Re-membering with river Daugava: Poetic engagements with water memory

Sound-, Land- And Story-Scapes Of Daugava.

Circling the drain – contemporary jewellery and the tale of the New Zealand Grayling

Report from the Art+Water, art and science project 2019.By combining art and science, and producing artworks that demystify and inform, it is possible to take scientific research further than science circles alone and allow the narrative to become part of the public vernacular. The intention is to foster interest, to communicate research findings, to raise questions, to become conversation starters, and to be triggers for further research or behavioural change. This interpretation of specialised scientific data allows for the information to be passed on, releasing the research so it can be understood through the objects themselves, with little or no background knowledge necessary.Contemporary jewellery, as an art form, is well positioned to do this. As a way of connecting people, jewellery can be a powerful means for mobilizing change.1 Once attached to a human host, jewellery has great potential for impact. From the origins of humanity, it has played a role of connectivity through symbolic representation. Its logical connection to the body gives the medium potential to speak of important issues within society.2My work examines how jewellery can act as a form of communication and an agent for change. It shows that the framework of contemporary jewellery has great potential to speak of issues within society and the environment

The waters were wide: A report on the Art and Science Project “Water/Wai: Mountains to the Sea”

The first known Greek/Phonecian philosopher of science, Thales of Miletus, viewed water as both the centre of life and the unifier of nature. We would all still agree – water is essential to life as we know it. Over the millennia, whole civilizations have risen and fallen depending on fresh water security; our species has adapted, thrived, or been decimated, depending on the availability of water. For this reason, water has always been the subject of close governance and stewardship.In 2019, the seventh in the Art and Science Project series embarked on Art+Water, with the theme of “Water: Mountains to the Sea.”This theme was interpreted in many ways, including: the forms of water, water-related protein structures, ice-formation, water-borne disease in birds, fossilized structures made by aquatic/ marine animals, the impacts of land-use on water quality, water-born environmental DNA, the effects of ocean acidification on marine calcifying organisms, the ecology of coastline shallows and deep ocean canyons, bioengineering on farmland, and conflicts in communities around water scarcity. Several projects involved community-based environmental restoration work, including volunteer projects at the Sinclair Wetlands and at Lake Wanaka.As for previous Art and Science projects, the aim of Art+Water was to foster artistic response to scientific research, rather than its illustration

Ice Is Cool – Artist’s response to John Tyndall, “Ice Flowers”

Report from the Art+Water, art and science project 2019.Ice at the Margins was a series of woven panels made in response to “The Forms of Water in Clouds and Rivers, Ice and Glaciers”, written by John Tyndall in 1872. Tyndall has been called the “father of climate change” and his work on the properties of gases to absorb and transmit radiant heat led to speculation on how fluctuations in water vapour could be related to climate, and how these gases help to moderate temperature on planet Earth. His book has never been out of print. Noting that a leading international climate research centre is named after him1, I am interested in the significance of Tyndall’s contribution to the history of science, and the continuing effects of greenhouse gases on changes in the cryosphere and impacts on water security. My focus for the Art+Water project was “ice”, and my muse was Tyndall’s historical “ice-flowers” experiment.

Seeking Poetic Justice: A Reading of Dylan Voller’s Prison Graffiti

When Four Corners aired the program ‘Australia’s Shame’ we entered into the prison cells of Darwin’s Don Dale Youth Detention Centre and witnessed through CCTV footage the torture of mostly Aboriginal inmates, enduring a colonial system of controlling and ‘settling’ them down. Images of Dylan Voller under a spit-hood and strapped to a restraint chair are horridly similar to the prison machine in Franz Kafka’s 1914 story: In the Penal Colony. In his story, Kafka’s prison machine is a ‘bed’ where the ‘condemned man is laid face-down naked’  and a marker carves script into the prisoner’s back that is “not easy to decipher with one’s eyes”, but the prisoner can “decipher the words “with his wounds” . One purpose of literary studies is to decipher the cultural markers responsible for humanity’s ‘wounds’ through the study of words or scripts known as texts. Kafka encourages us to read only the texts that wound us; books that allow us to reflect deeply, and with feeling, in order to inspire positive changes to the material world (Winston, 2016). Balla’s poem brings attention again to the treatment of Aboriginal children in Darwin’s Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. Her poem suggests there may be a poetic response to such atrocities if one reflects deeply. Recent texts that further expose Australia’s racist penal system and invite critical and creative reflection include, Kim Scott’s Taboo, Paul Collis’ Dancing Home and selected stories from Tony Birch’s Common People. These texts are published not long after the Four Corners exposé, and too inform writing about the treatment of Aboriginal people by white police and prison guards

Who Holds the Power for Change?

Is the indigenisation of an organization possible if we have not first acknowledged the machinery that has ensured and sustained indigenous people, their thought, their ways and their world view, subjugated for another and considered less than if not of little or any value, and especially when we consider the realm of academia and education.Maybe before we consider the opportunity for Indigenisation, we first consider the question as to whether we can have meaningful engagement without first deconstructing the Masters house, but can we effectively do this with the same master’s tools that built it.  Meaning can those that hold power be the ones that determine how and where and with whom this power should then be shared. Should this sharing be initiated by the same system that created disparity or instead by those who were diminished because of it?Who has the power to inculcate indigenization into a dominant culture; the system and power that created the space between our worlds, or the people who have maintained their existence despite the historical and real power structures that continue to this day to strip self-determination from indigenous communities

Indigeneity, Colonial History and Truth

In 2019, indigenisation of tertiary settings in Aotearoa seems to have taken twenty steps back over as many years where the systemic nature of our colonial history continues to determine what counts. Māori continue to sit on the outside of what is the norm within mainstream tertiary institutions or at best within pockets of various forms within it. Indigeneity insists that Māori did not cede sovereignty. For indigeneity to be realised, the place of Māori as tangata whenua needs to be apparent in the systems that govern us and the decisions that affect us.

Kia Tu Ki te Tahi. When we stand, we stand as one

Globally, colonialism has disconnected Indigenous peoples from their culture, community and land. It has left an indelible footprint on the education aspirations of Indigenes, often leaving them locked out of education systems and blaming them for their lack of ‘success’. Emanating from social justice through inclusion, equity and power sharing, indigenisation is not merely an add-on deriving from another world perspective: it presents opportunities to challenge cultural preconceptions and the way we order the world.Indigenisation advances authentic cultures and fosters the sharing of knowledge with non-indigenous peoples. It nurtures the adoption of Indigenous values and practices in our work and daily lives, and creates pathways for adaption to local ways.Junctures invited submissions on the theme of indigenisation and received response to the call from authors in the Cook Islands, Norway, Australia, Taiwan, Canada, South Africa, and Aotearoa, New Zealand

Getting a Quality Education: Indigenising Post-Secondary Institutions in Northern Ontario Through the Indigenous Quality Assurance Project

In Canada, many institutions have signed onto Indigenous education manifestos such as College and Institutes Canada’s Indigenous Education Protocol and Universities Canada’s Principles on Indigenous Education which generally advocate for respect for Indigenous knowledge systems and the meaningful participation and representation of Indigenous peoples in the academy. These declarations of commitment to indigenization, while widely announced and promoted in the public domain, do little to communicate and provide evidence of effective implementation, as defined by Indigenous peoples. As a result, a growing number of Indigenous scholars have questioned the intent, depth, and outcomes of indigenization efforts and have implicated indigenization in the ongoing system of settler colonialism.In response, northern colleges in Ontario undertook the Indigenous quality assurance (IQA) project to develop Indigenous quality assurance standards and an implementation process complimentary to the colleges’ current audit-based quality assurance system. This article will discuss the development of the northern colleges’ IQA system and explore how the Indigenous quality assurance system can provide a tangible path forward to enact indigenization. In particular, the capacity of Indigenous quality assurance to address the calls by Indigenous scholars to ensure indigenization efforts are systemic, led by Indigenous peoples, everyone’s responsibility, and accountable to Indigenous peoples are explored

From Collective Consent to Consultation Platform: An Experience of Indigenous Research Ethics in Makota’ay

In 2015, six organisations, including the Makota’ay Community Development Association, Hualien Tribal College (HTC), and the project team of Dynamics of Eastern Taiwan in the New Century at National Dong Hwa University (NDHU) co-signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at Makota’ay, a Pangcah2 tribal community on the east coast of Taiwan. The MoU establishes a community-focused interactive paradigm that aims towards collaboration in the promotion of indigenous education. By agreeing upon the MoU, the parties become partners in research. This moved research away from conventional paradigm where Indigenous peoples are subjects, and put Makota’ay’s input and aspirations towards constructing local knowledge at the centre of the multilateral relationship. One of the purposes of the MoU is to enact Article 21 of The Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, which mandates that research involving indigenous peoples should obtain the consent of the individual, and collective consent of the indigenous community