Garma Festival

I have worked with Yolngu communities in northeastern Arnhem Land for 6 years as a land manager, educator and researcher. I am currently a PhD student studying through the History and Philosophy of Science Department at the University of Melbourne and the Garma Cultural Studies Institute. My research forms part of an Australian Research Council funded collaborative research project, ‘Revealing Yolngu Aboriginal Theories of the Environment for Ecologists’, involving the University of Melbourne, the Garma Cultural Studies Institute, the Dhimurru Aboriginal Land Management Corporation, the Yirrkala Community Education Centre, the Yirrkala Homelands Schools and Yolngu communities of northeastern Arnhem Land. The focus of my research is the contemporary management of traditional Yolngu estates in northeastern Arnhem Land.

I am interested in exploring the relationship between people and place in the context of working together Yolngu knowledges and environmental science. As part of my research I am writing about the making and working of a plan of management for Nanydjaka (Cape Arnhem) by the contemporary Yolngu land and sea management agency, Dhimurru, in cooperation with Yolngu communities of northeastern Arnhem Land. I am also writing about the development of a community-based ranger training program at Dhimurru and Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education.

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Margaret with other Worrk workshop participants near Garathea
photo: J.Wearne

Jonathan Wearne

Throughout much of my early life I have lived and worked in Northeast Arnhem Land. After completing a Forestry degree in Melbourne, I returned to work on a variety of natural resource and environmental science projects with Yolngu people. What I found through my involvement in these projects, was that environmental scientists face a great many puzzles and challenges as they attempt to work with Yolngu knowledge traditions on Yolngu lands.

I took these challenges in a rather serious way and began doctoral studies. I am currently enrolled in the History and Philosophy of Science department at the University of Melbourne and I am also a student of the Garma Cultural Studies Institute. My ongoing involvement with Dhimurru Aboriginal Land Management Corporation, in particular the very first workshops run jointly by Garma Cultural Studies Institute and Dhimurru, have been particularly helpful in shaping the concerns and directions of my current PhD Studies.

I quickly realised that some of the difficulties I encountered lay within the environmental sciences themselves. To begin to unravel some of these difficulties, I turned to analytical perspectives from historical and sociological studies of science.

In my PhD study I follow 'specimens' through various historical and contemporary episodes of environmental science on Yolngu lands. Bandicoots feature in my story, especially those known as Golden Bandicoots, Isoodon auratus or Wankurra. By following specimens of the environmental sciences through the settings they are entangled in, I am producing an alternative account of the environmental sciences. I hope my account will assist environmental scientists to work with Yolngu traditions of knowing and caring for the land in a more balanced and respectful way.

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Jono at a Worrk workshop
photo: M. Ayre