney) and where euphemisms such as “harvesting” abound (Abrams, Zimbres, and Carr). In many locales, including Australia, there is squeamishness about talking about slaughter and the processes by which “animal” becomes “meat” which in turn prevents open discussion about the origins of meat (Bray et al., “Conversation”).Campaigning culinary documentaries by chefs, including Matthew Evans’s recent For the Love of Meat (SBS, 2016), aim to reconnect animal and meat in order to critique modern meat production methods. In addition, Gourmet Farmer and River Cottage Australia both feature depictions of hunting (skinning and butchering of the animals is shown but viewers are rarely exposed to the kill itself) and emphasise the use of highly skilled hunters in order to bring about a quick death. By highlighting not only a good life but also what constitutes a “good death”, celebrity chefs and others are arguably generating discussion about what makes meat ethical by emphasizing that the quality of death is as important as the quality of life. In many of these programs, the emphasis is on more boutique or small-scale production systems which typically produce meat products that are higher priced and more difficult to source.Given that such products are likely out of reach for many potential consumers because of price point, convenience, or both, perhaps unsurprisingly the emphasis in many of these programs is on the consumer rather than the consumed. Hence these programs tend to be more about constructing an “ethical meat consumer”, defined implicitly as someone who acknowledges the meat/animal connection through conscious exposure to the realities of animal slaughter (for example, by watching a documentary), by “meeting your meat” such as in the BBC series Kill It, Cook It, Eat It (BBC, 2007; Evans and Miele), or by actively participating in the slaughter process as Evans did with his own chickens on Gourmet Farmer. As anthropologist Catie Gressier notes in her study of wild meat consumers in Australia, “hunting meat is seen as more noble than purchasing it, while wild meat is seen as preferable to farmed” (Gressier 58). Gressier also describes how one of her participants viewed hunting (and eating locally) as preferable to veganism because of the “animal violence that is the inevitable outcome of mass-crop agriculture” (58). However some scholars have argued that highly graphic depictions of slaughter in the popular media are becoming more commonplace as a masculinised type of “gastro-snuff” (a term referring to food-related visual depictions of brutal killings) (Parry 382). These types of efforts thus may fail to create dialogue about what constitutes ethical meat or even an ethical meat consumer, and may well reinforce more traditional ideas about human/non-human hierarchies.In contrast to coverage in popular media, detailed descriptions of commercial slaughter, in particular pre-slaughter (lairage) conditions, are yet to make it on to restaurant menus, despite the connections between meat quality and pre-slaughter conditions being well recognised even by consumers (Evans and Miele). Commercial slaughter conditions are one of the reasons that hunting is framed as more ethical than “ethically farmed” animals. As an Internet post, quoted in Adams (“Redneck” 50), puts it: “Hunting? A creature is peacefully in its own domain, it is shot. How is that worse than being carried for hours in a truck, being forced into a crush, hearing the bellows of other creatures, being physically restrained at the peak of terror, then culled?” Although determining precise rates of consumption of wild meat is methodologically difficult (Conservation Visions 28), available rates of hunting together with limited consumption data indicate that Australians currently eat less game or wild-caught meat per capita than those in Europe or North America. However, there is a sector of the community in Australia who pursue hunting as part of their ethical food habits (Bray et al., “Ferals”) with the largest proportion of wild-meat consumers being those who hunted it themselves (Gressier).In many cases, descriptions of animal lives (using descriptors such as “free range” or “grass fed”) serve implicitly as proxies for assurances that the animals’ deaths also have been good. One exception is the increasing awareness of the use of halal slaughter methods in part due to more transparent labelling, despite limited public awareness about the nature of these methods, particularly in the Australian context where they in fact comply with standard animal welfare requirements such as pre-slaughter stunning (Bergeauld-Blackler). Detailed descriptions of post-mortem conditions (e.g., aging conditions and time) are more common on restaurant menus, although arguably these no longer draw attention to the connections between the animal and the meat, and instead focus on the meat itself, its flavour and other physical qualities, rather than on ethical attributes.Thus, although it would seem obvious that ethical meat consumption should involve considerations about slaughter conditions or what makes a “good death”, most efforts have focused on encouraging people to make better and more reflexive consumer choices, rather than promoting deeper engagement with slaughter processes, perhaps underscoring that this domain may still represent one of the final food taboos. Although it might seem to be counterintuitive that wild or hunted meat could be viewed as an ethical food choice, particularly if vegetarianism or veganism is taken as the main point of comparison, these trends point toward the complexities inherent in food choice and the inevitable trade-offs in values that occur in these processes.Problems with Promoting Ethical Meat Norms: Ways ForwardIt is undeniable that many people are reflecting on their consumption habits in order to pursue decisions that better reflect their values. Attempting to be an “ethical meat consumer” clearly fits within these broader trends. However there are a number of problems associated with current approaches to ethical meat consumption, and these raise questions as to whether such efforts are likely to result in broader changes. First, it is not clear that restaurants are the most appropriate spaces for people to engage with ethical considerations, including those relating to meat consumption. Many people seek to try something new, or to treat themselves when dining out, but these behaviours do not necessarily translate into changes in everyday eating habits. Reasons are varied but include that people cannot reproduce the same types of dishes or concepts at home as what they get at restaurants (or see on TV shows for that matter), and that many products may be out of an acceptable price range or inconvenient for daily consumption. Others want to escape from ethical decisions when dining out by relying on those preparing the food to do the work for them, and thus sometimes simply consume without necessarily investigating every detail relating to its production, preparation, and so on.Perhaps more importantly, many are sceptical about the promotion of various meat-related values by high-profile or celebrity chefs, raising questions about whether ethical categories are merely packaging or window dressing designed to sell products, or if they are truly tied to deeper values and better products. Such concerns are reinforced by tendencies to emphasize one type of meat product—say free-range, grass-fed, or humanely-raised—as better than all others, or even as the only right choice, and thus can at times seem to be elitist in their approaches, since they emphasize that only certain (often extremely expensive boutique products) count as ethical. As scholars have noted about the classed nature of many of these consumption practices (see, for example, Bell and Hollows; Naccarato and LeBesco), these types of value judgments are likely to be alienating to many people, and most importantly will not foster deeper reflections on our consumption habits.However it is clear that celebrity and other high-profile chefs do get the public’s attention, and thus can play important roles in shaping conversations about fostering more ethical ways of eating, including meat consumption. We contend that it is important not to emphasize only one right way of eating, but to actively consider the various trade-offs that we make when choosing what to buy, prepare, and consume. Promoting answers by nominating certain meat products or production methods as always better in all circumstances, no matter how these might be in conflict with other values, such as preferences for local, organic, alignment with cultural or religious values, sustainable, fair trade, and so on, is not likely to result in meaningful public engagement. Critiques of Pollan and other food activists make similar points about the potential elitism and hence limited value of promoting narrow forms of ethical eating (e.g., Guthman et al.; Zimmerman).In addition, such food categories often serve as proxies for deeper values, but not necessarily for the same values for all of us. Simply relying on categories or types of products thus fails to allow engagement with the underlying rationale for various choices. More generally, promoting individual consumer decision-making and market demand as the keys to ethical consumption overlooks the broader systemic issues that limit our choices, and in turn limits attention to changes that might be made in that system (e.g., Lavin; Guthman et al.; DeLind; Ankeny).Thus instead of promoting one right way of eating meat, or a narrow number of acceptable choices, celebrities, chefs, and restauranteurs should consider how they can help to promote dialogue and the posing of the right types of questions to consumers and diners, including about trade-offs inherent in meat consumption and choices of other products, ethical and otherwise. They also should use their roles as change-makers to consider how they might influence the broader food system, but without promoting a single right way of eating. Parallel to recent calls from scientists for a new planetary health diet which promotes increased vegetable consumption and reduced meat consumption for environmental, health, and other reasons, by providing a range of trade-offs to support a diet that that allows individuals to make personalised choices (Willett et al.), hybrid approaches to ethical eating are more likely to have influence on consumers and in turn on changing eating habits.ReferencesAbrams, Katie M., Thais Zimbres, and Chad Carr. “Communicating Sensitive Scientific Issues: The Interplay between Values, Attitudes, and Euphemisms in Communicating Livestock Slaughter.” Science Communication 37 (2015): 485–505.Adams, Carol. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory. London: Continuum, 2000.Adams, Michael. “‘Redneck, Barbaric, Cashed Up Bogan? I Don’t Think So’: Hunting and Nature in Australia.” Environmental Humanities 2 (2013): 43–56.Ankeny, Rachel A. “From Food Consumers to Food Citizens: Reconceptualising Environmentally-Conscious Food Decision-Making.” Food Justice, the Environment, and Climate Change. Eds. Erinn Gilson, and Sarah Kenehan. New York: Routledge, 2019. 267–79.Ankeny, Rachel A., and Heather J. Bray. “Red Meat and Imported Wine: Why Ethical Eating Often Stops at the Restaurant Door.” The Conversation 8 Jan. 2019. 28 Mar. 2019 <https://theconversation.com/red-meat-and-imported-wine-why-ethical-eating-often-stops-at-the-restaurant-door-106926>.Arcari, Paula. “The Ethical Masquerade: (Un)masking Mechanisms of Power behind ‘Ethical’ Meat.” Alternative Food Politics: From the Margins to the Mainstream. Eds. Michelle Phillipov and Katherine Kirkwood. London: Routledge, 2019. 169–89.Barnett, Clive, Nick Clarke, Paul Cloke, and Alice Malpass. “The Political Ethics of Consumerism.” Consumer Policy Review 15 (2005): 45–51.Bell, David, and Joanne Hollows. “From River Cottage to Chicken Run: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and the Class Politics of Ethical Consumption.” Celebrity Studies 2 (2011): 178–91.———, Joanne Hollows, and Steven Jones. “Campaigning Culinary Documentaries and the Responsibilization of Food Crises.” Geoforum 84 (2017): 179–87.Bergeauld-Blackler, Florence. “The Halal Certification Market in Europe and the World: A First Panorama.” Halal Matters: Islam, Politics and Markets in Global Perspective. Eds. Florence Bergeauld-Blackler, Johan Fischer, and John Lever. London: Routledge, 2016. 105–26.Bray, Heather J., Sebastian Konyn, Yvette Wijnandts, and Rachel Ankeny. “Ferals or Food? Does Hunting Have a Role in Ethical Food Consumption in Australia?” Wild Animals and Leisure: Rights and Wellbeing. Eds. Neill Carr and Jeanette Young. London: Routledge, 2018. 210–24.———, Sofia C. Zambrano, Anna Chur-Hansen, and Rachel A. Ankeny. “Not Appropriate Dinner Table Conversation? Talking to Children about Meat Production.” Appetite 100 (2016): 1–9.Conservation Visions. State of Knowledge Report: Consumption Patterns of Wild Protein in North America. A Literature Review in Support of the Wild Harvest Initiative. St John’s: Conservation Visions, April 2016.Croney, C.C. “The Ethics of Semantics: Do We Clarify or Obfuscate Reality to Influence Perceptions of Farm Animal Production?” Poultry Science 87 (2008): 387–91.DeLind, Laura B. “Are Local Food and the Local Food Movement Taking Us Where We Want to Go? Or Are We Hitching Our Wagons to the Wrong Stars?” Agriculture and Human Values 28 (2011): 273–83.Evans, Adrian B., and Mara Miele. “Between Food and Flesh: How Animals Are Made to Matter (and Not Matter) within Food Consumption Practices.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30 (2012): 298–314.Evans, Matthew. For the Love of Meat. Richmond: Hardie Grant Books, 2016.Fiddes, Nick. Meat: A Natural Symbol. London: Routledge, 1991.Gressier, Catie. “Going Feral: Wild Meat Consumption and the Uncanny in Melbourne, Australia.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 27 (2016): 49–65.Guthman, Julie, et al. “Can’t Stomach It: How Michael Pollan et al. Made Me Want to Eat Cheetos.” Gastronomica 7 (2007): 75–9.Henderson, Fergus. Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking. London: Bloomsbury, 2004 (1999).Johnston, Ian. “Campaign Leads to Free Range Chicken Shortage.” The Telegraph 13 Apr. 2008. 20 Mar. 2019 <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1584952/Campaign-leads-to-free-range-chicken-shortage.html>.Johnston, Josée, and Michael K. Goodman. “Spectacular Foodscapes: Food Celebrities and the Politics of Lifestyle Mediation in an Age of Inequality.” Food, Culture and Society 18 (2015): 205–22.Lavin, Chad. Eating Anxiety: The Perils of Food Politics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 2013.Lewis, Tania, and Alison Huber. “A Revolution in an Eggcup? Supermarket Wars, Celebrity Chefs and Ethical Consumption.” Food, Culture and Society 18 (2015): 289–307.———, and Emily Potter. “Introducing Ethical Consumption.” Ethical Consumption: A Critical Introduction. Eds. Tania Lewis and Emily Potter. London: Routledge, 2011. 3–24.Naccarato, Peter, and Kathleen LeBesco. Culinary Capital. London: Bloomsbury, 2012.OzTAM. “Consolidated Metropolitan Top 20 Programs: Week 22 2018, 27/05/2018–02/06/2018.” OzTAM 20 Mar. 2019 <https://oztam.com.au/documents/2018/OzTAM-20180527-EMetFTARankSumCons.pdf>.Parker, Christine, Rachel Carey, and Gyorgy Scrinis. “The Consumer Labelling Turn in Farmed Animal Welfare Politics: From the Margins of Animal Advocacy to Mainstream Supermarket Shelves.” Alternative Food Politics: From the Margins to the Mainstream. Eds. Michelle Phillipov and Katherine Kirkwood. London: Routledge, 2019. 193–215.Parry, Jovian. “The New Visibility of Slaughter in Popular Gastronomy.” MA thesis. U of Canterbury, 2010.Phillipov, Michelle. “Escaping to the Country: Media, Nostalgia, and the New Food Industries.” Popular Communication 14 (2016): 111–22.———. Media and Food Industries: The New Politics of Food. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.Pilgrim, Karyn. “‘Happy Cows’, ‘Happy Beef’: A Critique of the Rationales for Ethical Meat.” Environmental Studies 3 (2013): 111–27.Plous, S.S. “Psychological Mechanisms in the Human Use of Animals.” Journal of Social Issues 49 (1993): 11–52.Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. London: Penguin, 2006.Redzepi, Rene. “Redzepi on Redzepi: The Noma Australia Exit Interview.” Gourmet Traveller 30 Mar. 2016. 20 Mar. 2019 <https://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/news/restaurant-news/redzepi-on-redzepi-the-noma-australia-exit-interview-3702>.Roy Morgan. “Woolworths Increases Lead in $100b+ Grocery War.” Roy Morgan 23 Mar. 2018. 20 Mar. 2019 <http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/7537-woolworths-increases-lead-in-$100b-plus-grocery-war-201803230113>.Waters, Alice. The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook. London: Chatto and Windus / The Hogarth Press, 1982.———. “The Farm-Restaurant Connection.” A Slice of Life: Contemporary Writers on Food. Ed. Bonnie Marranca. Woodstock: Overlook Duckworth, 2003. 328–36.Willett, Walter, et al. “Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT–Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems.” The Lancet 393 (2019): 447–92.Zimmerman, Heidi. “Caring for the Middle Class Soul: Ambivalence, Ethical Eating and the Michael Pollan Phenomenon.” Food, Culture and Society 18 (2013): 31–50.

Kangatarianism is the rather inelegant word coined in the first decade of the twenty-first century to describe an omnivorous diet in which the only meat consumed is that of the kangaroo. First published in the media in 2010 (Barone; Zukerman), the term circulated in Australian environmental and academic circles including the Global Animal conference at the University of Wollongong in July 2011 where I first heard it from members of the Think Tank for Kangaroos (THINKK) group. By June 2017, it had gained enough attention to be named the Oxford English Dictionary’s Australian word of the month (following on from May’s “smashed avo,” another Australian food innovation), but it took the Nine Network reality television series Love Island Australia to raise kangatarian to trending status on social media (Oxford UP). During the first episode, aired in late May 2018, Justin, a concreter and fashion model from Melbourne, declared himself to have previously been a kangatarian as he chatted with fellow contestant, Millie. Vet nurse and animal lover Millie appeared to be shocked by his revelation but was tentatively accepting when Justin explained what kangatarian meant, and justified his choice on the grounds that kangaroo are not farmed. In the social media response, it was clear that eating only the meat of kangaroos as an ethical choice was an entirely new concept to many viewers, with one tweet stating “Kangatarian isn’t a thing”, while others variously labelled the diet brutal, intriguing, or quintessentially Australian (see #kangatarian on Twitter).There is a well developed literature around the arguments for and against eating kangaroo, and why settler Australians tend to be so reluctant to do so (see for example, Probyn; Cawthorn and Hoffman). Here, I will concentrate on the role that ethics play in this food choice by examining how the adoption of kangatarianism can be understood as a bargain struck to help to manage grief in the Anthropocene, and the limitations of that bargain. As Lesley Head has argued, we are living in a time of loss and of grieving, when much that has been taken for granted is becoming unstable, and “we must imagine that drastic changes to everyday life are in the offing” (313). Applying the classic (and contested) model of five stages of grief, first proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her book On Death and Dying in 1969, much of the population of the western world seems to be now experiencing denial, her first stage of loss, while those in the most vulnerable environments have moved on to anger with developed countries for destructive actions in the past and inaction in the present. The next stages (or states) of grieving—bargaining, depression, and acceptance—are likely to be manifested, although not in any predictable sequence, as the grief over current and future losses continues (Haslam).The great expansion of food restrictive diets in the Anthropocene can be interpreted as part of this bargaining state of grieving as individuals attempt to respond to the imperative to reduce their environmental impact but also to limit the degree of change to their own diet required to do so. Meat has long been identified as a key component of an individual’s environmental footprint. From Frances Moore Lappé’s 1971 Diet for a Small Planet through the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation’s 2006 report Livestock’s Long Shadow to the 2019 report of the EAT–Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, the advice has been consistent: meat consumption should be minimised in, if not eradicated from, the human diet. The EAT–Lancet Commission Report quantified this to less than 28 grams (just under one ounce) of beef, lamb or pork per day (12, 25). For many this would be keenly felt, in terms of how meals are constructed, the sensory experiences associated with eating meat and perceptions of well-being but meat is offered up as a sacrifice to bring about the return of the beloved healthy planet.Rather than accept the advice to cut out meat entirely, those seeking to bargain with the Anthropocene also find other options. This has given rise to a suite of foodways based around restricting meat intake in volume or type. Reducing the amount of commercially produced beef, lamb and pork eaten is one approach, while substituting a meat the production of which has a smaller environmental footprint, most commonly chicken or fish, is another. For those willing to make deeper changes, the meat of free living animals, especially those which are killed accidentally on the roads or for deliberately for environmental management purposes, is another option. Further along this spectrum are the novel protein sources suggested in the Lancet report, including insects, blue-green algae and laboratory-cultured meats.Kangatarianism is another form of this bargain, and is backed by at least half a century of advocacy. The Australian Conservation Foundation made calls to reduce the numbers of other livestock and begin a sustainable harvest of kangaroo for food in 1970 when the sale of kangaroo meat for human consumption was still illegal across the country (Conservation of Kangaroos). The idea was repeated by biologist Gordon Grigg in the late 1980s (Jackson and Vernes 173), and again in the Garnaut Climate Change Review in 2008 (547–48). Kangaroo meat is high in protein and iron, low in fat, and high in healthy polyunsaturated fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid, and, as these authors showed, has a smaller environmental footprint than beef, lamb, or pork. Kangaroo require less water than cattle, sheep or pigs, and no land is cleared to grow feed for them or give them space to graze. Their paws cause less erosion and compaction of soil than do the hooves of common livestock. They eat less fodder than ruminants and their digestive processes result in lower emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane and less solid waste.As Justin of Love Island was aware, kangaroo are not farmed in the sense of being deliberately bred, fed, confined, or treated with hormones, drugs or chemicals, which also adds to their lighter impact on the environment. However, some pastoralists argue that because they cannot prevent kangaroos from accessing the food, water, shelter, and protection from predators they provide for their livestock, they do effectively farm them, although they receive no income from sales of kangaroo meat. This type of light touch farming of kangaroos has a very long history in Australia going back to the continent’s first peopling some 60,000 years ago. Kangaroos were so important to Aboriginal people that a wide range of environments were manipulated to produce their favoured habitats of open grasslands edged by sheltering trees. As Bill Gammage demonstrated, fire was used as a tool to preserve and extend grassy areas, to encourage regrowth which would attract kangaroos and to drive the animals from one patch to another or towards hunters waiting with spears (passim, for example, 58, 72, 76, 93). Gammage and Bruce Pascoe agree that this was a form of animal husbandry in which the kangaroos were drawn to the areas prepared for them for the young grass or, more forcefully, physically directed using nets, brush fences or stone walls. Burnt ground served to contain the animals in place of fencing, and regular harvesting kept numbers from rising to levels which would place pressure on other species (Gammage 79, 281–86; Pascoe 42–43). Contemporary advocates of eating kangaroo have promoted the idea that they should be deliberately co-produced with other livestock instead of being killed to preserve feed and water for sheep and cattle (Ellicott; Wilson 39). Substituting kangaroo for the meat of more environmentally damaging animals would facilitate a reduction in the numbers of cattle and sheep, lessening the harm they do.Most proponents have assumed that their audience is current meat eaters who would substitute kangaroo for the meat of other more environmentally costly animals, but kangatarianism can also emerge from vegetarianism. Wendy Zukerman, who wrote about kangaroo hunting for New Scientist in 2010, was motivated to conduct the research because she was considering becoming an early adopter of kangatarianism as the least environmentally taxing way to counter the longterm anaemia she had developed as a vegetarian. In 2018, George Wilson, honorary professor in the Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment and Society called for vegetarians to become kangatarians as a means of boosting overall consumption of kangaroo for environmental and economic benefits to rural Australia (39).Given these persuasive environmental arguments, it might be expected that many people would have perceived eating kangaroo instead of other meat as a favourable bargain and taken up the call to become kangatarian. Certainly, there has been widespread interest in trying kangaroo meat. In 1997, only five years after the sale of kangaroo meat for human consumption had been legalised in most states (South Australia did so in 1980), 51% of 500 people surveyed in five capital cities said they had tried kangaroo. However, it had not become a meat of choice with very few found to eat it more than three times a year (Des Purtell and Associates iv). Just over a decade later, a study by Ampt and Owen found an increase to 58% of 1599 Australians surveyed across the country who had tried kangaroo but just 4.7% eating it at least monthly (14). Bryce Appleby, in his study of kangaroo consumption in the home based on interviews with 28 residents of Wollongong in 2010, specifically noted the absence of kangatarians—then a very new concept. A study of 261 Sydney university students in 2014 found that half had tried kangaroo meat and 10% continued to eat it with any regularity. Only two respondents identified themselves as kangatarian (Grant 14–15). Kangaroo meat advocate Michael Archer declared in 2017 that “there’s an awful lot of very, very smart vegetarians [who] have opted for semi vegetarianism and they’re calling themselves ‘kangatarians’, as they’re quite happy to eat kangaroo meat”, but unless there had been a significant change in a few years, the surveys did not bear out his assertion (154).The ethical calculations around eating kangaroo are complicated by factors beyond the strictly environmental. One Tweeter advised Justin: “‘I’m a kangatarian’ isn’t a pickup line, mate”, and certainly the reception of his declaration could have been very cool, especially as it was delivered to a self declared animal warrior (N’Tash Aha). All of the studies of beliefs and practices around the eating of kangaroo have noted a significant minority of Australians who would not consider eating kangaroo based on issues of animal welfare and animal rights. The 1997 study found that 11% were opposed to the idea of eating kangaroo, while in Grant’s 2014 study, 15% were ethically opposed to eating kangaroo meat (Des Purtell and Associates iv; Grant 14–15). Animal ethics complicate the bargains calculated principally on environmental grounds.These ethical concerns work across several registers. One is around the flesh and blood kangaroo as a charismatic native animal unique to Australia and which Australians have an obligation to respect and nurture. Sheep, cattle and pigs have been subject to longterm propaganda campaigns which entrench the idea that they are unattractive and unintelligent, and veil their transition to meat behind euphemistic language and abattoir walls, making it easier to eat them. Kangaroos are still seen as resourceful and graceful animals, and no linguistic tricks shield consumers from the knowledge that it is a roo on their plate. A proposal in 2009 to market a “coat of arms” emu and kangaroo-flavoured potato chip brought complaints to the Advertising Standards Bureau that this was disrespectful to these native animals, although the flavours were to be simulated and the product vegetarian (Black). Coexisting with this high regard to kangaroos is its antithesis. That is, a valuation of them informed by their designation as a pest in the pastoral industry, and the use of the carcasses of those killed to feed dogs and other companion animals. Appleby identified a visceral, disgust response to the idea of eating kangaroo in many of his informants, including both vegetarians who would not consider eating kangaroo because of their commitment to a plant-based diet, and at least one omnivore who would prefer to give up all meat rather than eat kangaroo. While diametrically opposed, the end point of both positions is that kangaroo meat should not be eaten.A second animal ethics stance relates to the imagined kangaroo, a cultural construct which for most urban Australians is much more present in their lives and likely to shape their actions than the living animals. It is behind the rejection of eating an animal which holds such an iconic place in Australian culture: to the dexter on the 1912 national coat of arms; hopping through the Hundred Acre Wood as Kanga and Roo in A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh children’s books from the 1920s and the Disney movies later made from them; as a boy’s best friend as Skippy the Bush Kangaroo in a fondly remembered 1970s television series; and high in the sky on QANTAS planes. The anthropomorphising of kangaroos permitted the spectacle of the boxing kangaroo from the late nineteenth century. By framing natural kangaroo behaviours as boxing, these exhibitions encouraged an ambiguous understanding of kangaroos as human-like, moving them further from the category of food (Golder and Kirkby). Australian government bodies used this idea of the kangaroo to support food exports to Britain, with kangaroos as cooks or diners rather than ingredients. The Kangaroo Kookery Book of 1932 (see fig. 1 below) portrayed kangaroos as a nuclear family in a suburban kitchen and another official campaign supporting sales of Australian produce in Britain in the 1950s featured a Disney-inspired kangaroo eating apples and chops washed down with wine (“Kangaroo to Be ‘Food Salesman’”). This imagining of kangaroos as human-like has persisted, leading to the opinion expressed in a 2008 focus group, that consuming kangaroo amounted to “‘eating an icon’ … Although they are pests they are still human nature … these are native animals, people and I believe that is a form of cannibalism!” (Ampt and Owen 26). Figure 1: Rather than promoting the eating of kangaroos, the portrayal of kangaroos as a modern suburban family in the Kangaroo Kookery Book (1932) made it unthinkable. (Source: Kangaroo Kookery Book, Director of Australian Trade Publicity, Australia House, London, 1932.)The third layer of ethical objection on the ground of animal welfare is more specific, being directed to the method of killing the kangaroos which become food. Kangaroos are perhaps the only native animals for which state governments set quotas for commercial harvest, on the grounds that they compete with livestock for pasturage and water. In most jurisdictions, commercially harvested kangaroo carcasses can be processed for human consumption, and they are the ones which ultimately appear in supermarket display cases.Kangaroos are killed by professional shooters at night using swivelling spotlights mounted on their vehicles to locate and daze the animals. While clean head shots are the ideal and regulations state that animals should be killed when at rest and without causing “undue agonal struggle”, this is not always achieved and some animals do suffer prolonged deaths (NSW Code of Practice for Kangaroo Meat for Human Consumption). By regulation, the young of any female kangaroo must be killed along with her. While averting a slow death by neglect, this is considered cruel and wasteful. The hunt has drawn international criticism, including from Greenpeace which organised campaigns against the sale of kangaroo meat in Europe in the 1980s, and Viva! which was successful in securing the withdrawal of kangaroo from sale in British supermarkets (“Kangaroo Meat Sales Criticised”). These arguments circulate and influence opinion within Australia.A final animal ethics issue is that what is actually behind the push for greater use of kangaroo meat is not concern for the environment or animal welfare but the quest to turn a profit from these animals. The Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia, formed in 1970 to represent those who dealt in the marsupials’ meat, fur and skins, has been a vocal advocate of eating kangaroo and a sponsor of market research into how it can be made more appealing to the market. The Association argued in 1971 that commercial harvest was part of the intelligent conservation of the kangaroo. They sought minimum size regulations to prevent overharvesting and protect their livelihoods (“Assn. Backs Kangaroo Conservation”). The Association’s current website makes the claim that wild harvested “Australian kangaroo meat is among the healthiest, tastiest and most sustainable red meats in the world” (Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia). That this is intended to initiate a new and less controlled branch of the meat industry for the benefit of hunters and processors, rather than foster a shift from sheep or cattle to kangaroos which might serve farmers and the environment, is the opinion of Dr. Louise Boronyak, of the Centre for Compassionate Conservation at the University of Technology Sydney (Boyle 19).Concerns such as these have meant that kangaroo is most consumed where it is least familiar, with most of the meat for human consumption recovered from culled animals being exported to Europe and Asia. Russia has been the largest export market. There, kangaroo meat is made less strange by blending it with other meats and traditional spices to make processed meats, avoiding objections to its appearance and uncertainty around preparation. With only a low profile as a novelty animal in Russia, there are fewer sentimental concerns about consuming kangaroo, although the additional food miles undermine its environmental credentials. The variable acceptability of kangaroo in more distant markets speaks to the role of culture in determining how patterns of eating are formed and can be shifted, or, as Elspeth Probyn phrased it “how natural entities are transformed into commodities within a context of globalisation and local communities”, underlining the impossibility of any straightforward ethics of eating kangaroo (33, 35).Kangatarianism is a neologism which makes the eating of kangaroo meat something it has not been in the past, a voluntary restriction based on environmental ethics. These environmental benefits are well founded and eating kangaroo can be understood as an Anthropocenic bargain struck to allow the continuation of the consumption of red meat while reducing one’s environmental footprint. Although superficially attractive, the numbers entering into this bargain remain small because environmental ethics cannot be disentangled from animal ethics. The anthropomorphising of the kangaroo and its use as a national symbol coexist with its categorisation as a pest and use of its meat as food for companion animals. Both understandings of kangaroos made their meat uneatable for many Australians. Paired with concerns over how kangaroos are killed and the commercialisation of a native species, kangaroo meat has a very mixed reception despite decades of advocacy for eating its meat in favour of that of more harmed and more harmful introduced species. Given these constraints, kangatarianism is unlikely to become widespread and indeed it should be viewed as at best a temporary exigency. As the climate warms and rainfall becomes more erratic, even animals which have evolved to suit Australian conditions will come under increasing pressure, and humans will need to reach Kübler-Ross’ final state of grief: acceptance. In this case, this would mean acceptance that our needs cannot be placed ahead of those of other animals.ReferencesAmpt, Peter, and Kate Owen. Consumer Attitudes to Kangaroo Meat Products. Canberra: Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, 2008.Appleby, Bryce. “Skippy the ‘Green’ Kangaroo: Identifying Resistances to Eating Kangaroo in the Home in a Context of Climate Change.” BSc Hons, U of Wollongong, 2010 <http://ro.uow.edu.au/thsci/103>.Archer, Michael. “Zoology on the Table: Plenary Session 4.” Australian Zoologist 39, 1 (2017): 154–60.“Assn. Backs Kangaroo Conservation.” The Beverley Times 26 Feb. 1971: 3. 22 Feb. 2019 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article202738733>.Barone, Tayissa. “Kangatarians Jump the Divide.” Sydney Morning Herald 9 Feb. 2010. 13 Apr. 2019 <https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/kangatarians-jump-the-divide-20100209-gdtvd8.html>.Black, Rosemary. “Some Australians Angry over Idea for Kangaroo and Emu-Flavored Potato Chips.” New York Daily News 4 Dec. 2009. 5 Feb. 2019 <https://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/eats/australians-angry-idea-kangaroo-emu-flavored-potato-chips-article-1.431865>.Boyle, Rhianna. “Eating Skippy.” Big Issue Australia 578 11-24 Jan. 2019: 16–19.Cawthorn, Donna-Mareè, and Louwrens C. Hoffman. “Controversial Cuisine: A Global Account of the Demand, Supply and Acceptance of ‘Unconventional’ and ‘Exotic’ Meats.” Meat Science 120 (2016): 26–7.Conservation of Kangaroos. Melbourne: Australian Conservation Foundation, 1970.Des Purtell and Associates. Improving Consumer Perceptions of Kangaroo Products: A Survey and Report. Canberra: Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, 1997.Ellicott, John. “Little Pay Incentive for Shooters to Join Kangaroo Meat Industry.” The Land 15 Mar. 2018. 28 Mar. 2019 <https://www.theland.com.au/story/5285265/top-roo-shooter-says-harvesting-is-a-low-paid-job/>.Garnaut, Ross. Garnaut Climate Change Review. 2008. 26 Feb. 2019 <http://www.garnautreview.org.au/index.htm>.Gammage, Bill. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2012.Golder, Hilary, and Diane Kirkby. “Mrs. Mayne and Her Boxing Kangaroo: A Married Woman Tests Her Property Rights in Colonial New South Wales.” Law and History Review 21.3 (2003): 585–605.Grant, Elisabeth. “Sustainable Kangaroo Harvesting: Perceptions and Consumption of Kangaroo Meat among University Students in New South Wales.” Independent Study Project (ISP). U of NSW, 2014. <https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/1755>.Haslam, Nick. “The Five Stages of Grief Don’t Come in Fixed Steps – Everyone Feels Differently.” The Conversation 22 Oct. 2018. 28 Mar. 2019 <https://theconversation.com/the-five-stages-of-grief-dont-come-in-fixed-steps-everyone-feels-differently-96111>.Head, Lesley. “The Anthropoceans.” Geographical Research 53.3 (2015): 313–20.Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia. Kangaroo Meat. 26 Feb. 2019 <http://www.kangarooindustry.com/products/meat/>.“Kangaroo Meat Sales Criticised.” The Canberra Times 13 Sep. 1984: 14. 22 Feb 2019 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article136915919>.“Kangaroo to Be Food ‘Salesman.’” Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, 2 Dec. 1954. 22 Feb 2019 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article134089767>.Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy, and their own Families. New York: Touchstone, 1997.Jackson, Stephen, and Karl Vernes. Kangaroo: Portrait of an Extraordinary Marsupial. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010.Lappé, Frances Moore. Diet for a Small Planet. New York: Ballantine Books, 1971.N’Tash Aha (@Nsvasey). “‘I’m a Kangatarian’ isn’t a Pickup Line, Mate. #LoveIslandAU.” Twitter post. 27 May 2018. 5 Apr. 2019 <https://twitter.com/Nsvasey/status/1000697124122644480>.“NSW Code of Practice for Kangaroo Meat for Human Consumption.” Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales 24 Mar. 1993. 22 Feb. 2019 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page14638033>.Oxford University Press, Australia and New Zealand. Word of the Month. June 2017. <https://www.oup.com.au/dictionaries/word-of-the-month>.Pascoe, Bruce. Dark Emu, Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? Broome: Magabala Books, 2014.Probyn, Elspeth. “Eating Roo: Of Things That Become Food.” New Formations 74.1 (2011): 33–45.Steinfeld, Henning, Pierre Gerber, Tom Wassenaar, Vicent Castel, Mauricio Rosales, and Cees d Haan. Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, 2006.Trust Nature. Essence of Kangaroo Capsules. 26 Feb. 2019 <http://ncpro.com.au/products/all-products/item/88139-essence-of-kangaroo-35000>.Victoria Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. Kangaroo Pet Food Trial. 28 Mar. 2019 <https://www.wildlife.vic.gov.au/managing-wildlife/wildlife-management-and-control-authorisations/kangaroo-pet-food-trial>.Willett, Walter, et al. “Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT–Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems.” The Lancet 16 Jan. 2019. 26 Feb. 2019 <https://www.thelancet.com/commissions/EAT>.Wilson, George. “Kangaroos Can Be an Asset Rather than a Pest.” Australasian Science 39.1 (2018): 39.Zukerman, Wendy. “Eating Skippy: The Future of Kangaroo Meat.” New Scientist 208.2781 (2010): 42–5.

Most non-human animals live in the wild and it is probable that suffering predominates in their lives due to natural events. Humans may at some point be able to engage in paradise engineering, or the modification of nature and animal organisms themselves, to improve the well-being of wild animals. We may, in other words, make nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ no more. We argue that this creates a tension between environmental ethics and animal ethics which is likely insurmountable. First, we argue that concern for the environment can be compatible with helping individual wild animals but should see redesigning nature as morally impermissible. Second, we argue that if we are concerned with animal well-being, we may reject that we have a duty to help wild animals even to the point of redesigning nature, but we must nevertheless concede that it is permissible to do so under certain circumstances. We show how this permissibility can be derived from three animal rights views: Tom Regan’s, a novel account inspired by Thomas Pogge and a libertarian approach to animal rights.

Abstract There is growing concern globally about the inhumane treatment of ‘pest’ animals, including rodents, and about the ecological consequences of rodenticides, notably the poisoning of non-target wildlife like raptors and scavengers. Recent contestation between Environmental Health (EH) officials in Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s largest African township, and the National Council for Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA) illustrates the tension that can arise between innovative ecologically-focused strategies and existing legislation and animal protection practices. In 2013/14 EH officials introduced a job-creation project to trap and drown rats, describing it as ‘humane’ because it avoided poison thereby posing no danger to wildlife such as owls. The NSPCA, however, halted the project, arguing that drowning was both inhumane and illegal. Death by poison is also inhumane but the South Africa’s Animals Protection Act (1962) allows it (and trapping and hunting) to be used against ‘pests’/‘vermin’. The NSPCA, which has never challenged the Act for allowing the inhumane treatment of these animals, used it to trump local preferences. A representative survey from Khayelitsha showed that there was some support for an NSPCA-like position (14% thought that drowning was cruel and that workers should not be allowed to trap and drown rats) but that the majority (70%) indicated that they were both concerned about the poisoning of non-target animals and supported the continuation of the trapping and drowning project. This was not a contestation over whether animals should be protected, but over how to do this, and which animals to include.

The COVID-19 pandemic has re-focused attention on mechanisms that lead to zoonotic disease spillover and spread. Commercial wildlife trade, and associated markets, are recognized mechanisms for zoonotic disease emergence, resulting in a growing global conversation around reducing human disease risks from spillover associated with hunting, trade, and consumption of wild animals. These discussions are especially relevant to people who rely on harvesting wildlife to meet nutritional, and cultural needs, including those in Arctic and boreal regions. Global policies around wildlife use and trade can impact food sovereignty and security, especially of Indigenous Peoples. We reviewed known zoonotic pathogens and current risks of transmission from wildlife (including fish) to humans in North American Arctic and boreal biomes, and evaluated the epidemic and pandemic potential of these zoonoses. We discuss future concerns, and consider monitoring and mitigation measures in these changing socio-ecological systems. While multiple zoonotic pathogens circulate in these systems, risks to humans are mostly limited to individual illness or local community outbreaks. These regions are relatively remote, subject to very cold temperatures, have relatively low wildlife, domestic animal, and pathogen diversity, and in many cases low density, including of humans. Hence, favorable conditions for emergence of novel diseases or major amplification of a spillover event are currently not present. The greatest risk to northern communities from pathogens of pandemic potential is via introduction with humans visiting from other areas. However, Arctic and boreal ecosystems are undergoing rapid changes through climate warming, habitat encroachment, and development; all of which can change host and pathogen relationships, thereby affecting the probability of the emergence of new (and re-emergence of old) zoonoses. Indigenous leadership and engagement in disease monitoring, prevention and response, is vital from the outset, and would increase the success of such efforts, as well as ensure the protection of Indigenous rights as outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Partnering with northern communities and including Indigenous Knowledge Systems would improve the timeliness, and likelihood, of detecting emerging zoonotic risks, and contextualize risk assessments to the unique human-wildlife relationships present in northern biomes.

The concept of the “other” is starting to get a little worn out, as it has been used extensively. Despite this it still is a clarifying term to be used when we talk of things that we tend to marginalize. The concept is largely built on fear, for it is that which we find distant, different and threatening that we name the “other”. We construct others because of fear and then fear them because of their otherness. (Cohen 1996). One forgotten group of “others” are animals. Of course, we don’t always see the animals as others, and maybe are heading more into the direction of seeing similarities instead of differences between them and ourselves. Still, the animals are often seen as our opposites. It is through the animal that anthropocentric cultures have defined “humanity”: we are what animals are not (see Clarke & Linzey 1990). One differentiating thing is their “wildness”, and it is often the cause of fear. Unlike us supposedly “cultural” creatures, we like to see (biased as ever) the animals as irrational and instinctual beings that threaten our control. Together with wildness also the “unknown” nature of animals makes us fearful, for the silent animals (especially when lurking in the waters or forests) remain beyond our reach. This fear has given birth to animal monsters that have been meddling with our imagination for centuries: the folklores tell about wear wolves, hell hounds and dragons that brave nights have to kill so that human cultures can flourish, the Bible suggests that the fallen angle is a dragon and the anti-christ a “beast”. Especially in the Middle Ages animals were often seen as demonic beings not to be messed with. (Salisbury 1997; Serpell 1986, 46). It does not seem like a big leap to claim that sometimes we see the animal as the silent, immoral, instinctual, material and even evil enemy that needs to be destroyed so that human rationality, morality and spirituality can prevail. The animal monster has not gone anywhere. They still live in the media, in the horror films and in the urban stories. Natural nasties The animal monsters became increasingly popular in the 70’s horror film. Andrew Tudor has called the genre “eco-doom” and refers to the animal monsters as “natural nasties” (Tudor 1989, 48-62). In his opinion the increased number of animal monsters can be tied to the fear of ecological catastrophe. I’d like to add the growing attention to animal rights issues and animal welfare. All of a sudden the superior status of humans was being critically examined, and animal monsters were one way to deal with the fear of loosing the old safe position. Tudor points out that at the same time also paranoia and helplessness were being emphasised: it was in the presumably safe environment that monsters all of a sudden emerged from, and the heroes were no longer quite as strong in protecting the society against them. This could be linked to the awareness of environmental and animal welfare issues: it was the supposedly controlled area that was attacking humanity. The most famous example of “zoohorror” (perhaps a better term for specifically animal monster horror) is of course Jaws (Spielberg, USA 1975). In the film an idyllic small town with happy holiday enjoyers is attacked by a seemingly psychopathic shark. Through out the film the difference and otherness of the shark are emphasised, and it is described as an instinctual “eating machine”. The humans trying to fight it are morally upright people who care for the community, the shark on the other hand is an aggressive killer who’s only motive seems to be to eat as many people as possible. The otherness is underlined with the way the shark is constructed. He remains out of sight for the majority of the film, neither the swimmers or the viewers get to see it. When it is seen for brief few seconds it is shown as a bodily spectacle of a fin, grey glittering body and – of course – huge jaws. Tudor calls these kinds of monsters “alien”, but I think a better term in this case would be “physical”. The monster lacks all personality and its motives are nonexistent. It becomes known only through its body and aggressive actions: it is constructed as an acting body. Otherwise it remains hidden, causing fear with its invisibility and absence. This goes well together with the idea that the animal is the opposite of humans – where as the humans in the films are intentional, rational and moral heroes the animal remains an instinctually acting violent body that is unseen, unknown – and frightning. Pets gone bad As said, it is the wildness and uncontrollability of animals that often causes us to view them as “others” and make us fear them. This is most evident with wild animals, but also present when it comes to domesticated animals. Domestication has often been understood as a process of improvement, of bringing animals from the natural state into culture that is supposed to be somehow “higher” (Thomas 1980; Harris 1996). Domestication also makes it possible to take control over animals (Passariello 1999). The threatening wildness disappears, and animals are made tame creatures that follow our control (of course, this is not always the motive behind domestication). Still, the wildness never completely disappears. As Steve Baker (1993) has claimed, it seems that there always is a fear of our control breaking and the animal going back to its natural stage. A nice little puppy can turn into a hellhound over night and kill the mailman. These stories make the headlines regularly causing even hysteria. The feared others can be domesticated and tamed, but they can still any time break free. The most famous example of an animal monster that causes fear because of “dedomestication” is Cujo (Teague, USA 1983). In the film a friendly family dog turns into a killer after being bit by a bat, and goes after the local villagers with amazing determination to kill everyone in sight. Another example is Man’s Best Friend (Lafia, USA 1993), where a genetically engineered Rottweiler kills all the people he considers rivals in respect to the owner. These (and many more) films construct animal monsters on the basis of our fear that something might go wrong with the domestication. The differences to the “natural nasties” are interesting. Where as wild animals are often physical monsters, domesticated animals are closer to the “anthropomorphic” (the term from Tudor 1989, 115) or “individual” monsters, for unlike wild animals, we are familiar with them. They are not hidden away like the wild animals, but remain in the viewers’ sight. They are also not as instinctual, and we can even understand their motives. Still, they are monsters that cause fear, for they have fought our cultural control and gone back into being “wild”. Psychopathic primates Where as wild animals are far away and domesticated animals close to us, primates are understood to be like us. Their cognitive skills and DNA’s have made it difficult to categorise them, and we feel a little embarrassed of how much they are like us. Still, and perhaps even because of this, they also cause fear. Planet of the Apes (Schaffner USA 1968) plays with the idea of roles being turned upside down, Link (Franklin 1985) and Congo (Marshall 1995) on the other hand show us primates as monsters. In these films the main motive seems to be to find a difference between humans and primates. Eventually it is claimed to be (when all else fails) morality. In Link a domesticated chimpanzee, who can use language, dresses in clothes and even works as a butler for a scientist, turns into a psychopathic killer when he discovers he might be replaced. In the film the scientist keeps saying humans should never forget that they are “the dominant species” and that primates “lack morality”. In Congo there is both a well behaving domesticated gorilla, and a pack of wild gorillas. The scientist, who owns the domesticated one decides to bring her back to the jungle (where she supposedly “belongs”) and has to fight back a group of monstrous wild gorillas. In the course of the film he becomes to understand that not all primates are as nice as the one he’s had, and that some are “killer apes”. The lesson seems to be quite clear: primates can resemble us, but because they lack morality they can ultimately become viscious monsters. Where as wild animals are physical and domesticated animals somewhat closer to individual monsters, primates are completely individuated – after all, they are “closest” to us. In the films the primate monsters are portrayed much like traditional human villains: we understand their motives and they remain visible to us most of the time. Monstrosity is built on individuality that lacks a crucial feature. Conclusion The existence of animal monsters depends on our understanding of what animals are. When we want to emphasise their difference, we create dualisms and classify animals under the one headline “animal”. Through this “generic animal” we can distance ourselves from animality and nature: we are individuals, they are all part of the class of “animals”, who are determined by animality and attributes that go with it (Birke & Parisi 1999). Cultural studies generally ignore the animal others. Nature and animals are mentioned as the opposites to culture and human beings (Haraway 1991), but they usually remain just that – a mention. Certain understandings of their meaning still make us tend to believe that the analyses of animals is somehow disinteresting (Baker 1993; Steeves 1999; Simons 1997). Paradoxically animals are made the opposite of human beings, and then marginalized even in cultural studies as the disinteresting “other”. Analysing what we understand “animality” to be and why we make it our opposition is crucial in seeking to find new ways to relate to animals. Maybe if this was done, the next time the wolf from the national park or the dog that bit the mailman would not cause fear, panic, and hatred. References Baker, Steve. Picturing the beast. Animals, identity and representation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993. Birke, Lynda and Parisi, Luciana. “Animals, Becoming.” Animal Others: On Ethics, Ontology and Animal Life. Ed. Peter Steeves. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. 55-75. Clarke, Paul & Linzey, Andrew. Political Theory and Animals Rights. London: Pluto Press, 1990. Cohen, Jeffrey. ”Monster Culture: Seven Theses.” Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Ed. Jeffrey Cohen. Minneapolis: UMP, 1996. Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Harris, David. “Domesticatory Relationships of People, Plants and Animals.” Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication. Eds. Roy Ellen, Katruyoshi Fukui. Berg: Oxford International Publishers, 1996. Passariello, Phylis. “Me and my totem: cross-cultural attitudes toward animals.” Attitudes to Animals: View to Animal Welfare. Ed. Francine Dolins. Cambridge: CUP, 1999. 12-26. Salisbury, Joyce. “Human Beasts and Bestial Humans in the Middle Ages.” Animal Acts: Configuring the Human in Western History. Eds. Jennifer Ham and Matthew Senior. London: Routledge, 1997. 9-23. Serpell, James. In the Company of Animals. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Simons, John. “The Longest Revolution: Cultural Studies after Speciesism.” Environmental Values vol. 6, no 4 (1997): 483-497. Steeves, Peter. Introduction. Animal Others: on Ethics, Ontology and Animal Life. Ed. Peter Steeves. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. 1-14. Thomas, Keith. Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800. London: Penguing Books, 1983. Tudor, Andrew. Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Aaltola, Elisa. "Animal Monsters and the Fear of the Wild" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.1 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/animals.php>. Chicago Style Aaltola, Elisa, "Animal Monsters and the Fear of the Wild" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 1 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/animals.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Aaltola, Elisa. (2002) Animal Monsters and the Fear of the Wild. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(1). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/animals.php> ([your date of access]).

According to The Betoota Advocate (Parker), a CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) paper has recently established that “it takes roughly seven minutes on average for a vegan to tell you that they’re vegan” (qtd. in Harrington et al. 135). For such a statement to have currency as a joke means that it is grounded in a shared experience of being vegan on the one hand, and of encountering vegans on the other. Why should vegans feel such a need to justify themselves? I recognise the observation as being true of me, and this article is one way to explore this perspective: writing to find out what I currently only intuit. As Richardson notes (516), writing is “a way of ‘knowing’—a method of discovery and analysis. By writing in different ways, we discover new aspects of our topic and our relationship to it. Form and content are inseparable” (qtd. in Wall 151).Autoethnography, the qualitative research methodology used for this article, is etymologically derived from Greek to indicate a process for exploring the self (autos) and the cultural (“ethno” from ethnos—nation, tribe, people, class) using a shared, understood, approach (“graphy” from graphia, writing). It relies upon critical engagement with and synthesising of the personal. In Wall’s words, this methodological analysis of human experience “says that what I know matters” (148). The autoethnographic investigation (Riggins; Sparkes) reported here interrogates the experience of “being judged” as a vegan: firstly, by myself; secondly, by other vegans; and ultimately by the wider society. As Ellis notes, autoethnography is “research, writing, story and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social and political. Autoethnographic forms feature concrete action, emotion, embodiment, self-consciousness, and introspection” (xix).Introspection is important because researchers’ stories of their observations are interwoven with self-reflexive critique and analysis: “illustrative materials are meant to give a sense of what the observed world is really like, while the researcher’s interpretations are meant to represent a more detached conceptualization of that reality” (Strauss and Corbin 22). Leaving aside Gans’s view that this form of enquiry represents the “climax of the preoccupation with self […] an autobiography written by sociologists” (542), an autoethnography generally has the added advantage of protecting against Glendon and Stanton’s concern that interpretive studies “are often of too short a duration to be able to provide sufficiently large samples of behaviour” (209). In my case, I have twelve years of experience of identifying as a vegan to draw upon.My experience is that being vegan is a contested activity with a significant range of variation that partly reflects the different initial motivations for adopting this increasingly mainstream identity. Greenebaum notes that “ethical vegans differentiate between those who ‘eat’ vegan (health vegans) and those who ‘live’ vegan (ethical vegans)”, going on to suggest that these differences create “hierarchies and boundaries between vegans” (131). As Greenebaum acknowledges, there is sometimes a need to balance competing priorities: “an environmental vegan […] may purchase leather products over polyvinyl chloride (PVC), thinking that leather is a better choice for the environment” (130). Harrington et al. similarly critique vegan motivations as encompassing “a selfless pursuit for those who cared for other beings (animals)” to “a concern about impacts that affect all humans (environment), and an interest mostly in the self (individual health …)” (144). Wright identifies a fourth group of vegans: those searching for a means of dietary inclusivity (2). I have known Orthodox Jewish households that have adopted veganism because it is compatible with keeping Kosher, while many strict Hindus are vegan and some observant Muslims may also follow suit, to avoid meat that is not Halal certified.The Challenge of the EverydayAlthough my initial vegan promptings were firmly at the selfish end of an altruism spectrum, my experience is that motivation is not static. Being a vegan for any reason increasingly primes awareness of more altruistic motivations “at the intersection of a diversity of concerns [… promoting] a spread and expansion of meaning to view food choices holistically” (Harrington et al. 144). Even so, everyday life offers a range of temptations and challenges that require constant juggling and, sometimes, a string of justifications: to oneself, and to others. I identify as a bit of a bad vegan, and not simply because I embrace the possibility that “honey is a gray area” (Greenebaum, quoting her participant Jason, 139). I’m also flexible around wine, for example, and don’t ask too many questions about whether the wine I drink is refined using milk, or egg-shells or even (yuk!) fish bladders. The point is, there are an infinite number of acid tests as to what constitutes “a real vegan”, encouraging inter-vegan judgmentality. Some slight definitional slippage aligns with Singer and Mason’s argument, however, that vegans should avoid worrying about “trivial infractions of the ethical guidelines […] Personal purity isn’t really the issue. Not supporting animal abuse – and persuading others not to support it – is. Giving people the impression that it is virtually impossible to be vegan doesn’t help animals at all” (Singer and Mason 258–9).If I were to accept a definition of non-vegan, possibly because I have a leather handbag among other infractions, that would feel inauthentic. The term “vegan” helpfully labels my approach to food and drink. Others also find it useful as a shorthand for dietary preferences (except for the small but significant minority who muddle veganism with being gluten free). From the point of view of dietary prohibitions I’m a particularly strict vegan, apart from honey. I know people who make exceptions for line-caught fish, or the eggs from garden-roaming happy chooks, but I don’t. I increasingly understand the perspectives of those who have a more radical conception of veganism than I do, however: whose vision and understanding is that “behind every meal of meat is an absence: the death of the animal whose place the meat takes. The ‘absent referent’ is that which separates the meat eater from the animal and the animal from the end product [… keeping] something from being seen as having been someone” (Adams 14). The concept of the global suffering of animals inherent in the figures: “31.1 billion each year, 85.2 million each day, 3.5 million each hour, 59,170 each minute” (Adams dedication) is appalling; as well as being an under-representation of the current situation since the globe has had almost two further decades of population growth and rising “living standards”.Whatever the motivations, it’s easy to imagine that the different branches of veganism have more in common than divides them. Being a vegan of any kind helps someone identify with other variations upon the theme. For example, even though my views on animal rights did not motivate my choice to become vegan, once I stopped seeing other sentient creatures as a handy food source I began to construct them differently. I gradually realised that, as a species, we were committing the most extraordinary atrocities on a global scale in treating animals as disposable commodities without rights or feelings. The large-scale production of what we like to term “meat and poultry” is almost unadulterated animal suffering, whereas the by-catch (“waste products”) of commercial fishing represents an extraordinary disregard of the rights to life of other creatures and, as Cole and Morgan note, “The number of aquatic animals slaughtered is not recorded, their individual deaths being subsumed by aggregate weight statistics” (135). Even if we did accept that humans have the right to consume some animals some of the time, should the netting of a given weight of edible fish really entail the death of many, many time more weight of living creatures that will be “wasted”: the so-called by-catch? Such wanton destruction has increasingly visible impacts upon complex food chains, and the ecosystems that sustain us all.The Vegan Threat to the Status QuoExamining the evidence for the broader community being biased against vegetarians and vegans, MacInnis and Hodson identify that these groups are “clear targets of relatively more negative attitudes” (727) towards them than other minority groups. Indeed, “only drug addicts were evaluated more negatively than vegetarians and vegans” (726). While “vegans were evaluated more negatively than vegetarians” (732), there was a hierarchy in negative evaluations according to the underlying motivation for someone adopting veganism or vegetarianism. People motivated by personal health received the least negative evaluations from the general population followed by those who were motivated by the environment. The greatest opprobrium was reserved for vegans who were motivated by animal rights (732). MacInnis and Hodson reason that this antipathy is because “vegetarians and vegans represent strong threats to the status quo, given that prevailing cultural norms favour meat-eating” (722). Also implied here is that fact that eating meat is itself a cultural norm associated with masculinity (Rothgerber).Adams’s work links the unthinking, normative exploitation of animals to the unthinking, normative exploitation of women, a situation so aligned that it is often expressed through the use of a common metaphor: “‘meat’ becomes a term to express women’s oppression, used equally by patriarchy and feminists, who say that women are ‘pieces of meat’” (2002, 59). Rothberger further interrogates the relationship between masculinity and meat by exploring gender in relation to strategies for “meat eating justification”, reflecting a 1992 United States study that showed, of all people reporting that they were vegetarian, 68% were women and 32% men (Smart, 1995). Rothberger’s argument is that:Following a vegetarian diet or deliberately reducing meat intake violates the spirit of Western hegemonic masculinity, with its socially prescribed norms of stoicism, practicality, seeking dominance, and being powerful, strong, tough, robust and invulnerable […] Such individuals have basically cast aside a relatively hidden male privilege—the freedom and ability to eat without criticism and scrutiny, something that studies have shown women lack. (371)Noting that “to raise concerns about the injustices of factory farming and to feel compelled by them would seem emotional, weak and sensitive—feminine characteristics” (366), Rothberger sets the scene for me to note two items of popular culture which achieved cut-through in my personal life. The evidence for this is, in terms of all the pro-vegan materials I encounter, these were two of a small number that I shared on social media. In line with Rothberger’s observations, both are oppositional to hegemonic masculinity:one represents a feminised, mother and child exchange that captures the moment when a child realises the “absent referent” of the dead animal in the octopus on his plate—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrU03da2arE;while the other is a sentimentalised and sympathetic recording of cattle luxuriating in their first taste of pastureland after a long period of confinement—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huT5__BqY_U.Seeing cows behaving like pets does call attention to the artificial distinction between “companion animals” and other animals. As Cole and Stewart note, “the naming of other animals is useful for human beings, while it is dangerous, and frequently lethal, for other animals. This is because the words we use to name other animals are saturated with common sense knowledge claims about those animals that legitimate their habitual use for humans” (13). Thus a cat, in Western culture, has a very different life trajectory to a cow. Adams notes the contrary case where the companion animal is used as a referent for a threatened human:Child sexual abusers often use threats and/or violence against companion animals to achieve compliance from their victims. Batterers harm or kill a companion animal as a warning to their partner that she could be next; as a way of further separating her from meaningful relationships; to demonstrate his power and her powerlessness. (Adams 57)For children who are still at a stage where animals are creatures of fascination and potential friends, who may be growing up with Charlotte’s Web (White) or Peter Rabbit (Potter), the mental gymnastics of suspending identification with these fellow creatures are harder because empathy and imagination are more active and the ingrained habit of eating without thinking has not had so long to develop. Indeed, children often understand domestic animals as “members of the family”, as illustrated by an interview with Kani, a 10-year old participant in one of my research projects. “In the absence of her extended family overseas, Kani adds her pets to [the list of] those with whom she shares her family life: ‘And my mum and my uncle and then our cat Dobby. I named it [for Harry Potter’s house elf] ...and the goldfish. The goldfish are Twinkle, Glitter, Glow and Bobby’” (Green and Stevenson). Such perceptions may well filter through to children having a different understanding of animals-as-food, even though Cole and Stewart note that “children enter into an adult culture habituated to [the] banal conceptualization of other animals according to their (dis)utilities” (21).Evidence-Based VeganismThose M/C Journal readers who know me personally will understand that one reason why I embrace the “bad vegan” label, is that I’m no more obviously a pin-up for healthy veganism than I am for ethical or environmental veganism. In particular, my BMI (Body Mass Index) is significantly outside the “healthy” range. Even so, I attribute a dramatic change in my capacity for stamina-based activity to my embrace of veganism. A high-speed recap of the evidence would include: in 2009 I embarked on a week-long 500km Great Vic bike ride; in 2012 I successfully completed a Machu Picchu trek at high altitude; by 2013 I was ready for my first half marathon (reprised in 2014, and 2017); in 2014 I cycled from Surfers’ Paradise to Noosa—somewhat less successfully than in my 2009 venture, but even so; in 2016 I completed the Oxfam 50km in 24 hours (plus a half hour, if I’m honest); and in 2017 I completed the 227km Portuguese Camino; in 2018 I jogged an average of over 3km per day, every day, up until 20 September... Apart from indicating that I live an extremely fortunate life, these activities seem to me to demonstrate that becoming vegan in 2007 has conferred a huge health benefit. In particular, I cannot identify similar metamorphoses in the lives of my 50-to-60-something year-old empty-nester friends. My most notable physical feat pre-veganism was the irregular completion of Perth’s annual 12km City-to-Surf fun run.Although I’m a vegan for health reasons, I didn’t suddenly wake up one day and decide that this was now my future: I had to be coaxed and cajoled into looking at my food preferences very differently. This process entailed my enrolling in a night school-type evening course, the Coronary Health Improvement Program: 16 x 3 hour sessions over eight weeks. Its sibling course is now available online as the Complete Health Improvement Program. The first lesson of the eight weeks convincingly demonstrated that what is good for coronary health is also good for health in general, which I found persuasive and reassuring given the propensity to cancer evident in my family tree. In the generation above me, my parents each had three siblings so I have a sample of eight immediate family to draw upon. Six of these either have cancer at the moment, or have died from cancer, with the cancers concerned including breast (1), prostate (2), lung (1), pancreas (1) and brain (1). A seventh close relative passed away before her health service could deliver a diagnosis for her extraordinarily elevated eosinophil levels (100x normal rates of that particular kind of white blood cell: potentially a blood cancer, I think). The eighth relative in that generation is my “bad vegan” uncle who has been mainly plant-based in his dietary choices since 2004. At 73, he is still working three days per week as a dentist and planning a 240 km trek in Italy as his main 2019 holiday. That’s the kind of future I’m hoping for too, when I grow up.And yet, one can read volumes of health literature without stumbling upon Professor T. Colin Campbell’s early research findings via his work on rodents and rodent cells that: “nutrition [was] far more important in controlling cancer promotion than the dose of the initiating carcinogen” and that “nutrients from animal-based foods increased tumor development while nutrients from plant-based foods decreased tumor development” (66, italics in original). Plant was already an eminent scientist at the point where she developed breast cancer, but she noted her amazement at learning “precisely how much has been discovered already [that] has not filtered through to the public” (18). The reason for the lack of visible research in this area is not so much its absence, but more likely its political sensitivity in an era of Big Food. As Harrington et al.’s respondent Samantha noted, “I think the meat lobby’s much bigger than the vegetable lobby” (147). These arguments are addressed in greater depth in Green et al.My initiating research question—Why do I feel the need to justify being vegan?—can clearly be answered in a wide variety of ways. Veganism disrupts the status quo: it questions both the appropriateness of humanity’s systematic torturing of other species for food, and the risks that those animal-based foods pose for the long-term health of human populations. It offends many vested interests from Big Food to accepted notions of animal welfare to the conventional teachings of the health industry. Identifying as a vegan represents an outcome of one or more of a wide range of motivations, some of which are more clearly self-serving (read “bad”); while others are more easily identified as altruistic (read “good”). After a decade or more of personal experimentation in this space, I’m proud to identify as a “bad vegan”. It’s been a great choice personally and, I hope, for some other creatures whose planet I share.ReferencesAdams, Carol. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. New York: Continuum, 1990.Campbell, T. Colin, and Thomas M. Cambell. The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2005.Cole, Matthew, and Karen Morgan. “Vegaphobia: Derogatory Discourses of Veganism and the Reproduction of Speciesism in UK National Newspaper.” British Journal of Sociology 62 (2011): 134–53.———, and Kate Stewart. Our Children and Other Animals: The Cultural Construction of Human-Animal Relations in Childhood. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.Ellis, Carolyn. The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography. Oxford: Altamira Press, 2004.Gans, Herbert J. “Participant Observation in the Era of ‘Ethnography’.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 28.5 (1999): 540–48.Glendon, A. Ian, and Neville Stanton. “Perspectives on Safety Culture.” Safety Science 34.1-3 (2000): 193–214.Green, Lelia, Leesa Costello, and Julie Dare. “Veganism, Health Expectancy, and the Communication of Sustainability.” Australian Journal of Communication 37.3 (2010): 87–102.———, and Kylie Stevenson. “A Ten-Year-Old’s Use of Creative Content to Construct an Alternative Future for Herself.” M/C Journal 20.1 (2017). 13 Apr. 2019 <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1211>.Greenebaum, Jessica. (2012). “Veganism, Identity and the Quest for Authenticity.” Food, Culture and Society 15.1 (2012): 129–44.Harrington, Stephen, Christie Collis, and OzgurDedehayir. “It’s Not (Just) about the F-ckin’ Animals: Why Veganism Is Changing, and Why That Matters.” Alternative Food Politics: From the Margins to the Mainstream. Eds. Michelle Phillipov and Katherine Kirkwood. New York: Routledge, 2019. 135–50.MacInnes, Cara. C., and Gordon Hodson. “It Ain’t Easy Eating Greens: Evidence of Bias Toward Vegetarians and Vegans from Both Source and Target.” Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 20.6 (2015): 721–44.Parker, Errol. “Study Finds the Easiest Way to Tell If Someone Is Vegan Is to Wait until They Inevitably Tell You.” The Betoota Advocate 2017. 10 Apr. 2019 <https://www.betootaadvocate.com/humans-of-betoota/study-finds-easiest-way-tell-someone-vegan-wait-inevitably-tell/>.Plant, Jane A. Your Life in Your Hands: Understand, Prevent and Overcome Breast Cancer and Ovarian Cancer. 4th ed. London: Virgin Books, 2007.Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. London: Frederick Warne and Co, 1902.Richardson, Laurel. “Writing: A Method of Inquiry.” Handbook of Qualitative Research. Eds. Norman K. Denzon and Yvonne S. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994. 516–29.Riggins, Stephen Harold. “Fieldwork in the Living Room: An Autoethnographic Essay.” The Socialness of Things: Essays on the Socio-Semiotics of Objects. Ed. Stephen Harold Riggins. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994. 101–50.Rothgerber, Hank. “Real Men Don’t Eat (Vegetable) Quiche: Masculinity and the Justification of Meat Consumption.” Psychology of Men and Masculinity 14 (1994): 363–75.Singer, Peter, and Jim Mason. The Ethics of What We Eat. Melbourne: Text Publishing Company.Smart, Joanne. “The Gender Gap.” Vegetarian Times 210 (1995): 74–81.Sparkes, Andrew C. “Autoethnography: ‘Self-Indulgence or Something More?’” Ethnographically Speaking: Auto-Ethnography, Literature and Aesthetics. Eds. Arthur P. Bochner and Carolyn C. Ellis. Oxford: Altamira Press, 2002. 209–32.Strauss, Anselm, and Juliet Corbin. Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. London: Sage, 1990.Wall, Sarah. “An Autoethnography on Learning about Autoethnography.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 5 (2006): 146–60.White, Elwyn B. Charlotte’s Web. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952.Wright, Laura. The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals and Gender in the Age of Terror. Athens: U of Georgia Press, 2015.

Introduction Eating is one of the most quintessential activities of human life. Because of this primacy, eating is, as food anthropologist Sidney Mintz has observed, “not merely a biological activity, but a vibrantly cultural activity as well” (48). This article posits that the current awareness of climate change in the Western world is animating such cultural activity as the Slow Food movement and is, as a result, stimulating what could be seen as an evolutionary change in popular foodways. Moreover, this paper suggests that, in line with modelling provided by the Slow Food example, an increased awareness of the connections of climate change to the social injustices of food production might better drive social change in such areas. This discussion begins by proposing that contemporary foodways—defined as “not only what is eaten by a particular group of people but also the variety of customs, beliefs and practices surrounding the production, preparation and presentation of food” (Davey 182)—are changing in the West in relation to current concerns about climate change. Such modification has a long history. Since long before the inception of modern Homo sapiens, natural climate change has been a crucial element driving hominidae evolution, both biologically and culturally in terms of social organisation and behaviours. Macroevolutionary theory suggests evolution can dramatically accelerate in response to rapid shifts in an organism’s environment, followed by slow to long periods of stasis once a new level of sustainability has been achieved (Gould and Eldredge). There is evidence that ancient climate change has also dramatically affected the rate and course of cultural evolution. Recent work suggests that the end of the last ice age drove the cultural innovation of animal and plant domestication in the Middle East (Zeder), not only due to warmer temperatures and increased rainfall, but also to a higher level of atmospheric carbon dioxide which made agriculture increasingly viable (McCorriston and Hole, cited in Zeder). Megadroughts during the Paleolithic might well have been stimulating factors behind the migration of hominid populations out of Africa and across Asia (Scholz et al). Thus, it is hardly surprising that modern anthropogenically induced global warming—in all its’ climate altering manifestations—may be driving a new wave of cultural change and even evolution in the West as we seek a sustainable homeostatic equilibrium with the environment of the future. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring exposed some of the threats that modern industrial agriculture poses to environmental sustainability. This prompted a public debate from which the modern environmental movement arose and, with it, an expanding awareness and attendant anxiety about the safety and nutritional quality of contemporary foods, especially those that are grown with chemical pesticides and fertilizers and/or are highly processed. This environmental consciousness led to some modification in eating habits, manifest by some embracing wholefood and vegetarian dietary regimes (or elements of them). Most recently, a widespread awareness of climate change has forced rapid change in contemporary Western foodways, while in other climate related areas of socio-political and economic significance such as energy production and usage, there is little evidence of real acceleration of change. Ongoing research into the effects of this expanding environmental consciousness continues in various disciplinary contexts such as geography (Eshel and Martin) and health (McMichael et al). In food studies, Vileisis has proposed that the 1970s environmental movement’s challenge to the polluting practices of industrial agri-food production, concurrent with the women’s movement (asserting women’s right to know about everything, including food production), has led to both cooks and eaters becoming increasingly knowledgeable about the links between agricultural production and consumer and environmental health, as well as the various social justice issues involved. As a direct result of such awareness, alternatives to the industrialised, global food system are now emerging (Kloppenberg et al.). The Slow Food (R)evolution The tenets of the Slow Food movement, now some two decades old, are today synergetic with the growing consternation about climate change. In 1983, Carlo Petrini formed the Italian non-profit food and wine association Arcigola and, in 1986, founded Slow Food as a response to the opening of a McDonalds in Rome. From these humble beginnings, which were then unashamedly positing a return to the food systems of the past, Slow Food has grown into a global organisation that has much more future focused objectives animating its challenges to the socio-cultural and environmental costs of industrial food. Slow Food does have some elements that could be classed as reactionary and, therefore, the opposite of evolutionary. In response to the increasing homogenisation of culinary habits around the world, for instance, Slow Food’s Foundation for Biodiversity has established the Ark of Taste, which expands upon the idea of a seed bank to preserve not only varieties of food but also local and artisanal culinary traditions. In this, the Ark aims to save foods and food products “threatened by industrial standardization, hygiene laws, the regulations of large-scale distribution and environmental damage” (SFFB). Slow Food International’s overarching goals and activities, however, extend far beyond the preservation of past foodways, extending to the sponsoring of events and activities that are attempting to create new cuisine narratives for contemporary consumers who have an appetite for such innovation. Such events as the Salone del Gusto (Salon of Taste) and Terra Madre (Mother Earth) held in Turin every two years, for example, while celebrating culinary traditions, also focus on contemporary artisanal foods and sustainable food production processes that incorporate the most current of agricultural knowledge and new technologies into this production. Attendees at these events are also driven by both an interest in tradition, and their own very current concerns with health, personal satisfaction and environmental sustainability, to change their consumer behavior through an expanded self-awareness of the consequences of their individual lifestyle choices. Such events have, in turn, inspired such events in other locations, moving Slow Food from local to global relevance, and affecting the intellectual evolution of foodway cultures far beyond its headquarters in Bra in Northern Italy. This includes in the developing world, where millions of farmers continue to follow many traditional agricultural practices by necessity. Slow Food Movement’s forward-looking values are codified in the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture 2006 publication, Manifesto on the Future of Food. This calls for changes to the World Trade Organisation’s rules that promote the globalisation of agri-food production as a direct response to the “climate change [which] threatens to undermine the entire natural basis of ecologically benign agriculture and food preparation, bringing the likelihood of catastrophic outcomes in the near future” (ICFFA 8). It does not call, however, for a complete return to past methods. To further such foodway awareness and evolution, Petrini founded the University of Gastronomic Sciences at Slow Food’s headquarters in 2004. The university offers programs that are analogous with the Slow Food’s overall aim of forging sustainable partnerships between the best of old and new practice: to, in the organisation’s own words, “maintain an organic relationship between gastronomy and agricultural science” (UNISG). In 2004, Slow Food had over sixty thousand members in forty-five countries (Paxson 15), with major events now held each year in many of these countries and membership continuing to grow apace. One of the frequently cited successes of the Slow Food movement is in relation to the tomato. Until recently, supermarkets stocked only a few mass-produced hybrids. These cultivars were bred for their disease resistance, ease of handling, tolerance to artificial ripening techniques, and display consistency, rather than any culinary values such as taste, aroma, texture or variety. In contrast, the vine ripened, ‘farmer’s market’ tomato has become the symbol of an “eco-gastronomically” sustainable, local and humanistic system of food production (Jordan) which melds the best of the past practice with the most up-to-date knowledge regarding such farming matters as water conservation. Although the term ‘heirloom’ is widely used in relation to these tomatoes, there is a distinctively contemporary edge to the way they are produced and consumed (Jordan), and they are, along with other organic and local produce, increasingly available in even the largest supermarket chains. Instead of a wholesale embrace of the past, it is the connection to, and the maintenance of that connection with, the processes of production and, hence, to the environment as a whole, which is the animating premise of the Slow Food movement. ‘Slow’ thus creates a gestalt in which individuals integrate their lifestyles with all levels of the food production cycle and, hence to the environment and, importantly, the inherently related social justice issues. ‘Slow’ approaches emphasise how the accelerated pace of contemporary life has weakened these connections, while offering a path to the restoration of a sense of connectivity to the full cycle of life and its relation to place, nature and climate. In this, the Slow path demands that every consumer takes responsibility for all components of his/her existence—a responsibility that includes becoming cognisant of the full story behind each of the products that are consumed in that life. The Slow movement is not, however, a regime of abstention or self-denial. Instead, the changes in lifestyle necessary to support responsible sustainability, and the sensual and aesthetic pleasure inherent in such a lifestyle, exist in a mutually reinforcing relationship (Pietrykowski 2004). This positive feedback loop enhances the potential for promoting real and long-term evolution in social and cultural behaviour. Indeed, the Slow zeitgeist now informs many areas of contemporary culture, with Slow Travel, Homes, Design, Management, Leadership and Education, and even Slow Email, Exercise, Shopping and Sex attracting adherents. Mainstreaming Concern with Ethical Food Production The role of the media in “forming our consciousness—what we think, how we think, and what we think about” (Cunningham and Turner 12)—is self-evident. It is, therefore, revealing in relation to the above outlined changes that even the most functional cookbooks and cookery magazines (those dedicated to practical information such as recipes and instructional technique) in Western countries such as the USA, UK and Australian are increasingly reflecting and promoting an awareness of ethical food production as part of this cultural change in food habits. While such texts have largely been considered as useful but socio-politically relatively banal publications, they are beginning to be recognised as a valid source of historical and cultural information (Nussel). Cookbooks and cookery magazines commonly include discussion of a surprising range of issues around food production and consumption including sustainable and ethical agricultural methods, biodiversity, genetic modification and food miles. In this context, they indicate how rapidly the recent evolution of foodways has been absorbed into mainstream practice. Much of such food related media content is, at the same time, closely identified with celebrity mass marketing and embodied in the television chef with his or her range of branded products including their syndicated articles and cookbooks. This commercial symbiosis makes each such cuisine-related article in a food or women’s magazine or cookbook, in essence, an advertorial for a celebrity chef and their named products. Yet, at the same time, a number of these mass media food celebrities are raising public discussion that is leading to consequent action around important issues linked to climate change, social justice and the environment. An example is Jamie Oliver’s efforts to influence public behaviour and government policy, a number of which have gained considerable traction. Oliver’s 2004 exposure of the poor quality of school lunches in Britain (see Jamie’s School Dinners), for instance, caused public outrage and pressured the British government to commit considerable extra funding to these programs. A recent study by Essex University has, moreover, found that the academic performance of 11-year-old pupils eating Oliver’s meals improved, while absenteeism fell by 15 per cent (Khan). Oliver’s exposé of the conditions of battery raised hens in 2007 and 2008 (see Fowl Dinners) resulted in increased sales of free-range poultry, decreased sales of factory-farmed chickens across the UK, and complaints that free-range chicken sales were limited by supply. Oliver encouraged viewers to lobby their local councils, and as a result, a number banned battery hen eggs from schools, care homes, town halls and workplace cafeterias (see, for example, LDP). The popular penetration of these ideas needs to be understood in a historical context where industrialised poultry farming has been an issue in Britain since at least 1848 when it was one of the contributing factors to the establishment of the RSPCA (Freeman). A century after Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (published in 1906) exposed the realities of the slaughterhouse, and several decades since Peter Singer’s landmark Animal Liberation (1975) and Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights (1983) posited the immorality of the mistreatment of animals in food production, it could be suggested that Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth (released in 2006) added considerably to the recent concern regarding the ethics of industrial agriculture. Consciousness-raising bestselling books such as Jim Mason and Peter Singer’s The Ethics of What We Eat and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (both published in 2006), do indeed ‘close the loop’ in this way in their discussions, by concluding that intensive food production methods used since the 1950s are not only inhumane and damage public health, but are also damaging an environment under pressure from climate change. In comparison, the use of forced labour and human trafficking in food production has attracted far less mainstream media, celebrity or public attention. It could be posited that this is, in part, because no direct relationship to the environment and climate change and, therefore, direct link to our own existence in the West, has been popularised. Kevin Bales, who has been described as a modern abolitionist, estimates that there are currently more than 27 million people living in conditions of slavery and exploitation against their wills—twice as many as during the 350-year long trans-Atlantic slave trade. Bales also chillingly reveals that, worldwide, the number of slaves is increasing, with contemporary individuals so inexpensive to purchase in relation to the value of their production that they are disposable once the slaveholder has used them. Alongside sex slavery, many other prevalent examples of contemporary slavery are concerned with food production (Weissbrodt et al; Miers). Bales and Soodalter, for example, describe how across Asia and Africa, adults and children are enslaved to catch and process fish and shellfish for both human consumption and cat food. Other campaigners have similarly exposed how the cocoa in chocolate is largely produced by child slave labour on the Ivory Coast (Chalke; Off), and how considerable amounts of exported sugar, cereals and other crops are slave-produced in certain countries. In 2003, some 32 per cent of US shoppers identified themselves as LOHAS “lifestyles of health and sustainability” consumers, who were, they said, willing to spend more for products that reflected not only ecological, but also social justice responsibility (McLaughlin). Research also confirms that “the pursuit of social objectives … can in fact furnish an organization with the competitive resources to develop effective marketing strategies”, with Doherty and Meehan showing how “social and ethical credibility” are now viable bases of differentiation and competitive positioning in mainstream consumer markets (311, 303). In line with this recognition, Fair Trade Certified goods are now available in British, European, US and, to a lesser extent, Australian supermarkets, and a number of global chains including Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonalds, Starbucks and Virgin airlines utilise Fair Trade coffee and teas in all, or parts of, their operations. Fair Trade Certification indicates that farmers receive a higher than commodity price for their products, workers have the right to organise, men and women receive equal wages, and no child labour is utilised in the production process (McLaughlin). Yet, despite some Western consumers reporting such issues having an impact upon their purchasing decisions, social justice has not become a significant issue of concern for most. The popular cookery publications discussed above devote little space to Fair Trade product marketing, much of which is confined to supermarket-produced adverzines promoting the Fair Trade products they stock, and international celebrity chefs have yet to focus attention on this issue. In Australia, discussion of contemporary slavery in the press is sparse, having surfaced in 2000-2001, prompted by UNICEF campaigns against child labour, and in 2007 and 2008 with the visit of a series of high profile anti-slavery campaigners (including Bales) to the region. The public awareness of food produced by forced labour and the troubling issue of human enslavement in general is still far below the level that climate change and ecological issues have achieved thus far in driving foodway evolution. This may change, however, if a ‘Slow’-inflected connection can be made between Western lifestyles and the plight of peoples hidden from our daily existence, but contributing daily to them. Concluding Remarks At this time of accelerating techno-cultural evolution, due in part to the pressures of climate change, it is the creative potential that human conscious awareness brings to bear on these challenges that is most valuable. Today, as in the caves at Lascaux, humanity is evolving new images and narratives to provide rational solutions to emergent challenges. As an example of this, new foodways and ways of thinking about them are beginning to evolve in response to the perceived problems of climate change. The current conscious transformation of food habits by some in the West might be, therefore, in James Lovelock’s terms, a moment of “revolutionary punctuation” (178), whereby rapid cultural adaption is being induced by the growing public awareness of impending crisis. It remains to be seen whether other urgent human problems can be similarly and creatively embraced, and whether this trend can spread to offer global solutions to them. References An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Lawrence Bender Productions, 2006. Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004 (first published 1999). Bales, Kevin, and Ron Soodalter. The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. Chalke, Steve. “Unfinished Business: The Sinister Story behind Chocolate.” The Age 18 Sep. 2007: 11. Cunningham, Stuart, and Graeme Turner. The Media and Communications in Australia Today. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2002. Davey, Gwenda Beed. “Foodways.” The Oxford Companion to Australian Folklore. Ed. Gwenda Beed Davey, and Graham Seal. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993. 182–85. Doherty, Bob, and John Meehan. “Competing on Social Resources: The Case of the Day Chocolate Company in the UK Confectionery Sector.” Journal of Strategic Marketing 14.4 (2006): 299–313. Eshel, Gidon, and Pamela A. Martin. “Diet, Energy, and Global Warming.” Earth Interactions 10, paper 9 (2006): 1–17. Fowl Dinners. Exec. Prod. Nick Curwin and Zoe Collins. Dragonfly Film and Television Productions and Fresh One Productions, 2008. Freeman, Sarah. Mutton and Oysters: The Victorians and Their Food. London: Gollancz, 1989. Gould, S. J., and N. Eldredge. “Punctuated Equilibrium Comes of Age.” Nature 366 (1993): 223–27. (ICFFA) International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture. Manifesto on the Future of Food. Florence, Italy: Agenzia Regionale per lo Sviluppo e l’Innovazione nel Settore Agricolo Forestale and Regione Toscana, 2006. Jamie’s School Dinners. Dir. Guy Gilbert. Fresh One Productions, 2005. Jordan, Jennifer A. “The Heirloom Tomato as Cultural Object: Investigating Taste and Space.” Sociologia Ruralis 47.1 (2007): 20-41. Khan, Urmee. “Jamie Oliver’s School Dinners Improve Exam Results, Report Finds.” Telegraph 1 Feb. 2009. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/4423132/Jamie-Olivers-school-dinners-improve-exam-results-report-finds.html >. Kloppenberg, Jack, Jr, Sharon Lezberg, Kathryn de Master, G. W. Stevenson, and John Henrickson. ‘Tasting Food, Tasting Sustainability: Defining the Attributes of an Alternative Food System with Competent, Ordinary People.” Human Organisation 59.2 (Jul. 2000): 177–86. (LDP) Liverpool Daily Post. “Battery Farm Eggs Banned from Schools and Care Homes.” Liverpool Daily Post 12 Jan. 2008. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2008/01/12/battery-farm-eggs-banned-from-schools-and-care-homes-64375-20342259 >. Lovelock, James. The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth. New York: Bantam, 1990 (first published 1988). Mason, Jim, and Peter Singer. The Ethics of What We Eat. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2006. McLaughlin, Katy. “Is Your Grocery List Politically Correct? Food World’s New Buzzword Is ‘Sustainable’ Products.” The Wall Street Journal 17 Feb. 2004. 29 Aug. 2009 < http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/1732.html >. McMichael, Anthony J, John W Powles, Colin D Butler, and Ricardo Uauy. “Food, Livestock Production, Energy, Climate Change, and Health.” The Lancet 370 (6 Oct. 2007): 1253–63. Miers, Suzanne. “Contemporary Slavery”. A Historical Guide to World Slavery. Ed. Seymour Drescher, and Stanley L. Engerman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Mintz, Sidney W. Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994. Nussel, Jill. “Heating Up the Sources: Using Community Cookbooks in Historical Inquiry.” History Compass 4/5 (2006): 956–61. Off, Carol. Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World's Most Seductive Sweet. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2008. Paxson, Heather. “Slow Food in a Fat Society: Satisfying Ethical Appetites.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 5.1 (2005): 14–18. Pietrykowski, Bruce. “You Are What You Eat: The Social Economy of the Slow Food Movement.” Review of Social Economy 62:3 (2004): 307–21. Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006. Regan, Tom. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Scholz, Christopher A., Thomas C. Johnson, Andrew S. Cohen, John W. King, John A. Peck, Jonathan T. Overpeck, Michael R. Talbot, Erik T. Brown, Leonard Kalindekafe, Philip Y. O. Amoako, Robert P. Lyons, Timothy M. Shanahan, Isla S. Castañeda, Clifford W. Heil, Steven L. Forman, Lanny R. McHargue, Kristina R. Beuning, Jeanette Gomez, and James Pierson. “East African Megadroughts between 135 and 75 Thousand Years Ago and Bearing on Early-modern Human Origins.” PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America 104.42 (16 Oct. 2007): 16416–21. Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Doubleday, Jabber & Company, 1906. Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. New York: HarperCollins, 1975. (SFFB) Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity. “Ark of Taste.” 2009. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.fondazioneslowfood.it/eng/arca/lista.lasso >. (UNISG) University of Gastronomic Sciences. “Who We Are.” 2009. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.unisg.it/eng/chisiamo.php >. Vileisis, Ann. Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get It Back. Washington: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2008. Weissbrodt, David, and Anti-Slavery International. Abolishing Slavery and its Contemporary Forms. New York and Geneva: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations, 2002. Zeder, Melinda A. “The Neolithic Macro-(R)evolution: Macroevolutionary Theory and the Study of Culture Change.” Journal of Archaeological Research 17 (2009): 1–63.

In 2013, the Capricornia Arts Mob (CAM), an Indigenous collective of artists situated in Rockhampton, central Queensland, Australia, successfully tendered for one of three public art projects that were grouped under the title Flood Markers (Roberts; Roberts and Mackay; Robinson and Mackay). Commissioned as part of the Queensland Government's Community Development and Engagement Initiative, Flood Markers aims to increase awareness of Rockhampton’s history, with particular focus on the Fitzroy River and the phenomena of flooding. Honouring Land Connections is CAM’s contribution to the project and consists of several “memory poles” that stand alongside the Fitzroy River in Toonooba Park. Rockhampton lies on Dharumbal Country with Toonooba being the Dharumbal name for the Fitzroy River and the inspiration for the work due to its cultural significance to the Aboriginal people of that region. The name Toonooba, as well as other images and icons including boomerangs, spears, nets, water lily, and frogs, amongst others, are carved, burnt, painted and embedded into the large ironbark poles. These stand with the river on one side and the colonial infrastructure of Rockhampton on the other (see fig. 1, 2 and 3).Figure 1 Figure 2Figure 3Within this article, we discuss Honouring Land Connections as having two main functions which contribute to its significance as Indigenous cultural expression and identity affirmation. Firstly, the memory poles (as well as the process of sourcing materials and producing the final product) are a manifestation of Country and a representation of its stories and lived memories. Honouring Land Connections provides a means for Aboriginal people to revel in Country and maintain connections to a vital component of their being as Indigenous. Secondly, by revealing Indigenous stories, experiences, and memories, Honouring Land Connections emphasises Indigenous voices and perspectives within a place dominated by Eurocentric outlooks and knowledges. Toonooba provides the backdrop on which the complexities of cultural and identity formation within settler-colonial spaces are highlighted whilst revelling in continuous Indigenous presence.Flood Markers as ArtArtists throughout the world have used flood markers as a means of visual expression through which to explore and reveal local histories, events, environments, and socio-cultural understandings of the relationships between persons, places, and the phenomena of flooding. Geertz describes art as a social text embedded within wider socio-cultural systems; providing insight into cultural, social, political, economic, gendered, religious, ethnic, environmental, and biographical contexts. Flood markers are not merely metric tools used for measuring the height of a river, but rather serve as culture artefacts or indexes (Gell Art and Agency; Gell "Technology of Enchantment") that are products and producers of socio-culture contexts and the memories and experiences embedded within them. Through different methods, mediums, and images, artists have created experiential and intellectual spaces where those who encounter their work are encouraged to engage their surroundings in thought provoking and often-new ways.In some cases, flood markers have brought attention to the “character and natural history” of a particular place, where artists such as Louise Lavarack have sought to provoke consciousness of the movement of water across flood plains (Lavarack). In other works, flood markers have served as memorials to individuals such as Gilbert White whose daughter honoured his life and research through installing a glass spire at Boulder Creek, Colorado in 2011 (White). Tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 have also been commemorated through flood markers. Artist Christopher Saucedo carved 1,836 waves into a freestanding granite block; each wave representing a life lost (University of New Orleans). The weight of the granite symbolises the endurance and resilience of those who faced, and will continue to face, similar forces of nature. The Pillar of Courage erected in 2011 in Ipswich, Queensland, similarly contains the words “resilience, community, strength, heroes, caring and unity” with each word printed on six separate sections of the pillar, representing the six major floods that have hit the region (Chudleigh).Whilst these flood markers provide valuable insights into local histories, specific to each environmental and socio-cultural context, works such as the Pillar of Courage fail to address Indigenous relationships to Country. By framing flooding as a “natural disaster” to be overcome, rather than an expression of Country to be listened to and understood, Euro and human-centric perspectives are prioritised over Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Indigenous knowledges however encourages a reorientation of Eurocentric responses and relationships to Country, and in doing so challenge compartmentalised views of “nature” where flooding is separated from land and Country (Ingold Perception; Seton and Bradley; Singer). Honouring Land Connections symbolises the voice and eternal presence of Toonooba and counters presentations of flooding that depict it as historian Heather Goodall (36) once saw “as unusual events of disorder in which the river leaves its proper place with catastrophic results.”Country To understand flooding from Indigenous perspectives it is first necessary to discuss Country and apprehend what it means for Indigenous peoples. Country refers to the physical, cosmological, geographical, relational, and emotional setting upon which Indigenous identities and connections to place and kin are embedded. Far from a passive geographic location upon which interactions take place, Country is an active and responsive agent that shapes and contextualises social interactions between and amongst all living beings. Bob Morgan writes of how “Country is more than issues of land and geography; it is about spirituality and identity, knowing who we are and who we are connected to; and it helps us understand how all living things are connected.” Country is also an epistemological frame that is filled with knowledge that may be known and familiarised whilst being knowledge itself (Langton "Sacred"; Rose Dingo; Yunupingu).Central to understanding Country is the fact that it refers to a living being’s spiritual homeland which is the ontological place where relationships are formed and maintained (Yunupingu). As Country nurtures and provides the necessities for survival and prosperity, Indigenous people (but also non-Indigenous populations) have moral obligations to care for Country as kin (Rose Nourishing Terrains). Country is epistemic, relational, and ontological and refers to both physical locations as well as modes of “being” (Heidegger), meaning it is carried from place to place as an embodiment within a person’s consciousness. Sally Morgan (263) describes how “our country is alive, and no matter where we go, our country never leaves us.” Country therefore is fluid and mobile for it is ontologically inseparable to one’s personhood, reflected through phrases such as “I am country” (B. Morgan 204).Country is in continuous dialogue with its surroundings and provides the setting upon which human and non-human beings; topographical features such as mountains and rivers; ancestral beings and spirits such as the Rainbow Snake; and ecological phenomena such as winds, tides, and floods, interact and mutually inform each other’s existence (Rose Nourishing Terrains). For Aboriginal people, understanding Country requires “deep listening” (Atkinson; Ungunmerr), a responsive awareness that moves beyond monological and human-centric understandings of the world and calls for deeper understandings of the mutual and co-dependant relationships that exist within it. The awareness of such mutuality has been discussed through terms such as “kincentrism” (Salmón), “meshworks” (Ingold Lines), “webs of connection” (Hokari), “nesting” (Malpas), and “native science” (Cajete). Such concepts are ways of theorising “place” as relational, physical, and mental locations made up of numerous smaller interactions, each of which contribute to the identity and meaning of place. Whilst each individual agent or object retains its own autonomy, such autonomy is dependent on its wider relation to others, meaning that place is a location where “objectivity, subjectivity and inter-subjectivity converge” (Malpas 35) and where the very essence of place is revealed.Flooding as DialogueWhen positioned within Indigenous frameworks, flooding is both an agent and expression of Toonooba and Country. For the phenomenon to occur however, numerous elements come into play such as the fall of rain; the layout of the surrounding terrain; human interference through built weirs and dams; and the actions and intervention of ancestral beings and spirits. Furthermore, flooding has a direct impact on Country and all life within it. This is highlighted by Dharumbal Elder Uncle Billy Mann (Fitzroy Basin Association "Billy Mann") who speaks of the importance of flooding in bringing water to inland lagoons which provide food sources for Dharumbal people, especially at times when the water in Toonooba is low. Such lagoons remain important places for fishing, hunting, recreational activities, and cultural practices but are reliant on the flow of water caused by the flowing, and at times flooding river, which Uncle Mann describes as the “lifeblood” of Dharumbal people and Country (Fitzroy Basin Association "Billy Mann"). Through her research in the Murray-Darling region of New South Wales, Weir writes of how flooding sustains life though cycles that contribute to ecological balance, providing nourishment and food sources for all beings (see also Cullen and Cullen 98). Water’s movement across land provokes the movement of animals such as mice and lizards, providing food for snakes. Frogs emerge from dry clay plains, finding newly made waterholes. Small aquatic organisms flourish and provide food sources for birds. Golden and silver perch spawn, and receding waters promote germination and growth. Aboriginal artist Ron Hurley depicts a similar cycle in a screen-print titled Waterlily–Darambal Totem. In this work Hurley shows floodwaters washing away old water lily roots that have been cooked in ant bed ovens as part of Dharumbal ceremonies (UQ Anthropology Museum). The cooking of the water lily exposes new seeds, which rains carry to nearby creeks and lagoons. The seeds take root and provide food sources for the following year. Cooking water lily during Dharumbal ceremonies contributes to securing and maintaining a sustainable food source as well as being part of Dharumbal cultural practice. Culture, ecological management, and everyday activity are mutually connected, along with being revealed and revelled in. Aboriginal Elder and ranger Uncle Fred Conway explains how Country teaches Aboriginal people to live in balance with their surroundings (Fitzroy Basin Association "Fred Conway"). As Country is in constant communication, numerous signifiers can be observed on land and waterscapes, indicating the most productive and sustainable time to pursue certain actions, source particular foods, or move to particular locations. The best time for fishing in central Queensland for example is when Wattles are in bloom, indicating a time when fish are “fatter and sweeter” (Fitzroy Basin Association "Fred Conway"). In this case, the Wattle is 1) autonomous, having its own life cycle; 2) mutually dependant, coming into being because of seasonal weather patterns; and 3) an agent of Country that teaches those with awareness how to respond and benefit from its lessons.Dialogue with Country As Country is sentient and responsive, it is vital that a person remains contextually aware of their actions on and towards their surroundings. Indigenous peoples seek familiarity with Country but also ensure that they themselves are known and familiarised by it (Rose Dingo). In a practice likened to “baptism”, Langton ("Earth") describes how Aboriginal Elders in Cape York pour water over the head of newcomers as a way of introducing them to Country, and ensuring that Country knows those who walk upon it. These introductions are done out of respect for Country and are a way of protecting outsiders from the potentially harmful powers of ancestral beings. Toussaint et al. similarly note how during mortuary rites, parents of the deceased take water from rivers and spit it back into the land, symbolising the spirit’s return to Country.Dharumbal man Robin Hatfield demonstrates the importance of not interfering with the dialogue of Country through recalling being told as a child not to disturb Barraru or green frogs. Memmott (78) writes that frogs share a relationship with the rain and flooding caused by Munda-gadda, the Rainbow Snake. Uncle Dougie Hatfield explains the significance of Munda-gadda to his Country stating how “our Aboriginal culture tells us that all the waterways, lagoons, creeks, rivers etc. and many landforms were created by and still are protected by the Moonda-Ngutta, what white people call the Rainbow Snake” (Memmott 79).In the case of Robin Hatfield, to interfere with Barraru’s “business” is to threaten its dialogue with Munda-gadda and in turn the dialogue of Country in form of rain. In addition to disrupting the relational balance between the frog and Munda-gadda, such actions potentially have far-reaching social and cosmological consequences. The rain’s disruption affects the flood plains, which has direct consequences for local flora and transportation and germination of water lily seeds; fauna, affecting the spawning of fish and their movement into lagoons; and ancestral beings such as Munda-gadda who continue to reside within Toonooba.Honouring Land Connections provided artists with a means to enter their own dialogue with Country and explore, discuss, engage, negotiate, and affirm aspects of their indigeneity. The artists wanted the artwork to remain organic to demonstrate honour and respect for Dharumbal connections with Country (Roberts). This meant that materials were sourced from the surrounding Country and the poles placed in a wave-like pattern resembling Munda-gadda. Alongside the designs and symbols painted and carved into the poles, fish skins, birds, nests, and frogs are embalmed within cavities that are cut into the wood, acting as windows that allow viewers to witness components of Country that are often overlooked (see fig. 4). Country therefore is an equal participant within the artwork’s creation and continuing memories and stories. More than a representation of Country, Honouring Land Connections is a literal manifestation of it.Figure 4Opening Dialogue with Non-Indigenous AustraliaHonouring Land Connections is an artistic and cultural expression that revels in Indigenous understandings of place. The installation however remains positioned within a contested “hybrid” setting that is informed by both Indigenous and settler-colonial outlooks (Bhabha). The installation for example is separated from the other two artworks of Flood Markers that explore Rockhampton’s colonial and industrial history. Whilst these are positioned within a landscaped area, Honouring Land Connections is placed where the grass is dying, seating is lacking, and is situated next to a dilapidated coast guard building. It is a location that is as quickly left behind as it is encountered. Its separation from the other two works is further emphasised through its depiction in the project brief as a representation of Rockhampton’s pre-colonial history. Presenting it in such a way has the effect of bookending Aboriginal culture in relation to European settlement, suggesting that its themes belong to a time past rather than an immediate present. Almost as if it is a revelation in and of itself. Within settler-colonial settings, place is heavily politicised and often contested. In what can be seen as an ongoing form of colonialism, Eurocentric epistemologies and understandings of place continue to dominate public thought, rhetoric, and action in ways that legitimise White positionality whilst questioning and/or subjugating other ways of knowing, being, and doing (K. Martin; Moreton-Robinson; Wolfe). This turns places such as Toonooba into agonistic locations of contrasting and competing interests (Bradfield). For many Aboriginal peoples, the memories and emotions attached to a particular place can render it as either comfortable and culturally safe, or as unsafe, unsuitable, unwelcoming, and exclusionary (Fredericks). Honouring Land Connections is one way of publicly asserting and recognising Toonooba as a culturally safe, welcoming, and deeply meaningful place for Indigenous peoples. Whilst the themes explored in Honouring Land Connections are not overtly political, its presence on colonised/invaded land unsettles Eurocentric falsities and colonial amnesia (B. Martin) of an uncontested place and history in which Indigenous voices and knowledges are silenced. The artwork is a physical reminder that encourages awareness—particularly for non-Indigenous populations—of Indigenous voices that are continuously demanding recognition of Aboriginal place within Country. Similar to the boomerangs carved into the poles representing flooding as a natural expression of Country that will return (see fig. 5), Indigenous peoples continue to demand that the wider non-Indigenous population acknowledge, respect, and morally responded to Aboriginal cultures and knowledges.Figure 5Conclusion Far from a historic account of the past, the artists of CAM have created an artwork that promotes awareness of an immediate and emerging Indigenous presence on Country. It creates a space that is welcoming to Indigenous people, allowing them to engage with and affirm aspects of their living histories and cultural identities. Through sharing stories and providing “windows” into Aboriginal culture, Country, and lived experiences (which like the frogs of Toonooba are so often overlooked), the memory poles invite and welcome an open dialogue with non-Indigenous Australians where all may consider their shared presence and mutual dependence on each other and their surroundings.The memory poles are mediatory agents that stand on Country, revealing and bearing witness to the survival, resistance, tenacity, and continuity of Aboriginal peoples within the Rockhampton region and along Toonooba. Honouring Land Connections is not simply a means of reclaiming the river as an Indigenous space, for reclamation signifies something regained after it has been lost. What the memory poles signify is something eternally present, i.e. Toonooba is and forever will be embedded in Aboriginal Country in which we all, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, human and non-human, share. The memory poles serve as lasting reminders of whose Country Rockhampton is on and describes the life ways of that Country, including times of flood. Through celebrating and revelling in the presence of Country, the artists of CAM are revealing the deep connection they have to Country to the wider non-Indigenous community.ReferencesAtkinson, Judy. Trauma Trails, Recreating Song Lines: The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia. Spinifex Press, 2002.Bhabha, Homi, K. The Location of Culture. Taylor and Francis, 2012.Bradfield, Abraham. "Decolonizing the Intercultural: A Call for Decolonizing Consciousness in Settler-Colonial Australia." Religions 10.8 (2019): 469.Cajete, Gregory. Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence. 1st ed. Clear Light Publishers, 2000.Chudleigh, Jane. "Flood Memorial Called 'Pillar of Courage' Unveiled in Goodna to Mark the Anniversary of the Natural Disaster." The Courier Mail 2012. 16 Jan. 2020 <http://www.couriermail.com.au/questnews/flood-memorial-called-pillar-of-courage-unveiled-in-goodna-to-mark-the-anniversary-of-the-natural-disaster/news-story/575b1a8c44cdd6863da72d64f9e96f2d>.Cullen, Peter, and Vicky Cullen. This Land, Our Water: Water Challenges for the 21st Century. ATF P, 2011.Fitzroy Basin Association. "Carnarvon Gorge with Fred Conway." 8 Dec. 2010 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbOP60JOfYo>.———. "The Fitzroy River with Billy Mann." 8 Dec. 2019 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00ELbpIUa_Y>.Fredericks, Bronwyn. "Understanding and Living Respectfully within Indigenous Places." Indigenous Places: World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium Journal 4 (2008): 43-49.Geertz, Clifford. "Art as a Cultural System." MLN 91.6 (1976): 1473-99.Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Clarendon P, 1998.———. "The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology." Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics, eds. J. Coote and A. Shelton. Clarendon P, 1992. 40-63.Goodall, Heather. "The River Runs Backwards." Words for Country: Landscape & Language in Australia, eds. Tim Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths. U of New South Wales P, 2002. 30-51.Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. 1st English ed. SCM P, 1962.Hokari, Minoru. Gurindji Journey: A Japanese Historian in the Outback. U of New South Wales P, 2011.Ingold, Tim. Lines: A Brief History. Routledge, 2007.———. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling & Skill. Routledge, 2000.Langton, Marcia. "Earth, Wind, Fire and Water: The Social and Spiritual Construction of Water in Aboriginal Societies." Social Archaeology of Australian Indigenous Societies, eds. Bruno David et al. Aboriginal Studies P, 2006. 139-60.———. "The Edge of the Sacred, the Edge of Death: Sensual Inscriptions." Inscribed Landscapes: Marking and Making Place, eds. Bruno David and M. Wilson. U of Hawaii P, 2002. 253-69.Lavarack, Louise. "Threshold." 17 Jan. 2019 <http://www.louiselavarack.com.au/>.Malpas, Jeff. Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography. Cambridge UP, 1999.Martin, Brian. "Immaterial Land." Carnal Knowledge: Towards a 'New Materialism' through the Arts, eds. E. Barret and B. Bolt. Tauris, 2013. 185-04.Martin, Karen Lillian. Please Knock before You Enter: Aboriginal Regulation of Outsiders and the Implications for Researchers. Post Pressed, 2008.Memmott, Paul. "Research Report 10: Aboriginal Social History and Land Affiliation in the Rockhampton-Shoalwater Bay Region." Commonwealth Commission of Inquiry, Shoalwater Bay Capricornia Coast, Queensland: Research Reports, ed. John T. Woodward. A.G.P.S., 1994. 1-107.Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. U of Minnesota P, 2015.Morgan, Bob. "Country – a Journey to Cultural and Spiritual Healing." Heartsick for Country: Stories of Love, Spirit and Creation, eds. S. Morgan et al. Freemantle P, 2008: 201-20.Roberts, Alice. "Flood Markers Unveiled on Fitzroy." ABC News 5 Mar. 2014. 10 Mar. 2014 <https://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2014/03/05/3957151.htm>.Roberts, Alice, and Jacquie Mackay. "Flood Artworks Revealed on Fitzroy Riverbank." ABC Capricornia 29 Oct. 2013. 5 Jan. 20104 <http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2013/10/29/3879048.htm?site=capricornia>.Robinson, Paul, and Jacquie Mackay. "Artwork Portray Flood Impact." ABC Capricornia 29 Oct. 2013. 5 Jan. 2014 <http://www.abc.net.au/lnews/2013-10-29/artworks-portray-flood-impact/5051856>.Rose, Deborah Bird. Dingo Makes Us Human: Life and Land in an Aboriginal Australian Culture. Cambridge UP, 1992.———. Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness. Australian Heritage Commission, 1996.Salmón, Enrique. "Kincentric Ecology: Indigenous Perceptions of the Human-Nature Relationship." Ecological Applications 10.5 (2000): 1327-32.Seton, Kathryn A., and John J. Bradley. "'When You Have No Law You Are Nothing': Cane Toads, Social Consequences and Management Issues." The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 5.3 (2004): 205-25.Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics. 3rd ed. Cambridge UP, 2011.Toussaint, Sandy, et al. "Water Ways in Aboriginal Australia: An Interconnected Analysis." Anthropological Forum 15.1 (2005): 61-74.Ungunmerr, Miriam-Rose. "To Be Listened To in Her Teaching: Dadirri: Inner Deep Listening and Quiet Still Awareness." EarthSong Journal: Perspectives in Ecology, Spirituality and Education 3.4 (2017): 14-15.University of New Orleans. "Fine Arts at the University of New Orleans: Christopher Saucedo." 31 Aug. 2013 <http://finearts.uno.edu/christophersaucedofaculty.html>.UQ Anthropology Museum. "UQ Anthropology Museum: Online Catalogue." 6 Dec. 2019 <https://catalogue.anthropologymuseum.uq.edu.au/item/26030>.Weir, Jessica. Murray River Country: An Ecological Dialogue with Traditional Owners. Aboriginal Studies Press, 2009.White, Mary Bayard. "Boulder Creek Flood Level Marker Projects." WEAD: Women Eco Artists Dialog. 15 Jan. 2020 <https://directory.weadartists.org/colorado-marking-floods>.Wolfe, Patrick. "Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native." Journal of Genocide Research 8.4 (2006): 387-409.Yunupingu, Galarrwuy. Our Land Is Our Life: Land Rights – Past, Present and Future. University of Queensland Press, 1997.

IntroductionI work at a regional campus of La Trobe University, Australia. More precisely, I work at the Bendigo campus of La Trobe University. At Bendigo, we are often annoyed when referred to and addressed as ‘regional’ students and staff. Really, we should not be. After all, Bendigo campus is an outpost of La Trobe’s metropolitan base. It is funded, run, and directed from Bundoora (Melbourne). The word ‘regional’ simply describes the situation. A region is an “administrative division of a city or a district [… or …] a country” (Brown 2528). And the Latin etymology of region (regio, regere) includes “direction, line”, and “rule” (Kidd 208, 589). Just as the Bendigo campus of La Trobe is a satellite of the metropolitan campus, the town of Bendigo is an outpost of Melbourne. So, when we are addressed and interpellated (Althusser 48) as regional, it is a reminder of the ongoing fact that Australia is (still) a colony, an outpost of empire, a country organised on the colonial model. From central administrative hubs, spokes of communication, and transportation spread to the outposts. When Bendigo students and staff are addressed as regional, in a way we are also being addressed as colonial.In this article, the terms ‘region’ and ‘regional’ are deployed as inextricably associated with the Australian version of colonialism. In Australia, in the central metropolitan hubs, where the colonial project is at its most comprehensive, it is hard to see what remains, to see what has escaped that project. The aim of this article is to explore how different aspects of the country escape the totalising project of Australian colonialism. This exploration is undertaken primarily through a discussion of the ways in which some places on this continent remain not regional (and thus, not colonial) how they keep the metropolis at bay, and how they, thus, keep Europe at bay. This discussion includes a general overview of the Australian colonial project, particularly as it pertains to First Nations Peoples, their knowledge and philosophies, and the continent’s unique ecologies. Then the article becomes more speculative, imagining different ways of seeing and experiencing time and place in this country, ways of seeing the remains and refuges of pre-1788, not-regional, and not-colonial Australia. In these remains and refuges, there persist the flourishing and radical difference of this continent’s ecologies and, not surprisingly, the radical suitedness of tens of thousands of years of First Nations Peoples’ culture and thinking to that ecology, as Country. In what remains not regional, I argue, are answers to the question: How will we live here in the Anthropocene?A Totalising ProjectSince 1788, in the face of the ongoing presence and resistance of First Nations cultures, and the continent’s radically unique ecologies, the Australian colonial project has been to convert the continent into a region of Europe. As such, the imposed political, administrative, scientific, and economic institutions are largely European. This is also so, to a lesser extent, of social and cultural institutions. While the continent is not Europe geologically, the notion of the Anthropocene suggests that this is changing (Crutzen and Stoermer). This article does not resummarise the vast body of scholarship on the effects of colonisation, from genocide to missionary charity, to the creation of bureaucratic and comprador classes, and so on. Suffice to say that the different valences of colonisation—from outright malevolence to misguided benevolence–produce similar and common effects. As such, what we experience in metropolitan and regional Australia, is chillingly similar to what people experience in London. Chilling, because this experience demonstrates how the effects of the project tend towards the total.To clarify, when I use the name ‘Australia’ I understand it as the continent’s European name. When I use the term ‘Europe’ or ‘European’, I refer to both the European continent and to the reach and scope of the various colonial and imperial projects of European nations. I take this approach because I think it is necessary to recognise their global effects and loads. In Australia, this load has been evident and present for more than two centuries. On one hand, it is evident in the social, cultural, and political institutions that come with colonisation. On another, it is evident in the environmental impacts of colonisation: impacts that are severely compounded in Australia. In relation to this, there is vital, ongoing scholarship that explores the fact that, ecologically, Australia is a radically different place, and which discusses the ways in which European scientific, aesthetic, and agricultural assumptions, and the associated naturalised and generic understandings of ‘nature’, have grounded activities that have radically transformed the continent’s biosphere. To name but a few, Tim Flannery (Eaters, “Ecosystems”) and Stephen Pyne, respectively, examine the radical difference of this continent’s ecology, geology, climate, and fire regimes. Sylvia Hallam, Bill Gammage, and Bruce Pascoe (“Bolt”, Emu) explore the relationships of First Nations Peoples with that ecology, climate, and fire before 1788, and the European blindness to the complexity of these relationships. For instance, William Lines quotes the strikingly contradictory observations of the colonial surveyor, Thomas Mitchell, where the land is simultaneously “populous” and “without inhabitants” and “ready for the immediate reception of civilised man” and European pastoralism (Mitchell qtd. in Lines 71). Flannery (Eaters) and Tim Low (Feral, New) discuss the impacts of introduced agricultural practices, exotic animals, and plants. Tom Griffiths tells the story of ‘Improving’ and ‘Acclimatisation Societies’, whose explicit aims were to convert Australian lands into European lands (32–48). The notion of ‘keeping Europe at bay’ is a response to the colonial assumptions, practices, and impositions highlighted by these writers.The project of converting this continent and hundreds of First Nations Countries into a region of Europe, ‘Australia’, is, in ambition, a totalising one. From the strange flag-plantings, invocations and incantations claiming ownership and dominion, to legalistic conceptions such as terra nullius, the aim has been to speak, to declare, to interpellate the country as European. What is not European, must be made European. What cannot be made European is either (un)seen in a way which diminishes or denies its existence, or must be made not to exist. These are difficult things to do: to not see, to unsee, or to eradicate.One of the first acts of administrative division (direction and rule) in the Port Phillip colony (now known as Victoria) was that of designating four regional Aboriginal Protectorates. Edward Stone Parker was appointed Assistant Protector of Aborigines for the Loddon District, a district which persists today for many state and local government instrumentalities as the Loddon-Mallee region. In the 1840s, Parker experienced the difficulty described above, in attempting to ‘make European’ the Dja Dja Wurrung people. As part of Parker’s goal of Christianising Dja Dja Wurrung people, he sought to learn their language. Bain Attwood records his frustration:[Parker] remarked in July 1842. ‘For physical objects and their attributes, the language readily supplies equivalent terms, but for the metaphysical, so far I have been able to discover scarcely any’. A few years later Parker simply despaired that this work of translation could be undertaken. ‘What can be done’, he complained, ‘with a people whose language knows no such terms as holiness, justice, righteousness, sin, guilt, repentance, redemption, pardon, peace, and c., and to whose minds the ideas conveyed by those words are utterly foreign and inexplicable?’ (Attwood 125)The assumption here is that values and concepts that are ‘untranslatable’ into European understandings mark an absence of such value and concept. Such assumptions are evident in attempts to convince, cajole, or coerce First Nations Peoples into abandoning traditional cultural and custodial relationships with Country in favour of individual private property ownership. The desire to maintain relationships with Country are described by conservative political figures such as Tony Abbott as “lifestyle choices” (Medhora), effectively declaring them non-existent. In addition, processes designed to recognise First Nations relationships to Country are procedurally frustrated. Examples of this are the bizarre decisions made in 2018 and 2019 by Nigel Scullion, the then Indigenous Affairs Minister, to fund objections to land claims from funds designated to alleviate Indigenous disadvantage and to refuse to grant land rights claims even when procedural obstacles have been cleared (Allam). In Australia, given that First Nations social, cultural, and political life is seamlessly interwoven with the environment, ecology, the land–Country, and that the colonial project has always been, and still is, a totalising one, it is a project which aims to sever the connections to place of First Nations Peoples. Concomitantly, when the connections cannot be severed, the people must be either converted, dismissed, or erased.This project, no matter how brutal and relentless, however, has not achieved totality.What Remains Not Regional? If colonisation is a totalising project, and regional Australia stands as evidence of this project’s ongoing push, then what remains not regional, or untouched by the colonial? What escapes the administrative, the institutional, the ecological, the incantatory, and the interpellative reach of the regional? I think that despite this reach, there are such remains. The frustration, the anger, and antipathy of Parker, Abbott, and Scullion bear this out. Their project is unfinished and the resistance to it infuriates. I think that, in Australia, the different ways in which pre-1788 modes of life persist are modes of life which can be said to be ‘keeping Europe at bay’.In Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation, Deborah Bird Rose compares Western/European conceptualisations of time, with those of the people living in the communities around the Victoria River in the Northern Territory. Rose describes Western constructions of time as characterised by disjunction (for example, the ‘birth’ of philosophy, the beginnings of Christianity) and by irreversible sequence (for example, concepts of telos, apocalypse, and progress). These constructions have become so naturalised as to carry a “seemingly commonsensical orientation toward the future” (15). Orientation, in an Australian society “built on destruction, enables regimes of violence to continue their work while claiming the moral ground of making a better future” (15). Such an orientation “enables us to turn our backs on the current social facts of pain, damage, destruction and despair which exist in the present, but which we will only acknowledge as our past” (17).In contrast to this ‘future vision’, Rose describes what she calls the ‘canonical’ time-space conceptualisation of the Victoria River people (55). Here, rather than a temporal extension into an empty future, orientation is towards living, peopled, and grounded origins, with the emphasis on the plural, rather than a single point of origin or disjunction:We here now, meaning we here in a shared present, are distinct from the people of the early days by the fact that they preceded us and made our lives possible. We are the ‘behind mob’—those who come after. The future is the domain of those who come after us. They are referred to as […] those ‘behind us’. (55)By way of illustration, when we walk into a sheep paddock, even if we are going somewhere (even the future), we are also irrevocably walking behind ancestors, predecessor ecologies, previous effects. The paddock, is how it is, after about 65,000 years of occupation, custodianship, and management, after European surveyors, squatters, frontier conflict and violence, the radical transformation of the country, the destruction of the systems that came before. Everything there, as Freya Mathews would put it, is of “the given” (“Becoming” 254, “Old” 127). We are coming up behind. That paddock is the past and present, and what happens next is irrevocably shaped by it. We cannot walk away from it.What remains not regional is there in front of us. Country, language, and knowledge remain in the sheep paddock, coexisting with everyone and everything else that everyone in this country follows (including the colonial and the regional). It is not gone. We have to learn how to see it.By the Fox or the Little EagleFigure 1: A Scatter of Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo Feathers at Wehla. Image Credit: Terry Eyssens.As a way of elaborating on this, I will tell you about a small, eight hectare, patch of land in Dja Dja Wurrung Country. Depending on the day, or the season, or your reason, it could take fifteen minutes to walk from one end to the other or it might take four hours, from the time you start walking, to the time when you get back to where you started. At this place, I found a scatter of White Cockatoo feathers (Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo—Cacatua galerita). There was no body, just the feathers, but it was clear that the Cockatoo had died, had been caught by something, for food. The scatter was beautiful. The feathers, their sulphur highlights, were lying on yellow-brown, creamy, dry grass. I dwelled on the scatter. I looked. I looked around. I walked around. I scanned the horizon and squinted at the sky. And I wondered, what happened.This small patch of land in Dja Dja Wurrung Country is in an area now known as Wehla. In the Dja Dja Wurrung and many other Victorian languages, ‘Wehla’ (and variants of this word) is a name for the Brushtail Possum (Trichosurus vulpecula). In the time I spend there/here, I see all kinds of animals. Of these, two are particularly involved in this story. One is the Fox (Vulpes vulpes), which I usually see just the back of, going away. They are never surprised. They know, or seem to know, where everyone is. They have a trot, a purposeful, cocky trot, whether they are going away because of me or whether they are going somewhere for their own good reasons. Another animal I see often is the Little Eagle (Hieraaetus morphnoides). It is a half to two-thirds the size of a Wedge-tailed Eagle (Aquila audax). It soars impressively. Sometimes I mistake a Little Eagle for a Wedge-tail, until I get a better look and realise that it is not quite that big. I am not sure where the Little Eagle’s nest is but it must be close by.I wondered about this scatter of White Cockatoo feathers. I wondered, was the scatter of White Cockatoo feathers by the Fox or by the Little Eagle? This could be just a cute thought experiment. But I think the question matters because it provokes thinking about what is regional and what remains not regional. The Fox is absolutely imperial. It is introduced and widespread. Low describes it as among Australia’s “greatest agent[s] of extinction” (124). It is part of the colonisation of this place, down to this small patch of land in Dja Dja Wurrung Country. Where the Fox is, colonisation, and everything that goes with it, remains, and maintains. So, that scatter of feathers could be a colonial, regional happening. Or maybe it is something that remains not regional, not colonial. Maybe the scatter is something that escapes the regional. The Little Eagles and the Cockatoos, who were here before colonisation, and their dance (a dance of death for the Cockatoo, a dance of life for the Little Eagle), is maybe something that remains not regional.But, so what if the scatter of White Cockatoo feathers, this few square metres of wind-blown matter, is not regional? Well, if it is ‘not regional’, then, if Australia is to become something other than a colony, we have to look for these things that are not regional, that are not colonial, that are not imperial. Maybe if we start with a scatter of White Cockatoo feathers that was by the Little Eagle, and then build outwards again, we might start to notice more things that are not regional, that still somehow escape. For example, the persistence of First Nations modes of land custodianship and First Nations understandings of time. Then, taking care not to fetishise First Nations philosophies and cultures, take the time and care to recognise the associations of all of those things with simply, the places themselves, like a patch of land in Dja Dja Wurrung Country, which is now known as Wehla. Instead of understanding that place as something that is just part of the former Aboriginal Protectorate of Loddon or of the Loddon Mallee region of Victoria, it is Wehla.The beginning of decolonisation is deregionalisation. Every time we recognise the not regional (which is hopefully, eventually, articulated in a more positive sense than ‘not regional’), and just say something like ‘Wehla’, we can start to keep Europe at bay. Europe’s done enough.seeing and SeeingChina Miéville’s The City and The City (2009) is set in a place, in which the citizens of two cities live. The cities, Besźel and Ul Qoma, occupy the same space, are culturally and politically different. Their relationship to each other is similar to that of border-sharing Cold War states. Citizens of the two cities are forbidden to interact with each other. This prohibition is radically policed. Even though the citizens of Besźel and Ul Qoma live in adjoining buildings, share roads, and walk the same streets, they are forbidden to see each other. The populations of each city grow up learning how to see what is permitted and to not see, or unsee, the forbidden other (14).I think that seeing a scatter of White Cockatoo feathers and wondering if it was by the Fox or by the Little Eagle is akin to the different practices of seeing and not seeing in Besźel and Ul Qoma. The scatter of feathers is regional and colonial and, equally, it is not. Two countries occupy the same space. Australia and a continent with its hundreds of Countries. What remains not regional is what is given and Seen as such. Understanding ourselves as walking behind everything that has gone before us enables this. As such, it is possible to see the scatter of White Cockatoo feathers as by the Fox, as happening in ‘regional Australia’, as thus characterised by around 200 years of carnage, where the success of one species comes at the expense of countless others. On the other hand, it is possible to See the feathers as by the Little Eagles, and as happening on a small patch of land in Dja Dja Wurrung Country, as a dance that has been happening for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. It is a way of keeping Europe at bay.I think these Cockatoo feathers are a form of address. They are capable of interpellating something other than the regional, the colonial, and the imperial. A story of feathers, Foxes, and Little Eagles can remind us of our ‘behindness’, and evoke, and invoke, and exemplify ways of seeing and engaging with where we live that are tens of thousands of years old. This is both an act of the imagination and a practice of Seeing what is really there. When we learn to see the remains and refuges, the persistence of the not regional, we might also begin to learn how to live here in the Anthropocene. But, Anthropocene or no Anthropocene, we have to learn how to live here anyway.References Allam, Lorena. “Aboriginal Land Rights Claims Unresolved Despite All-Clear from Independent Review.” The Guardian 29 Mar. 2019. <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/29/aboriginal-land-rights-claims-unresolved-despite-all-clear-from-independent-review>.Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation).” On Ideology. Trans. Ben Brewster. London: Verso, [1971] 2008.Attwood, Bain. The Good Country: The Djadja Wurrung, the Settlers and the Protectors. Clayton: Monash UP, 2017.Brown, Lesley. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: On Historical Principles: Volume 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.Crutzen, Paul, J., and Eugene F. Stoermer. “The ‘Anthropocene’.” Global Change Newsletter 41 (May 2000): 17–18.Flannery, Timothy F. “The Fate of Empire in Low- and High-Energy Ecosystems.” Ecology and Empire: Environmental History of Settler Societies. Eds. Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin. Edinburgh: Keele UP, 1997. 46–59.———. The Future Eaters. Sydney: Reed New Holland, 1994.Gammage, Bill. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2012.Griffiths, Tom. Forests of Ash. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.Hallam, Sylvia. Fire and Hearth: A Study of Aboriginal Usage and European Usurpation in South-Western Australia. Rev. ed. Crawley: U of Western Australia P, 2014.Kidd, D.A. Collins Gem Latin-English, English-Latin Dictionary. London: Collins, 1980.Lines, William. Taming the Great South Land: A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1991.Low, Tim. The New Nature: Winners and Losers in Wild Australia. Camberwell: Penguin Books, 2003.———. Feral Future: The Untold Story of Australia’s Exotic Invaders. Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1999.Mathews, Freya. “Becoming Native: An Ethos of Countermodernity II.” Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 3 (1999): 243–71.———. “Letting the World Grow Old: An Ethos of Countermodernity.” Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 3 (1999): 119–37.Medhora, Shalailah. “Remote Communities Are Lifestyle Choices, Says Tony Abbott.” The Guardian 10 Mar. 2015. <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/mar/10/remote-communities-are-lifestyle-choices-says-tony-abbott>.Miéville, China. The City and the City. London: Pan MacMillan, 2009.Pascoe, Bruce. Dark Emu, Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? Broome: Magabala Books, 2014.———. “Andrew Bolt’s Disappointment.” Griffith Review 36 (Winter 2012): 226–33.Pyne, Stephen. Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia. North Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1992.Rose, Deborah Bird. Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation. Sydney: U of New South Wales P, 2004.

Introduction The counterculture that arose during the 1960s and 1970s left lasting social and political reverberations in developed nations. This was a time of increasing affluence and liberalisation which opened up remarkable political opportunities for social change. Within this context, an array of new social movements were a vital ingredient of the ferment that saw existing norms challenged and the establishment of new rights for many oppressed groups. An expanding arena of concerns included the environmental damage caused by 200 years of industrial capitalism. This article examines one aspect of a current environment movement in Australia, the anti-Coal Seam Gas (CSG) movement, and the part played by participants. In particular, the focus is upon one action that emerged during the recent Bentley Blockade, which was a regional mobilisation against proposed unconventional gas mining (UGM) near Lismore, NSW. Over the course of the blockade, the conventional ritual of waving at passers-by was transformed into a mechanism for garnering broad community support. Arguably, this was a crucial factor in the eventual outcome. In this case, we contend that the wave, rather than a countercultural artefact being appropriated by the mainstream, represents an everyday behaviour that builds social solidarity, which is subverted to become an effective part of the repertoire of the movement. At a more general level, this article examines how counterculture and mainstream interact via the subversion of “ordinary” citizens and the role of certain cultural understandings for that purpose. We will begin by examining the nature of the counterculture and its relationship to social movements before discussing the character of the anti-CSG movement in general and the Bentley Blockade in particular, using the personal experience of one of the writers. We will then be able to explore our thesis in detail and make some concluding remarks. The Counterculture and Social Movements In this article, we follow Cox’s understanding of the counterculture as a kind of meta-movement within which specific social movements are situated. For Cox (105), the counterculture that flourished during the 1960s and 1970s was an overarching movement in which existing social relations—in particular the family—were rejected by a younger generation, who succeeded in effectively fusing previously separate political and cultural spheres of dissent into one. Cox (103-04) points out that the precondition for such a phenomenon is “free space”—conditions under which counter-hegemonic activity can occur—for example, being liberated from the constraints of working to subsist, something which the unprecedented prosperity of the post WWII years allowed. Hence, in the 1960s and 1970s, as the counterculture emerged, a wave of activism arose in the western world which later came to be referred to as new social movements. These included the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, pacifism and the anti-nuclear and environment movements. The new movements rejected established power and organisational structures and tended, some scholars argued, to cross class lines, basing their claims on non-material issues. Della Porta and Diani claim this wave of movements is characterised by: a critical ideology in relation to modernism and progress; decentralized and participatory organizational structures; defense of interpersonal solidarity against the great bureaucracies; and the reclamation of autonomous spaces, rather than material advantages. (9) This depiction clearly announces the countercultural nature of the new social movements. As Carter (91) avers, these movements attempted to bypass the state and instead mobilise civil society, employing a range of innovative tactics and strategies—the repertoire of action—which may involve breaking laws. It should be noted that over time, some of these movements did shift towards accommodation of existing power structures and became more reformist in nature, to the point of forming political parties in the case of the Greens. However, inasmuch as the counterculture represented a merging of distinctively non-mainstream ways of life with the practice of actively challenging social arrangements at a political level (Cox 18–19; Grossberg 15–18;), the tactic of mobilising civil society to join social movements demonstrates in fact a reverse direction: large numbers of people are transfigured in radical ways by their involvement in social movements. One important principle underlying much of the repertoire of action of these new movements was non-violence. Again, this signals countercultural norms of the period. As Sharp (583–86) wrote at the time, non-violence is crucial in that it denies the aggressor their rationale for violent repression. This principle is founded on the liberal notion, whose legacy goes back to Locke, that the legitimacy of the government rests upon the consent of the governed—that is, the people can withdraw their consent (Locke in Ball & Dagger 92). Ghandi also relied upon this idea when formulating his non-violent approach to conflict, satyagraha (Sharp 83–84). Thus an idea that upholds the modern state is adopted by the counterculture in order to undermine it (the state), again demonstrating an instance of counterflow from the mainstream. Non-violence does not mean non-resistance. In fact, it usually involves non-compliance with a government or other authority and when practised in large numbers, can be very effective, as Ghandi and those in the civil rights movement showed. The result will be either that the government enters into negotiation with the protestors, or they can engage in violence to suppress them, which generally alienates the wider population, leading to a loss of support (Finley & Soifer 104–105). Tarrow (88) makes the important point that the less threatening an action, the harder it is to repress. As a result, democratic states have generally modified their response towards the “strategic weapon of nonviolent protest and even moved towards accommodation and recognition of this tactic as legitimate” (Tarrow 172). Nevertheless, the potential for state violence remains, and the freedom to protest is proscribed by various laws. One of the key figures to emerge from the new social movements that formed an integral part of the counterculture was Bill Moyer, who, in conjunction with colleagues produced a seminal text for theorising and organising social movements (Moyer et al.). Many contemporary social movements have been significantly influenced by Moyer’s Movement Action Plan (MAP), which describes not only key theoretical concepts but is also a practical guide to movement building and achieving aims. Moyer’s model was utilised in training the Northern Rivers community in the anti-CSG movement in conjunction with the non-violent direct action (NVDA) model developed by the North-East Forest Alliance (NEFA) that resisted logging in the forests of north-eastern NSW during the late 1980s and 1990s (Ricketts 138–40). Indeed, the Northern Rivers region of NSW—dubbed the Rainbow Region—is celebrated, as a “‘meeting place’ of countercultures and for the articulation of social and environmental ideals that challenge mainstream practice” (Ward and van Vuuren 63). As Bible (6–7) outlines, the Northern Rivers’ place in countercultural history is cemented by the holding of the Aquarius Festival in Nimbin in 1973 and the consequent decision of many attendees to stay on and settle in the region. They formed new kinds of communities based on an alternative ethics that eschewed a consumerist, individualist agenda in favour of modes of existence that emphasised living in harmony with the environment. The Terania Creek campaign of the late 1970s made the region famous for its environmental activism, when the new settlers resisted the logging of Nightcap National Park using nonviolent methods (Bible 5). It was also instrumental in developing an array of ingenious actions that were used in subsequent campaigns such as the Franklin Dam blockade in Tasmania in the early 1980s (Kelly 116). Indeed, many of these earlier activists were key figures in the anti-CSG movement that has developed in the Rainbow Region over the last few years. The Anti-CSG Movement Despite opposition to other forms of UGM, such as tight sands and shale oil extraction techniques, the term anti-CSG is used here, as it still seems to attract wide recognition. Unconventional gas extraction usually involves a process called fracking, which is the injection at high pressure of water, sand and a number of highly toxic chemicals underground to release the gas that is trapped in rock formations. Among the risks attributed to fracking are contamination of aquifers, air pollution from fugitive emissions and exposure to radioactive particles with resultant threats to human and animal health, as well as an increased risk of earthquakes (Ellsworth; Hand 13; Sovacool 254–260). Additionally, the vast amount of water that is extracted in the fracking process is saline and may contain residues of the fracking chemicals, heavy metals and radioactive matter. This produced water must either be stored or treated (Howarth 273–73; Sovacool 255). Further, there is potential for accidents and incidents and there are many reports—particularly in the United States where the practice is well established—of adverse events such as compressors exploding, leaks and spills, and water from taps catching fire (Sovacool 255–257). Despite an abundance of anecdotal evidence, until recently authorities and academics believed there was not enough “rigorous evidence” to make a definitive judgment of harm to animal and human health as a result of fracking (Mitka 2135). For example, in Australia, the Queensland Government was unable to find a clear link between fracking and health complaints in the Tara gasfield (Thompson 56), even though it is known that there are fugitive emissions from these gasfields (Tait et al. 3099-103). It is within this context that grassroots opposition to UGM began in Australia. The largest and most sustained challenge has come from the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, where a company called Metgasco has been attempting to engage in UGM for a number of years. Stiff community opposition has developed over this time, with activists training, co-ordinating and organising using the principles of Moyer’s MAP and NEFA’s NVDA. Numerous community and affinity groups opposing UGM sprang up including the Lock the Gate Alliance (LTG), a grassroots organisation opposing coal and gas mining, which formed in 2010 (Lock the Gate Alliance online). The movement put up sustained resistance to Metgasco’s attempts to establish wells at Glenugie, near Grafton and Doubtful Creek, near Kyogle in 2012 and 2013, despite the use of a substantial police presence at both locations. In the event, neither site was used for production despite exploratory wells being sunk (ABC News; Dobney). Metgasco announced it would be withdrawing its operations following new Federal and State government regulations at the time of the Doubtful Creek blockade. However it returned to the fray with a formal announcement in February 2014 (Metgasco), that it would drill at Bentley, 12 kilometres west of Lismore. It was widely believed this would occur with a view to production on an industrial scale should initial exploration prove fruitful. The Bentley Blockade It was known well before the formal announcement that Metgasco planned to drill at Bentley and community actions such as flash mobs, media releases and planning meetings were part of the build-up to direct action at the site. One of the authors of this article was actively involved in the movement and participated in a variety of these actions. By the end of January 2014 it was decided to hold an ongoing vigil at the site, which was still entirely undeveloped. Participants, including one author, volunteered for four-hour shifts which began at 5 a.m. each day and before long, were lasting into the night. The purpose of a vigil is to bear witness, maintain a presence and express a point of view. It thus accords well with the principle of non-violence. Eventually the site mushroomed into a tent village with three gates being blockaded. The main gate, Gate A, sprouted a variety of poles, tripods and other installations together with colourful tents and shelters, peopled by protesters on a 24-hour basis. The vigils persisted on all three gates for the duration of the blockade. As the number of blockaders swelled, popular support grew, lending weight to the notion that countercultural ideas and practices were spreading throughout the community. In response, Metgasco called on the State Government to provide police to coincide with the arrival of equipment. It was rumoured that 200 police would be drafted to defend the site in late April. When alerts were sent out to the community warning of imminent police action, an estimated crowd of 2000 people attended in the early hours of the morning and the police called off their operation (Feliu). As the weeks wore on, training was stepped up, attendees were educated in non-violent resistance and protestors willing to act as police liaison persons were placed on a rotating roster. In May, the State Government was preparing to send up to 800 police and the Riot Squad to break the blockade (NSW Hansard in Buckingham). Local farmers (now a part of the movement) and activist leaders had gone to Sydney in an effort to find a political solution in order to avoid what threatened to be a clash that would involve police violence. A confluence of events, such as: the sudden resignation of the Premier; revelations via the Independent Commission against Corruption about nefarious dealings and undue influence of the coal industry upon the government; a radio interview with locals by a popular broadcaster in Sydney; and the reputed hesitation of the police themselves in engaging with a group of possibly 7,000 to 10,000 protestors, resulted in the Office for Coal Seam Gas suspending Metgasco’s drilling licence on 15 May (NSW Department of Resources & Energy). The grounds were that the company had not adequately fulfilled its obligations to consult with the community. At the date of writing, the suspension still holds. The Wave The repertoire of contention at the Bentley Blockade was expansive, comprising most of the standard actions and strategies developed in earlier environmental struggles. These included direct blocking tactics in addition to the use of more carnivalesque actions like music and theatre, as well as the use of various media to reach a broader public. Non-violence was at the core of all actions, but we would tentatively suggest that Bentley may have provided a novel addition to the repertoire, stemming originally from the vigil, which brought the first protestors to the site. At the beginning of the vigil, which was initially held near the entrance to the proposed drilling site atop a cutting, occupants of passing vehicles below would demonstrate their support by sounding their horns and/or waving to the vigil-keepers, who at first were few in number. There was a precedent for this behaviour in the campaign leading up to the blockade. Activist groups such as the Knitting Nannas against Gas had encouraged vehicles to show support by sounding their horns. So when the motorists tooted spontaneously at Bentley, we waved back. Occupants of other vehicles would show disapproval by means of rude gestures and/or yelling and we would wave to them as well. After some weeks, as a presence began to be established at the site, it became routine for vigil keepers to smile and wave at all passing vehicles. This often elicited a positive response. After the first mass call-out discussed above, a number of us migrated to another gate, where numbers were much sparser and there was a perceived need for a greater presence. At this point, the participating writer had begun to act as a police liaison person, but the practice of waving routinely was continued. Those protecting this gate usually included protestors ready to block access, the police liaison person, a legal observer, vigil-keepers and a passing parade of visitors. Because this location was directly on the road, it was possible to see the drivers of vehicles and make eye contact more easily. Certain vehicles became familiar, passing at regular times, on the way to work or school, for example. As time passed, most of those protecting the gate also joined the waving ritual to the point where it became like a game to try to prise a signal of acknowledgement from the passing motorists, or even to win over a disapprover. Police vehicles, some of which passed at set intervals, were included in this game. Mostly they waved cheerfully. There were some we never managed to win over, but waving and making direct eye contact with regular motorists over time created a sense of community and an acknowledgement of the work we were doing, as they increasingly responded in kind. Motorists could hardly feel threatened when they encountered smiling, waving protestors. By including the disapprovers, we acted inclusively and our determined good humour seemed to de-escalate demonstrated hostility. Locals who did not want drilling to go ahead but who were nevertheless unwilling to join a direct action were thus able to participate in the resistance in a way that may have felt safe for them. Some of them even stopped and visited the site, voicing their support. Standing on the side of the road and waving to passers-by may seem peripheral to the “real” action, even trivial. But we would argue it is a valuable adjunct to a blockade (which is situated near a road) when one of the strategies of the overall campaign is to win popular backing. Hence waving, whilst not a completely new part of the repertoire, constitutes what Tilly (41–45) would call innovation at the margins, something he asserts is necessary to maintain the effectiveness and vitality of contentious action. In this case, it is arguable that the sheer size of community support probably helped to concentrate the minds of the state government politicians in Sydney, particularly as they contemplated initiating a massive, taxpayer-funded police action against the people for the benefit of a commercial operation. Waving is a symbolic gesture indicating acknowledgement and goodwill. It fits well within a repertoire based on the principle of non-violence. Moreover, it is a conventional social norm and everyday behaviour that is so innocuous that it is difficult to see how it could be suppressed by police or other authorities. Therein lies its subversiveness. For in communicating our common humanity in a spirit of friendliness, we drew attention to the fact that we were without rancour and tacitly invited others to join us and to explore our concerns. In this way, the counterculture drew upon a mainstream custom to develop and extend upon a new form of dissent. This constitutes a reversal of the more usual phenomenon of countercultural artefacts—such as “hippie clothing”—being appropriated or co-opted by the prevailing culture (see Reading). But it also fits with the more general phenomenon that we have argued was occurring; that of enticing ordinary residents into joining together in countercultural activity, via the pathway of a social movement. Conclusion The anti-CSG movement in the Northern Rivers was developed and organised by countercultural participants of previous contentious challenges. It was highly effective in building popular support whilst at the same time forging a loose coalition of various activist groups. We have surveyed one practice—the wave—that evolved out of mainstream culture over the course of the Bentley Blockade and suggested it may come to be seen as part of the repertoire of actions that can be beneficially employed under suitable conditions. Waving to passers-by invites them to become part of the movement in a non-threatening and inclusive way. It thus envelops supporters and non-supporters alike, and its very innocuousness makes it difficult to suppress. We have argued that this instance can be referenced to a similar reverse movement at a broader level—that of co-opting liberal notions and involving the general populace in new practices and activities that undermine the status quo. The ability of the counterculture in general and environment movements in particular to innovate in the quest to challenge and change what it perceives as damaging or unethical practices demonstrates its ingenuity and spirit. This movement is testament to its dynamic nature. References ABC News. Metgasco Has No CSG Extraction Plans for Glenugie. 2013. 30 July 2014 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-22/metgasco-says-no-csg-extraction-planned-for-glenugie/4477652›. Bible, Vanessa. Aquarius Rising: Terania Creek and the Australian Forest Protest Movement. Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Thesis, University of New England, 2010. 4 Nov. 2014 ‹http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/terania/Vanessa%27s%20Terania%20Thesis2.pdf›. Buckingham, Jeremy. Hansard of Bentley Blockade Motion 15/05/2014. 16 May 2014. 30 July 2014 ‹http://jeremybuckingham.org/2014/05/16/hansard-of-bentley-blockade-motion-moved-by-david-shoebridge-15052014/›. Carter, Neil. The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge UP, 2007. Cox, Laurence. Building Counter Culture: The Radical Praxis of Social Movement Milieu. Helsinki: Into-ebooks 2011. 23 July 2014 ‹http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/building_counter_culture/›. Della Porta, Donatella, and Mario Diani. Social Movements: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Dobney, Chris. “Drill Rig Heads to Doubtful Creek.” Echo Netdaily Feb. 2013. 30 July 2014 ‹http://www.echo.net.au/2013/02/drill-rig-heads-to-doubtful-creek/›. Ellsworth, William. “Injection-Induced Earthquakes”. Science 341.6142 (2013). DOI: 10.1126/science.1225942. 10 July 2014 ‹http://www.sciencemag.org.ezproxy.scu.edu.au/content/341/6142/1225942.full?sid=b4679ca5-0992-4ad3-aa3e-1ac6356f10da›. Feliu, Luis. “Battle for Bentley: 2,000 Protectors on Site.” Echo Netdaily Mar. 2013. 4 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.echo.net.au/2014/03/battle-bentley-2000-protectors-site/›. Finley, Mary Lou, and Steven Soifer. “Social Movement Theories and Map.” Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements. Eds. Bill Moyer, Johann McAllister, Mary Lou Finley, and Steven Soifer. Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2001. Grossberg, Lawrence. “Some Preliminary Conjunctural Thoughts on Countercultures”. Journal of Gender and Power 1.1 (2014). Hand, Eric. “Injection Wells Blamed in Oklahoma Earthquakes.” Science 345.6192 (2014): 13–14. Howarth, Terry. “Should Fracking Stop?” Nature 477 (2011): 271–73. Kelly, Russell. “The Mediated Forest: Who Speaks for the Trees?” Belonging in the Rainbow Region: Cultural Perspectives on the NSW North Coast. Ed. Helen Wilson. Lismore: Southern Cross UP, 2003. 101–20. Lock the Gate Alliance. 2014. 15 July 2014 ‹http://www.lockthegate.org.au/history›. Locke, John. “Toleration and Government.” Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader. Eds. Terence Ball & Richard Dagger. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004 (1823). 79–93. Metgasco. Rosella E01 Environment Approval Received 2104. 4 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.metgasco.com.au/asx-announcements/rosella-e01-environment-approval-received›. Mitka, Mike. “Rigorous Evidence Slim for Determining Health Risks from Natural Gas Fracking.” The Journal of the American Medical Association 307.20 (2012): 2135–36. Moyer, Bill. “The Movement Action Plan.” Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements. Eds. Bill Moyer, Johann McAllister, Mary Lou Finley, and Steven Soifer. Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2001. NSW Department of Resources & Energy. “Metgasco Drilling Approval Suspended.” Media Release, 15 May 2014. 30 July 2014 ‹http://www.resourcesandenergy.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/516749/Metgasco-Drilling-Approval-Suspended.pdf›. Reading, Tracey. “Hip versus Square: 1960s Advertising and Clothing Industries and the Counterculture”. Research Papers 2013. 15 July 2014 ‹http://opensuic.lib.siu.edu/gs_rp/396›. Ricketts, Aiden. “The North East Forest Alliance’s Old-Growth Forest Campaign.” Belonging in the Rainbow Region: Cultural Perspectives on the NSW North Coast. Ed. Helen Wilson. Lismore: Southern Cross UP. 2003. 121–148. Sharp, Gene. The Politics of Nonviolent Action: Power and Struggle. Boston, Mass.: Porter Sargent, 1973. Sovacool, Benjamin K. “Cornucopia or Curse? Reviewing the Costs and Benefits of Shale Gas Hydraulic Fracturing (Fracking).” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (2014): 249–64. Tait, Douglas, Isaac Santos, Damien Maher, Tyler Cyronak, and Rachael Davis. “Enrichment of Radon and Carbon Dioxide in the Open Atmosphere of an Australian Coal Seam Gas Field.” Environmental Science & Technology 47 (2013): 3099–3104. Tarrow, Sidney. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. 3rd ed. New York: Cambridge UP, 2011. Thompson, Chuck. “The Fracking Feud.” Medicus 53.8 (2013): 56–57. Tilly, Charles. Regimes and Repertoires. Chicago: UCP, 2006. Ward, Susan, and Kitty van Vuuren. “Belonging to the Rainbow Region: Place, Local Media, and the Construction of Civil and Moral Identities Strategic to Climate Change Adaptability.” Environmental Communication 7.1 (2013): 63–79.

This story not for myself … all over Australia story.No matter Aborigine, White-European, secret before,Didn’t like im before White-European…This time White-European must come to Aborigine,Listen Aborigine and understand it.Understand that culture, secret, what dreaming.— Senior Lawman Neidjie, Story about Feeling (78)IntroductionIn Senior Lawman Neidjie’s beautiful little book, with big knowledge, Story about Feeling (1989), he shares with us, his readers, the importance of feeling our connectedness with the land around us. We have heard his words and this is our effort to articulate our respect and responsibility in return. We are a small group of undergraduate students and a lecturer at the University of Newcastle (a mixed “mob” with non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal heritages) participating in an English course designed around listening to the knowledge stories of Country, in the context of Country as the energy and agency of the lands around us and not just a physical setting, as shared by those who know it best. We are a diverse group of people. We have different, individual, purposes for taking this course, but with a common willingness to listen which has been strengthened through our exposure to Aboriginal literature. This paper is the result of our lived experience of practice-led research. We have written this paper as a collective group and therefore we use “we” to represent and encompass our distinct voices in this shared learning journey. We write this paper within the walls, physically and psychologically, of western academia, built on the lands of the Darkinjung peoples. Our hope is to rethink the limits of epistemic boundaries in western discourses of education; to engage with Aboriginal ways of knowing predominantly through the pedagogical and personal act of listening. We aspire to reimagine our understanding of, and complicity with, public memory while simultaneously shifting our engagement with the land on which we stand, learn, and live. We ask ourselves: can we re-imagine the institutionalised space of our classroom through a dialogic pedagogy? To attempt to do this we have employed intersubjective dialogues, where our role is mostly that of listeners (readers) of stories of Country shared by Aboriginal voices and knowledges such as Neidjie’s. This paper is an articulation of our learning journey to re-imagine the tertiary classroom, re-imagine the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australian knowledges, perspectives and peoples, re-imagine our collective consciousness on Aboriginal lands and, ultimately, to re-imagine ourselves. Re-imagining the Tertiary English Literature Classroom Our intersubjective dialogues have been built around listening to the stories (reading a book) from Aboriginal Elders who share the surface knowledge of stories from their Countries. These have been the voices of Neidjie, Max Dulumunmun Harrison in My People’s Dreaming (2013), and Laklak Burarrwanga et al. in Welcome to My Country (2013). Using a talking circle format, a traditional method of communication based upon equality and respect, within the confines of the four-walled institute of Western education, our learning journey moved through linear time, meeting once a week for two hours for 13 weeks. Throughout this time we employed Joshua Guilar’s notion of an intersubjective dialogue in the classroom to re-imagine our tertiary journey. Guilar emphasises the actions of “listening and respect, direction, character building and authority” (para 1). He argues that a dialogic classroom builds an educative community that engages both learners and teachers “where all parties are open to learning” (para 3). To re-imagine the tertiary classroom via talking circles, the lecturer drew from dialogic instruction which privileges content as:the major emphasis of the instructional conversation. Dialogic instruction includes a sharing of power. The actions of a dialogic instructor can be understood on a continuum with an autocratic instructional style at one end and an overly permissive style on the other. In the middle of the continuum are dialogic-enabling behaviors, which make possible a radical pedagogy. (para 1) Re-imaging the lecturer’s facilitating role has not been without its drawbacks and issues. In particular, she had to examine her own subjectivity and role as teacher while also adhering to the expectations of her job as an academic employee in the University. Assessing students, their developing awareness of Aboriginal ways of knowing, was not without worry. Advocating a paradigm shift from dominant ways of teaching and learning, while also adhering to expected tertiary discourses and procedures (such as developing marking rubrics and providing expectations regarding the format of an essay, referencing information, word limits, writing in standard Australian English and being assessed according to marks out of 100 that are categorised as Fails, Passes, Credits, Distinctions, or High Distinctions) required constant self-reflexivity and attempts at pedagogical transparency, for instance, the rubrics for assessing assignments were designed around the course objectives and then shared with the students to gauge understanding of, and support for, the criteria. Ultimately it was acknowledged that the lecturer’s position within the hierarchy of western learning carried with it an imbalance of power, that is, as much as she desired to create a shared and equal learning space, she decided and awarded final grades. In an effort to continually and consciously work through this, the work of Gayatri Spivak on self-reflexivity was employed: she, the lecturer, has “attempted to foreground the precariousness of [her] position throughout” although she knows “such gestures can never suffice” (271). Spivak’s work on the tendency of dominant discourses and institutions to ignore or deny the validity of non-western knowledges continues to be influential. We acknowledge the limits of our ability to engage in such a radical dialogical pedagogy: there are limits to the creativity and innovativeness that can be produced within a dominant Eurocentric academic framework. Sharing knowledge and stories cannot be a one-way process; all parties have to willingly engage in order to create meaningful exchange. This then, requires that the classroom, and this paper, reflect a space of heterogeneous voices (or “ears” required for listening) that are self-sufficiently open to hearing the stories of knowledge from the traditional custodians. Listening becomes a mode of thought where we are also aware of the impediments in our ability to hear: to hear across cultures, across histories, across generations, and across time and space. The intersubjective dialogues taking place, between us and the stories and also between each other in the classroom, allow us to deepen our understanding of the literature of Country by listening to each other’s voices. Even if they offer different opinions from our own they still contribute to our broader conception of what Country is and can mean to people. By extension, this causes us to re-evaluate the lands upon which we stand, entering a dialogue with place to reinterpret/negotiate our position within the “story” of Country. This learning and listening was re-emphasised with the words of Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann’s explanation of “Dadirri”: an inner, deep, contemplative listening and awareness (para 4). To be able to hear these stories has required a radical shift in the way we are listening. To create a space for an intersubjective dialogue to occur between the knowledge stories of Aboriginal peoples who know their Country, and us as individual and distinct listeners, Marcia Langton’s third category of an intersubjective dialogue was used. This type of dialogue involves an exchange between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians where both are positioned as subjects rather than, as historically has been the case, non-Aboriginal peoples speaking about Aboriginality positioned as “object” and “other” (81). Langton states that: ‘Aboriginality’ arises from the subjective experience of both Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal people who engage in any intercultural dialogue, whether in actual lived experience or through a mediated experience such as a white person watching a program about Aboriginal people on television or reading a book. Moreover, the creation of ‘Aboriginality’ is not a fixed thing. It is created from out histories. It arises from the intersubjectivity of black and white in dialogue. (31)Langton states that historically the ways Aboriginality has been represented by the ethnographic gaze has meant that “Aboriginality” and what it means is a result of colonisation: Aboriginal peoples did not refer to themselves or think of themselves in such ways before colonisation. Therefore, we respectfully tried to listen to the knowledge stories shared by Aboriginal people through Aboriginal ways of knowing Country. Listening to Stories of Country We use the word “stories” to represent the knowledge of a place that traditional custodians of their land know and willingly share through the public publication of literature. Stories, in our understanding, are not “made-up” fictional narratives but knowledge documents of and from specific places that are physically manifested in the land while embodying metaphysical meaning as well. Stories are connected to the land and therefore they are connected to its people. We use the phrase “surface (public) knowledge” to distinguish between knowledges that anyone can hear and have access to in comparison with more private, deeper layered, secret/sacred knowledge that is not within our rights to possess or even within our ability to understand. We are, however, cognisant that this knowledge is there and respect those who know it. Finally, we employ the word Country, which, as noted above means the energy and agency of the lands around us. As Burarrwanga et al. share:Country has many layers of meaning. It incorporates people, animals, plants, water and land. But Country is more than just people and things, it is also what connects them to each other and to multiple spiritual and symbolic realms. It relates to laws, customs, movement, song, knowledges, relationships, histories, presents, future and spirits. Country can be talked to, it can be known, it can itself communicate, feel and take action. Country for us is alive with story, Law, power and kinship relations that join not only people to each other but link people, ancestors, place, animals, rocks, plants, stories and songs within land and sea. So you see, knowledge about Country is important because it’s about how and where you fit in the world and how you connect to others and to place. (129) Many colonists denied, and many people continue to deny today, the complexity of Aboriginal cultures and ways of knowing: “native traditions” are recorded according to Western epistemology and perceptions. Roslyn Carnes has argued that colonisation has created a situation in Australia, “where Aboriginal voices are white noise to the ears of many non-Indigenous people. […] white privilege and the resulting white noise can be minimised and greater clarity given to Aboriginal voices by privileging Indigenous knowledge and ways of working when addressing Indigenous issues. To minimise the interference of white noise, non-Indigenous people would do well to adopt a position that recognises, acknowledges and utilises some of the strengths that can be learned from Aboriginal culture and Indigenous authors” (2). To negotiate through this “white noise”, to hear the stories of Country beneath it and attempt to decolonise both our minds and the institutional discourses we work and study in (Langton calls for an undermining of the “colonial hegemony” [8]) and we have had to acknowledge and position our subjectivity as Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples and try to situate ourselves as “allied listeners” (Carnes 184). Through allied listening in intersubjective dialogues, we are re-learning (re-imagining) history, reviewing dominant ideas about the world and ways of existing in it and re-situating our own positions of Aboriginality and non-Aboriginality. Rereading the Signs Welcome to My Country by Burarrwanga et al. emphasises that knowledge is embedded in Country, in everything on, in, above, and moving through country. While every rock, tree, waterhole, hill, and animal has a story (stories), so do the winds, clouds, tides, and stars. These stories are layered, they overlap, they interconnect and they remain. A physical representation such as a tree or rock, is a manifestation of a metaphysical moment, event, ancestor. The book encourages us (the readers) to listen to the knowledge that is willingly being shared, thus initiating a layer of intersubjectivity between Yolngu ways of knowing and the intended reader; the book itself is a result of an intersubjective relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women and embedded in both of these intersubjective layers is the relationship between us and this land. The book itself offers a way of engaging with the physical environment that combines western processes (standard Australian written English for instance) with Aboriginal ways of knowing, in this instance, Yolngu ways. It is an immediate way of placing oneself in time and space, for instance it was August when we first read the book so it was the dry season and time for hunting. Reading the environment in such a way means that we need to be aware of what is happening around us, allowing us to see the “rules” of a place and “feel” it (Neidjie). We now attempt to listen more closely to our own environments, extending our understanding of place and reconsidering our engagement with Darkinjung land. Neidjie, Harrison, and Burarrwanga et al. share knowledge that helps us re-imagine our way of reading the signs around us—the physical clues (when certain plants flower it might signal the time to catch certain fish or animals; when certain winds blow it might signal the time to perform certain duties) that the land provides but there is also another layer of meaning—explanations for certain animal behaviours, for certain sites, for certain rights. Beneath these layers are other layers that may or may not be spoken of, some of them are hinted at in the text and others, it is explained, are not allowed to be spoken of or shared at this point in time. “We use different language for different levels: surface, middle and hidden. Hidden languages are not known to everyone and are used for specific occasions” (Burarrwanga et al. 131). “Through language we learn about country, about boundaries, inside and outside knowledge” (Burarrwanga et al. 132). Many of the esoteric (knowledge for a certain few) stories are too different from our dominant discourses for us to understand even if they could be shared with us. Laklak Burarrwanga happily shares the surface layer though, and like Neidjie, refers to the reader as “you”. So this was where we began our intersubjective dialogue with Aboriginality, non-Aboriginality and Country. In Harrison’s My People’s Dreaming he explains how Aboriginal ways of knowing are built on watching, listening, and seeing. “If we don’t follow these principles then we don’t learn anything” (59). Engaging with Aboriginal knowledges such as Harrison’s three principles, Neidjie’s encouragement to listen, and Burarrwanga et al.’s welcoming into wetj (sharing and responsibility) has impacted on our own ideas and practices regarding how we learn. We have had to shelve our usual method of deconstructing or analysing a text and instead focus on simply hearing and feeling the stories. If we (as a collective, and individually) perceive “gaps” in the stories or in our understanding, that is, the sense that there is more information embodied in Country than what we are receiving, rather than attempting to find out more, we have respected the act of the surface story being shared, realising that perhaps deeper knowledge is not meant for us (as outsiders, as non-Aboriginal peoples or even as men or as women). This is at odds with how we are generally expected to function as tertiary students (that is, as independent researchers/analytical scholars). We have identified this as a space in which we can listen to Aboriginal ways of knowing to develop our understanding of Aboriginal epistemologies, within a university setting that is governed by western ideologies. Neidjie reminds us that a story might be, “forty-two thousand [years]” old but in sharing a dialogue with each other, we keep it alive (101). Kwaymullina and Kwaymullina argue that in contrast, “the British valued the wheel, but they did not value its connection to the tree” (197), that is, western ways of knowing and being often favour the end result, disregarding the process, the story and the cycle where the learning occurs. Re-imagining Our Roles and Responsibility in Discourses of ReconciliationSuch a space we see as an alternative concept of spatial politics: “one that is rooted not solely in a politics of the nation, but instead reflects the diverse spaces that construct the postcolonial experience” (Upstone 1). We have almost envisioned this as fragmented and compartmentalised palimpsestic layers of different spaces (colonial, western, national, historical, political, topographical, social, educational) constructed on Aboriginal lands and knowledges. In this re-imagined learning space we are trying to negotiate through the white noise to listen to the voices of Aboriginal peoples. The transformative power of these voices—voices that invite us, welcome us, into their knowledge of Country—provide powerful messages for the possibility of change, “It is they who not only present the horrors of current circumstances but, gesturing towards the future, also offer the possibility of a way to move forward” (Upstone 184). In Harrison’s My People’s Dreaming, his chapter on Forgiveness both welcomes the reader into his Country while acknowledging that Australia’s shared history of colonisation is painful to confront, but only by confronting it, can we begin to heal and move forward. While notions of social reconciliation revolve around rebuilding social relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, “ecological reconciliation involves restoring ecological connectivity, sustaining ecological services, sustaining biodiversity, and making tough decisions from an eco-centric point of view that will not always prioritise human desire” (Rose 7). Deborah Bird Rose identifies four reasons why ecological reconciliation must occur simultaneously with social reconciliation. First, “without an imaginable world for the future, there is no point even to imagining a future for ourselves” (Rose 2). Second, for us to genuinely embrace reconciliation we must work to respond to land rights, environmental restoration and the protection of sacred sites. Third, we must recognise that “society and environment are inextricably connected” (Rose 2) and that this is especially so for Aboriginal Australians. Finally, Aboriginal ways of knowing could provide answers to postcolonial environmental degradation. By employing Guilar’s notion of the dialogic classroom as a method of critical pedagogy designed to promote social justice, we recognise our own responsibilities when it comes to issues such as ecology due to these stories being shared with us about and from Country via the literature we read. We write this paper in the hope of articulating our experience of re-imagining and enacting an embodied cognisance (understood as response and responsibility) tuned towards these ways of knowing. We have re-imagined the classroom as a new space of learning where Aboriginal ways of knowing are respected alongside dominant educational discourses. That is, our reimagined classroom includes: the substance of [...] a transactive public memory [...] informed by the reflexive attentiveness to the retelling or representation of a complex of emotionally evocative narratives and images which define not necessarily agreement but points of connection between people in regard to a past that they both might acknowledge the touch of. (Simon 63) Through an intersubjective dialogic classroom we have attempted to reimagine our relationships with the creators of these texts and the ways of knowing they represent. In doing so, we move beyond dominant paradigms of the land around us, re-assessing our roles and responsibilities in ways that are both practical and manageable in our own lives (within and outside of the classroom). Making conscious our awareness of Aboriginal ways of knowing, we create a collective consciousness in our little circle within the dominant western space of academic discourse to, wilfully and hopefully, contribute to transformative social and educational change outside of it. Because we have heard and listened to the stories of Country: We know White-European got different story.But our story, everything dream,Dreaming, secret, ‘business’…You can’t lose im.This story you got to hang on for you,Children, new children, no-matter new generationAnd how much new generation.You got to hang on this old story because the earth, This ground, earth where you brought up, This earth e grow, you growing little by little, Tree growing with you too, grass…I speaking storyAnd this story you got to hang on, no matter who you, No-matter what country you.You got to understand…this world for us.We came for this world. (Neidjie 166) Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands upon which this paper was researched and written. References Burarrwanga, Laklak, Ritjilili Ganambarr, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Banbapuy Ganambarr, Djawundil Maymuru, Sarah Wright, Sandie Suchet-Pearson, and Kate Lloyd. Welcome to My Country. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2013. Carnes, Roslyn. “Changing Listening Frequency to Minimise White Noise and Hear Indigenous Voices.” Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues 14.2-3 (2011): 170-84. Guilar, Joshua D. “Intersubjectivity and Dialogic Instruction.” Radical Pedagogy 8.1 (2006): 1. Harrison, Max D. My People’s Dreaming: An Aboriginal Elder Speaks on Life, Land, Spirit and Forgiveness. Sydney: HarperCollins Australia, 2013. Kwaymullina, Ambelin, and Blaze Kwaymullina. “Learning to Read the Signs: Law in an Indigenous Reality.” Journal of Australian Studies 34.2 (2010): 195-208.Langton, Marcia. Well, I Saw It on the Television and I Heard It on the Radio. Sydney: Australian Film Commission, 1993. Neidjie, Bill. Story about Feeling. Broome: Magabala Books, 1989. Rose, Deborah Bird. “The Ecological Power and Promise of Reconciliation.” National Institute of the Environment Public Lecture Series, 20 Nov. 2002. Speech. Parliament House. Simon, Roger. “The Touch of the Past: The Pedagogical Significance of a Transactional Sphere of Public Memory.” Revolutionary Pedagogies: Cultural Politics, Instituting Education, and the Discourse of Theory (2000): 61-80. Spivak, Gayatri. C. “'Can the Subaltern Speak?' Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture.” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Eds. Nelson, Cary and Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana, IL: U of Illinois P, 1988. 271-313. Ungunmerr-Baumann, Miriam-Rose. Dadirri: Inner Deep Listening and Quiet Still Awareness. Emmaus Productions, 2002. 14 June 2015 ‹http://nextwave.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Dadirri-Inner-Deep-Listening-M-R-Ungunmerr-Bauman-Refl.pdf›.Upstone, Sara. Spatial Politics in the Postcolonial Novel. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2013.