Indigenous Australians and engaged anthropologists: how can they struggle together for social justice and a safe climate?

Introduction

Indigenous land tenure systems and social structures are highly complex, and this article does not attempt an explication of these. It is recognized however, that First Nation peoples in Australia altered tracts of land through land management practices such as strategic fire burning and other forms of land clearing for purposes of maintaining or increasing food sources (Gammage, 2011). Other societies including peasants in medieval Europe, maintained commons for hundreds, even thousands of years, without seriously destroying their natural habitats. Commons are collective or communal forms of ownership. In contrast, state societies, whether agrarian, industrial, or post-industrial, with their imperialist and colonizing structures to a greater or lesser extent emerged as land grabs. Due to European invasion in the late 18th century, First Peoples in Australia quickly became a subjugated and exploited stratum in the remotest British settler colonial state. This status continued for several decades after Federation in 1901 forming a settler-colonial relationship of the type that Coulthard (2014) has argued is one

where power—in this case, interrelated discursive and nondiscursive facets of economic, gendered, racial, and state power—have been structured into a relatively secure sedimented set of hierarchical social relations that continue to facilitate the dispossession of Indigenous peoples of their lands and self-determining authority (pp. 6–7).

While some First Peoples have been incorporated into sectors of the affluent working and middle-classes in the larger Australian society, the status of many First Peoples resembles that of Indigenous peoples throughout much of the Global South.

From a world system theory perspective, Australia may now seem to be what is termed a minor core country. In this theory of unequal exchange, core or developed capitalist countries exploit the peripheral or the poorest countries as well as the semi-peripheral countries (Shannon, 1996; Wallerstein, 2004). The periphery is exploited by both the core and the semi-periphery—as, for instance, semi-peripheral giant China is now exploiting various African countries. During the late 20th century, Australia shifted away from its earlier status as a large exporter of wool, meat, wheat, and gold to other mineral resources, particularly iron ore, coal, and aluminum. While Australia continued to have some national players in the resources sector, most mining operations in Australia came to be owned by foreign capital. This has made Australia as a quarry nation look even more like a semi-peripheral country, albeit a highly affluent one. As a result, it resembles other countries in the Global South subjected to the resource curse in which resource companies play a key role in shaping national and ongoing settler-colonial relations. Modern capitalism developed as an energy intensive mode of extraction, production, and consumption of various forms: fossil fuels (Malm, 2016), hydroelectricity, nuclear energy, and renewable energy (solar, wind, and geothermal). All of these have entailed the expropriation of land from First Nation peoples, including in Australia.

Indigenous peoples traditionally have participated in the common or the “common wealth of the material world—the air, the water, the fruits of the soil, and all nature’s bounty . . . to be shared together” for eons without generally adversely impacting their habitats (Hardt & Negri, 2009, p. viii). Indeed, Marx, whom Patterson (2009) identifies as a pioneering anthropologist, argued that what today goes under the rubric of Indigenous peoples, which for him included foraging, horticultural village, and pastoral societies. For Marx all of these socio-economic forms of society practiced primitive communism. I argue that for Marx, both primitive communism which, in his view characterized pre-state formations, and advanced communism are based on the adage—from each according to his means, to each according to his needs. Despite the existence of post-revolutionary or socialist-oriented societies, starting out with the Soviet Union, eco-socialists view socialism and communism as visions that can actualise efforts to respond to a global socio-ecological crisis (Baer, 2018).

From an eco-socialist perspective, due to European invasion and colonization of Australia beginning in the late 18th century, First Peoples lost access by and large to their commons. Without seeking to romanticize First Nation Australians, John Bodley (2017) provides the following depiction of what social life looked like for them:

Aboriginal people maintained and transmitted the broad features of their culture for millennia because it allowed them to enjoy the good life. The culture was sustainable because it worked for people. It helped people to meet their needs fairly, reliably, and easily, and therefore they willingly reproduced the system with only minimal, fine-tuning changes to suit changing conditions. Aborigines designed and reproduced a cultural system that rewarded people for keeping their families small and their material requirements low. They correctly understood that nature would generously provide all their material needs in return for minimal human effort. (pp. 31-32)

While anthropologists have long recognized that for First Nation peoples, land and water constitute genres of the commons, as a form of collective ownership (Bodley, 2017; Patterson, 2009), the growing awareness of anthropogenic climate change has expanded the definition of the commons to include the atmosphere. While in the past the burning of wood and animal dung for cooking and slash and burn horticulture produced some carbon dioxide emissions and various agricultural activities in early state societies resulted in the release of methane into the atmospheric commons, the advent of fossil capitalism has dramatically accelerated the rate of CO₂ emissions.

Given the growing adverse impacts of climate change on First Peoples, I argue that engaged anthropologists, particularly ones working with First Peoples and on the socio-ecological and climatic crises in the Australian context, enter into a serious dialogue with First Peoples, to challenge threats to First Nation land tenure systems and the Indigenous Knowledge which underpins these complex rights and interests in specific areas of land. From an eco-socialist perspective this blending of First Nations knowledge has the potential to restore the notion of the commons as a strategy for mitigating catastrophic climate change and a larger socio-ecological crisis.

Climate change as a looming crisis for Indigenous and vulnerable peoples around the world

Multinational corporations, state and joint-venture companies in post-revolutionary societies, have created a global factory and a new global ecosystem which includes industrial and motor vehicle pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, deforestation, desertification, and climate change (Baer, 2021). The Peoples Republic of China is a case in point, as this state has come to manufacture numerous products for developed capitalist societies at relatively cheap labor costs (Smith, 2020). The Industrial Revolution relied first on coal, then petroleum, and finally natural gas, including coal seam gas, the burning of which all produce carbon dioxide emissions which contribute to anthropogenic climate change (Baer, 2021).

A growing number of climate scientists argue that if humanity does start to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions soon, there is a strong possibility that the average global temperature will be four or more degrees higher than present, a point at which the average global temperature already stands 1.1 ^oC higher than in 1900 (Lynas, 2020). Indeed, 2019 constituted the hottest year on record for both the globe and Australia. In Australia, four degrees of global warming is predicted to dramatically alter rainfall and temperature patterns and distribution, leading to increased incidence and intensity of extreme weather events like droughts, heatwaves, floods, storms, and catastrophic bushfires. In 2019–2020, Australia experienced the most extensive bushfires on record in which 21% of Australia’s temperate broadleaf and mixed forests burnt, impacting either directly or indirectly nearly 80% of Australians, resulting not only in the devastation of numerous rural communities in southeastern Australia but also Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne being blanketed by dangerous levels of smoke. Furthermore, an estimated one billion animals were killed by the bushfires: 800,000 of them in New South Wales (Hughes et al., 2020). Needless to say, various climatic events, whether they be rising temperatures, droughts, bushfires, cyclones, and flooding, will over the course of the 21^st century have their most adverse impact on First Nation Australians in capital cities, regional cities and towns, and remote areas.

People who have contributed the least to anthropogenic climate change are suffering the most from it. This applies to the Inuit and Inupiat in the Arctic; First Nation Australians living in remote communities; Indigenous peoples in the Andes; peasants in Bangladesh, India, Africa; South Pacific Islanders on low-lying islands; pastoralists in Africa and the Middle East; and poor urbanites in mega-cities around the world, to speak of only a few. Fortunately, First Nation peoples and other marginalized peoples are increasingly mobilizing in various ways to confront this grim reality.

First Nation peoples are frequently on the front line resisting the spread of capitalism into every nook of the planet. Tokar (2010) claims that demand for climate justice was first expressed by Indigenous Environmental Network founder and director Tom Goldtooth in the mid-1990s. The Declaration of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change (Second Indigenous International Forum on Climate Change, 2000) announced:

Earth is our Mother . . . not a commodity . . . our cultures, and the territories under our stewardship, are now the last ecological mechanisms remaining in the struggle against climate devastation . . . Climate change is a reality and is affecting hundreds of millions of our peoples and territories, resulting in famine, extreme poverty, disease, loss of basic resources in our traditional habitats and provoking involuntary displacements of our peoples as environmental refugees. The causes of climate change are the production and consumption patterns in industrialised countries and are therefore, the primary responsibilities of these countries. (Paras. 3–9)

Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, convened the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba in April 2010. He asserted that either capitalism dies or Mother Earth dies (Goodman, 2010). The People’s Agreement of Cochabamba (2010), drafted at the conference asserted: “The capitalist system has imposed on us a logic of competition, progress, and limitless growth (para. 3). It also stated that: “Humanity confronts a great dilemma: to continue on the path of capitalism, degradation, and death, or to choose the path of harmony with nature and respect for life” (para. 6).

Alice Springs, a town with a large First Nation population, experienced 55 days above 40^oC in 2019 up to July (Allam & Evershed, 2019). Such climatic impacts have motivated First Nation activism and the design of initiatives and entrepreneurial enterprises across the nation including Original Power (https://www.originalpower.org.au) and the First Nations Clean Energy network (https://www.firstnationscleanenergy.org.au).

Impact of climate change on First Nation peoples

Of all Australians, First Nation peoples, particularly those residing in remote communities are the most vulnerable to rising temperatures, droughts, floods and other climatic changes. Marcus Barber (2011), an anthropologist working for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, notes that the Garnaut Review on climate change commissioned by the Australian government predicts that without significant mitigation, Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory, will have over 200 days each year above 35^oC by 2070. First Nation Australians across Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory are becoming increasingly aware of anthropogenic climate change. As a result, the Yolngu now regard climate change as a major threat to their way of life. Barber (2011) asserts that one challenge for anthropologists is to find appropriate means of conversing with people who are removed from the generators of climate change.

Green et al. (2010) maintain that First Nation Australians have accumulated rich ecological knowledge, including climatic and weather observations, which potentially can fill gaps in the climate data on seasonal changes for tropical northern Australia. They comment: “Indigenous knowledge may well be one of the keys in understanding how best to engage in culturally appropriate climate change adaptations for these communities” (p. 351).

Unless greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced both globally and in Australia, First Nation people, particularly in remote areas, face enormous challenges to their physical, mental, and socio-cultural well-being. Joelle Gergis (2018) paints a grim picture particularly for inland Australia in terms of rising average temperatures by the year 2100 unless drastic reductions in emissions were to occur in the interim. Nash et al. (2018) conducted a series of interviews on the perceptions of climate change held by First Peoples in communities in the Upper Georgina River Basin in Northwest Queensland. While not all of those they spoke with “are completely engaged with or convinced by the scientific discourse of climate change, they have observed the gradual transformations and shifts in local eco-systems that such changes bring about” (p. 117).

Drawing upon focus group discussions with First Peoples from multiple locations in north-east Queensland, Alice Springs, and Adelaide, Nursey-Bray et al. (2019) found that their informants articulated their fear of how increasing temperatures might impact upon well-being due to inadequate housing and lack of air-conditioning, mediated by possible pre-existing health problems both in rural and urban areas. Just as was the case for hundreds of Australians in southeastern Australia due to the massive bushfires of 2019–2020, First Peoples face the tragic possibility over the course of next several decades of becoming internal climate refugees. Whereas non-Indigenous people generally can easily migrate, First Nation peoples in remote areas who speak Indigenous languages as their first languages and who practice ceremonial attachments to Country are less inclined to relocate, they have a commitment to place that non-Indigenous people generally do not have.

Climate change as a portal for collaboration between First Nation peoples and engaged anthropologists

Many universities have environmental education programs that touch on climate change, and some anthropology departments have programs on environmental or ecological anthropology. Outside of academia there are environmental institutes that employ anthropologists. Some theorists of the cultural ecological, cultural interpretive, and critical anthropological perspectives of climate change tend to acknowledge that their research has an applied component not only for specific groups or societies but also for the future of humanity (Baer & Singer, 2018). The cultural ecological perspective draws attention to the ways people collectively respond and use their sociocultural system to cope with or adapt to new climatic threats and develop new options in the face of climate change adversity. Cultural interpretive examinations tend to focus on perceptions on the part of diverse peoples or local knowledge about climate change. Finally, the critical anthropology of climate change is guided by an eco-social perspective that is informed by three theoretical currents in and beyond anthropology: world system theory, political ecology, and critical health anthropology.

Furthermore, in the applied field anthropologists have been working on climate change issues at two broad and quite distinct levels, these are: in the formulation of climate policies and through becoming involved in climate action groups and the climate movement that supports social and economic changes to limit global warming and climate change. In addition, many applied anthropologists work on environmental issues such as community perceptions of the environment, alternative environment-based subsistence strategies, cultural and environmental resource management, environmental degradation in local contexts, and social roles in the identification and response to environmental change—types of work that position them to address the environmental impacts of climate change. In the 1980s, many anthropologists provided scholarly expertise in land rights cases for First Nations peoples across Australia (Gray, 2007).

However, in terms of climate change, anthropologists are too small a group to act alone as a vanguard in the struggle against climate change and global capitalism that impacts social justice for First Nation peoples. In Australia, there are a number of emergent First Nation climate change action groups to which engaged climate anthropologists could offer support. The Wangan & Jagalingou Family Council representing the Traditional Owners of the land in Queensland’s Galilee Basin and Seed, a First Peoples youth group affiliated with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition are two examples.

As leader of the Wangan & Jagalingou Family Council, Adrian Burragubba has gone bankrupt over the course of his 15 years of opposition to the Adani mining project which is supported by the Federal government and the Queensland government. For the Wangan & Jagalingou Family Council (n.d.) social justice is indistinguishable from environmental justice. Beresford (2018) reports:

For Burragubba, the fight with Adani has exposed the limitations not just of the land rights system but of Aboriginal people’s lack of real sovereignty. “You can’t get self-determination,” he says, “by relying on a mining company to give you something.” He is insulted that, as a traditional elder and leader, neither Adani nor Australian government officials have ever paid him the respect of a face-to-face meeting. “I shouldn’t have to talk to hired lawyers,” he explains. (pp. 236–237)

The Wangan and Jagalingou communities have gained support in their struggle from various progressive groups, such as the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Get Up! and Stop Adani! Whereas, on the one hand this leads to, “trade unionists and some conservative indigenous leaders joining with businesses and lobbyists to defend the mutual interests in polluting fossil-fueled industries,” on the other hand, in “opposition to the fossil fuels economy, one can also see informal alliances between environmentalists, indigenous groups threatened by mining companies, Left unions representing mainly the service sector, especially pubic-sector workers” (Frankel, 2018, p. 51). Conversely, the Stop Adani! campaign has demonstrated the shortcomings of Native Title legislation. In August 2019, Adani was granted freehold title over areas of the Carmichael mine site effectively extinguishing native title rights and interests over the site.

Ultimately, from an eco-socialist standpoint, meaningful rights for First Nations people would require a radical restructuring of the Australian political economy. Such a restructuring would perhaps be one which, given the socio-ecological crisis faced, not only by Indigenous people but the majority of Australians, would entail a shift from the logic of late capitalism, to one that is based on eco-socialist principles. These principals are a commitment to social parity and justice and environmental sustainability at local, national, and global levels.

Eco-socialism and the struggle for Indigenous rights

Finally, addressing climate change in a responsible manner will entail nothing short of what John Bellamy Foster (2009) terms an ecological revolution—one that will over the long run lead to a new world system based upon social equality and justice, deep democracy, environmental sustainability, and a safe climate. In that, corporations and most governments have not been acting in a responsible manner in terms of serious climate change mitigation, despite considerable rhetoric to the contrary, much of the collective effort has to be spurred by anti-systemic movements, including a burgeoning climate movement which remains quite variable in terms of addressing social justice issues and indigenous and ethnic rights movements.

The climate movement constitutes a subgenre of the environmental movement, although in both its international and national manifestations, it exhibits three tendencies: (1) a green social democratic one that calls for ecological modernization, particularly calling for the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable sources of energy, and the regulation of capitalism; (2) an anti-capitalist and radical one which maintains that, ultimately capitalism must be transcended to achieve a safe climate and livable environment characterized by a high degree of social parity; and (3) an in-between one that recognizes climate justice issues, but is not explicitly anti-capitalist. Whereas groups that belong to the first tendency generally do not give a great deal of attention to social justice issues, those that belong to the latter two tendencies do. Christine Frank (2009) criticizes much of the environmental movement as being too soft on capitalism. She calls for an “uncompromising environmental movement led by working people in alliance with other oppressed groups,” one that is imbued with “ecosocialist principles that go beyond the maintenance of capitalism and its suicidal and genocidal policies, and instead advances a zero-growth, zero-waste, steady-state, democratically planned socialist economy that puts planetary human needs before profits” (p. 43). In terms of oppressed groups, I would include First Nations peoples around the world, including First Nations peoples in Australia.

Numerous Indigenous rights and peasant movements have appeared in recent decades in the Global South and the Global North which, while seeking to preserve local cultures and traditions, have done so by challenging the activities of multinational corporations and their political allies. Indigenous protestors are often connected to a wide array of NGOs, even UN organizations, and social media but often retain their own autonomous groups. The adherence to the collectivist ownership of resources often constitutes their most basic challenge to global capitalism. While Indigenous movements may not on their own constitute serious threats to global capitalism and may not even seek to transcend it per se, they engage in a war of position in Gramscian terms, particularly in alliance with others—including scholar-activists—in their relationship to it. In forming alliances with other anti-systemic movements, ones which are respectful of their rights, along with progressive scholars, the aims of Indigenous movements have a greater potential of being achieved. Indeed, eco-socialism claims compatibility with First Nation calls for self-determination. The Belem Ecosocialist Declaration calls for the eco-socialist revolution to include Indigenous peoples stating:

The most oppressed elements of human society, the poor and the indigenous peoples, must take full part in the ecosocialist revolution, in order to revitalize ecologically sustainable traditions and give voice to those whom the capitalist system cannot hear. Because the peoples of the global south and the poor in general are the first victims of capitalist destruction, their struggles and demands will help define the contours of the ecologically and economically sustainable society in creation. (Kovel et al., 2019, p. 165)

In the Australian context, relations between First Nation peoples and environmentalists have been historically fraught at times (Neale & Vincent, 2016). Nevertheless, there have been some victories along the way, such as the rescinding of the proposed Jabiluka uranium mine in 2000 resulting in a victory against Rio Tinto (Altman, 2009). However, these earlier successes pale terribly against the recent destruction of the Juukan Gorge caves in the Pilbara in Western Australia in 2020 by the very same mining company (Wensing, 2021).

Beyond a viable First Peoples-environmentalist alliance, there is an urgent need to revisit and revive Black-Red-Green alliances of earlier eras. Up to the late 1960s, some radical First Peoples leaders worked in solidarity with left-wing European Australians situated in militant trade unions, most of which were influenced by the Communist Party of Australia, as well as with Australian Labor Party socialists (Townsend, 2009). In the case of Australia, climate activists, Indigenous people, labor unions, along with others, need to be part and parcel of creating a broad political movement calling for socio-ecological and energy transformation. Indigenous scholar Tony Birch (2016, p. 359) asserts that climate change mitigation in Australia will require a transformation in consciousness that goes beyond a mechanistic replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy sources and includes a “shift in our social and psychological relationship with the planet required to live more equitably with each other and non-human species.”

This reversion, difficult by any reckoning, will require a progressive government with the political will to carry it out and abide by the wishes of many Australians rather than those of multi-national corporations with operations in Australia. Potentially implementing public ownership of the mining industry, particularly the coal mining industry, might be a starting point for introducing more public ownership in general and could serve as a necessary step toward the goal of creating a genuine democratic eco-socialist society in Australia. Such a move would reduce the power of the mining sector and wealthy individuals to influence elections through campaign contributions, favorable media coverage, and even bribery (Baer, 2022). Socialization or public ownership, both at the state level and in the form of cooperatives, could also facilitate the shift from fossil fuel energy sources—with their taxpayer funded-subsidies—to renewable energy and trigger what has come to be known as a just transition for displaced workers by, for instance, offering former coal miners jobs in solar panel construction and the development of wind farms and solar power plants. Climate change mitigation strategies to increase energy efficiency and discourage energy consumption would also be much easier to instigate if energy supply was publicly owned.

While privatization’s downside has become an axiomatic discourse among even relatively progressive actors, including the Greens, the discussion of ways to socialize energy production and shift away from coal production has larger dimensions. The shift must emphasize benefiting people rather than corporations, democratic rather than authoritarian structures and means, and the growth of human potential over economic growth. Socialization of minerals and energy sources along with agriculture could pave the way for fuller land rights in which First Nation people could exert greater control over the productive processes that occur on their traditional lands. This would include giving sites on First Nation land citizenship rights, in keeping with the rights of nature movement in Latin America and Aotearoa (New Zealand) where the Whanganui River on the North Island was granted legal personhood (Mika et al, 2022).

If alliances between eco-socialism and First Nations peoples are to succeed then it is imperative that eco-socialists abide by Gumbainggir Historian and activist Gary Foley’s advice that the eco-socialists acknowledge the “importance of ‘Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs’” by Indigenous people (as cited in Land, 2015). This requires that eco-socialists who work with First Peoples in Australia and globally acknowledge and support First Nation calls for sovereignty, self-determination, and recognition of a cultural distinctiveness.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart was formulated at the First Nations National Constitution Convention convened in May 2017 with political support from the two major Australian political parties, the Liberal-National Coalition and the Australian Labor Party. The Statement “asserts and affirms the sovereignty of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, which was never ceded to the British colonial government at the time of settlement” (Hutchings, 2019, p. 197). Ultimately, it is my contention that any guarantee of recognition of First Nation sovereignty and self-determination by the State is not possible under capitalism as a world-system. What is needed is a deep dialogue with First Nation peoples on how best to develop an eco-socialism that recognizes First Nation sovereignty and self-determination.

Ultimately, I believe that the Indigenous struggle for sovereignty, self-determination, land rights, and the eco-socialist struggle for social justice, deep democracy, environmental sustainability, and a safe climate share a commitment to the notion of the commons, in which all peoples share, rather than supporting corporate interests committed to the extraction of resources for profit-making. As Hardt and Negri (2017) observe:

[T]he earth and its ecosystems are ineluctably common in the sense that we are affected (albeit in varying degrees) by their damage and destruction. But we cannot have faith that the logics of private property or national interest will preserve them, and instead we must treat the earth as common so as collectively to make decisions to care for and guarantee its and our future. (p. 98)

These are causes in which anthropologists and other scholar-activists, both First Nation and non-Indigenous, can play a role.