Readings to stir spirits

While the causes of today’s contestation over water can be traced back through Federation and colonisation, the past two decades have brought new issues to the fore. From traditional owners’ demands for recognition and allocation of cultural water, to the de-coupling of water from land and pressures on irrigators to compete in a newly deregulated market, to the ecological impacts of over-extraction, to aggressive transnational trade in water for profit, to the broader impacts of climate change on water availability—it is clear that water is now ground zero in a supercharged battle over incommensurable interests and values.

The Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI) and the Institute of Postcolonial Studies (IPCS) are running a series of seminars on international experiences of truth-telling with particular relevance to the unfolding conversation in Australia following the release of the Uluru Statement calling for Voice, Treaty and Truth in 2017.

The (Un)settled Writing Workshops are a series of online monthly writing sessions where friends and members of IPCS, across all levels of writing experience, come together to experiment with modes of writing that do not perpetuate reinvestments in settler ontologies or depend on apocalyptic fantasies.