Michael Adams

Negotiating Nature: Collaboration and Conflict between Aboriginal and Conservation Interests in New South Wales, Australia.

Abstract Faced with the paradox of a large global increase in conservation reserves and a simultaneous global decreasein actual effective protection for biodiversity, conservation scientists and policymakers are questioningestablished conservation theory and practice. I argue that the fundamental premises, the foundational myths,for Western-style conservation also need to be questioned. The statistics on Indigenous land claims, andconservation reserves, in Australia and more specifically the state of New South Wales (NSW), reveal alandscape of policy failure in both arenas. Focusing on Australia, I use spatial analysis and policy histories todemonstrate converging trajectories of land use priorities for conservation needs and Indigenous peoples’needs. This intersection, while generating much potential for conflict, also creates new political landscapes. Acombination of spatial and cultural analyses can create a clear picture of new “operational landscapes”, and anunderstanding of the (sometimes) complementary values of different cultural groups negotiating about theselandscapes. From the basis that environmental problems are fundamentally social problems, this papercontributes to explorations of new paradigms supporting new social-ecological relationships, and newrelationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

Engaging with the (Un)familiar: Field Teaching in a Multi-Campus Teaching Environment

Field trips have long been central to geography, but have been subject to assessment of the role of the ‘field’ in teaching. At the same time, academics face barriers to running field trips. Distance education and enhanced educational access for non-metropolitan students represented such an obstacle at an Australian university. These obstacles were taken as an opportunity to draw on the regional nature of the students and staff to enhance teaching goals, run critically informed field trips by and manage academic workloads. We evaluate the field trips by conducting surveys and interviews with students and tutors, and as an example of innovation within constraints.

Conflict in Common: Heritage-making in Cape York

ABSTRACT The outstanding natural and cultural values of Cape York have been acknowledged for decades, but those decades have been characterised by deep conflict. Non-government organisation intervention in local politics has seen a forceful push for nominating some or all of the Cape York Peninsula as a World Heritage Site. We illuminate the authorised heritage discourse at work in heritage-making, and highlight contested issues of ownership, governance, authenticity, and value. These themes contribute to the possibility of marginalising the voices of local people who wish to contribute to heritage-making in Cape York. Politics infuses all aspects of heritage-making in Cape York, and the specific experiences on Cape York reflect larger political processes occurring in World Heritage discourse. The paper draws on interviews undertaken in May and June 2012.

First Nations and the Politics of Indigeneity: Australian perspectives on Indigenous peoples, resource management and global rights

Many academic researchers are drawn to Scandinavia because of the perception of its model social democratic institutions, associated high standards of living and progressive social policy. A plethora of work, concerned mainly with comparing Scandinavian welfare states with other nations outside that region, frames Scandinavian states as ideal models of social responsibility and as leading global citizens. This is a viewpoint also eagerly embraced by the governments of those Scandinavian states. And indeed, in some respects this reputation may be well deserved. However, Scandinavia’s own Indigenous people, the Saami, might reasonably question where their own claims for recognition, self-determination and resource rights fit within this model of apparently progressive social responsibility. A notable exception to much of the published literature is the work of geographer Allan Pred (2000): his book Even in Sweden: racisms, racialized spaces and the popular geographical imagination confronts and challenges these images of apparent social responsibility in an analysis of contemporary racisms in Sweden. Even Pred, however, ignores Saami issues in his discussion. Indigenous peoples*/resource management and global rights , by Jentoft, Minde and Nilsen, addresses this question, whilst also contributing to broader discussions concerning Indigenous peoples more globally. In order to situate our review of this book we should first position our own work in this field of Indigenous issues. Both

Wild tradition: Hunting and nature in regional Sweden and Australia

This chapter addresses where two issues – the problem of not seeing at a certain time and the idea of a static nature over time – converge in two historical searches for the last: the European beav ...The view from off-centre : Sweden and Australia in the imaginative discourse of the Anthropocene

Engaging with uncertainty: Shared governance in indigenous conservation landscapes

This book examines the diverse use of Indigenous customary rights in modern landscapes from a multidisciplinary perspective. Divided into two parts, the first deals explicitly with Sami customary r ...