Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Monday 08 May
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
When the environmental movement emerged in Australia in the 1970s, many saw an obvious alliance between activists and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. There seemed to be broad agreement on one major principle: the natural environment should not be subject to thoughtless destruction.
But these relationships have also often played out with tension – complicated by disagreements on issues from fire management to mining sites and the contested idea of ‘wilderness’. In her 2012 Boyer Lecture, Indigenous writer and anthropologist Marcia Langton denounced ‘the refusal among the romantics, leftists and worshippers of nature to admit that Aboriginal people, like other humans, have an economic life … and have economic rights’.
A new book, Unstable Relations, explores the past and present of this sometimes tense, often constructive and always evolving relationship. Join its co-editor, anthropologist Eve Vincent, Indigenous organiser and strategist Karrina Nolan and contributor Jon Altman in conversation with host Tony Birch.
This event will be Auslan interpreted.
Presented in partnership with Yirramboi.
Featuring
Tony Birch
Tony Birch is the author of four novels, five short fiction collections, and two poetry books. His most recent book is the novel, Women and Children (UQP).
View ProfileEve Vincent
Eve Vincent is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Macquarie University. She is the co-editor, with Timothy Neale, of Unstable Relations: Indigenous people and environmentalism in contemporary Australia (UWAP, 2016).
Jon Altman
Jon Altman is a research professor at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University, and an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University.
One of Australia's most engaged public intellectuals, Jon also frequently writes for a broader audience on Aboriginal economic issues in Inside Story, Crikey, Arena, and New Matilda.
His research engages with questions of social justice and human rights for minority groups globally, and he looks at issues of appropriate economic development and associated policy for Indigenous Australia; hybrid economy theory and practice; and the economic engagement of Indigenous people with Australian and global capitalism.
Karrina Nolan
Karrina Nolan is of mixed heritage from Yorta Yorta nation in Victoria. She’s worked as an organiser, strategist, campaigner, facilitator, lobbyist and hip-hop wrangler alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, young people and communities for 20 years. She’s led programs and campaigns on women’s rights, globalisation and environmental justice with a focus on First Nations peoples.
Most recently, Karrina has been working as Seed’s Strategist and Community Facilitator. She has also been building power among communities protecting country – supporting communities in the Northern Territory to fight fracking and other resource extraction like mining Borroloola, and in Queensland alongside the Wangan and Jagalingou people. She is also a singer with the Mission Songs project, rejuvenating songs not heard in over 60 years from the mission days.