Economics Assignment on Indigenous Land Management
Question
Task
Purpose: This economics assignment requires you synthesise scientific information with your own reflective writing.
Reflective writing helps you to look at an experience or situation and offer your perspectives on it. This helps you consider why things occur, to evaluate situations and apply critical thinking and problem solving skills. It also helps you practice self analysis with the aim of learning from an experience.
Writing a Opinion Piece, Commentary or Blog will support you to achieve the Subject Learning Outcome "Be able to communicate, in a professionally appropriate style, about contemporary Agricultural challenges by considering multiple perspectives to arrive at a justified viewpoint"
Task Description:
You are required to write an Opinion Piece, Commentary or Blog using your personal reflection on the process of social justice and reconciliation within the context of agriculture.
Answer
The present economics assignment focuses on the context of agriculture which is one of the most essential economic activities of Australia (Pascoe, 2018). Food and agriculture are both fundamental to the survival of the human beings and it has led the very foundation of the human civilization since ages. I have spent my childhood in a beautiful house that was surrounded by plants on all sides. I have always been attracted to the natural flora and fauna that add beauty to nature. I have seen my parents and grandparents spend a huge time in our backyard gardens and we had our farmlands. I used to enjoy watching the entire process of preparing and before farming till the growth and the harvesting of the crops. However, after growing up and attending school I developed a keen interest in learning about agricultural studies and how there have been several changes or transitions in the agricultural formats in the pre-colonial and post-colonial eras.
Once I was in charge of leading a team project along with some of my team members. This was for an annual day competition that would take place in our schools. I was selected as the team in charge and had to look after my team that comprised of about ten members. I realized that the team members were initially much enthusiastic about the work and they took up their responsibilities in a proper way. However,after some days. I could see that some of the students in my team were afraid to take up any tasks. They were often sad and looked disinterested. I was initially unable to understand the reason However after some time, I came to know that these students are from indigenous backgrounds. As our school encourages an all-inclusive and diverse educational curriculum many students were coming from Aboriginal or indigenous backgrounds. I took some special sessions with them and came to know that agriculture is a much sensitive issue for them. As per their opinion when they went home and discussed their project their families were sad. I was moved by theirstories that how their age-old traditional agricultural methods have been brutally crushed and subside. It is due to this reason that they are unable to match their mentality with the mindsets or the agricultural concepts that were being given by the other non-indigenousAustralian students.
I was moved by their story and went along with them to visit their houses and know about the methods that they followed in agriculture and farming. It is from this point in time that I gave a deeper reading to the works like Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu, Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident (Pascoe, 2014).
The author in this bookPascoe is an Indigenous historian who shows his relentless efforts to remove the criticisms or the denigration of the indigenous people Hughes-d'Aeth (2021) Davis et al (2019) stated that theindigenous people have been much closer to nature for ages. They are the ones who have real knowledge about the different species of plants and animals that grow around them. I have been able to gain a huge enlightening knowledge from this book. I have learned that with the arrival of the agricultural era there have been severe issues within the indigenous communities. In the book The Call of the Reed Warbler, the author talks about the shift in his observation towards the world. The author says that he could finally realize the actual colors of the world. The world was no longer a land filled with greenery or agriculture with an efficient and promising future but it was a highly mechanized world that is devoid of its relationships. I interviewed the family members of the indigenous teammates and came to know that after the arrival of modern and innovative farmingtechniques their lands and rivers have been destroyed.
A similar account of damaged natural settings is mentioned in Pascoe's book the Dark Emu, Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident (Pascoe, 2014). The author in this book gives an account of something serious that happened which damaged the entire natural agricultural setting that had been set up by the indigenous people for ages. It has been suggested by the author that their kids and future generation have grown in a fog. They have been denied the opportunity to see the actual brilliance of the indigenous people. Gammage’s The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia shows the great metaphor that lies in the very setting of Australia. Australia is seen as a land of soil, harvesting bush, farming, and others that form a metaphysical substance that holds the place together (Gammage, 2011). However, this is an entire irony because this has not given unity to people but has only given rise to more distortions and disunity among people. This is because several non-indigenous communities like that of the Uluru and others have suffered from the issues like the destruction of their lands, isolation, losing their economic independence and their means of livelihood, and many other such aspects. I have come across the concept of fire management in this book. The author talks about the incredible management methods of the Aboriginals and the indigenous people in Australia who used fire as a tool for creating a well-organized and carefully designed landscape. The different chapters in this book show how the indigenous people have talked about land management. Chapter 4, titled Heaven on Earth links earthly duties or the responsibilities through which the Aboriginals could maintain the management of land and other duties. It is said that the fire management technique fulfilled the five features namely- It was planned, it could be easily predicted, it was precise and it was organized (Gammage, 2011). Therefore, this technique used by the indigenous people was to bring unity both on the local and the Universal level in Australia. The book unsettling food Politics has also helped me to gain a huge knowledge about the food movements in Australia. Mayes suggests in his book that a shared goal is to be developed so that the indigenous and the non – indigenous people in Australia can listen to each other and work together. The best solution is to bring together both the food politics and struggles of the Indigenous people in Australia. This book shows the role of agriculture in Australia's settler-colonial project. Mayes has described that the setters used agriculture as a practice to eliminate Australia’s Indigenous inhabitants by crushing their agricultural systems and establish white possessions (Mayes, 2018).
After being inspired by Pascoe's work, I researched through some diaries and accounts of real explorers on the internet to know about the techniques of land management used by Aboriginals. I Have been greatly fascinated by all these facts. Therefore, I was assured by teammates that we will be working on the lost and forgotten indigenous agricultural techniques for the project.
On a personal note, I was often of a limited, restricted, and narrowed mindset. I was afraid of trying something new However after this experience I have been able to develop myself on a personal and professional front. From my self-analysis, I realized that I have been able to acquire a huge knowledge about the different agricultural methods that were used by the indigenous people and how they have been abandoned in the post-colonial era. I have developed cross-cultural knowledge which will help in my professional life in the coming days. In the future, I can use the cession learned from this experience. I will be able to work by setting up an all-inclusive environment so that I can get the knowledge from them and work inclusively.
On a personal note, I have been able to work on my communication skill. Although I had a helpful and empathetic nature I was often unable to communicate with people. However, it is through the interviewing skill, that I have been able to work on my communication and this has helped me on a personal and professional level. In the future, I will always be able to work by expressing my feelings and understand the feelings of others as well.
References
Allam, L. (2019). Dark Emu's infinite potential: 'Our kids have grown up in a fog about the history of the land'. the Guardian.
Davis, J., Moulton, A. A., Van Sant, L., & Williams, B. (2019). Anthropocene, capitalocene,… plantationocene?: A manifesto for ecological justice in an age of global crises. Geography Compass, 13(5), e12438.
Gammage, B. (2011). The biggest estate on earth: how Aborigines made Australia (p. 434). Sydney: Allen & Unwin
Hughes-d'Aeth, T. (2021). Friday essay: Dark Emu and the blindness of Australian agriculture. Economics assignment The Conversation.
Mayes, C. (2018). Unsettling food politics: Agriculture, dispossession and sovereignty in Australia. Rowman & Littlefield.
Pascoe, B. (2014). Dark emu black seeds: Agriculture or accident?. Broome, W.A: Magabala Books.
