Nulungu Books

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  Making the Intangible Count? Metrification of the Value of Culture

  Kathryn Thorburn, Jeanette Ward, and Stephen Kinnane

  This chapter confronts increasing bureaucratisation of culture through well-intended but potentially recolonising insistence by government departments for quantifiable proof of cultural impact on First Nations wellbeing. We acknowledge the contemporary paradox in which those for whom culture ‘counts’ are rarely those who drive its metrification, preferring to invest limited resources in cultural practice, preservation, rejuvenation, and transmission. Indigenous responses to failed policies of normalisation and reductively narrow evaluation frameworks seek both co-design of policies and programs, and the incorporation of First Nations complexity in evaluation. We examine the tension between western bureaucratic preoccupation to measure and evaluate the impact of culture, and Indigenous responses within this intercultural space via analysis of Indigenous led studies at national and regional levels developing cultural outcomes impact frameworks, grounded in Indigenous cultural values. This chapter explores the dangers of failing to identify the distinction between valuing cultural difference and developing Indigenous cultural indices. We argue these dangers are magnified in the absence of proper and respectful relationships between First Nations Australians, self-determining First Nations institutions and organisations, and the settler state. The case for meticulous adherence overseen by the most senior staff of non-Indigenous entities to all principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty is presented.

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  Waking up the Snake: Ancient wisdom for regeneration

  Anne Poelina, Bill Webb, Sandra Wooltorton, and Naomi Godden

  Bringing together interdisciplinary climate change scholarship and grassroots activism, this book considers the possibilities of planetary justice across human difference, generations, species and the concept of life and non-life. Writing amidst bushfires, cyclones, global climate strikes and a global pandemic, contributors from the Earth Unbound Collective share stories from India, Australia, Canada and Scotland. Chapters draw on Indigenous, Black, Southern, ecosocialist and ecofeminist perspectives to call for more radical and interconnected ideas of justice and solidarity.

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  Voices from the Front Line: Community leaders, government managers and NGO field staff talk about what's wrong in Aboriginal development and what they are doing to fix it

  Patrick Sullivan, Kathryn Thorburn, Kate Golson, Janet Hunt, and Julie Lahn