The Community Weathering Station (CoWS) encourages people to view climate change through a uniquely socio-cultural lens. It sees local climate action as vitally important to meeting global challenges but also as a means of improving public health and supporting Indigenous people by redressing colonial harms.
“International commitments in Glasgow to rapidly reduce emissions are imperative if we are to protect our communities and ensure a liveable future,” says CoWS coordinator Dr Jennifer Hamilton, a lecturer in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New England. “However, action at the local level can also build more equitable community health, and reimagine the way we relate to one another and to our environment.”
This Sunday (7 November), CoWS is inviting people of the New England to take part in a slow walk along Dumaresq Creek, through the heart of Armidale, as part of a project funded by King’s College London and part of the Weathering Waterways project. In a “sister walk”, people on the other side of the world, walking along the Thames in old England, will be able to hear Anaiwan and Gumbaynggirr artist Gabi Briggs reflect on climate change and colonisation in Armidale.
Gabi says addressing Indigenous dispossession – by healing people and country and improving land access – should be at the heart of our nation’s response to climate change. “I’m driven by a desire to heal myself, my community and my Country from colonial harm,” she says. “Measures that centre Indigenous sovereignty all lead back to care and respect for Country.”
CoWS draws parallels between the development of fossil fuel technologies and the exploitation of land and water. Both, Jennifer says, are products of the same historical processes that saw the violent taking of Indigenous land and lives around the world.
Addressing this damage is not straightforward and requires new thinking and new alliances. In a related partnership between CoWS and other community groups, the Armidale Climate and Health Project seeks to restore the health of people and our planet, while foregrounding Indigenous knowledge.
“We are eager to explore what climate action might look like if we were to respect, value and centre Indigenous knowledge; how we might heal the planet by working to acknowledge that violence,” Jennifer says. “The walk combines all this and seeks to amplify the situation in the New England, inviting people to think about the ways that colonisation and its powerful economic and political interests has contributed to the degradation of Australia and helped to fuel this planetary crisis.
“Beyond solar power and organic farming, it’s a collective step towards seeding new conversations and respectful solidarity. We have, in our midst, the Indigenous knowledge and practices for how to relate respectfully to our ecosystems and each other. The community of Armidale can take a different stance, and model the change we want to see elsewhere.”
Those who cannot take part in Sunday’s walk will soon be able to download audio tracks from https://soundcloud.com/weatheringstation that include an interview with Gabi and Anaiwan elder Uncle Steve Widders. He says the pandemic is “a training run of what’s to come if climate change is not addressed” and recommends embracing the ways of Aboriginal people who lived sustainably for thousands of years and “always thought generations ahead; they were visionaries, they looked to the future”.
The COP26 Creek Walk starts at 3pm from Lake Zot Gate in the UNE Gym carpark and the round-trip will take about two hours. For COVID-safe planning, please register your interest in joining the walk at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cop26-creek-walk-decolonising-the-new-england-for-climate-justice-tickets-201349250027
