Abstract
Indigenous "country" or "land" is a region of reciprocities constituted through the relationships and obligations that preserve the continuity of life. It is a "region of care." In picking up and developing this phrase, this article opens a discussion about how regional political ecology can build from the materialist perspectives of contemporary scholarship and Indigenous politics. If, as some materialist scholars have argued, the political field in the Anthropocene is now more than ever an ecology of problems, how might regional political ecology use these perspectives to address the challenges of coexistence among humans, nonhumans, and other things? The article explores how praxis oriented around "regions of care" helps those involved in political-ecological work confront these challenges in an experimental politics that respects and works with nonhuman, material agencies through place-based relationships and networks. In this way, regional political ecology addresses the new environmental politics of the Anthropocene in a way that is attuned to the concerns of the many communities engaged in the challenges of coexistence.Key words: Anthropocene, Indigenous, materiality, political ecology, region
Highlights
Indigenous "country" or "land" is a region of reciprocities constituted through the relationships and obligations that preserve the continuity of life
On the first day of my World Regional Geography class, shortly after reviewing the syllabus, I summon the trinity of formal, functional, and vernacular regions and parrot the well-worn line that regions are constructs we use to understand the world in spatial terms
I end my minilecture with a flourish, proclaiming that despite its troubled past, the concept of region helps us see all the global connections and diversity among people and places that make geography such a fun discipline and, by the way, a great major for all you undecided freshmen out there
Summary
Indigenous "country" or "land" is a region of reciprocities constituted through the relationships and obligations that preserve the continuity of life. Instead of the formal open space of assembly—spaces that presuppose and assert a uniform political subjectivity of (national, global, but always human) citizenship (Tully 1995)—Aboriginal meetings, Carter suggests, occur in the ambient places of encounter, like the poverty bush, where ongoing reciprocities support the interdependencies that sustain the well-being of country over the long term.
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