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The “White Magic” of Modernity: Retracing Indigenous Environmental Knowledge in Settler-Colonialist Australia

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Environmental Transformations and Cultural Responses

Abstract

Wergin presents original material drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a conflict situation over the construction of a AUD $45 billion liquefied natural gas facility on top of an Indigenous heritage site: Walmadany/James Price Point, at the Indian Ocean coast of Northwest Australia. It discusses, from an emic point of view, the inadequacy of western science terminology to represent Indigenous knowledge about the environment in question. To overcome related shortcomings in assessment processes of natural and cultural values, Wergin argues for ways in which western law und science can be better equipped first to recognise Indigenous knowledge as ontologically different but equal, and second to overcome the impossible task of expressing Indigenous world(view)s in modernist terms.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Heidelberg, Germany

    Carsten Wergin

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  1. Carsten Wergin
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Academic/Ed, Munich, Germany

    Eveline Dürr

  2. Munich, Germany

    Arno Pascht

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Wergin, C. (2017). The “White Magic” of Modernity: Retracing Indigenous Environmental Knowledge in Settler-Colonialist Australia. In: Dürr, E., Pascht, A. (eds) Environmental Transformations and Cultural Responses. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53349-4_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53349-4_7

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-53348-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-53349-4

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