About Clint Hansen
Clint Hansen is a Yiman man, currently a PhD candidate and Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow (Chemical and Environmental Engineering) at RMIT. His research is looking at the relationship between Iman peoples and the extractive Industries who operate on stolen land heavily populated by Coal Seam Gas Wells and associated infrastructure. Previous Honours research includes analysing appropriate solutions of clean water for remote communities in Western Australia whose water supply is rich in contaminants of Nitrate and Uranium.
Publications
On Informit
Currell, M., Hansen, C., Nicholson, R., Esmond, M., & Dooley, K. (2022). Designing a monitoring program and conceptual models to protect ecological and cultural values of waterways vulnerable to coal seam gas impacts. Hydrology & Water Resources Symposium 2022 (HWRS 2022): The Past, the Present, the Future. Engineers Australia. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.916866948672904
Video Transcript
0.17 Can you please introduce yourself and tell us about your education and career background?
So my name’s Clint Hansen. I’m an Iman man, Iman Countryman, so if you don’t know where Iman country is, that’s Central Queensland. I was born and raised on Darumbal Country in Rockhampton. The reason I was born on Darumbal Country in Rockhampton is due to forced removal of Iman people off of our Country after some massacres that happened. We were rounded up at Taroom Aboriginal Reserve in Taroom on Country with a bunch of other mobs right up from Batdjala country in the East where Kgari Island is, Cape York in the North, and South as well as far as Kamilaroi Country. So from there most of my family went to Woorabinda, from Woorabinda that you got Rocky inland, uh east of that at the coast – that’s where I grew up and spent most of my life. Um, the Wardingarri river, the Dawson River is on Iman country, so I have connections to that. It confluences with the MacKenzie River and it’s the Tanuba river known as the Dawson River to the whitefellas, which is Durambal Country where I grew up and that heads out into Woppaburra Sea Country, so all of that Country is connected by those waterways there and I’m connected to those different waterways, both fresh water and sea water, salt water. And have yeah, ties to that land. Uh after that a bit more about myself: I left school early at 15 to do an apprenticeship as a fitter machinist. I didn’t really like school too much, as much as some of the teachers, and English teachers in particular, wanted me to continue on to year 12. Um moving to Meanjin Brisbane after I finished my trade, I think it was 22. I did really enjoyed my trade – I like that, liked the hands-on work. Um move to Meanjin for about a year to two years, realized through my trade that I was doing a lot of engineer work on a minimum wage as a trade. Like Engineers would come to me and get me to design stuff for them like on lays and mills… I started looking around and thought I need to go back to university and thought… well, not back to university – go back to school and education per se and I thought how am I going to do this? You know I left school at 15, I don’t have an ATAR or an OP or anything like that. And I looked up all the different universities, some in Meanjin Brisbane, some down here and RMIT had vocational education bridging into higher ed. So I did a two-year vocational education Advanced Diploma Mechanical Engineering and if you get a certain grade point average out of four, three out of four and above, you can take a year and a half off the same field and topic in the Bachelor. So I did that um and then this leads me into talking a little bit about changing topics from mechanical engineering into my undergrad, which was sustainable systems engineering. So the reason changing, I went back… I’m not sure if you know much about Native Title or Prescribed Body Corporates, but the Iman Native Title – we won Native Title in 2016 in Federal Court on Country, which was a beautiful celebration and recognition of our connection to Country and that as our land and Country. And part of the meetings growing up going to the Native Title but then, even recently as recent as four or five years ago when I was studying down here doing mechanical engineering, I was going to these meetings back home in Rockhampton – the PBCs and proponents and representatives from different gas companies and conglomerates would sort of give presentations to our community about what was happening on our Country – some of that was petroleum industry, so gas wells, rather than just … like Central Queensland if you don’t know is heavily densely populated by the extractive industry, both coal and petroleum, but gas you’d say. So I was attending this meeting and this guy’s talking about Coal Seam Gas wells and gas wells in particular and my mother raised the question, I said, what what happens to them once they’re decommissioned, once you’ve depleted all the gas from the Coal Seam Gas wells underground? And their response was very rude, ignorant and dismissive of a sovereign matriarchal Elder of Iman people in that particular time at that meeting when they were supposed to be engaging appropriately with us about what was happening on our Country. And that really upset me and it made me realize that I particularly wanted to change my discipline and not focus on mechanical engineering – I’d done that for close to 12 years after leaving school at 15 and doing my trade and I wanted to focus on more the sustainability lens and what it meant for Country and you know conservation and Land Management type sort of things. And I’d picked, I’d studied at RMIT in my undergrad and there’s a place, an Indigenous education unit called in Ngara Wilam Centre which is a safe space and inclusive space for Indigenous students at RMIT, so I met lots of great friends there – it was a community to go and study, there was computers and such there, still is now. It’s a great place, I still have connections to that place. And I picked up a program booklet during mid-semester break and was scrolling through it like oh what what other degrees or you know study fields aligned to my moral and ethical compass that I can give back to my community while I’m away from Community getting a higher degree. And I come across sustainable systems engineering I was very like, wow, what is this. I haven’t heard of this as an engineering field before, you know. Um, from this I started studying sustainable systems engineering, got some credits from mechanical engineering, changed into that field. I greatly enjoyed it – that was life cycle assessment, materials analysis, sustainable systems design, remote area power supply – all these type sorts of things, besides you know the coding classes and other things you have to do as well. So it’s kind of like a melting pot of different disciplines focused on that sustainability lens. Um you know and different archetypical behaviors that exist within society and the world that you know can help inform systems change which is what you know I’m currently about through my research is that systematic change.
6.15 Can you talk about your Honours project?
So from that I did an Honours degree that that is that my capstone year project I met a Professor Matthew Carrell who’s now my PhD supervisor. I met him through I think it was the second year I mentored the Victoria… as part of the Victorian Indigenous engineering winter school which is a partnership between Melbourne Uni, RMIT, Monash and Swinburne where Indigenous students from around the country aged 15 to 17 come down here to Narrm Melbourne to check out the universities and different engineering practices and I met my current supervisor at this. He was I think the sort of reconciliation advisor within the School of Engineering at RMIT and he was involved with this particular views Camp. Um and we got we got along. I’d done I think an MC talk as part of David Unaipon’s um you know engineering for RMIT it started to build a pretty healthy relationship up with this supervisor and blackfella way – like sussed him out like – is he trustworthy and things like this outside of even the academy, and is he good for Country and stuff like this… Yes great good relationship, good working relationship and even good personal relationship now. And um he’s a hydrogeologist so that means underground water science right very passionate about that, does a lot of stuff around the country with Wangan and Jagalingou mob up there with the Doongmabulla Springs complex with Adani and such and such like that and down here in Victoria and around the way. And he suggested to me and reached out before my Honours year if I wanted to do a project focusing on clean drinking water for a remote community in the goldfields region in Western Australia, so it was a very remote community eight hours drive north east of Calgary I think it’s got a small plane strip that hardly can get the plane there anyway and I was working with my supervisor on my Honours project and a doctor, a pediatrician I believe it’s called who’d synthesized the link between nitrate and uranium in bore water that was drinking water for community and infant mortality rates and blue baby syndrome and chronic kidney disease in this community and my supervisor approached me say hey do you want to be involved with this pilot program working with University Queensland, RMIT, the doctor, the senior Lawman of the community and this external company who does clean water projects so we designed a pilot project with three different technologies to clean the groundwater – reverse osmosis ion exchange and solar distillation and piloted that project so as was in the shipping container, like tested it here in Melbourne… Um and that was not only about technology right – for the community it’s not just people that aren’t from that community coming in and being like here’s a quick fix to this really intense problem about your, you know, poor quality drinking water in Western Australia. And I in this project there was two other students with me and my Honours – one looked at tech, and the other looked at appropriate tech and ways to clean the water, and I was really interested in the community governance and policy and like the social aspect of that. Even though I’ve done my engineering degree and… I was like, I looked at the Ombudsman report and how terrible that was in relation to all the communities and remote Indigenous communities in WA who’d suffered from poor clean drinking poor drinking water that wasn’t to of the Australian drinking water guidelines standard as a basic human right. And then I realized through that study and the literature review of of that sort of topic area that a lot of.. around the same time this ombudsman report come out was the same time I think the Abbott government was wanting to close down a lot of remote communities because they wouldn’t they didn’t want to deal with the issue of supplying clean water right and I also found out some of the extractive industry in that area from the gold mining were supposed to be servicing the wells and the way to clean the water and there was like overdosing of chlorine in the system, things like this that wasn’t appropriate. So through that Honours year I got heavily involved in that sort of research, more that social science-based research and humanitarian type sort of research. I wouldn’t even call it humanitarian, just like um I guess um trying to make aware of the nuances and of that situation and the injustices of of that from an engineering and Indigenous standpoint.
12.27 So, from not finishing high school, you are now in your 3rd year of a PhD! What is your PhD project about?
Yeah, so my PhD project and position at RMIT – I’m a Vice Chancellor’s Indigenous Research Fellow, a PhD candidate which is a four-year timeline of limited teaching duties, some professional activities and research to obtain a PhD. So my PhD project is about the coal seam gas industry and more particularly the extractive industry as a whole operating on Sovereign Indigenous land in Central Queensland, both my Country, Iman Country in Central Queensland and the surrounding areas focusing on both the surface water and the groundwater, the cultural values of each of those and how the extractive industry may impact on the you know livelihoods of Indigenous peoples of those area and both the totemic species that identify Country and kin of that area and the unique biodiversity and ecosystems – the groundwater dependent ecosystems of that area and just combining both um well I wouldn’t say combining, I don’t really like that, it’s more you know Western science and an engineering background meeting an Indigenous standpoint both with, you know, qualitative research and quantitative research or qualitative being – doing fieldwork on Country, collecting water samples of surface water, checking different eco-tox values those for inorganics Organics heavy metals and such and things like this. The other the other thing is interviewing Elders of my mob, so one-on-one interviews like we’re doing now that I’ve you know curated, through a high-risk ethics application that I’d done to engage with you know them as elders and and you know have that really intimate one-on-one time with you know older generations that aren’t often um treated and respected the way they should be and haven’t been in past from Western institution and academic institutions. Often Western institutions have been very extractive in their nature – so coming from more that Indigenous standpoint and Indigenous ways of being doing and knowing and my reciprocal relationship with my own community in an ethical way and having those really rich yarns that can also tell the you know through a thematic analysis of those elders and their experience pertaining to water on Country both above and below ground – different sites different meanings different reasons as to why things are and the way things have been done and maybe could be done better you know and where you know we’ve found high levels of boron from field work last year from different areas there’s other researchers now reaching out to me who have like oh that was actually where you what some of your research had come out that we’ve done recently is part of the hydrology water research symposium highlighting some of these issues. There’s now other academics in this sort of space that reach out and be like, oh there was a spill at one of the wells a few years ago because the petroleum industry they didn’t use the correct piping for their wellhead it was like copper instead of 216 stainless and things like this and that’s only you know and it’s in proximity to areas we’d found that were high levels of toxins and such so combining like I say both that Western science well not combining meeting at halfway you know and how they can complement each other and that two-way learning, I guess you’d say as well and now… yeah, I’ll finish at that.
14.58 Can you explain what is meant by water colonialism?
Yeah of course, so water colonialism briefly – I’ll try briefly because there’s a lot of history there you may have heard the term terra nullius you know the Van Diemen’s Land ‘there’s no one here’, you know, no one has connection to this place, and the many different nations within this place. So water colonialism is like you can think of ‘Aqua nullius’ so and on a systematic level you know Virginia Marshall is a Wiradjuri author and academic did a book a few years ago, on the seminal work Aqua nullius securing Aboriginal water rights from more of that like legal perspective and talks heavily on aqua nullius and water colonialism and what that means for our mob. And just quick stats are like you know we make up – all land within this colony of Australia is Indigenous land right, there’s some connection from an Indigenous group to that place. Not only that, there’s water. So people talk about ‘land back’ and and you know reparations… but without ‘water back’ and removing that water colonialism you can’t have land back so water colonialism is like two percent of the water licenses in Australia less than – owned by Indigenous people probably less, the Murray-Darling Basin Indigenous nations are still waiting for millions upon millions of dollars from the federal you know government environment minister to administer those water licenses and funds back to those communities, things like this. Water colonialism is where, is put in place on Iman country that shouldn’t have been there that have now flooded areas that shouldn’t been flooded. Water colonialism is my ancestors, some of my ancestors’ remains now being you know shown from erosion from some of these practices on country where you know that Taroom Aboriginal Reserve I spoke of earlier, there’s now ancestral remains that have actually been you know coming up from erosion of the waterways and the surface waters, so they are types of water colonialism that many people may not understand or you know the industry extracting water and those you know the modern day water licenses and who gets to actually trade on that water market and Are any Indigenous people on that water market, are there users outside of the irrigators and you know the extractive industry – is there benefits for Indigenous people both economically and socially and culturally for community if they were to have access to those water… I can guarantee there is through both you know some of my research in the early stages in these two years and other Indigenous academics in this space that have been here for a long time before me as well.
17.37 Can you talk a bit about culturally supported methods of water management?
Yeah so a different model to manage water would be you know we speak of Indigenous rangers you know um in Indigenous protected areas up in the Daintree and uh in Queensland there could be similar ideas like Indigenous independent rangers. Recently I heard from uh uh I think I believe he was an Ogier Boi[?] man from around the Toronto area in Turtle Island, First Nations over there, at a conference I attended and he speaks of the importance of gathering baseline independent Indigenous water data, things like this. Monitoring our own waterways and what that means for us based on our principles, our cultural principles not what is forced upon us through you know some sort of standard that isn’t actually.. what I’ve been found is not actually followed these water standards and you know the eco-tox levels are above what they should be for different users in different environments within both the surface water and tributaries of those areas that are populated by coal seam gas wells so you know some of those culturally supportive methods are having you know a cultural advisor with you when you are out on Country if you’re a scientist going to collect water or if you’re an ecologist or you know you’re going to sample different species of that area is there anyone who’s a Traditional Owner that can go and walk that Country with you to ensure you’re doing things in a culturally appropriate way and um I can guarantee from you know experience of students I’ve supervised that have been on my Country with a cultural advisor to collect water they’ve greatly benefited from that, to the point now one of them’s actually doing a PhD in that area focusing on water, um and are really passionate about it and that is from you know learning from the community of that area that’s connected to that area of Indigenous peoples of that area. So that’s more about those culturally supported scientific methods and combining those you know Elders’ voices um with some of this you know numbers and data.
19.41 How do you engage with and manage conflicting agendas between the Indigenous communities and the extractive resources industry?
Yeah I can go into detail a little bit about that so in relation to you know where the extractive industry reps sit and wanting to engage with this research uh and you know the the different I guess stakeholders those that involve you have private land holders on freeheld land that isn’t Native Title land, on Native Title determined Country. So there’s nuances with that you have you know cotton farmers on Country, you have cattle farmers, the irrigators and such that our water users as well and then you have the extractive industry. The jobs that they make and create and economic gains from that in that area and then you also have traditional owners and such and as a very you know politicizing topic and as an academic you don’t want to get too involved in that of course from an ethical and academic standpoint and when we when when you ask about whether the extractive industry want to engage in this research um I guess there was a particular one representative from one of the companies who had a Native Title meeting reached out to me after realizing some of the work I’d been doing um and wanted to engage further and I said here’s my email, here’s my contact and I’ve yet to hear from them. So I guess face value that there is, and some of the extractive industry they’re very big on marketing so on at our NAIDOC Day on Country last year when fieldwork was undertaken there’s big marquees of all the extractive industry businesses and hats they give out and things like this and they’re really promoting you know ‘we engage with the community’ and ‘we’re for the community’ um without you know going into the detail about… well you can be like that but what about that poisoned creek or what about the fact you want to release you know 15 megalitres of cobra produce water into the river systems that are going to affect these totemic species that are identified different clan groups within emanation they don’t really want to talk about that as just that sort of face value thing and from my standpoint I’m more interested in hearing from community I think for too long we haven’t heard from community and their standpoint and viewpoint and often I guess the industry in itself promote and have their promotions heavily. I’m sure when more publications come out they might you know reach out to me more and want to you know want to be involved um potentially I know for some community members they may work with the industry and there’s good relationships there and the reason they may work with the industry is um you know if you look on one of the extractive industries websites there’s a bit of an interview there and it’s about how the imminent person and how knowledge holder and the cultural heritage worker wants to work there to ensure when they’re doing their operations they’re not going to bulldoze a burial tree or a scar tree or a culturally significant site. And my sort of research goes further to that and looks at well if we have the Cultural Heritage Act in Queensland and the Indigenous land use agreements, cultural heritage management plans what how are the how is the policy and governance of that done and what is the legislation needs to being put in place to make those stronger and incorporate you know water sovereignty for our people in a more stronger sense as well.
23.07 How are you structuring your project in terms of methodology?
So there’s a lot of nuances especially when you’re working with your own community but there’s also benefits of me working with my own community. I spoke a little earlier about my Honours degree, I’m working with a different Indigenous community in remote Western Australia my PhD actually started with that clean drinking water groundwater for them, for the first three months and after reflexivity thinking about my positionality within that research and more learning from the social sciences and humanities and you know being drawn back to my own Country and realizing I’m down here for another four years while I study and there’s all this stuff going on home um and we’re just trying to keep up you know the gas supply security projects is going to be 22,000 wells in that area and I’d realized through that method of reflexivity and my positionality within it I wanted to focus back on this research so that is how working with my own community come about and the need for that. There was a huge need for that and wanting to give back after being away for so long and studying and get a higher degree being in a privilege privileged position to do that, as much as I’ve worked really hard to be in the position I am and that then also from you know going to meetings from a very young age with my mob about you know our land rights, there’s always you know family community relationships and such so it’s easier when you know you have those relationships already built. I’m not say um I guess an outsider you know I’m an insider within this research but I’m also an outsider as someone who’s in a university institution. That’s my position and regarding recruiting for interviews that is more so when I first started doing some of the research I let out, reached out straight away to the elders’ working group and the PBC board members who you know engage the most with the petroleum industry and because they engage the most with the petroleum industry in high level executive meetings they’re some of the best people to talk to about you know what is that experience like, is there free prior and informed consent with that relationship and agreement making through Indigenous land use agreements and cultural heritage management plans? So that’s part of that recruitment process and it was um I think something as simply as like a phone call or I’d and initially I’d done a presentation on some of my early findings and just disseminated some of my research in a plain language and I just said, hey you mob, do you know what’s happening on Country with this particular um water release and that was both co-produced water and RO releases being planned by a company at the Fairview in June site to release these toxins into the waterway? They’re like oh no, we don’t know much of that, we were told reverse osmosis water is very clean we didn’t know about the co-produced water on top of that. So I just shared from a plain language sense and point of view what was happening to those elders and one of the elders raised their hand in that presentation said hey hey nephew, can you send us a survey, like I want to be involved, I want to hear more I want to talk about this so that led to then those interviews it led to an ethics application and that involves four different key areas and methods which is interviews with the elders of the board who deal most with the extractive industry through those executive meetings; shorter surveys with broader community members; follow-up yarning circles and dissemination of that through those yarning circles so there’s some of those methods and that’s from that Indigenous standpoint and that you know reciprocal participatory approach with my own community. Yeah that was a really big thing within the method is I didn’t want to just do the elders or those that were on the PBC board. I really wanted to and they represent each family and clan group within emanation as well so there’s you know you’re giving everyone a part of that community an opportunity because some as well they may not be on the board but they’re still involved with community of course that go to the meetings and then that’s why I have the follow-up surveys with broader community and have greater numbers and and data through a shorter survey rather than an in-depth you know one hour interview where I have to transcribe and the thematic analysis of that yeah.
27.40 How do you see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing being useful towards land use and sustainability of natural systems in the context of today?
Indigenous standpoint and ways of knowing being useful for natural resource management I guess is a huge benefit to the broader community not only indigenous community in the sense that it recognizes past wrongdoings and it comes up with new ways and better ways and more appropriate and respectful ways to do and engage with community, better science that incorporates you know Indigenous Sovereign voices of that Country that often hasn’t incorporated those voices. There’s you know an example some of the work Professor Ampelina is doing in the Matawara Fitzroy Rivers um you know there and it goes into more detail um about the benefits of having Indigenous academics speaking on you know natural resources like water and better ways to manage water. Some of the other benefits outside of reconciling or not even reconciling, just acknowledging the past injustices from you know the first people that use the water for their sheep farms that destroyed borer sites and ceremonial dancing grounds because our flat planes on country to now you know the farmers to then the extractive industry that are you know extracting that water resource as well. When we think of indigenous ways of being, doing and knowing we are involving community and an indigenous people in a sovereign way to ensure their wishes are done appropriately and without that I think a lot of natural resource management management is lacking it’s from a western standpoint I think. When you think of the 65 000 plus years of natural resource management of Indigenous people – the Gundidjmara eel traps, the Brewarrina fish traps up you know in New South Wales, you think you know when I speak a bit about water colonialism you’ve got the Yarra River and the waterfall that was used to be there between the salt and fresh and that being blown up and you know the harm that’s caused between different neighbouring tribes, and and such, water plays an integral role as a natural resource to Indigenous communities. Often it can be a boundary, often it can be a meeting place often it can be places of great, great cultural significance for different specific ceremonies. um it can be a place of mourning and healing as well and it can be you know places where you’re not supposed to go at all and I think some of those sort of values and principles aren’t incorporated within the way that things have been done you know look at the position we’re in now around the world regarding climate change um and things like that and I could go into more detail about you know the fires, the stuff like that – the floods, what you know how – how has Western natural resource management led and contributed to that that, is another way of thinking about things.
30.50 What kinds of outcomes and impacts are you hoping to achieve with the research?
Yeah of course, so that some of the outcomes and objectives are to disseminate simply as a starting point some of the voices and concerns from traditional owners that have never been published before right. It’s always been you know from the other, rather than from an Indigenous standpoint of ways of doing and knowing, so that’s really important an objective I want to do. I want to tell our story from our our way right, so that’s a really great objective I’m looking forward to in itself as a baseline. Another objective is something even recently through the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act I was working with an ecologist, lawyer and some other academics and we submitted a public submission to the EPBC, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Cons Act and the federal government as part of a water release on country where they’re going to release co-produced water and that was the first time in that area of public submission incorporated cultural values of water as well as Western science reasons as to why that maybe should not go ahead and some of our concerns. And from that publication and submission to the EPBC Act, as part of the water trigger, we gave our advice to the federal environment Minister we also sent her a co-signed letter from community from Woorabinda, up on you know Wuli Wuli Country, Gangalu Country, Iman country, Darumbal country, others got involved inside that and raised our concerns as well as that public submission from that some of the early you know objectives from this research about protecting country and kin and totemic species and groundwater and surface water we had a win where the actual Federal environment was to knock back that and before she would even knocked back that sorry um the the company actually said oh, no we’re not going to release co-produced water anymore and I’m sure that it’s from the feedback that was given from us to the federal environment so that was then passed on so that’s a huge win that’s already happened and an objective in the early stages in the second year of this research that I didn’t realize could happen in the academic spaces as particularly as a PhD student I thought you know you’re in a very pinpoint silo of information and knowledge that you’re going to give back and make society a better place for that and you know just sitting at a desk, going away, you’re doing your literature reviews and the field work but it’s great to see that already in the early stages of this project there’s been practical outcomes that have then led to the protection of country and kin and cultural values of water. Other like long-term um and when I finish outside of just you know hearing from Iman peoples about that water is you know hopefully these different ways of water management can help you know surrounding communities and other communities that are facing you know heavy heavily densely populated gas fields or you know the proposal of gas you know you have the Betaloo basin and you have the Gomeroi mob with the Narrabri gas and the pipelines associated with that so I’m not trying to homogenize the Indigenous experience within the colony, however I’m saying that there is similarities there from a sovereign standpoint that some of this research may help benefit and inform and we’re already seeing that with other communities reaching out and wanting to be involved and learning from from that you know first publication so they’re some of the benefits as well um and then you know I see it I think long term you know changing policy and legislation. I’m a Lynn Brake Scholarship winner as part of the department I was at the time Department Agriculture, Water and Environment now Department Energy, Environment, Climate change and Water and that scholarship was about protecting the Great Artesian Basin in Queensland. Lynn Brake was an amazing academic who’d done a lot of great work having Bores in in the gap to protect the underground water and from that scholarship I now can you know present some you know earlier reports and disseminate presentations to the Great Artesian Basin senior advisory committee who advise the federal environment Minister and they advise policy makers in every state and territory in the country pertaining to water in particular with The Gap so already there’s things like that as well that are happening that are informant policy and legislation change and different ways of being and doing and knowing and how we see and our relationship and reciprocal relationship with waterways um and I hope that continues into the future with some of this research and when it’s published and that you know more publications on the way and such.
35.36 Thinking beyond your own project, what do you see as some of the most significant developments underway in Australian Indigenous research at the moment?
Yeah so in this moment in history relating to Indigenous research within Australia, so-called Australia, we have different topical areas. So currently we have the referendum coming up as well, there’s some great research coming out of Get Up and Larissa Baldwin Bundjalung woman there and some of the work they’re doing and activist work they’re doing in relation to the the the referendum. There’s also detailing known as brown and Millie Telford at Australian Progress that are doing things with Common Ground which was a conference in Meanjin and gathering of change makers and what do the change makers who are Indigenous around the country, all around the country want to see so that’s some of that you know forefront research at the moment. Indigenous research in the country as well that’s going to have huge impacts in different areas as well there’s also from a health standpoint an Indigenous health humanity standpoint, there’s Professor Chelsea Watego in Meanjin, Queensland who’s doing amazing research on you know racial injustices within the health system as well – that’s going to have huge impacts for Indigenous community in the country. There’s also from you know talking about health and and that there’s also you know we think about health of Country there’s fire research coming out and cultural burning practices from Indigenous standpoints there’s Professor and Aunty Em Poelina in the Martuwarra Fitzroy River and the personhood of that river – that was the first paper in the country where there was an author noted as a river, the Martuwarra was an author within that publication. It’s a first of its kind. There’s Brad Moggridge of Gomeroi, Indigenous water scientist as well in New South Wales that speaks on underground water and the cultural values of underground water within the country – he’s like one of if not the only person besides myself doing that sort of research in the country that’s well overdue. So there’s some sort of I guess different topic areas where there’s a lot of you know Indigenous research within the country that’s you know really um at the forefront at the moment and will have a lot of impact I think.