Regeneration time: ancient wisdom for planetary wellbeing

Anne Poelina,Sandra Wooltorton,Catrina Luz Aniere,Pierre Horwitz,Peta J White,Mindy Blaise,Stephen Muecke

doi:10.1017/aee.2021.34

Abstract

AbstractIn these regenerative times prompted by the Anthropocene, Aboriginal voices are situated to draw on ancient wisdom for local learning and to share information across the globe as ecological imperative for planetary wellbeing. In this paper, postqualitative research foregrounds the sentient nature of life as ancestral power and brings the vitality of co-becoming as our places into active engagement. It enables coloniality to surface and reveals how it sits in our places and lives, in plain sight but unnoticed because of its so-called common sense. Postqualitative research relates with ancient knowledges in foregrounding Country’s animacy and presence, revealing the essence of time as non-linear, cyclical and perpetual. In this way, we are places, weather and climate, not separate. Postqualitative research also relates with ancient knowledge in illustrating Country as agentic and time as multiple, free of constraint and directly involved in our everyday. Country is active witness in the lives of Aboriginal peoples, here always. This is a strong basis for decolonisation. We all have a responsibility to listen, to help create a new direction for the future in the present time.

Highlights

Opening We acknowledge the Elders and Traditional Owners of three Western Australian language regions: the southwest comprising Noongar Boodjar, east to Ngadju Country of the Great Western Woodlands, and the Nyikina nation of the Martuwarra Fitzroy River in the Kimberley
We work within a relational, postqualitative, decolonial paradigm for environmental education – and life – with ancient wisdom at its heart
Storying places with Elders is a way into both of these priorities. When we synthesise these priorities, we find that all education is environmental education, and that Aboriginal wisdom shows us we are part of; and integral to our environments5

Summary

Introduction

Opening We acknowledge the Elders and Traditional Owners of three Western Australian language regions: the southwest comprising Noongar Boodjar, east to Ngadju Country of the Great Western Woodlands, and the Nyikina nation of the Martuwarra Fitzroy River in the Kimberley. We acknowledge Betty Logan, Ngadju elder of wisdom and vision who co-leads a Ngadju family regenerative learning program that is involved in this research. In this conceptual paper, we work within a relational, postqualitative, decolonial paradigm for environmental education – and life – with ancient wisdom at its heart. Using field philosophy (Buchanan, Bastian & Chrulew, 2018; van Dooren, 2018) we take a katitjin bidi or learning journey, to interweave poetry and reflective narratives with wisdom of three Aboriginal languages: Noongar (southwest), Nyikina (one of the eight Martuwarra nations) and Ngadju (Great Western Woodlands). Katitjin bidi is Noongar, meaning knowledge path, and is a metaphor for connecting people, place and time. By ‘river’, we mean to include riverine multispecies communities, surface and subsurface living water flows as part of cycles, agential actions and socio-cultural interpretations (RiverOfLife, Taylor & Poelina, 2021)

Discussion

Conclusion