PhD Scholar

E-mail: u4327250@anu.edu.au

Ecological philosophers highlight the fact that the achievements in science, technology, industry, commerce and finance have brought humans into a new age at the expense of much of the diversity of life and the life enhancing processes of the Earth. Across the world, life is being lost, driven to extinction by the essentially unchecked ideal and practice of development, itself underwritten by forms of cultural imperialism, patriarchal relations and the suppression of Indigenous world views.

The urgency is to curb the lack of discipline inherent in our utilisation of our Earth's resources by moving from 'human centric' to 'earth caring' approaches in the future. Ecologists and Indigenous peoples across the world have shown themselves capable of disengagement from processes that exalt human beings as distinct from, not intrinsic too, the Universe in which we live. As such it is Indigenous peoples, with ecologists and ethicists who are in a prime position to assist the human community realise our dependency on nature and structure new citizenship models, to refocus our efforts on our, and the Earth's future.

This Project involves synthesising Indigenous and ecological knowledges to develop universe referent models of citizenship, determine what might be achieved by them, and how these models might be accomplished.

This project is an opportunity to conceive knowledge for the future outside of the constructs of a Western modernity by placing the universe as the 'primary' in our lives and seeing what emerges.