| 1. |
- Graham, Marnie, et al.
(author)
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Deep-colonising narratives and emotional labour : Indigenous tourism in a deeply-colonised place
- 2021
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In: Tourist Studies. - : SAGE Publications. - 1468-7976 .- 1741-3206. ; 21:3, s. 444-463
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Sydney is an Indigenous place - Indigenous Country - infused with Indigenous stories and lore/Law. Yet as the original site of British colonisation in 1788, Sydney today is also a deeply-colonised place. Long-held narratives of Sydney as a colonial city have worked hard to erasure Indigenous peoples' presences and to silence Indigenous stories of this place (Rey and Harrison, 2018). In recent years, however, Indigenous-led tours on Country are emerging in the Greater Sydney region, whereby Indigenous guides share with visitors stories of place, history, culture, language and connection. We write together as Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, in conversation with four Indigenous tour operators in the Greater Sydney region to reflect on their experiences of conducting Indigenous tours in this Indigenous-yet-deeply-colonised place. We document the kinds of 'deep-colonising' (Rose, 1996) narratives and assumptions the operators encounter during their tours and within the tourism industry, and highlight how Indigenous tour operators facilitate many non-Indigenous peoples in taking their first steps towards meaningful interactions with Indigenous Sydney-siders. We conclude that Indigenous tour operators undertake incredibly complex, confronting and challenging emotional labours trying to change the pervasive and deep-colonising narratives and assumptions about Indigenous peoples in the Greater Sydney region. In a world where the histories of thousands of cities 'lie in dispossession and genocide of Indigenous peoples' (Porter, 2020: 15), we argue for further and careful analytical attention on Indigenous tourism encounters in Indigenous - yet deeply-colonised - places.
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| 2. |
- Graham, Marnie
(author)
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Everyday human (in)securities in protected urban nature - Collaborative conservation at Macassar/Wolfgat dunes nature reserves, Cape Town, South Africa
- 2015
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In: Geoforum. - : Elsevier BV. - 0016-7185 .- 1872-9398. ; 64, s. 25-36
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The diverse residents of the urban global South experience insecurities in everyday, immediate and subjective ways. Lemanski argues these insecurities relate not only to physical concerns like fear, crime, and violence but also to stressors like insecure tenure and financial situations, and threatened and contested lifestyles and cultures as cities rapidly change. This paper considers how diverse 'everyday human (in)securities' manifest through urban nature and shape collaborations around nature conservation. The focus is on protected coastal dunes in Cape Town and collaborative conservation participants, including municipal nature conservators and community representatives from the adjacent apartheid-era 'townships'. The diverse 'everyday human (in)securities' perceived and experienced by these participants manifest variously in physical threats to bodies and biodiversity, but also in relation to the insecure tenure and financial situations experienced by residents and conservators alike, alongside differing cultural values of nature. Through attention to diffuse power relations and everyday experiences, divergent perceptions of (in)security are shown to be frictional and sometimes paradoxical in nature. Yet identifying these (in)securities also holds potential for exploring hopeful and productive negotiations around what 'security' might mean, and how it might be realised through the collaborations bringing into dialogue contested spaces of urban nature in cities of the global South and North.
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| 3. |
- Graham, Marnie, 1980-
(author)
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Exploring stakeholder perceptions of an urban protected area and associated co-management arrangements: Macassar Dunes, Cape Town, South Africa
- 2011
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Within our cities the importance of urban green spaces such as forests, parks, wetlands, and protected areas are increasingly recognised for their contribution to human health and wellbeing, and in the provision of ecosystem services. Meanwhile, cities contain much social, cultural, economic, and environmental diversity, and natural resource management strategies for green areas need to account for the diversity of perspectives and conflict spaces that such urban diversity can encapsulate. Here, the empirical focus is on an urban protected area, Macassar Dunes, in Cape Town, bordered by vast informal and township settlement, and subject to a co-management arrangement for the last ten years between representatives of local residents, academic researchers, and conservation and planning authorities. This study examines the range of perceived ‘bridges’ and ‘barriers’ to co-management from the perspectives of stakeholders in the peak co-management body, the Maccasar Dunes Co-Management Association Management Committee (MDCA MC). This analysis finds the arrangements are perceived as both highly valuable and highly contested amongst MDCA MC stakeholders, with a wide array of bridges and barriers identified. In a complementary analysis the range of place meanings attached to Macassar Dunes within the MDCA MC are examined using the ‘sense of place’ concept. The contention of this thesis is that exploring issues of place through recognising places and their meanings as relational, political and contested can contribute to a co-management theory and practice which is more sensitive to the places through which it is enacted, and provide possibilities for understanding conflict in co-management arrangements.
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| 4. |
- Graham, Marnie, 1980-
(author)
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Postcolonial Nature Conservation and Collaboration in Urban Protected Areas : Everyday relations at Macassar Dunes/Wolfgat reserves, Cape Town, South Africa
- 2015
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Protected areas and nature conservation are profoundly shaped by Western ideas, and are embedded within powerful discourses and colonising practices. This thesis examines how colonialism and apartheid shape contemporary practices of nature conservation in Cape Town in South Africa - its institutions, geographies and peoples. Through three empirical studies of collaborative arrangements at the Macassar Dunes/Wolfgat nature reserves, the thesis develops a postcolonial nature conservation perspective to explore how colonial legacies live on, are contested and are re-shaped through everyday practices. Departing from Margaret Kovach’s Indigenous methodology, interviews and participatory observations are used to focus on collaborations as they occur in the everyday relations between people and nature, on-reserve and in the adjoining township areas. This shows how collaborative arrangements bring together participants across historical and social divides, including municipal nature conservators and residents from apartheid-era racially-segregated townships. Results illustrate how colonising legacies persist at wider and institutional levels through exclusionary conservation practices, a focus on biodiversity preservation, and through sustained racialised relations. Nonetheless, this thesis argues that some of the most transformative collaborative practices occur within ad hoc, informal, and unmanaged interactions, involving deeply interpersonal and ethically challenging situations. Through these interactions, conservators and community participants are re-defining what it means to be ‘postcolonial nature conservators’ in Cape Town. These everyday practices engage difficult and fraught steps that allow us to consider what it means to belong, to reconcile and to be responsible to nature and to each other in a postcolonial city. With its focus on collaboration as everyday relations, the thesis brings to the literature one of the first in-depth studies of urban nature conservation from the rapidly growing cities of the global South. It contributes critical analyses to emerging debates around nature conservation, urban nature, and colonial legacies and opens crucial questions around expertise, knowledge, informality and poverty.
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| 5. |
- McLean, Jessica, et al.
(author)
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Decolonising strategies and neoliberal dilemmas in a tertiary institution : Nurturing care-full approaches in a blended learning environment
- 2019
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In: Geoforum. - : Elsevier BV. - 0016-7185 .- 1872-9398. ; 101, s. 122-131
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- New learning and teaching methods such as 'blended learning' are increasingly promoted within higher education institutions. Such methods-especially those which replace slow scholarship and/or people with digital technologies-run the risk of reinforcing neoliberal learning spaces and perpetuating processes of 'deep colonization' (Rose, 1996). We argue that these new learning and teaching methods must be grounded in critical pedagogies to avoid extending neoliberal agendas in the university context. Furthermore, we propose these methods require careful student and teacher reflection, coupled with conscientious attempts at decolonising existing educational institutions and pedagogies (Radcliffe, 2017). In this article we explore the intersections and disconnections between critical pedagogy, attempts at decolonising the classroom, and flexible learning approaches like blended learning. We draw on our collective experiences as both teachers and students who are continuously learning-learning-teachers and learning-students-within the context of a higher level subject entitled 'Rethinking Resource Management' which is taught at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. A blended learning approach is practiced by the learning-teachers of this course, in an effort to situate their responsibilities and shift their pedagogy towards decolonizing approaches. In this dialogue between learning-teachers and learning-students, we argue that while blended learning can provide opportunities to improve learning experiences and support decolonising pedagogies, constraints that arise from a neoliberal university context, such as the reframing of students as clients and the prioritisation of money-saving approaches, can moderate such promise. Further, decolonising education requires more than what can be delivered by blended learning approaches in isolation. They also fundamentally require a careful reconfiguration of responsibilities in a relational and multidirectional manner, of learning-teachers, learning-students and the broader learning-institution context. So while the learning-teachers' efforts at decolonising the classroom and better engaging with learning-students remain partial, they are deeply valued by many learning-students and are important tentative contributions towards nurturing more 'care-full' decolonising learning spaces. The article offers a critical discussion of the issues raised in a dialogue between learning teachers and learning-students of Rethinking Resource Management, and considers what we can contribute to broader debates in decolonising learning, the blended learning trend and structural changes in universities. We offer this instance of care-full teaching and learning as a case study that emphasises dialogue, in multiple modes, to renegotiate power relations, and to advocate caution in moves toward top-down entrenchment of digital teaching modes.
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| 6. |
- Ngurra, Darug, et al.
(author)
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Buran Nalgarra : an Indigenous-led model for walking with good spirit and learning together on Darug Ngurra
- 2021
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In: AlterNative. - : SAGE Publications. - 1177-1801 .- 1174-1740. ; 17:3, s. 357-367
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In the distressing midst of global extinction and environmental crises, changes to the ways that places are managed and cared for are vital and urgent. We offer here an Indigenous-led model of cross-cultural collaboration based on lessons shared by Darug custodians in Sydney, Australia, embedded in the making of buran nalgarra (stringybark rope). The Buran Nalgarra model of collaboration is not a simple cut-and-paste model nor panacea for effective collaboration. Rather, embedded deeply in Darug Ngurra (Darug Country), we share what we have learnt and value through our Caring-as-Darug-Ngurra project in the hope that others will find our guiding principles and processes useful, and perhaps adapt our learning to their own places. We strive for strength and learning through togetherness.
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| 7. |
- Ngurra, Darug, et al.
(author)
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Legal Pluralism on Dyarubbin : Country-as-Lore/Law in Western Sydney, Australia
- 2023
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In: GeoHumanities. - 2373-566X .- 2373-5678. ; 9:2, s. 355-379
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In Australia, urbanisation is synonymous with ecological and cultural fragmentation. In places that became cities through deeply colonising processes, this destruction is imbricated with the relegation of Indigenous Lore/Law below English-derived law. In this article we argue for appropriate recognition and respectful intercultural engagements with Country-as-Lore/Law as a counter to the conception of land as a passive subject of anthropocentric law. Weaving together autoethnography, historical research and more-than-human geographies we identify the colonial practices that perpetuate ecological and cultural fragmentation in Sydney, Australia, while providing a novel, situated engagement with the humans, animals, plants, lands and waters that co-become to co-create particular and overlapping more-than-human legal landscapes. We show how Indigenous-non-Indigenous collaboration grounded in Darug Country-as-Lore/Law refracts and disperses the colonial logics of the state on urban Country that is ostensibly held, yet certainly neglected, by the Crown.
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| 8. |
- Ngurra, Darug, et al.
(author)
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Yanama budyari gumada : reframing the urban to care as Darug Country in western Sydney
- 2019
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In: Australian Geographer. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0004-9182 .- 1465-3311. ; 50:3, s. 279-293
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In non-urban places of Australia, caring-as-Country frames natural resource management (NRM) as a practice of reciprocal, more-than-human care-giving (S. Suchet-Pearson, S. Wright, K. Lloyd, and L. Burarrwanga. 2013. 'Caring as Country: towards and ontology of co-becoming in natural resource management.' Asia Pacific Viewpoint 54 (2): 185-197). Caring-as-Country is an idea that encapsulates the entangled, reciprocal relationships that people have with, and as part of, agentic more-than-human worlds. In more urbanised places, however, practices of caring-as-Country are often unrecognised, undervalued and undocumented. In this paper we make explicit practices of caring, healing and rejuvenation at Yellomundee Regional Park, Darug Country in western Sydney. Our discussion of care, entanglement and reciprocity at Yellomundee focuses on two specific activities that embody caring-as-Country: the return of cultural burns and sustained presence on Country in the form of Darug-led culture camps. The Darug principle of yanama budyari gumada, to 'walk with good spirit', embodies and invites new ways of thinking and practising intercultural caring-as-Country in heavily colonised, urban places like Yellomundee. As we document the practices arising from this invitation, we consider its far-reaching implications for NRM and planning, and we expand on the importance of geographies of care for unceded urban places.
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