culture | ConservationBytes.com

Mapping the ‘super-highways’ the First Australians used to cross the ancient land

4 05 2021

Author provided/The Conversation, Author provided

There are many hypotheses about where the Indigenous ancestors first settled in Australia tens of thousands of years ago, but evidence is scarce.

Few archaeological sites date to these early times. Sea levels were much lower and Australia was connected to New Guinea and Tasmania in a land known as Sahul that was 30% bigger than Australia is today.

Our latest research advances our knowledge about the most likely routes those early Australians travelled as they peopled this giant continent.

We are beginning to get a picture not only of where those first people landed in Sahul, but how they moved throughout the continent.

Navigating the landscape

Modelling human movement requires understanding how people navigate new terrain. Computers facilitate building models, but they are still far from easy. We reasoned we needed four pieces of information: (1) topography; (2) the visibility of tall landscape features; (3) the presence of freshwater; and (4) demographics of the travellers.

We think people navigated in new territories — much as people do today — by focusing on prominent land features protruding above the relative flatness of the Australian continent. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Aboriginal, connection, culture, human ecology, indigenous, Indigenous Australians, movement
Categories : Australia, coasts, mathematics, modelling

Respecting Aboriginal culture through language

16 10 2019

(originally posted on the GE.blog)

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What’s in a name? Well, rather a lot, I think.

Names have meanings, and not just in the way that they tag people, places or objects. I am of the opinion that names go to the core of culture and personal identity in a way that our corporate/fast-food/market-driven society often fails to appreciate or espouse.

This is why we decided to seek cultural permission to have our lab’s name translated into the local Kaurna Language. Like many Aboriginal languages around Australia, Kaurna needs support, respect, and value among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people alike if it is to survive. And to me, the extinction of even one language is akin to the extinction of a species. Gone forever, never to be renewed.

But some people probably do not understand why this is important, which was brought home to me last night when a good friend asked why we decided to seek permission to have the lab’s name translated.

“Well,”, I said, “whenever I travel to other countries where multiple languages are spoken, be that in New Zealand¹, South Africa², Canada³, or southern Finland⁴, almost every official building, place, object, or document has a translation in different languages of the region.”

“Why don’t we seem to do that in Australia very much?”, I said.

After all, it is, at the very least, a sign of respect and recognition of the rightful custodians of the places and land; it recognises that there isn’t only one culture that usurps all others, and that there is multiple meaning and value in that place or object. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Aboriginal, Adelaide, Adelaide Plains, culture, extinction, indigenous, Kaurna, language, naming, Partuyarta Ngadluku Wardli Kuu, respect, Traditional Owners
Categories : Australia

Challenging the traditional conference model

28 08 2015

An interesting take on conference culture by Diogo Veríssimo (mastermind behind I Fucking Love Biodiversity).

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Just a few weeks back, more than 2000 conservationists got together in Montpellier, France, for the 27^th International Congress on Conservation Biology (ICCB). I have been attending these conferences since 2008, and once again had a blast. Yet as I went through the usual talks, posters, work meetings, and this and that social, I could not help but feel that the traditional conference model was hindering, not helping me, maximise my benefits.

In my experience of conservation conferences, the content is largely delivered via a one-way channel, and attendees listen passively until the chance for a question or two comes up at the end. If time allows, that is, and it rarely does. Given the huge costs (and the footprint) of these events, how can we maximise the outcomes of these meetings?

Let’s look first at what is currently the backbone of most conferences anywhere: the oral presentation. Currently, the gold standard for the vast majority of ICCB presenters is the 15-min presentation, and those who are denied that chance often say they have been “downgraded”. I find this unfortunate.

My biggest criticisms of our current approach to content management during a conference is that it leaves the discussion to happen informally and without the benefit of the collective knowledge that comes together at these meetings. Many conservationists are keen to avoid long-winded lectures in their classrooms, but when we come together, those concerns seem to go out the window. The Q&A after a talk should be the most important part of a session for either the presenter (expert feedback can save a lot of time and resources) and the audience (who otherwise cannot focus on what they think is important).

Giving sessions enough Q&A time, which I argue would have to be as long as the time given to presentations, would imply having fewer presentations — unless we have shorter presentations. The ICCB already has the speed presentation, a format that lasts just 5 minutes. Why not make that the default? Yes, presenting your content effectively in 5 minutes is an acquired skill, but not much different in kind from writing an abstract to a paper. Having presented in both traditional and speed format, I am convinced presentations strongly suffer from the law of diminishing returns, meaning the difference from the audience point of view ends up being small. This is particularly true if fewer talks means more time for the audience to interact and ask about the things in which they are interested, rather than what the presenter thinks they should learn. Read the rest of this entry »