Author Identifier
Naomi Joy Godden: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9881-3365
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Title
Planetary Justice: Stories and Studies of Action, Resistance and Solidarity
Volume
20
Issue
1
Publisher
Bristol University Press
School
School of Arts and Humanities
RAS ID
71675
Abstract
The Anthropocene exposes the colonial paradox: ‘that Indigenous people were right all along, that landscapes are neither inert nor mute, but imbued with vitality’ (Ghosh, 2021, p 256). Now, humans must speak out to represent the vital living earth, to return persons of all species to cultures, stories and places. This is called ‘Waking up the Snake’ – using the ancient wisdom of our places to awaken the consciousness of the people to their obligations of stewardship through an ethic of care and love. Serpent goes by many names, being integral to Australia’s Earth Dream, a 65,000-year-old story of sentient worlds in a past presence of co-becoming. In this chapter, we build on environmental humanities literatures, using Indigenist methodologies to provide evidence from the Martuwarra and Wardandi Noongar regions of Western Australia. We use Indigenous onto-epistemologies in diverse ways to make change that is profoundly regenerative, emphasizing the vital nature of relational living places.
DOI
10.51952/9781529235319.ch002
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Comments
Poelina, A., Webb, B., Wooltorton, S., & Joy Godden, N. (2024). Waking up the snake: Ancient wisdom for regeneration. In Planetary Justice (pp. 25-38). Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529235319.ch002