Samantha Muller

• Flinders University

Issues of race and sovereignty are embedded in every cross‐cultural collaboration in natural resource management (NRM). This article aims to bring these issues to the forefront by incorporating the term whiteness. Whiteness enables a critique of the privileging of Western sovereignty and the so‐called objective and universal value of Western scienc...

Indigenous nations have always and continue to assert their sovereignties to resist colonialism. This paper makes explicit the ways in which environmental management has been and continues to act as a tool of colonialism, particularly by privileging Western science, institutions, and administrative procedures. We argue that to decolonise environmen...

Indigenous involvement in Australian water management is conventionally driven by a top-down approach by nonIndigenous government agencies, that asks “how do we engage Indigenous people?” and has culminated in the ineffective “consult” and “service delivery” processes evident in mainstream water management planning. This is a hopeful paper that ide...

This is the golden age of philanthropy. Over the 55-year period 1998–2052, bequests to charity in the USA alone are estimated to be between $109 and $454 billion per year. This paper exhorts geographers to give critical attention to less-than-charitable consequences of the so-called ‘new philanthropy’ among the super-rich. It sets out a number of a...

Ontological differences between mainstream ‘Natural Resource Management’ (NRM) and Indigenous Australian ‘Caring for Country’ are an often invisible but complicating factor in cross-cultural collaborations in land and sea management. In an effort to be included, or to include, Indigenous peoples and their estates in NRM funding, many Indigenous gro...

Focusing on the coexistence of competing and contested interests in intercultural natural resource management (NRM) systems in Australia and Malaysia, this paper explores the ways in which ontological pluralism and the interplay of socio‐cultural, political–economic and biophysical influences shape NRM systems. We aim to foster a discursive space i...

This paper exhorts geographers to give critical attention to the super-rich, defined as individuals with investable assets in excess of US$1 million. The super-rich currently number almost 11 million globally (2011) and have collective wealth in excess of $42 trillion. We argue that as a result of our discipline’s typical, and not unjustifiable, fo...

Drawing on insights from scholars whose work at Macquarie University has engaged with a wide range of cultural interfaces in land use and sea country management, this paper discusses the genealogy and application of a series of related concepts that provide a powerful set of tools and practices for nurturing respectful working relationships between...

The popular construction of rural places as ‘white’ spaces has significant repercussions for ethnic, Indigenous and ‘other’ groups who do not always fit within prescribed dominant processes. This paper provides new insights for rural scholarship through an engagement with Indigenous specific experiences of governance and decision making in rural an...

Sea country planning has emerged as a tool for Indigenous Australian groups to express their aspirations and seek investment for managing the sea. This article contextualises sea country within a Yolngu Traditional Owner view, challenging dominant understandings, and administrative and legislative provisions for public ownership of the seas. Challe...

This paper investigates practices of border formation through an analysis of Australia’s quarantine processes. We use the work of the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS), through the Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy (NAQS), to interrogate the ways in which borders are made and remade in daily life. By exploring quotidian pract...

Recent government initiatives have acknowledged Indigenous ranger groups in the ‘top end’ (northern region) of the Northern Territory (NT), Australia, for their holistic role in environmental management and community development. The services provided by these groups are of national significance with respect to biodiversity protection, ongoing cult...

Dominant social and political constructions of ‘saltwater’ assume marine environments to be common property resources, justifying jurisdiction and management responsibilities by the State. However, in northern Australia ‘saltwater country’ is gaining recognition as a cultural landscape with customary law defining ownership and management rights and...

Accountability, a keyword in the development discourse, also takes centre stage in the practical politics of the development processes. Accountability requirements for funding, governance and recognition operate at multiple scales to ensure standards are complied with, funds are accounted for, corruption is minimised, and the impact government and...

Management of Australia's National Parks and Protected Areas originally developed according to the United State's ‘Yellowstone’ model. Aimed primarily at preserving ‘wilderness’ areas, this form of protected area management has excluded indigenous habitation and land management, effectively colonising these landscapes. Since the 1980s indigenous ex...