Backhaus, Vincent, Nuendorf, Nalisa, Brooksbank, Lokes, and Innes, Tahnee (2024) Blue Country: Nurturing meaningful relationships in discontinuous environments. In: Newlands, Maxine, and Hansen, Claire, (eds.) Critical Approaches to the Australian Blue Humanities. Routledge Environmental Humanities . Routledge, Abingdon, UK, pp. 23-34.

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Abstract

Blue Country presents a challenge to the notion of blue spaces by a People of Knowledge. It aims to raise questions about research, particularly in contexts where Traditional Owner voices are renewing the call urging deeper and more meaningful engagement between researchers and Indigenous communities, people, and knowledge. Fundamental to this understanding is the contextualisation of embodied, inalienable rights, responsibilities, and relations of and between people and Landscapes, Waterscapes, and Skyscapes. Water mediates and guides understanding through these scapes and its temporal and cyclical nature fosters meaningful social relationships. This chapter guides us to think of relationships, social or otherwise, flowing across littoral, riparian, and marine bodies of water and out into the deep history of the oceans, only to cycle back as rain across the land and island landscape. Imbued with Traditional Knowledge, water guides a storied understanding of how these important conceptualisations and relationships come to inform the notion of Blue Country as a foundation of Countried understandings of knowledges, peoples, and the importance of personhood. The authors introduce the notion of Blue Country as a resistance and adaptation to accepting the status quo of knowing and understanding presented by blue spaces. Through four stories, the chapter layers in an understanding of Pasin and Luksave, a creolisation of thinking and understanding of good social relationships. The stories are situated across Melanesian, Torres Strait Islands, and continental (Australia). What is revealed is a gap between understanding how a People of Knowledge sees blue spaces and the way blue spaces chart a new engagement into the region.

Item ID:	84693
Item Type:	Book Chapter (Research - B1)
ISBN:	9781003365501
Copyright Information:	© 2025 selection and editorial matter, Maxine Newlands and Claire Hansen; individual chapters, the contributors.
Date Deposited:	25 Feb 2025 01:00
FoR Codes:	43 HISTORY, HERITAGE AND ARCHAEOLOGY > 4303 Historical studies > 430302 Australian history @ 50% 44 HUMAN SOCIETY > 4406 Human geography > 440601 Cultural geography @ 50%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1304 Heritage > 130401 Assessment of heritage value @ 100%
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