Country

This stream of work explores the relationship between colonisation, ecology and climate. It focuses on the ways First Nations’ care for and obligations to Country are inextricably bound to questions of sovereignty, and understands the unfolding environmental crises that confront us as evidence of the settler state’s incapacity to manage the land and waters of this continent.

Understanding environmental harm as a foundational violence of settler colonialism, unmoved by “good intentions” and white morality, this stream unpicks the ways both terra nullius and aqua nullius continue to manifest in contemporary environmental policy, discourse, and social movements. Centring research and activism that ties questions of intergenerational justice to First Nations sovereignty, this stream explores what it means to care for Country in the context of ongoing colonial occupation.

For more information contact convener, Dr Erin O'Donnell erin.odonnell@unimelb.edu.au.