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This edited collection is an essential resource for understanding contemporary Indigenous-settler relations across three major settler colonial contexts, bringing together First Nations and settler scholars, practitioners, artists and community organisations from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the USA. The book provides students and researchers with critical frameworks for analysing how colonial power relations shape contemporary injustices while exploring Indigenous-led pathways toward transformation.
Organised into three sections Words of the Land, Unmaking Extraction, and Restoring Country, Restoring Justice the collection demonstrates how relationships between people, place, and the more-than-human world are articulated through Indigenous water governance, cultural restoration projects, decolonial museum practices, traditional ecological knowledge, and community-controlled care systems. Chapters engage theoretical rigor with practical case studies, offering concrete examples of how Indigenous knowledge systems provide solutions to environmental and social challenges.
Featuring majority Indigenous authorship and innovative cross-cultural collaborations, this collection models meaningful scholarly engagement while centring Indigenous perspectives. Essential for scholarships in Indigenous studies, environmental justice, colonialism, and social justice, this volume contains critical insights in envisioning more just futures grounded in relationality and care.
List of contents
Introduction: Amplifying Connection, Care, and Decoloniality.- Part 1: Words of the Land: Renaming, Resistance, and Renewal.- Part 1: Words of the Land: Renaming, Resistance, and Renewal.- How does it all come back now? Re-organising naturalized histories.- Waka Memory: Ancestral Connections.- Gender Responsibility Country: How Aboriginal people define their role in caring for the universe.- Part 2: Unmaking Extraction: Toward Restoration and Repair.- The Root of The Matter: Forests and Colonial Histories in Aotearoa New Zealand.- Cultural Waters: Integrating Indigenous Knowledge and Governance for Justice and Sustainability in Central Queensland.- The River is an Island: (Re)imagining a More-than-human Future for the Waimata Catchment.- Whanau Care: A Model for Equitable Support for Kaitiaki Whanau.- Part 3: Restoring Country, Restoring Justice: Pathways to Transformation.- First Nations Water Holder: The Future for Cultural Water in the Murray Darling Basin.- Djaara Women Returning Food Plants and Healing Country: A Story of Walking Together and Generating Embodied Knowledge.- Securing Water Access: Economic Futures for Victoria s Traditional Owners.- First Peoples, Living Waters. A Cultural Dialogue.- Reflections.
About the author
Melissa Kennedy is a Tati Tati First Nations person belonging to Murray River Country in Australia. She is a PhD candidate at Monash University, and a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Social Equity, a global community collaborating across borders and disciplines to address the root causes of inequity. Melissa sits on the advisory board for the federal Aboriginal Water Entitlements Program, and is the Director and cofounder of Tati Tati Kaiejin, an Indigenous owned and operated conservation organisation. In 2022, Melissa was a co-author of the Victorian Government’s policy Water is Life: Traditional Owner Access to Water Roadmap.
Erin O’Donnell, PhD, is a settler water law and policy expert, recognized internationally for her research into the legal rights for rivers and Indigenous rights to water. Since 2018, Erin has been a member of the Birrarung Council, the voice of the Yarra River in Melbourne. In 2022, Erin was a co-author of the Victorian Government’s policy Water is Life: Traditional Owner Access to Water Roadmap.In 2023, Erin commenced an ARC-funded research fellowship to explore the opportunity of treaty to address aqua nullius, increase Traditional Owner power and resources in water, and create more sustainable and legitimate settler state water laws.
Summary
This edited collection is an essential resource for understanding contemporary Indigenous-settler relations across three major settler colonial contexts, bringing together First Nations and settler scholars, practitioners, artists and community organisations from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the USA. The book provides students and researchers with critical frameworks for analysing how colonial power relations shape contemporary injustices while exploring Indigenous-led pathways toward transformation.
Organised into three sections – Words of the Land, Unmaking Extraction, and Restoring Country, Restoring Justice – the collection demonstrates how relationships between people, place, and the more-than-human world are articulated through Indigenous water governance, cultural restoration projects, decolonial museum practices, traditional ecological knowledge, and community-controlled care systems. Chapters engage theoretical rigor with practical case studies, offering concrete examples of how Indigenous knowledge systems provide solutions to environmental and social challenges.
Featuring majority Indigenous authorship and innovative cross-cultural collaborations, this collection models meaningful scholarly engagement while centring Indigenous perspectives. Essential for scholarships in Indigenous studies, environmental justice, colonialism, and social justice, this volume contains critical insights in envisioning more just futures grounded in relationality and care.
