Two books launched in Darwin recently explore northern landscapes
from indigenous and western perspectives.
Burning Questions, Emerging environmental issues for indigenous
peoples in northern Australia
is a timely survey by Marcia Langton, Director of the Centre for
Indigenous Natural and Cultural Resource Management (CINCRM), at
the Northern Territory University which argues for the
reimplication of Aboriginal people in the management of northern
Australian landscapes.
Professor Langton argues that indigenous people successfully
managed the landscape for millennia and are responding to the
challenge of sustainable environmental management in innovative
ways that combine traditional environmental practices and western
scientific insights.
Tracking Knowledge in North Australian Landscapes
edited by Deborah Rose and Anne Clark, is a collection of essays
that focus on northern and central outback regions of Australia.
They explore some of the systematic ways in which Australian people
have organised, communicated, erased, and reinvented knowledge of
these unique environments. Among the contributors are Settler and
Indigenous writers; the range of their academic disciplines
includes anthropology, archaeology, biological science, and
geography.
