1. Dr Susan Goff, Principal, CultureShift Pty Ltd and
Cultivating the Knowing Ecologies of Hyperobjects: Decolonising natural resource management in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia July 2014
Dr Susan Goff, Principal, CultureShift Pty Ltd and
Neil Ward, Director, Indigenous Policy and Research, Murray-Darling Basin Authority

2. < 1% of the Basin in Indigenous Estate
The geo-political context
30% of Australia Indigenous Estate
< 1% of the Basin in Indigenous Estate
Agricultural food bowl
ABS Agricultural census found that 84% of the land in the Murray-Darling Basin is owned by businesses engaged in Agriculture
A little over 2.1 Million people living in the Basin 10% of population
Approx 83,500 Indigenous people or 18% of Australia’s Indigenous population or about 4.0% of the Basin population c.f. 2.4% (548,370) of the total Australian population (23,235,000)
Essentially the Basin is fully allocated – contributing to the circumstances of <1% of the Basin being held in the Indigenous estate.
The environmental significance of the Indigenous estate : Natural resource management as economic development in remote Australia
J.C. Altman, G.J. Buchanan and L. Larsen. DISCUSSION PAPER No. 286/2007
Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research
(Altman, J.C., Buchanan, G.J. and Larsen, L., 2007)

3. The state of the Basin Manmade poisoning and climate change
Aboriginal knowledge and respect of land will improve land management, progress reconciliation and address unacceptable SES inequities.
Image of Traditional Owners contributed to this presentation with consent.
Illegal and over extraction of water
Ecologically unsustainable agribusiness
Loss of cultural and social capitals

4. Propositions:
Knowledge ecologies are of a different nature to their past constructions when grown in decolonising contexts in the presence of hyperobjects
The praxis of cultivating such entities in this situation is intuitive, reflexively strategic, embodied, transdisciplinary and moral
The stance is that of acceptance, amelioration and resilience

5. A Knowledge Ecology in the Basin
Use and Occupancy Mapping: inalienable Country
Cultural Health Index: informed decision-making
Cultural Flows, Socioeconomic and Biodiversity Research
Free, Prior and Informed Consent:
Protected discourse and intellectual property rights
Aboriginal and Western NRM Authority: Law
Traditional Owner governance systems: MLDRN and NBAN voice

6. The Participants The Traditional Owner Nations The Country
Authorities: Western, Aboriginal and “nature”
The strategy:
UNDRIP – Free, Prior and Informed Consent
MDBA principles of Indigenous engagement
The system – MLDRIN and NBAN
The practitioners of cultivation (the Murray-Darling Basin Authority): the Assemblage, Collective Self Determination and Openness

7. Echuca Declaration
Meeting of Traditional Owner representatives
Recognition of inalieanable rights and responsibilities for country, illegality of western claims and constituttions and definitions of cultural flows

8. The Outcomes Cultural values protected, understood
Quantities of water modelled
Overlap between environmental and cultural water explained and demonstrated
Governance options understood and enacted
Socio-economic benefits of cultural flows in operation
Cultural values in the Basin: uninterrupted ownership of land, air, water, and obligations to all life; access to sites with spiritual, cultural and social uses and values; participation in the customary economy and its modern developments (arts, tourism, education, health, healing, customary law and restorative justice; culturally authentic governance and participation in decision-making in relationship to Aboriginal ways of thinking, relating and being)

9.  $ Cultural Flows Environmental Flows Agricultural use Well being
Cultural Benefits
Cultural Flows
Tourism, etc
Food, Economy etc
Ecosystem services
Agriculture  $
Well being
Water Resource
Environmental Flows
Agricultural use
The system theory underpinning the KE: Neil Ward, 2014

10. The concept of “hyperobjects”
Timothy Morton: (2013) The vastness of the hyperobject’s scale makes smaller beings – people, countries, even continents – seem like an illusion, or a small coloured patch on a large dark surface. How can we know it is real? What does real mean? The threat of global warming is not only political, but also ontological. The threat of unreality is the very sign of reality itself (p.32)
Characteristics of hyperobjectives: viscocity (stickiness), nonlocality (multi-site presence), temporal undulation (Unknowable in total due to massive time scale of existence), phasing (changing form as expressions of all the above), interobjectivity (different hyperobjects interact in all these dimensions creating an interobjective dynamic and intersubjectivities because human beings are inside them)
With regard to Morton's premise - as I stated, he is of the view that there are now manifestations of human impact as a consequence of the Anthropocene that are of such a scale that they exceed our capacity to know them because they reach beyond time and space measures that make knowing them possible. He is referring to climate change, but also oil, plastic, radiation etc - these elements are now so integrated into all life systems on earth and for so long, that our ability to know or predict the dynamic of their existence is beyond our means. Moreover, we have lost what he calls the "aesthetic distance" between these so-called hyper-objects and ourselves because we are within them as they are within us. It's truly an ecological era in this regard, but an ecology without "nature" - where the concept of nature is drawn through the west's industrial revolution as a romantic counter to one way exploitation. This concept underpins much of indigenous peoples' opposition to environmental conservation for example.

11. The presence of hyperobjects in the Basin
Climate change – Millenium Drought, floods, changes to agriculture, population shifts
Energy – coal and coal seem gas - the legacies of Watts’ steam engine (MDB, Nov 2011)
Radiation – British nuclear testing in Maralinga (Parkinson, xx)
Colonisation – Less than 1% ownership of land in the Basin; 55% unemployed, 70% experiencing long term unemployment
Plastics, County

12. Knowledge ecologies: examples from the past
How to know a knowledge ecology
Wojciechowski’s 25 laws governing the ecology of knowledge (1975) describing the diversities of structure and emergence that characterise a KE
More recent references include social, human, “natural” and knowledge ecologies: (are there differences?)
“Knowledge Ecologies are cultural, made up of social, virtual and bio-physical systems; they embody attractors, and come about by creating a balance between structured and emergent, impermanent inter-relationships between all these elements” (Goff, 2014)
(References - Brown, 1999; Malhotra, 1999; Goonatilake, 2006; O’Leary, 2007; Williams, Mackness and Gumtau, 2012)
Law 1: The number and variety of causes of stress are proportional to the amount of knowledge
Law 11: The perception of the complexity of the consequences of knowledge is proportional to the development of knowledge
Law III: The knowledge of knowledge is a function of a general development of knowledge
Law IV: The size and complexity of the problematic of knowledge is proportional to the general level of knowledge
Law V: Thought induces change
Law VI: Humans’ ability to determine the development of humanity is proportional to their knowledge
Law VII: All other things being equal, the complexity of involvement of the individual with external reality is proportional to the amount of knowledge he or she possesses
Law VIII: Physical mastery of nature is proportional to the active, intellectual subordination to it
Law IX: There exists an interdependence between the size of the human group, the amount of communications within the group, the spread of inter-subjectivity of the knowledge construct and the progress of knowledge
Law X: The need for communication is proportional to the size of the society, the number of groups within the society and the amount of knowledge available
Law XI: The needs of humans to understand themselves is proportional to the level of their knowledge and of their demiurgic capacities
Law XII: Rational activity is proportional to knowledge and its corollary
Law XIII The efficiency of rational activity is proportional to knowledge
Law XIV The need to understand the existential system of man is proportional to the level of knowledge
Law XV: The size and complexity of the existential system of man are proportional to the level of rational activity
Law XVI: The impact of the existential system of man on humans is proportional to its nature – size and complexity
Law XVII: The level and complexity of human life and problems are proportional to the existential system of man
Law XVIII: The satisfaction with the existential system of man is inversely proportional to the capacity to change it
Law XIX: The development of a society is proportional to its storage and use of information
Law XX: The potential for the development of knowledge is proportional to the existing knowledge
Law XXI: An intellectual construct always retains its noetic role
Law XXII: The level of the material support system for knowledge has to be proportional to the level of knowledge
Law XXIII: The numbers of peoples in need of help is proportional to the level of knowledge and ability to act
Law XXIV: The moral problematic is proportional to the knowledge construct and to the power to act
Law XXV: The capacity to do good or evil is proportional to knowledge.

13. KE praxis
References call on: “A warranted belief leading to action” (Brown, 1999)
Working in and with inescapable trauma
Heuristic research over long time scales
Our “Self” as self governing, multi-local, participatory and indigenous (First, Second and Third Person inquiry – Chandler and Torbert, 2003)
Tipping points, bridges, influential, learning by doing alongside each other
Messy, unmanageable, un-designable - but able to be nurtured
The nature of knowledge is innately uncertain. (Brown, 1999; O’Neil, 2012; Wilding, 2012)
Neil describing an aspect of KE praxis. Minutes: 23:58 – 27:02
Yarns on the River
Open ended questions
TO references
TO Facilitators
Non-indigenous scribes
NVIVO
IP/consents
Controlled access
Representative Advice - water planning

14. What does it all mean?
The Intuitive Praxis: Decolonising the hyperobject raises the question - Is Bohm’s Implicate Order still in tact?
The Reflexively Strategic/Embodied Praxis: KE action brings presence to the hyperobject as well as its living subjects - a knowing ecology
The Moral Praxis: Accepts the nostalgia of restoration and repositions healing as intrinsically (defiantly/obediently) valuable – Acceptance, amelioration and resilience
On what are we calling to notice, maintain our presence, envision possibilities and become them?
We are within hyperobjects and they are within us – as we transform we transform them as they transform they transform us – the notion of “boundary”, self and other is rendered meaningless
Morality is a principled act of acceptance, and compassionate efforts to minimise wounding and loss, rather than a journey forward into a better world
The motivation of “making a difference” has a more nuanced and limited hubris

15. References
Altman, J.C., Buchanan, G.J. and Larsen, L., (2007) Governing the provision of ecosystem services, Canberra, CAEPR.
Anonymous: “Knowledge ecologies: text eagles and crowd sourcing in the knowledge economy: the transcriptions of distributed cognition and commerce.” On “Learning Affordances” Wikispace classroom. Retrieved: 14/3/14,
Bennett, B., Green, S., Gilbert, S. and Bessarab, D. (2013) Our voices: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Work. Palgrave MacMillan, South Yarra.
Brown, J.S. (1999) “Sustaining the ecology of knowledge”, Leader to Leader (Spring): 31 – 36.
Chandler, D. and Torbert, B. (2003) “Transforming inquiry and action‘. Action Research. 1(2):
Goff, S. (2014) “The A.E..I.O of You and Me: Creating knowledge ecologies in Australian decolonising contexts.” Presentation to the UWS Symposium: Cultivating knowledge ecologies, Parammatta, New South Wales, March 25-27, 2014.
Goonatilake, S. (2006) “Knowledge as ecology”, Theory, culture and society, 23 (2-3): 170 – 172.
Malhotra, Y. (1999) “Knowledge management for organizational white-waters: an ecological framework”. Knowledge Management. (no pages) Retrieved 14/3/14,
Morton, T. (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and ecology after the end of the world. University of Minnesota Press.
O’Neill, E. (2012) “The place of creation: transformation, trauma and re-rooting creative praxis” in Lewis Williams, Rose Anne Roberts and Alastair MacIntosh (Eds), Radical Human Ecology: intercultural and indigenous approaches. Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Farnham.
Parkinson, A. (2007) Australia’s nuclear waste cover-up, Australia: ABC Books.
Senate Committee (2011): Management of the MDB Interim report: the impact of mining coal seam gas on the management of the Murray-Darling Basin. . Commonwealth of Australia Retrieved 27/6/14:
Ward, N. (2014) Presentation to the Basin Community Committee, Murray Darling Basin Authority, Canberra.