Senior Fellow
Indigenous environmental knowledge and philosophy, settler landscapes and relationships to place, social and environmental justice, cross-culturalising animal ethics.
Phone: +61 (0)2 612 50584
Fax: + 61 (0)2 6125 0746
E-mail: Deborah.Rose@anu.edu.au

Professional Activities

Indigenous ecological knowledge and ethics; Indigenous and Settler landscapes in Australia and other settler societies; post-colonial possibilities for social and ecological justice; cross-culturalising animal ethics.

• Cultural Environments Initiative
• Interspecies Workshop 2002: Marauding Beasts of the Australian Bush
• Aboriginal Elders Teaching Program at CRES - 2001
• Concise CV
• Online papers
• Connecting with ecological futures
• The ecological power and promise of reconciliation
• Love and reconciliation in the forest: a study in decolonisation, 2002
• Research Project: Indigenous ecological knowledge

Australia is home to a remarkable diversity of systems of knowledge about the ecology of this unique continent. Indigenous knowledge systems and systems based on western scientific tradition have often been seen as the most distant poles on a continuum that ranges from 'myth' to 'fact'. Recent analysis undermines this dichotomy, and research in Australia shows that indigenous ecological knowledge on this continent is detailed, localised, and well grounded in empirical observations. In addition, indigenous knowledge is embedded within a system of ethics that is oriented toward long-term balance and mutual care in relationships between people, other living things, and life support systems.

Indigenous knowledge about Australian ecosystems has been built up over long periods of time through fine grained observation and complex systems of ordering memory, place, event, and significance. In the form of relatively fragmented bits of information, indigenous ecological knowledge has contributed to Australian field sciences, and is an important part of co-management schemes.

This research project aims to document and analyse indigenous ecological knowledge, practice, and philosophy in two regions of north Australia: the floodplains and the savanna. In addition to numerous published articles, the first large-scale study is now published: Country of the Heart: An Indigenous Australian Homeland, with Sharon D'Amico, Nancy Daiyi, Kathy Deveraux, Margy Daiyi, Linda Ford and April Bright, Aboriginal Studies Press.

The significance of this research is founded in the fact that the sharing of ecological knowledge and philosophy is an important response to the environmental crises in which all our lives are entangled. The sharing can go both ways, for in contemporary Australia there are numerous knowledge systems that can help to recover the capacity of ecological systems to nourish human and other forms of life.

• http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/archprod/aspc/rasp/frameset_frame.htm
• Ecological Humanities

Selected Publications

2002 Country of the Heart: An Indigenous Australian Homeland, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra. With Sharon D'Amico, Nancy Daiyi, Kathy Deveraux, Margy Daiyi, Linda Ford and April Bright.

2000 [1992] Dingo Makes Us Human; Life and land in an Australian Aboriginal Culture. Cambridge University Press. New in Paperback. Winner of the 1992/3 Stanner Prize.

1998 Tracking Knowledge: Studies in North Australian Landscapes, edited with Anne Clarke, NARU, Darwin.

1996 Nourishing Terrains; Australian Aboriginal views of Landscape and Wilderness, Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra.

1995 Country in Flames; Proceedings of the 1994 symposium on biodiversity and fire in North Australia. Biodiversity Unit, Department of the Environment, Sport and Territories and the North Australia Research Unit, The Australian National University, Canberra and Darwin.

1991 Hidden Histories. Black Stories from Victoria River Downs, Humbert River, and Wave Hill stations, North Australia. Aboriginal Studies Press. Winner of the 1991 Jessie Litchfield Award for Literature.