Education Commons^™

This scoping paper is a preliminary introduction to the aspirations, interrelated literature and research involved in development of the Kimberley Transitions project. Our focus is on northern Western Australia’s Kimberley region, a landscape of immense natural and cultural significance. Along with the rest of Australia and indeed the world in which we all live, the Kimberley is on the verge of major climate, political, social and economic change. The direction of changes being proposed by governments and industry are regularly criticized, both globally and locally, by individuals and organisations concerned about damage to its rich biodiversity and cultural integrity. With …

Different languages, knowledge systems and ways of knowing impact upon shared understandings of place across and within landscapes. In this article we illustrate ways in which Noongar and English language-based understandings of groundwater and wetland interactions can inform a third space. Noongar knowledges recognise deep interdependences across social, linguistic, ecological, physical and spiritual domains, while English ways of knowing highlight separations and abstractions such as those between people and nature, and spirit and matter. The English language assumes a linear sense of time in which the past is always behind the present, where going forward is associated with progress. Noongar …