Rubble and Relationship: Rediscovering Mutuality in the Midst of Collapse
Kim Croxford

We had to spray paint a bright red warning —danger!—on the road’s edge. The rubbled tarmac still falling from the unstable river bank, and the willows gathering up remnants of the bridge in their desperate arms before being ripped away by the torrential flow apparently weren’t warning enough. A few curious people, who had navigated past road closed signs to witness the destruction first hand, remained determined to stand precariously close to the water’s edge. Days later, even our improvised safety measure had crumbled away.

The Breakaway Bridge—a wooden trestle bridge across the Goulburn River in Acheron—was destroyed by the floods that inundated Victoria in October 2022. The destruction of the bridge, which had stood 50m away from where I currently reside in a privately rented, ramshackle art studio, signified the arrival of a new climate-altered reality. The bridge had survived floods before (as recorded meticulously in the diary entries of my landlord’s father, whose family settled on the land in the early 1900s). In 1974, record rain trumped the 1934 and 1956 water levels. In 1993, water lapped at the front door. But the ferocity of the 2022 floods —and the prolonged experience of disaster as the Eildon dam struggled to cope^[1]—shook even the most confident multi-generational farming families living in the Goulburn region.

The beginning of the end of the world

For those of us in the climate movement, the Victorian floods reinforced a message that the earlier NSW floods and 2019/2020 firestorms had recently delivered: the future that we were striving so hard to prevent had arrived. Our lives would now be marred by recurrent climate disasters. The window to avoid worsening consequences is also closing fast in 2023. We may yet bear witness to mass extinction, a cascading loss of biodiversity—and the societies we recognise could be threatened with collapse within our lifetimes.

The demise of the Breakaway Bridge has also prompted reflection about the history of the land on which it stood for just over 100 years. For me, as a settler Australian participating in climate justice activism, it was a poignant reminder that existential threat, social upheaval, and extraordinary ecological change is not a new occurrence here in the Upper Goulburn Valley.

Climate and ecological collapse should not be positioned exclusively as an abstract, impending cataclysm to be avoided; it must also be acknowledged as a consequence of an existing crisis that has been unfolding on this land for over 200 years, since European invasion. What we are encountering now is an escalation, caused by our society’s continued adherence to the colonial worldview that severed the relationship between people and their traditional lands all over the world. Remaining cognisant of the recent ‘history of collapse’ on this land could significantly inform how we respond to the risk of imminent collapse in our time and context.

In 1816, the floodplains of the Goulburn River “were the rich hunting grounds of the Taungurung people.”^[2] But by the end of 1839, Taungurung people had been “effectively ‘removed from their Country’”,^[3] although many remained in the area working for pastoralists.

In 1859, Taungurung leaders came together to secure a culturally significant part of their Country, at the junction of Nyaggeron/the Acheron River (which intersects with Waring/the Goulburn River) and the Little River. William Thomas, who held the position of ‘Guardian of Aborigines’ at the time, described the location as the ‘Promised Land’. Thomas had hoped that the place could be a permanent settlement where Taungurung people could farm the land and remain on their own Country. But ‘Nakkrom’, or Acheron Aboriginal Station, barely lasted a year, and ultimately saw a dismayed Taungurung community, who had worked hard to establish crops and infrastructure for their people on the land, displaced again. Powerful squatters with connections in parliament had campaigned against the successful venture in order to maintain exclusive access to extensive parcels of land (the 16,000 acre ‘Niagaroon’ station and 50,000 acre Taggerty station). The Taungurung community were moved from Acheron to the nearby Mohican station, then on to Coranderrk mission on Wurundjeri country. In the years that followed, the use of Taungurung traditional language was prohibited, Christian faith was imposed, and the Aboriginal Natives Protection Bill of 1869 was enshrined with the power to “control Aboriginal residence, work, wages, and children.”^[4] As squatters transformed alluvial flats and lowland woodlands into grazing runs for sheep and cattle, Taungurung society endured extreme social and cultural upheaval.

By the time the Breakaway Bridge was built in 1921, in order to help settler farmers access the market when the Goulburn River changed course, Taungurung/Dhaung Wurrung^[5] traditional society, at least as it had existed on the land for tens of thousands of years, had been shattered by the violence of colonialism. Acheron had now become a well-established European farming community, producing wool, lamb, beef, potatoes, cauliflower, strawberries, nectarines, hazelnuts, velvet and tea. In his article, Bridging Lives and Loves, Con Boekel (who married into one of these early settler farming families) details the ecological changes that accompanied the collapse of pre-invasion Taungurung society and the establishment of the land management practices of settler colonialism. As willows were imposed on the river banks to restrict functional floodplains, wildlife populations changed dramatically. The abundance of game-sized water birds disappeared and were replaced by flocks of long-billed corellas that hadn’t before been observed in the area. Hundreds of wombats moved into the landscape, now transformed from floodplains to paddocks.^[6] Boekel describes how, in the 1950s, his wife’s father-in-law “would walk across the Breakaway Bridge and catch a sugar bag full of native fish in a few hours.” Due to the imposition of the Eildon dam and ‘de-snagging ’on natural river systems, by 2013 “the entire native fish fauna was locally extinct—millions of years of evolution wiped out in less than a century.”^[7]

Parallels can be drawn between the sweeping ecological changes that accompanied colonisation with those we expect to see due to climate change. The scale and breadth of the changes already predicted across the globe this century is dizzying. It is as if we are living in the imagination of a speculative fiction writer, instructed to create dystopia by extending observable social problems to their worst possible conclusion. We are already locked in a changed world, guaranteeing for ourselves the experience of ecological grief and human precarity. The latest IPCC report suggests we still have time to stave off the most nightmarish scenarios.^[8] But the speed of predicted climate impacts has surprised us all, including scientists.^[9]

Emerging responses to this urgent and admittedly dire situation paint a disturbing picture. In her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Naomi Klein describes scientific institutions hosting conferences to debate the need for “planet-hacking” geo-engineering experiments.^[10] Some of these proposals, put forth by a “geo-clique” of certain scientists, could create pollution and unequal consequences for the global south. They would also reinforce the flawed narrative of human technology’s ‘triumph’ over nature—man’s dominion over earth—that arguably landed us here in the first place. Meanwhile, reformist climate campaigners continue to push policy changes to ‘protect our way of life’, despite our capitalist, consumerist society’s role in perpetuating the problem. All of this sounds frighteningly comparable to a coal miner responding to the death of a canary by not only remaining in the tunnel, but determinedly digging deeper. On the other end of the spectrum, some of my former movement comrades have resigned all hope in humanity’s ability to intervene whatsoever. In the absence of the kind of transformative action they had hoped to see over the past decade, they have become survivalists, focused on fortifying themselves and prematurely surrendering their agency (which seems to me like an existential death more terrifying than the physical threats that may accompany social collapse). Ordinary people are also being unusually strategic about where to live. A friend of mine is attempting to convince all her loved ones to move to Tasmania or New Zealand, where she believes good soil and less severe climate impacts will allow the next generation to survive. But in 2017, wildfires encroached into Gondwana rainforest in Tasmania that hadn’t burnt in millions of years. Just last month, a cyclone devastated the North Island of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Nowhere is ‘safe’.

Amid the panic of climate chaos, will we be able to refrain from further entrenching worldviews that uphold the structures of power driving the problem? How can we embrace the terrifying uncertainty that accompanies our obligation to act in this increasingly urgent situation, while remaining oriented toward social and ecological justice? Even if preventing climate collapse becomes no longer possible (as natural systems respond to the cumulative effect of industrialisation/extractive land use, tipping points threaten to rapidly destabilise the living world)^[11] can we still live meaningfully, without surrendering entirely to apathy or despair?

Right behaviour

Nearly 40 years after being pushed off their land and being forced into “unequal patron-client relationships”—and even after the closure of Acheron and Mohican stations—Taungurung people “still expected Europeans to modify their behaviour to accommodate Aboriginal Sovereignty” and “tried to impose their ideas of ‘right behaviour’ on strangers in colonial times.”^[12]

The early resistance of Taungurung leaders, in the form of “strategic” relationships with pastoralists that gave them opportunities to “assert their sovereignty” and maintain “relationship to traditional lands,” is described in the book On Taungurung Land: Sharing History and Culture. Co-authours Jennifer Jones and Taungurung elder Uncle Roy Patterson explain that even before first contact, Kulin people “knew something of the adverse consequences of European invasion” from clans further north. Jones and Patterson detail how Taungurung custodians “made every effort to remain on their country for as long as possible,” not just to serve their own survival, but because of a Cultural obligation: the enduring custodial responsibility they have as a people toward land, water, and totems.

Taungurung traditional society was “shaped by responsibilities to land” and informed by the “interrelationships between people, plants, animals, landforms, and celestial bodies.” This “place-based wisdom, both practical and spiritual, directs proper action or ‘right behaviour’ on that particular land.” Decades after the advent of invasion, Taungurung leaders insisted on preserving and upholding as much of their culture as they could, intervening to establish some degree of “mutuality and reciprocity” in their relationships with pastoralists—and repeatedly attempting to communicate the critical importance of reciprocity with the land to these early settlers.

Taungurung Culture is still a living culture due to the resilience and tenacity of generations of Taungurung descendants. Violet Town in North East Victoria, where some of my ancestors settled, was initially established as a police base, in response to the effective and formidable Frontier warfare of nearby Taungurung clans.^[13] First Nations’ resistance and campaigns for social justice, Culture and Country have a rich history all over the continent. Taungurung advocacy for Culture and Country also persists here today. The Taungurung Land and Waters Council secured Mohican station^[14] in January as part of their land-back program. Their natural resource management initiative, Biik (with its guiding principles Healing Country, Reading Country, Caring for Country) exists to reunite Taungurung people with the land, “re-establishing connections to and continuation of ancestral custodianship of Country.”

Concurrent with this ongoing resistance and enduring custodial commitment, Jones and Patterson demonstrate that “Taungurung objectives to educate and alter non-Aboriginal behaviour” have also “remained constant.” In writing On Taungurung Land, Uncle Roy Patterson aimed to “revitalise relationships to place and establish respect and mutual practices of care for Country.”

For decades, we have known with certainty about the impacts of climate change. The first IPCC report was released a year before I was born, nearly 32 years ago. Like the Kulin people in the early 1800s, we’ve heard whispers of what’s to come. Faced with the grim outlook of a worsening climate emergency, we may look to First Nations’ early resistance to colonisation—and their ongoing fight for Sovereignty today—for information on how we might respond as these intersecting crises continue. Perhaps, in 2023—living, as we are, on the brink of ‘no return’—we might finally be prepared to receive the message that Taungurung people tried so consistently to deliver to early settlers. As settlers—and as beneficiaries of a worldview that caused both colonisation and the climate crisis—our task today remains the same as it did in the 1800s. Even in the midst of collapse, our obligation—and arguably the most dignified way to navigate this chapter of the crisis—is to dedicate ourselves to discovering what might constitute ‘right behaviour’ toward the land.

You’ve heard the line chanted at rallies and recited at organising meetings: there is no climate justice without First Nations justice. Climate action must be paired with meaningful solidarity with Aboriginal people in their fight for economic and social justice. The crime of colonial genocide that accompanied capitalism’s expansion around the world must be recognised as a root cause of today’s escalating climate fragility. But in addition to a commitment to supporting the campaign for First Nations Sovereignty, we must also heed the advice of early resistance leaders. We must work to decolonise our own thinking and determine how to enter into a respectful, mutualistic relationship with the more-than-human world.

Patterns of Creation

My heritage, as far back as I can trace it, is English and Danish. Any knowledge of indigeneity in my bloodline is long lost to me, as a consequence of historical imperial regimes designed to aid the establishment of private property. It is important that modern settlers don’t interpret the task of re-establishing a relationship with land as an invitation for white people like myself to indulge in cultural appropriation. Apalech man and academic Tyson Yunkaporta offers some advice in regards to how we might re-gain the knowledge required to direct ‘right behaviour,’ without co-opting the cultures of recently colonised peoples. Yunkaporta contends that this ‘re-learning’ will “not take the form of somebody passing on cultural content.” Instead, insight can be gained when Indigenous thinkers share “the patterns of knowledge and ways of thinking that will help trigger the ancestral knowledge hidden inside [us all].”

In his book, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, Yunkaporta examines Indigenous knowledge systems on this continent and around the globe, arguing that there are identifiable patterns that can be applied to the complex problems we are confronted with today. He sets humanity the urgent task of abandoning ideologies that position people outside of nature and assume human superiority over other species (take note, geo-clique). Non-Indigenous people, and our society more broadly, might study the patterns in Indigenous knowledge and ontology, not in a voyeuristic or appropriative way, but as a means to inform how we might direct scientific and intellectual inquiry, develop climate solutions, and design social systems.

Yunkaporta’s answer to how we might navigate the climate and ecological crisis is to honour the complexity of natural systems. He describes an “intensely interrelated process” between a particular bush, ant, and butterfly that would be “impossible for a single human mind to design,” positing that “this is precisely the kind of process we need to understand and engage with to create sustainable responses to the catastrophes we’re facing.”

Yunkaporta argues that Indigenous knowledge systems developed in a similar way to these symbiotic processes, evolving out of the “daily lives and interactions of people and place in an organic sequence of adaption” and that these societies often “emerge in ways that mirror the patterns of creation.” He concludes that “there is a pattern to the universe and everything in it, and there are knowledge systems and traditions that follow this pattern to maintain balance.”

Considering that Indigenous cultures “developed over millennia”, it would seem that it could take more time than humanity has left to re-familiarise ourselves with these concepts. But Yunkaporta believes that modern society can embrace these insights now, if people engage with different paradigms, and uncover ways of being: “not by learning Aboriginal Knowledge, but in remembering their own.”^[15]

Uncovering this “pattern to the universe,” by re-learning how to live in relationship with the earth’s natural processes, may just be the work of our lives in these most challenging of times.

“Let us pledge reciprocity with the living world”

Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi woman and botanist from Turtle Island/North America, in her beautifully written book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, agrees with Yunkaporta that engaging with Indigenous knowledge may lead settlers who have been socialised in modern capitalist society back from the brink and help us to “enter into the deep reciprocity that renews the world.” She writes that although “the details are highly specific to different cultures and ecosystems… the fundamental principles are nearly universal among peoples who live close to the land.”^[16]

Wall Kimmerer encourages us to begin the work of learning the landscapes, plants, and animals around us, to strive to “know the ways of the ones that take care of you, so you might take care of them.” This was a task set for Nanabozho, The Original Man in Anishinaabe creation stories, who first set foot on Turtle Island. Nanabozho was an immigrant, but he “became Indigenous to place” by following the ‘Original Instructions’ that outlined how to live in balance and mutuality with other beings. Wall Kimmerer muses that perhaps “the journey of the First Man will provide footsteps to guide the journey of the second” and assist settler people “to set aside the ways of the colonists.” While she is understandably cautious about settlers’ ability to ‘become Indigenous’ (“no amount of time or caring changes history or substitutes for soul-deep fusion with the land”), she suggests that we might at least become “naturalised” to place—integrated into the landscapes we now call home.

Wall Kimmerer invites us all to participate in reciprocity with the natural world by recognising everything the earth offers us as a gift. She explains that in Anishinaabe culture, each creature and plant has a sacred purpose and gifts to offer to the rest of creation. As a custodial species, humanity’s gift is to help the plants and animals that sustain our lives to mutually thrive: “all gifts are multiplied in relationship. This is how the world keeps going.”

Of course, considering climate change’s global reach, resistance to the power systems causing the problem must be a part of what we offer the earth, in return for its gifts. Kimmerer affirms that “political action, civic engagement—these are powerful acts of reciprocity with the land.” However, she also emphasises the critical importance of developing a deep connection to place; embracing the wisdom that’s offered to human beings once we embed ourselves “within a sentient landscape.” While recounting her PhD student’s successful experiment, which measured the symbiotic relationship between sweetgrass and traditional harvesters, Kimmerer demonstrates that plants are our oldest and wisest teachers. She reminds us that our subsistence on this earth depends on other lifeforms and that respectful recognition of the gifts provided by various plants and animals around us can build the mutual resilience of both human and non-human life. But developing this shared resilience requires our deep attention. Different plants and animals regenerate and sustain themselves in different ways: “the key is to know them well enough to respect the difference.”

“Honouring the knowledge in the land and caring for its keepers”

Here in Acheron, there remains an astounding abundance of life. It makes me catch my breath daily. Every morning, when I wake to the sun rising over Nanadhong/Nunnuthum (the Cathedral Ranges) and yellow-tailed black cockatoos whistle and glide gracefully overhead, I am indescribably grateful for nature’s gifts. In the heat of an afternoon, when a blue tongued lizard freezes across my path, or a djirri djirri/willy wagtail bounces its fanned tail joyfully on a farm fence, I cherish the fact that I live in a time where I’m still able to witness such brilliant biodiversity and experience the life-affirming wonder it inspires. At night, when I hear the rhythmic call of the muk muk/boobook owl, the trill of a Peron’s tree frog, or the squeak of a microbat, I feel comforted and held by the land.

My landlord’s father also had a relationship with this place. He is remembered as someone who “knew every tree, every blade of grass”and understood the importance of “walking the land”. His daughter, a wonderful oil painter, lovingly depicts the landscape her family has lived on for generations. The birds that greet her every morning feature in her most stunning artworks. I have always understood in my gut—even as a tiny child—the reverence the natural world commands when it reveals its beauty. Growing up here, exploring the soft tree ferns and tall mountain ash trees of the surrounding mountain ranges as a teenager, nurtured this appreciation. Most settler Australians, especially those who live rurally, love their surroundings. But we have ultimately been conditioned by the ‘civilised’, western, capitalist culture we’ve been raised in. This informs how we conceptualise things and, by extension, how we farm, consume resources, and relate to other creatures.

Settler love of the land can be analogous to an abusive relationship—love doesn’t preclude harm if the ultimate priority is control. Conversely, it was made clear to Nanabozho, in the Anishinabe ‘Original Instructions,’ that “his role was not to control or change the world as a human, but to learn from the world how to be human.” We must reach beyond our admiration for nature’s beauty and begin to regard animal and plant life as more than just a source of joy and inspiration. We must respectfully regard them as our equals, as knowledge holders, as our “wisest teachers”^[17]: capable of informing our systems of organisation, as well as sustaining our lives on this planet. We must relinquish our urge to control, manage, and simplify nature, and instead learn to reintegrate into the ecosystems we live within.

My deepest intuition has always told me that human dominion was an illusion, that the knowledge held by other species is vast and intricate. I intend to more fully embody and act on this awareness. By cultivating a sense of responsibility to this place, I look forward to engaging with the kind of accountability that Kimmerer believes can combat the problem of waste and overconsumption. Being in dialogue and relationship with the beings around us can transform our lens on the world, as ‘resources’ become our neighbours and kin. As Kimmerer says, “taking a life to sustain your own is much more significant when you recognise the beings who are harvested as persons, nonhuman persons vested with awareness, intelligence, spirit… acknowledging the lives that sustain our own and living in a way that demonstrates our gratitude is a force that keeps the world in motion.”^[18]

When I’m staring in rapt attention as cicadas emerge from the ground, awed by the celestial shimmer of their fresh wings; when I’m dancing in a lightning storm, buffeted by hot winds; when I’m snacking on vitamin-rich prickly currents by the river, or kneeling to recognise the leaves of a tiny bird orchid, I feel myself open to the challenge of learning from and living within this landscape. As a settler, I cannot ‘connect to Country’ like a person of Taungurung descent. Traditional custodians are “spiritually bound to Country through intimate connections with ancestral beings still present in the land and waters.”^[19] However, I do feel a powerful connection to this place. It’s a connection that I can deepen and expand, as I learn about the plant and animal life that lives alongside me. Like Nanabozho, the Original Man, and Linneaus, the original European taxonomist—as they are described walking together in Braiding Sweetgrass—I can strive to “learn the names of all the beings”: to understand their characters, their gifts, their needs, their “spirits.”

Keeping creation in motion

I know I won’t be joining my friend in Aotearoa as she builds her hopeful fortress in order to ride out the climate crisis. My home is here on Taungurung Country, at the foot of Nanadhong, in the valleys carved by the Nyaggeron/Acheron and Waring/Goulburn rivers. I intend to stay, and to come to know this place well enough, so that I may try to help sustain and regenerate this landscape as climate change impacts it.

Life threatening floods will occur here again. I am continually warned by anxious friends about living in this fire prone area (my family housed many of my school friends after the Black Saturday fires destroyed their homes—I am already well aware). But this landscape has already gifted me so much: a home, connection, purpose, rejuvenation. I will not abandon it. In return for all that it gives me daily, I can commit to loving this landscape like I would a life partner; learn from it like I would a parent or teacher; protect it like I would a child. I can offer this place my deepest attention, strive to live as close to the land as possible, and participate in reciprocity by giving back at every opportunity. Kimmerer says becoming naturalised to a place is to “live as if this is the land that feeds you”. It begins by declaring: “here, I will give my gifts and here I will meet my responsibilities.”^[20] I will demonstrate my gratitude for the fascinating beings that surround me, in return for their unique gifts and for their companionship, by offering them my human gifts of love and protection. I will do this in the public sphere and in the more private moments of my everyday life.

We must continue to act to protect the climate and the diversity of the more-than-human world. We must also make it our life’s work to know our surrounding landscapes as intimately as possible, so that we may build our own resilience to climate change, while attempting to aid the survival and adaptation of the ecosystems we live within. Far from mutually exclusive, these aims are highly interrelated. In the true spirit of reciprocity, if we take care to build the resilience of the life around us, our own resilience to climate impacts will increase too.

Of course, sometimes, despite the unwavering determination of people acting as protectors, change brought by destructive forces is inevitable. Despite the skill and perseverance of Taungurung warriors and resistance leaders, colonisation wrought havoc on this land. Despite the efforts of thousands of climate activists around the world, we may still encounter social and ecological collapse caused by climate change. Due to drought, the increased frequency and severity of fires and storms, and climatic changes affecting the ability of crops to thrive, there’s no guarantee that this place will remain habitable into the future. It’s predicted that more than 1 billion people may be displaced around the world within 30 years (although most of this forced migration is predicted to occur first in the global south).^[21] Yunkaporta once again turns us towards Indigenous ways of being to help us weather this time of turbulence: “all over Australia we have stories of past armageddons, warning against the behaviours that make these difficult to survive and offering a blueprint for transitional ways of being, so that our custodial species can keep creation in motion.”^[22] However this challenge is immense; our cities are established and our systems entrenched.

Despite our best efforts, as climate impacts escalate, we may collectively fail to protect life. If we are unable to prevent worsening human suffering and ecological collapse, we might at least restore some of humanity’s moral legacy. In return for our attempts to understand ‘right behaviour’, toward the living world, the earth may yet gift us one last thing: enduring purpose, even in the face of inevitable collapse. If we refuse to abandon the earth that has gifted us with so much, if we persist on our journey toward rediscovering mutuality, we may be able to counteract the paralysing existential dread that might otherwise accompany runaway climate change. Wouldn’t it be profoundly meaningful to spend the time we have left rediscovering what it means to be human, re-embodying our role as a custodial species?

If I can’t prevent the loss of the more-than-human life that I am coming to know, I will still stay here as long as possible, so that I may, at the very least, witness them as they go. In return for all they have given me, I will offer them a final human gift: the shadow of love, grief.

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1. ‘Eildon Struggles to Hold Back Floods’, The Age, November 10, 2022. ↑
2. Con Boekel, Bridging Lives and Loves, NNE Places, August edition, 2013. ↑
3. Roy Henry Patterson & Jennifer Jones, On Taungurung Land: Sharing History and Culture, 2020. ↑
4. On Taungurung Land: Sharing History and Culture. ↑
5. Taungurung, Taun Wurrung, Dhaung Wurrung, Daunarung are variations of the spelling preferred by certain families. I have used Taungurung in an ongoing way to be consistent with the TLAWC. ↑
6. Woinarski et al., Ongoing unravelling of a continental fauna: Decline and extinction of Australian mammals since European settlement, 2015: <https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1417301112> ↑
7. Bridging Lives and Loves. ↑
8. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. ↑
9. Tollefson, Climate change is hitting the planet faster than scientists originally thought. Latest IPCC climate report warns that rising greenhouse-gas emissions could soon outstrip the ability of many communities to adapt, Nature, 2022: <https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00585-7> ↑
10. Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, 2014. ↑
11. Lenton et al., Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against, Nature, 2020: <https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03595-0> ↑
12. On Taungurung Land: Sharing History and Culture. ↑
13. Don Chambers, The History of Violet Town or Honeysuckle in Australia Felix 1836-1908, 1985. ↑
14. Nyagaroon, A Taungurung Story: https://tinyurl.com/facebookwatchTLAWC ↑
15. Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, 2020. ↑
16. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge & the Teachings of Plants, 2020. ↑
17. Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 2020 ↑
18. Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 2020 ↑
19. On Taungurung Land: Sharing History and Culture. ↑
20. Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 2020. ↑
21. Climate crisis could displace 1.2bn people by 2050, report warns, The Guardian, 2020. <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/09/climate-crisis-could-displace-12bn-people-by-2050-report-warns> ↑
22. Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. ↑

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Kim Croxford is an activist and writer living on Taungurung Country.