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Ethnogeomorphology Deirdre Wilcock, Gary Brierley and Richard Howitt Progress in Physical Geography published online 30 April 2013 DOI: 10.1177/0309133313483164 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ppg.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/04/30/0309133313483164

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Ethnogeomorphology Deirdre Wilcock Victoria University, Australia

Gary Brierley University of Auckland, New Zealand

Richard Howitt Macquarie University, Australia

Abstract Geomorphology offers an effective entry point into wider debates across geography and the sciences, framing understandings of landscapes as manifestations of complex and emergent relationships that can be used as a platform to support conversations among multiple and diverse worldviews. Physical geographers have much to contribute in moving beyond monological (one only) views of landscapes. This paper draws upon concepts of emergence, connectivity and space-time relationality to develop an ‘ethnogeomorphic’ outlook upon biophysical-and-cultural (‘living’) landscapes. This perspective is grounded through ethnographic case studies with Indigenous1 communities in Australia and Canada that examine knowledge production and concerns for environmental negotiation and decision-making. Extending beyond a traditional approach to ethnosciences, ethnogeomorphology seeks to move beyond cross-disciplinary scientific disciplines (and their associated epistemologies) towards a shared (if contested) platform of knowledge transfer and communication that reflects multiple ways of connecting to landscapes. Convergent perspectives upon landscape understandings are highlighted from Indigenous knowledges and emerging, relational approaches to geomorphic analysis. Ethnogeomorphology presents a situated, non-relativist response to people–landscape connections that reflects and advocates sentient relationships to place. Potential applications of ethnogeomorphology as an integrating theme of geographic inquiry are explored, highlighting important tensions in the knowledge production process. Keywords place, emergence, critical geomorphology, Indigenous knowledges, contingency

I Introduction Geography has long positioned itself as a discipline that appraises nature-society or people-environment interactions. Innately, these considerations build upon peoples’ connections with landscapes. While place (e.g. Bender and Winer, 2001; Tuan, 1977) and landscape (e.g. Wylie, 2007) form a basis through which geography is positioned in wider debates, this paper uses geomorphology, and physical processes themselves

(see also Massey, 2006), to explore a conceptual frame through which geography could contribute to the important work of communicating among worldviews. Geomorphology is one way

Corresponding author: Deirdre Wilcock, Centre for Cultural Diversity and Wellbeing, Footscray Nicolson Campus, Victoria University VIC 3011, Australia. Email: [email protected]


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Progress in Physical Geography

of beginning this conversation.2 This paper purposefully draws upon, and traverses between, languages from so-called ‘physical’ and ‘human’ geography to illustrate synergies within geography – to recognize that landscapes are necessarily and simultaneously cultural and biophysical. It also illustrates philosophical tensions and controversies that act to reinforce particular discourses and render languages outside of specific limited ‘fields’ unintelligible. Physical geographers have much to contribute to and learn from these debates. We write this paper as a theoretical foray into ‘thinking with landscapes’ (similar to Wylie, 2007, but from a geomorphic process perspective) and, specifically, being able to see how multiple scales (spatial and temporal) are interacting in places simultaneously (also known as ‘relational scale’ – see Howitt, 1993, 1998, 2011). We use the term ‘ethnogeomorphology’ as a geomorphic lens to discuss ‘relationality’ – or the way in which processes emerge in nondeterministic and non-causative ways (see Phillips, 2006, 2011; Whatmore, 2002). The implications of this frame of thinking (for environmental management and beyond) are explored separately elsewhere (see Wilcock and Brierley, 2012). The purpose here is to explain the framework and its foundations. In geomorphic terms, concerns for landscape analysis build upon assessments of forms, processes and evolutionary adjustments, and associated applications of these understandings as an integrating biophysical template (e.g. Brierley and Fryirs, 2005; Petts and Amoros, 1996). Within human geography, landscape-scale relations underpin associations to place and home. They strongly influence land-use potential on the one hand, and combine with historical considerations to influence settlement patterns, trade links and sociocultural interactions on the other (see Olwig, 2002; Relph, 1976; Schama, 1995; Tuan, 1977; Wylie, 2007). Collectively, combinations of these factors help to fashion peoples’ sense of identity, heritage and belonging – their sense of place as more-than-natural and more-than-

human entities – both as individuals and in social groups and communities. Indeed, geographic and historical considerations underpin many Indigenous knowledges and associated relationships to place, typically expressed through ‘whole of system’ understandings (Howitt, 2001; Weir, 2009). In this paper, we seek to establish a coherent way of looking at, and examining, landscapes that presents an integrating platform for geographic inquiry and associated landscape-scale management applications. Our approach is normative in the sense that it advocates an ethical frame of engagement between multiple worldviews. This represents an attempt to move beyond within-disciplinary divides in practice (see Demeritt, 2009) by focusing attention upon common ground (pun intended) and associated disciplinary discussions around time-space interactions (Harrison et al., 2004; Lane, 2001; Massey, 2001, 2003). It emphasises scientific (geomorphic) concerns for linkages and connections among component parts of landscapes, alongside concern for both people–people and people–landscape interactions. These interactions are examined through case-study research that assesses Indigenous approaches to the totality of landscape relationships, based on lived experiences and practices. We use these understandings to examine the values and imaginaries that interweave in landscapes, given the persistence of Indigenous presence in landscapes (see Brody, 2002 [1981]). These knowledges are appraised alongside emerging approaches to geomorphic inquiry that frame system-specific understandings through analyses of contingent interactions. We demonstrate how similarities among these understandings present a convergent approach to analysis of mutually constituted cultural-and-biophysical landscapes. In addition to the similarities, we use this approach to examine knowledge production processes that could appreciate the different, and contested, ways in which space is produced, and the ways in which landscapes are lived, and living entities capable of overlapping and being


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overlapped as multiple and diverse places. This is the approach we refer to as ‘ethnogeomorphology’. We draw upon recent developments in geography around flows, processes and relational theory and hybridity (e.g. Anderson and McFarlane, 2011; Jones, 2009; Larsen and Johnson, 2012; Malpas, 2012; Rocheleau, 2008; Whatmore, 2002) and non-modern ontologies (Braun, 2004), as well as literatures that examine landscapes as entities that ‘speak back’ (see also Arntzen and Brady, 2008; Wylie, 2009), to extend current theoretical analyses of time-space. This theoretical development provides space for alternative ways of coming to know and understand the world. These discussions have practical implications for broader, more inclusive acceptance of knowledge pluralism, positioning landscapes as points of disciplinary and ontological convergence (see also Massey, 2006; Wylie, 2007). It is important to emphasize at the outset what this paper, and our approach to ethnogeomorphology, is not. First, in our efforts to define ethnogeomorphology, we are not proposing a framework that attempts to speak for all voices and perspectives, nor that conflation or confusion of knowledges is helpful, either between western sciences and diverse Indigenous knowledges, or an imagined homogenous ‘Indigenous knowledge’. Rather, landscape analyses are used here to provide a platform for discussion and negotiation among divergent understandings about the nature, value, purpose and meaning of landscapes. In this way, we use physical landscapes as foundational metaphors to understand complex concepts across discourses in both physical and human geographies. Second, we do not seek to provoke debate and argument around ‘ethnosciences’ and associated controversies, striving to ensure that we do not ‘drain life out of culture’ (Shore, 1996) or ignore the politics of colonialism that can come with ‘Traditional Ecological Knowledge’ approaches to

resource negotiation (Cruikshank, 2003; Nadasdy, 2004, 2005). Instead, by drawing attention to the social and cultural dimensions of landscapes in which divergent ontologies coexist, we suggest that pertinent commonalities in approaches to conceptualization of landscapes (which take careful account of epistemological challenges of human/nature interactions in colonialist contexts) demand that scientists engage with ethnographically informed case studies and the Indigenous peoples whose cultural knowledge and understanding underpins such studies. The paper draws on work undertaken with Indigenous peoples in Australia and Canada and emerging scientific approaches to landscape analysis undertaken within geomorphology.3 These case studies demonstrate the need to move beyond the ‘sterile dichotomy’ (Agrawal, 1995) of Indigenous knowledges and scientific knowledges, in two ways: (1) as understandings that emerge from, rather than sit in, static categories; and (2) highlighting controversies over knowledge production – in particular the marginalization of knowledges that do not adhere to technocentric worldviews (examples here are in forestry management (Braun, 1997, 2002), in water (Strang, 2004) and in a homogenous ‘Traditional Ecological Knowledge’ discourse where Indigenous knowledge is ‘cherry-picked’ (Cruikshank, 2005; Nadasdy, 2005)). Technocentric worldviews tend towards a view of landscapes that are able to be ‘managed’ or researched; this view has privileged a view of landscapes that is disconnected from human endeavour – a dead stage on which humans operate (White, 1996). A technocentric approach is one worldview, among many. Indigenous-non-Indigenous knowledge interfaces are effective spaces in which to examine the implications of alternative perspectives to technocentrism. A shift beyond technocentrism recognizes the politically constitutive nature of discussions between epistemologies, striving to provide a discussion space for knowledges outside the normative structures of subsuming an ‘Indigenous


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knowledge’ into natural resource management. In this vein, we aim to move past discussions of how Indigenous knowledge can be made relevant to an objective and value-neutral environmental management exercise (see Berkes and Berkes, 2009, for a discussion of Indigenous knowledge as fuzzy logic) and towards a progressive engagement between different worldviews embedded in sociopolitical contexts. Our examination of relationality in geomorphology and Indigenous knowledges as a space of knowledge production that can situate a broader perspective on environmental does not suggest that this is a value-free space of discussion; rather, it is a place where the politically constitutive nature of knowledge production may be tentatively engaged. We argue that ethnogeomorphology could be used to provide a frame for dialogue which can situate different knowledges in effective, but certainly not always consensual, conversation. Ethnogeomorphology, then, is based upon an approach to the notion of scale in geography which Howitt (2011) terms ‘radical contextualism’, defined as: an epistemological, political, philosophical, and aesthetic orientation to the importance of the material, transactional, and relational connections of history, geography, and society (of time, place, and social process) as influential on how things unfold, and how we come to understand and respond to the events, places and people around us – the sticky materialism and being-together-in-place. It points also to the priority of ethical connection . . . [i]t points to the value of field-based research in which observation, experience, and engagement with the processes of everyday life and the need make sense of gesture, symbol, and signal on the basis of the context in which they are delivered and received as the basis for knowing and doing social geographies. (Howitt, 2011: 133)

This approach views scale in relational terms, shifting away from hierarchical, flat and/or linear notions, or approaches that deem scale irrelevant (cf. Marston et al., 2005). Relationality

refers to the contingent or non-causative/deterministic nature of relationships. As emphasized in the quote above, acknowledging the mutually constitutive nature of the ‘present’ effectively moves away from demanding that our discussions of landscapes are based on linear and deterministic conceptions of place. Ethnogeomorphology opens a dialogue between ethically engaged geomorphological practices (which are centred around place) and sentient landscapes (including human and non-human beings) as agents of connection, change and meaning. This paper argues that landscapes are neither geomorphic or cultural, nor reducible to a scientific entity, rather like Corenblit et al.’s (2010) coevolutionary, eco-geomorphic entity, which cannot be explained as ecological or geomorphic in its own right – rather, that these are mutually constitutive (see also Corenblit et al., 2011). This relational approach emphasizes the mutually constitutive nature of environment, identity and place as an evolving entity – of the ecological, geomorphic and cultural. With this vision, it attempts to overcome some of the failures of research as well as current methodologies of intercultural communication that disconnect, dislocate and reduce the meaning of landscapes (see also Rocheleau and Roth, 2007; Roth, 2008, 2009). In this framing, ethnogeomorphology promotes a nexus of relation. Our paper is structured as follows. First, we overview recent place-based developments within geography that highlight moves towards more coherent transdisciplinary understandings. Second, transitions in geomorphic theory and practice are reviewed, emphasizing underpinning notions of contingency and relationality of time-space that can only be meaningfully appraised through context-specific applications, thereby emphasizing associations to place. Third, case-study research with three Indigenous groups in Australia and Canada is used to document approaches to landscape understandings. In the discussion, ethnogeomorphology is expressed as a form of ‘relational geomorphology’, a critical approach


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to geomorphology that acknowledges the agency both of the researcher and of place.

II Setting the stage: emerging perspectives in geography Geography has traditionally positioned itself as a discipline which sheds light upon holistic approaches to environmental management. However, as Rhoads (2004) illustrates, dualistic perspectives continue to dominate the discipline, whereby human and physical geographers engage in separate discourses with ‘nature’ positioned as external (see also Braun, 2004; Castree and Braun, 2001; Gober, 2000; Johnston, 1997). Massey (1999, 2005, 2006) offers some fruitful suggestions for a more coherent view of where human and physical geographers can build upon theory around emergence. Drawing on Raper and Livingstone’s (1995) work around time-space, Massey (1999: 262) asserts a relational, open and dynamic approach that conceptualises space as ‘constituted through the social, rather than as dimensions defining an arena within which the social takes place’. The relational context of a connected time-space, or SpaceTime (May and Thrift, 2004) departs from traditional perspectives, opening doors towards understandings of emergence based on complex open systems and feedback (see, for example, Richards, 1990, 1994). In a geomorphic context, Eden draws upon relationality/hybridity and actor-network theory to illustrate how nature is positioned as an external, neutral entity in river restoration projects, ignoring the social context of these processes (Eden and Bear, 2011; Eden and Tunstall, 2006; Eden et al., 2000). Although contentious, the notion of place is perhaps the most tenable agent of common ground across physical and human geography – Tsing (2004) refers to place as a ‘sticky universal’. Although everyone makes place, the places which we connect to, and the relationships which are formed, may be fundamentally

different. Drawing upon the work of Tuan (1977) that outlines the social construction of ‘bounded space’, Ingold (2000) describes places as the space of ‘dwelling’ that provides the connection in co-dependent and contingent ways. More recently, Ingold (2005) critiqued his earlier usage of the term, explaining that the term can conjure up a ‘cosy and comfortable’ image, whereas in fact there is no singular steady space where humans and non-humans live – it is ‘constantly tumultuous, contested and never pleasant’ (Ingold, 2005: 503). This resonates with romantic visions of landscape, where contestation and struggles for co-existence dare not intrude (see Rose, 1999). These assertions extend beyond the causal, linear relationships expressed by Sauer (1963) in terms of ‘culture as agent, landscape as medium’. Rather, notions of place and dwelling reflect mutually constituted relationships between landscapes and how we think about them. Some geographers have made concerted efforts to retain a coherent society-nature focus of inquiry (see Weisz and Clark, 2011). Indeed, Rhoads (2006) proposes that notions of mutual constitution – and Whiteheadian theory of emergence – could provide a theoretical path between physical and human geography because it situates mechanistic materialism as only one of a multitude of bases for geomorphic inquiry. This opens discursive space for understanding landscapes in a multitude of ways – from purely mechanical to highly responsive spiritual places. Hillman et al. (2008), writing about river restoration, argue that place identity is a ‘necessary prerequisite rather than an inherently sufficient condition for river health’ (p. 127; emphasis in original). These considerations are important in two key ways. First, they relate understandings of place across human and physical geography. Second, they emphasize concerns for the ways in which these understandings have been derived (i.e. process and contextual underpinnings of knowledge production). This latter point is emphasized by Lane (2001):


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Progress in Physical Geography our knowledge is conditioned by decisions taken over how research is being done, exposure to how others are doing research, the places visited as part of the research process, and the knowledge of the researcher of the general area within which the research is being conducted. (Lane, 2001: 251)

Both Baker and Twidale (1991) and Tadaki et al. (2012) express similar perspectives in their discussion of interrelationships between landscapes and geomorphologists, the former calling for a ‘reenchantment’ of geomorphology and the latter critiquing the ‘work’ of physical geographers. These contributions emphasize the ways in which researchers are agents of change in the studies that they undertake. Implications of agency can be used to examine the context of knowledge pluralism. Influences such as interpersonal relations (e.g. student-mentor associations and research groups) are also important in theory development (Kennedy, 2006). As Rescher (2000: 82) puts it: ‘[w]hat we detect or ‘‘find’’ in nature always depends on the mechanisms by which we search’. Others have done work around bringing together human and geomorphic approaches to landscapes. Duncan and Duncan’s (1988) approach of ‘rereading the landscape’ sets the tone for landscape studies through reading landscapes as text. The landscape, according to Duncan and Duncan, is encoded with cultural meaning. Reynard et al.’s (2009) ‘geomorphosites’ emphasise the importance of geomorphic landscapes to people, encouraging their protection in legislation. An ethnogeomorphic lens extends these approaches by thinking of places as emergent entities, rather than geomorphic units as specific, and separate, entities that people should protect (i.e. geomorphological sites are not simply containers that humans fill up with meaning – see Castree, 2005; Castree and Braun, 2001; Latour, 1993, 2005). Ethnogeomorphology recognises that a relational approach begins to break down the sterile dichotomy of protection of ‘sites’ for their own

intrinsic value, viewing landscapes as entities that change us, and that we change (Phillips, 2006; Rescher, 2000). Ethnogeomorphology is predicated upon a basis of recognizing the connection between nature and culture. Similar to these emerging discussions upon how we construct understandings of landscape relationships and place, some climatologists have recently called for recognition of ‘cultural climatology’ (e.g. Thornes and McGregor, 2003). Hulme (2008) elegantly captures this notion when he comments: climate can also be understood as an imaginative idea, an idea constructed and endowed with meaning and value through cultural activity . . . Registers of climate can be read in memory, behaviour, text and identity as much as they can be measured through meteorology . . . So why do we persist with this dualistic account of climate as non-overlapping physical and cultural entities? . . . geographical work can help bring these two orthogonal readings of climate into a more creative alignment . . . The subject to be studied – climate – needs to be reframed through negotiating a different ontological and epistemological structuring of climate knowledge. (Hulme, 2008: 7)

As Hulme (2008: 7) notes, geographers are well placed to consider such ontological and epistemological restructuring through their ‘imaginative yet meticulous work of revealing the local roots of climate meanings and in them finding ways of allowing climate to travel and cross scales without losing these essential anchors and narratives’. To date, such discussions between human and physical geographers have not been as productive as they could be. Demeritt (2009: 128), for example, comments: ‘[w]e need more substantive encounters, collisions even, in geography . . . geomorphologists do their bit of the environment, while cultural geographers do theirs’. Nowotny (2006) argues that these issues should be reframed, such that ‘a collective problem space in which they are to be embedded, contextualized and nurtured also


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needs to be reconfigured’ (pp. 757–758). This resonates with perspectives expressed by Bravo and So¨rlin (2002: 5), who see ‘the nexus of geography, anthropology and history of science as a place of contested cultural imagination that can be used to examine the production of Arctic landscapes as desolate and pristine, devoid of human presence and able to be appropriated’. Emerging discussions upon landscapes among geomorphologists and the ethnographic case studies outlined in this paper present fertile ground for collisions of perspectives within geography.

III Geomorphic understandings of landscapes Rhoads and Thorn (2011) note that: [g]eomorphologists pursue two primary goals: first, exploration of general principles that explain geomorphological processes, the ensuing landforms, and their interaction; and, second, explanation of the unique histories of individual landforms and landscapes. The salient component of the latter exercise missing from the former is an effective treatment of contingency (Gould, 1989) – in essence the unique history or sequence of events that actually happened, but did not have to happen. (Rhoads and Thorn, 2011: 62)

Essentially, landscapes are physical systems with a history (see Chorley et al., 1964, 1973; Schumm, 1977; Kennedy, 2006). In their synthesis of the emergence and development of geomorphic inquiry, Gregory and Goudie (2011) document that although formal expressions of the discipline only emerged in the late 19th century the discipline has now reached a stage of maturity and/or old age, whereby substantive specialization has been achieved, the growth rate has declined, and hybrid applications are manifest as part of multidisciplinary projects. However, Gregory and Goudie (2011) also point to prospective rejuvenation of the discipline through applications of emerging techniques to applied research questions on topics

such as environmental change or assessment of human impacts, framing these studies in relation to social values such as conservation and rehabilitation issues and associated concerns for social and environmental justice (see also Church, 2010; Preston et al., 2011). Although philosophical questions can be asked about their definition, identification and meaning, landforms are the component parts of a landscape (Richards and Clifford, 2011). They tend to form under a given set of energy conditions in particular settings. Particular sets of processes fashion and rework ‘characteristic’ forms whereby the process affects the form and vice versa (Brunsden and Thornes, 1979). Given sets of features tend to occur within particular process domains (e.g. Montgomery, 1999). Landforms are often genetically linked to their adjacent features, such as cirques and areˆtes, headlands and bays, pools and riffles. Elsewhere, adjacent features may be physically disconnected, reflecting an erosive event, or a disjunct in time. For example, terraces are older than adjacent floodplain and channel forms, and valley floors may be disconnected from adjacent hillslopes (e.g. Fryirs et al., 2007; Harvey, 2002). Interpretation of the boundaries between features provides insight into their erosional or depositional past, guiding interpretations into landscape evolution. Inevitably, the magnitude-frequency domains with which features are generated and interact vary from system to system. Determination of the timeframe over which features are created and/or reworked, the ways in which adjustments to one part of a system affect responses elsewhere in that system, and assessment of the operation of the system as a whole are key considerations in unravelling the inherent geomorphic complexities of landscape systems (Schumm, 1991). Spatial and temporal relationships are inextricably linked, with historical lagged (off-site) responses imprinted atop the contemporary process domain (Brierley, 2010). Ultimately, the record of these space-time interactions must be unravelled through appraisal of


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source-to-sink relationships at the landscape (catchment) scale (Brierley and Fryirs, 2005; Chorley, 1969; Lane and Richards, 1997; Schumm and Lichty, 1965). It is increasingly recognised that landscapeforming relationships are emergent in any particular setting (Harrison, 2001; Harrison et al., 2006). Unravelling system-specific behavioural and evolutionary traits at the landscape scale entails appraisal of inherently geographical and historical (evolutionary) considerations that relate to a given place (Preston et al., 2011). Such contextual or situated understandings embrace and build upon non-linear and contingent relationships of emergent and complex landscapes. History matters because geomorphic systems ‘remember’ initial variations and perturbations (Phillips, 2006). Landscapes have selective memories (Brierley, 2010). Each landscape has its own range of behaviour and evolutionary traits. Inherent uncertainties ensure that surprising outcomes are common. An open-minded approach to inquiry recognizes implicitly the potential for unique outcomes and associated uncertainties, creating what Phillips (2007) refers to as the ‘perfect landscape’. Hence, analysis of geomorphic systems cannot be meaningfully formalized through prescriptive applications of checklist, tick-box procedures (Kondolf and Piegay, 2011). Such rigidity belies the inherent diversity of landscapes, and the overwhelming range of factors, process-relationships and controls that generate and rework features at any given place. This is not to say that all landscapes are necessarily complex; indeed, some may be extremely simple or near featureless (Fryirs and Brierley, 2009). Unfortunately, there are many examples of misguided rigid applications of geomorphic principles in river restoration practice (see Kondolf, 2006; Lave, 2009, 2012; McDonald et al., 2004; Simon et al., 2007). Emerging perspectives to geomorphic inquiry extend beyond generalizations of landscape thinking by providing genuine insights into landscape relationships at any given place. For example, Brierley et. al. (2013) and Fryirs and Brierley

(2013) draw together principles and threads of enquiry to develop flexible sets of procedures with which to ‘read a landscape’. It is contended here that such emergent thinking can be related directly to many Indigenous understandings of landscapes.

IV Some Indigenous conceptualisations of landscapes The duty of caring for Country, as many Indigenous peoples assert, is an imperative rather than an ad hoc ‘cultural’ privilege granted by environmental decision-making agencies. Recent literatures such as Kingsley et al. (2009) argue that there is a direct link between Indigenous health and having responsibility for traditional lands and territories (whether this be through native title or other processes of decision-making). While such studies of Indigenous involvement in natural resource management often fall into traps of essentializing ‘Indigenous’ knowledges as a homogenous category (i.e. connection with lands as somehow ‘innate’ to an arbitrary ‘aboriginality’), there is some movement towards understanding decision-making on Country as a direct need for improving Indigenous wellbeing and health. Understanding the importance of place, and the multiple landscape connections that exist, is crucial in finding ethical ways of engaging with multiple senses of landscape. The case studies below illustrate some important similarities in the ways in which some Indigenous groups connect with landscapes of home. Ethnographic analysis in this study builds upon in depth interviews completed from 2007–2010 with the Indigenous communities of Yorta Yorta Nation (northwestern Victoria, Australia), the Stuart Lake Keyohs, specifically drawing upon Maiyoo Keyoh (northern British Columbia, Canada), and the Sto´:l¯o Nation (southern British Columbia, Canada) (Wilcock, 2011). In each case study, patterns and assemblages of landscape relationships were evident in stories about care and respect for the land and


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waters. These case examples are introduced here not with a view to developing detailed and direct comparisons of the specifics of knowledge, but rather as illustrations of the ways in which place is made and related to in different settings – to reflect the ways in which physical geomorphological processes teach important lessons about contingency and mutual constitution of time-space for understanding place. More detailed pointers to the connections made in the case study areas that supplement this discussion are provided in Tables 1–3.

1 The Barmah-Millewa Forests and the Yorta Yorta Nation, Australia The Barmah and Millewa Forests (National Parks spanning a trans-state boundary and together named Barmah-Millewa Forests) are located in the Murray-Darling Basin in southeastern Australia (see Figure 1). The Barmah and Millewa National Parks form a portion of the Country of Yorta Yorta Nation in northwestern Victoria. Drainage breakdown associated with anabranching and avulsive rivers characterizes this low relief landscape of the Murray River (see Rutherfurd and Kenyon, 2005, for a detailed geomorphic analysis of BarmahMillewa Forests) (Dhungalla in Yorta Yorta language; Figure 2). The Yorta Yorta describe themselves as a ‘river people’ and see the landscape as an embodied assemblage of connected fluvial features. As spokesperson Lee Joachim describes: [w]e identify the Barmah Lakes and the Moira Lakes as part of us – they are our kidneys. The narrows – what others call the choke – is like our central nervous system, and we are part of that . . . the correct flooding period is controlled through those narrows and all aspects of flooding in the Barmah-Millewa Forest (Lee Joachim, personal communication, 2008).

These assembled features are organs of a connected body which function in relation to patterns of water flow. The Yorta Yorta describe

Dhungalla as a series of ‘bodies’ or ‘systems’ sequentially going down the river, where each Indigenous Nation’s Country is one body, ‘selfcontained’, but also part of the larger river system (Joachim, personal communication, 2010). Yorta Yorta understand their Country as an embodied kidney system of purification and renewal: when the water and land has done what it is supposed to do (i.e. flooded the forest, maintained the biophysical-and-cultural landscape), then the water subsequently travels downstream to the next Nation, to the next country. The water is described as the ‘blood’ of the system, and the network of drainage channels the veins and capillaries of the functioning body of Country. The scale of species relationships and patterns emerge from this embodied perspective of the landscape (see Table 1). From a larger riverscape scale, the lands and waters are respected as a living entity that shifts, changes and responds to human interaction. Cross-scalar linkages and connections with the wider landscape form the basis of caring for Country. Having responsibility for this part of the wider connected landscape and understanding the nature of water renewal encompasses an understanding and respect for neighbouring Nations. In this way, the landscape is perceived as a responding collective – an entity – rather than an assemblage of units of individual processes. The Barmah-Millewa Forest, which spans both sides of Dhungalla, was formed by several events, including a ‘flick of the [Creation] snake’s tail’, and an uplift event and subsequent avulsion, or wholesale shift of direction, of the main river channel. This series of events caused great flooding of Yorta Yorta land. For the Yorta Yorta, this creation was not only a biophysical event; it also holds tacit lessons about social responsibility and ethical connection to the land and river. In an effort to survive, Yorta Yorta women got out their digging sticks and dug through the uplifted tract of land, forming a new path for Dhungalla to flow through (Atkinson, personal communication, 2005). Since this


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Moral connection with space-time

Space-time

Time

Space

Yorta Yorta conceptualize catchments as dynamic spatiotemporal embodiment of ecosystems. Yorta Yorta Country is one ‘body’. The river and associated lake systems are sequential selfsufficient and filtering bodies which are situated down the river system. Respect for the river is an articulation of the contingent and mutually constituted relations occurring in connected landscapes. Stories situate caring for the river in time just as the ‘bodies’ contextualize landscape processes in time-space. Ethical concerns of speaking about the river as a ‘pipe’ remove the moral context of care and respect for Country.

Physical places are viewed in relation to other sites as well as in multiple times – e.g. in narratives, channels connect underground the river, weaving through and across the river. These stories connect spaces and are spoken about in the past/present/future in one moment. Narratives of the Dreaming give a context of multiple times.

‘Caring for the river is caring for the people’. These ontological connections means that caring for the system is necessarily caring about the people as a whole. Talking about particular places – as sites with multiple times – reimagines the landscape of people and river bodies as mutually evolving and emergent entities.

Any particular physical site is a connection to multiple other physical sites in space as well as multiple times (Creation times to today). Quotes about ‘bodies’ – the Barmah-Millewa are the kidneys, and the river is the central nervous system and the river the blood (nurturing) of the system. The blood is both physical blood, and the blood of the people.

Yorta Yorta teaching: ‘You have to look to the past to look after the future’. This gives the context for looking after Country – i.e. you cannot have a linear perspective of relevance about Yorta Yorta teachings. Each physical site is spoken about in multiple times. This is an emergent relationship where linear time ceases to have relevance.

Patterns and indicators – species to catchment-level interactions and patterns of behaviour. Ontological differences are highlighted through the management interface in natural resources management. Statements such as ‘without the river, we cease to exist as a people’.

No ontological separation between nature and culture. Spaces are connected through narratives about water. These narratives weave through the landscape and constantly break down nature/culture binaries. Each Indigenous Nation is a ‘body’ capable of selffiltration (subcatchment).

Evidence

Finding

Table 1. Engagements of time-space with the landscape of Yorta Yorta Nation, Australia.

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Space-time

Time

Space

The river provides a pivotal set of relationships which can be viewed as an emergent relationship between the biophysical and the cultural. Rather than a relationship of ‘inscribing the mountains with meaning’ (landscape-as-text approach to the cultural landscape), the mountain is a sentient being, capable of responding to human action. The mountain is a protector of the people, but must be respected at all times. The heart organ situates the Sto´:lo¯ people in the time of Creation as well as reminding the people of the spatiotemporal connection with other Nations and their organs of the same being.

Mountains as ancestors link the relevance of the current with respect for those no longer here – the ancestors. L’hilheqey is also a nurturer of the salmon and the people as a protector.

Sto´:lo¯ is the name for the people as well as the river. The landscape is a collective set of relationships – river and streams, mountains, people, salmon, etc., which is situated in time-space.

L’hilheqey and the story of the mountain’s creation. ‘Beings of the water’ – Slalequems – are animals that inhabit particular sections of the river bed. They may save, or harm, people, depending on consequences of actions. These narratives make sure that the river is respected.

‘L’hilheqey watches over us, and the salmon.’ ‘The river washes the tears away. It is a way of cleansing.’ Storytelling breaks down physical boundaries of nature and culture through speaking about the mountain as having active agency. The physical changes in the landscape provide stark lessons for the way people view changes – e.g. the town that was washed away by the flood. The organs of the giant who walked across the land situates the Sto´:lo¯ in relation to other Nations and reminds the people of the interconnectivity of the landscape. The heart that was dropped on Sto´:lo¯ territory reminds the people of their moral context.

Narratives told along the Fraser (Sto´:lo) ¯ connect human history and geomorphological history through talking about particular events (e.g. a drowning event, or a narrative about s’olmeux or the water people). Sto´:l¯o stories of spatiotemporal connection with the river illustrate dynamic relationships around the consciousness and agency of mountains as connected to rivers (as a reference point). The ‘mother mountain’, L’hilheqey, is both a physical and cultural orientation in the landscape. The messages in the storytelling for the Sto´:lo¯ demonstrate ontological connection between biophysical and cultural landscapes.

Evidence

Finding

Table 2. Engagements of time-space with the landscape of the Sto´:lo¯ Nation, southeastern British Columbia.

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Table 3. Engagements of time-space with the landscape of the Maiyoo Keyoh, northern British Columbia, Canada. Finding Space

Time

Space-time

Evidence

Lakes and streams are connected – surface Use of trails and orientation in space – and ground water. walking the trails between lakes and along Maiyoo Keyoh and Stuart Lake Keyohs streams. conceptualize their landscape through Surface-subsurface connections (karst and lake connections (both surface and lava tubes). subsurface due to the karst landscape) in space-time. Physical landscape orientation is also by lake and connecting stream travel. Stuart Lake Keyoh physical landscape The trails are a powerful reminder of the orientation is by trails and stream ancestors. Walking the trails is walking in connection – this integrates time-space. the times of the ancestors. The Keyohs do not see the time perspective Walking the trails gives clues (both in without seeing space perspective, and vice relation to where the trail goes, as well as versa. Travelling across space is necessarily physical evidence of artifacts partially travelling in time. buried along the trail). In this sense, ‘space’ is not ‘out there’ in so much as it is self-identity – ‘Keyoh’ means ‘from where we generate our survival’. Travelling in space is travelling in time. Trails and ‘travelling with the ancestors’ – The relational-scalar view means that time as people walk along across space, they is not a process in time, i.e. time is not travel in multiple times. In this sense, linear. One implication of this is that the travelling is not just across space with a relevance of ancestral connections is mainconception of linear time. tained through time – the relevance of this Travelling in multiple times connects past/ as ‘past’ does not mean that it is less imporpresent/future in one moment. tant (or conflated). This connection through time is all-important.

event, the river naturally floods seasonally, forming the river red gum forest which has adapted to yearly wetting and drying. The word Dhungalla in Yorta Yorta language is both the river itself and the process of flooding the floodplains for renewal (i.e. it is a place-name as well as a dynamic process). For the Yorta Yorta, adaptations to floods and river changes over differing timescales are framed as inextricable relationships; in a sense, this is a form of coevolution or emergence. To many elders and members, floods were ‘never any problem’; rather, they were an ‘exciting time’ and a time of ‘renewal and life’. These

landscapes are described by a Yorta Yorta elder as ‘living and breathing’ (Ferguson, personal communication, 2008). The interconnectivity of Country and people are one and the same: ‘[t]he Country is us and we are the Country. This is our home and nowhere else’ (Joachim, personal communication, 2008). These are deeply reciprocal custodian relationships; people–landscape interactions are emergent in time-space. As Yorta Yorta elder Lee Joachim explains, humans are ‘like the dirt which populates the landscape’ (i.e. we are the landscape) and ‘we have to look to the past to understand our present and future’.


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Figure 1. The Barmah-Millewa Forest is located along the Murray River, which in turn demarcates the NSW–Victorian border in southeastern Australia. This low relief setting is characterized by extensive alluvial plains with anabranching river networks, discontinuous watercourses and lakes. The Cadell Fault induced north–south disruption of river patterns (aligned approximately from Moira Lake to Deniliquin on this map). For the Yorta Yorta people, the river and associated wetlands are a complex web of stories that outline detailed progressions of river evolution and behaviour over time. Creation stories of caring for Country link both upstream and downstream sections of the river (between Nations), the tributaries and wetlands (through embodiment) and functioning of the river over time through ancestral stories of river avulsion and associated strategies of care (e.g. stories of a giant snake ‘flicking its tail’ and changing the course of the river).

Yorta Yorta teachings illustrate that there is no time without space. For example, each ‘site’ of a story is always connected to others – whether this is a Dreaming site referred to as ‘the emu tree’ or a dangerous bend of the river ‘where the giant cod lives’. They are connected through the river, and with water spirits. This connection, which mentally locates the story in spatial terms, is always framed in relation to other spaces (e.g. between the emu tree and the cod hole). The

narratives connect specific places in relation to multiple times. The embodiment of not just the river, but of the subcatchment, draws together time-space notions into a responsive, and sentient, collective.

2 The Fraser River and the Sto´:lo¯, Canada Sto´:l¯o territory is located in the Fraser Valley, upstream of Vancouver in British Columbia


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Figure 2. Aerial photograph of the Barmah-Millewa forest wetlands and Murray River, showing the connected nature of the lakes, tributaries and main channel Source: Paul O’Connor, Department of Sustainability and Environment, Victoria

(Figure 3). The word Sto´:l¯o is used for people as well as the river, and they describe themselves as ‘river people’. In geomorphic terms, the Fraser (Sto´:l¯o) is an unstable wandering gravel bed river that adjusts recurrently to frequent flood events (Church and Rice, 2009). For the Sto´:l¯o, the land is also bound up in stories about organs of a body in the landscape (McAlsie, personal communication, 2008). While these are different stories, they overlap in the landscape (see Table 2). Understanding the different uses for each area of land is intimately connected to creation stories around great beings which ‘dropped organs all over the land’. For the Sto´:l¯o, the heart organ was left.

The highest mountain seen in Sto´:l¯o territory, from the perspective of travelling along the river, is an ancestor, L’hilheqey, transformed into stone form. L’hilheqey is described as the ‘mother mountain’, and watches over the salmon, the river and the people (McAlsie, personal communication, 2009). She is worthy of deep respect. Connections between the mountain and the river underpin traditional relationships to the land, including ways of hunting, gathering and caring for territory. The Sto´:l¯o landscape also highlights the deeply connected nature of time-space. The mountains are not simply anthropomorphized; they are literally living mountains. The narratives of


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Figure 3. From a geomorphic perspective, the lower course of the Fraser River in southwestern British Columbia is a wandering gravel-bed river that is subjected to significant and recurrent realignment of channels and bars. This reach is intermediary between a gorge upstream of Hope and the delta downstream. Bedrock abutments such as Mount Cheam (L’hilheqey) induce local constraints upon patterns and rates of channel adjustment. L’hilheqey is a dominant feature in the Sto´:lo¯ landscape. The mountain is sentient and a protector of people and salmon; an ancestor who has been turned to stone. The mountain is treated with reverence, and contains ‘schweli’ or a spirit, as any other living entity.

transformation of ancestors into active landforms break down binaries between living and nonliving natures of landscapes, giving the landscape a sentient and mutually constitutive agency. This extends discussion of agency beyond plants and

animals to the physical landscape itself. Landforms and landscapes are deeply responsive to human interaction and consequences for disrespect are also communicated through narratives of ‘twisting up and dying’. This sentience of the


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mountain is not merely an interesting story, nor is it important only for cultural relativity: the connection between nature/culture at the ontological level by narrative renders this relationship a moral one (see Table 2). Caring for the mountain necessarily entails caring about people.

3 The Stuart Lake Keyohs, Maiyoo Keyoh and the interior lakes of British Columbia, Canada The Stuart Lake Keyohs traditional territories are of the Carrier Nation of the British Columbia interior, north of Fort St James. The Maiyoo Keyoh, one family group of the larger collective of the Stuart Lake Keyohs, is situated on Great Beaver Lake (see Figure 4). A mix of glaciated, volcanic and karst terrains has created a complex pattern of drainage networks (Figure 5). The interconnected nature of the lakes and surface-subsurface flows has driven the societyecological connections and historical contexts of the Stuart Lake Keyohs. For the Maiyoo Keyoh, intimate knowledge of the connectivity of groundwater and surface water is embedded in stories about the lakes and water beings inhabiting and travelling between them, through great underground channels (see Table 3). Travelling the land by trails is a connection of space (across the land) but also of walking the land and remembering the ancestors, which is also an enactment of temporal connection (Prince Snr, personal communication, 2009). The trail patterns are mostly parallel or perpendicular to waterways, for ease of access across and between traditional territories. Trails mark connections, as noted by Jim Munroe, president of the Maiyoo Keyoh Society: Interviewer: Why are the trails important? Jim: Well, their ancestors. They used the same trails. It’s part of you. Its part of your . . . ancestral lineage. It supplied all your [pause] . . . if it wasn’t for that land there, you wouldn’t be here. Interviewer: So the land defines you both in a time . . . with the ancestors, as well as the way in which

the land is situated – so where the lakes and the trails are connected? Jim: Yeah, it’s part of it – it’s not just – you can’t just look at it from one perspective. It’s like, everything’s linked together. It’s all connected. Every way. Interviewer: Time, space – everything? Jim: Every way. Yeah. Like, Larry or Kenny, and Victor [other keyoh holders], its everything, you know, it’s just like he’s lost, eh. Like they cut one more block [of forest], and he’s more lost – every time. Goes spiritually and physically, not just – you know, it’s not just physically. It’s not just ’cause it’s gone, there’s no more trail, there’s no more reference points. Spiritually too.

This engagement of connection is an ethical one – without the land and waters, the people cease to exist. Separation of the natural from the social, from this perspective, is unimaginable (see Table 3). As noted in Table 3, the trails are not only physical spaces that facilitate walking the land, they also promote and support intimate reengagement, and enactment, of time-space: as Jim describes walking the land, this travelling across space is also walking through, and between, times. As he explains, this entails ‘walking where the ancestors walked, and thinking about the trails’ relevance and use’. This ontological connection between spirituality and time-space echoes the message that a relationship between an external nature and people (as subject and object) is untenable. The perspectives of the Yorta Yorta, Maiyoo Keyoh and the Sto´:l¯o Nation move beyond notions of ‘holism’ of landscapes in a static and romantic sense. The Maiyoo Keyoh sense of travelling the land of the trails, for example, is a connection of multiple time-spaces in the same moment (i.e. it is, in one moment, past/present/ future). This perspective moves beyond a linear, or cyclical, sense of holism, instead moving through, between and across time-space scales. As the Maiyoo Keyoh, Yorta Yorta and Sto´:l¯o describe, it is not that time is irrelevant, but rather that time is multiple.


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Figure 4. Location of the Maiyoo Keyoh traditional territory, British Columbia, Canada Source: PlanLab for Maiyoo Keyoh Society

It is not purported here that all Indigenous relationships of place are the same, or that a pro-Indigenous perspective will be a more effective response to place in environmental decision-making and collaborating with Indigenous colleagues. Rather, it is contended that convergence around landscapes and contextual thinking may provide a foundation of synergetic perspectives whereby landscapes are given agency, and, in doing so, knowledges can be situated in a broader context of pluralism. This move towards pluralism insists that landscapes are not reducible to a geomorphic account, or ‘natural’ scientific entities, devoid of ethical considerations. This ‘moral imagination’, Lane et al. (2011) argue, challenges the assumption that politics can be excluded from scientific method. This repositioning unsettles the notion that physical science operates in a context free

from ethical and moral concerns. Ethnogeomorphology envisages this moral imagination as a space where different knowledges can be situated, not as a diffuse romanticism but rather by actively attending to the historical context and distribution of power relations between different worldviews.

V Discussion In advocating the notion of ethnogeomorphology, our selection of the prefix ethno- is a decisive and deliberate choice. We use the term in a way that we hope moves explicitly and deliberately beyond approaches to ‘ethnosciences’ that attempt to simply incorporate and subsume Indigenous knowledges into a larger and authoritative scientific exercise. For us, ethnogeomorphology entails a shift in thinking


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Figure 5. The fault-disrupted landscape of northeastern British Columbia is characterized by southeast– northwest aligned lakes and rivercourses, with significant subterranean drainage in karst landscapes. For the Maiyoo Keyoh, and surrounding Stuart Lake Keyohs, this landscape is inscribed, and intimately tied to, several narratives of vast cave networks (limestone) and underground channels (‘underground rivers’). Great water beasts use these tunnels to travel from lake to lake. Each of the stories are specifically tied to either Stuart Lake or Great Beaver Lake. Keyoh members refer specifically to the separation of the cave and underground networks between the lakes. The stories’ clear separation between the lake and geological networks is reflected in this map as a tract of non-karst or basaltic geology. Mount Pope, or ‘Nak’al’, is a great limestone cave opening where it is said ‘little people’ reside in the underground karst network.

around traditional approaches to both human and biophysical relationships in, of and to landscape. Moving beyond cross-disciplinary debates within science, it calls for an epistemological transformation beyond dominant perspectives of humans over biophysical landscapes, towards respecting more relational ontologies of connection, and situates intercultural knowledges in conversation (rather than subsumption within a western scientific framework). In this light,

ethnogeomorphology extends beyond the anthropological perspective used by Harrison (2004) as a way of describing myths of water spirits, where landscapes were inscribed with meaning, or the use of the term ‘ethno-physiography’ by Mark and Turk (2003) or ‘geomorphosites’ (Reynard et al., 2009) as a vehicle to promote increased regard for the crossover between conventional approaches to science and local forms of knowledge. Our ethnogeomorphology approach is


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based firmly within strong traditions of geographic thinking in both physical and human geography, and does not seek to reframe or re-present ongoing discussions in political ecology around non-equilibrium foundations across geography. Indeed, we see ethnogeomorphology as sitting alongside approaches from biology which also emphasise non-equilibrium thinking (see Zimmerer, 1994, 2001) and we seek to examine how emergence in geomorphic landscapes could be an effective entry point to thinking about wider emergences of placemaking (see also Brierley, 2009; Harrison et al., 2004; Massey, 2006).

1 Emergence of a living landscape ethos The biophysical and cultural landscapes in which people live, work and play are not neatly compartmentalized entities. So why do geographers’ ways of thinking about them remain dualistic? Seeing the landscape not as the sum of its constituent parts, but rather as a dynamic entity that is capable of highly complex and emergent process interactions, be they biophysical or cultural, has potential to open doorways of intercultural approaches to landscape analysis. Mutual constitution of landscapes promotes a perspective where scientific understandings are not disconnected from human endeavour. Such non-deterministic thinking in geomorphology emphasises that you cannot explain what a landscape is without explaining what it does. The case studies demonstrate notable similarities in ways of thinking about relationships of respect in peopled landscapes. For the Yorta Yorta, Sto´:l¯o and Maiyoo Keyoh Indigenous communities, clear moral relationships emerge with active and responsive landscapes. An ethical framework of care and respect for the land is based on knowing spatio-temporal connections and patterns of landscape processes. In each case, the basis of respect is on knowing the organs of the landscape, but, more importantly, how the organs relate to the functioning of the

landscape as a whole. Viewing catchments as functioning systems – complete with organs and ‘self-contained bodies’ sequentially going down a river system – enables a perspective whereby different emergent places can be situated both in a biophysical (ecological functioning) and cultural (reciprocation and responsibility) sense, with processes and relationships as intimately connected to their landscape context. This space of ontological connectivity is one whereby the functioning of biophysical landscapes is intimately connected with the health and wellbeing of people (Hillman et al., 2008). The uniqueness of each landscape is a manifestation of the convergence of biophysical and social processes. However, this is not ‘holism’ captured in static time-space. Understanding of space-time connectivity in landscapes entails thinking at multiple spatial and temporal scales simultaneously. All three case studies emphasise time-space as a ‘collision’ space, marked by biophysical-cultural interactions over multiple time periods. For the Maiyoo Keyoh, simultaneous multiple times were expressed through maintenance of cultural connection through travelling trails. For the Yorta Yorta and Sto´:l¯o, this entailed travelling the river through time-space, connecting stories of the Dreaming (of past in present moment), of ancestors travelling the land with everyday patterns of use in recent times. In the contextual and relational nature of landscapes as lived culture (past/present/future) for these Indigenous communities, human and physical worlds are entangled and intimately relational: just as there is no ontological boundary between humans and an externalized nature, the ontological boundary between time periods is non-linear. These assertions are connected deeply in stories of creation and Dreaming. This lived engagement space with the landscape is highly reciprocal: what happens to one implicitly happens to the other. Time is not immune from lived engagement. Rather, Yorta Yorta teachings of ‘going back to the creation stories to understand the future’


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(Joachim, personal communication, 2008) innately link spatial and temporal connections from a perspective where humans and landscapes are inseparable. As noted by Cruikshank (2005), the landscape is sentient and imbued with spirit. For the Yorta Yorta, the river is a living being that evokes a deeply embedded moral relationship of care, connecting people across space and also to their ancestors across time. For the Sto´:l¯o Nation, mountains and rivers must be respected as they are physical ancestors in another form. To the Maiyoo Keyoh, knowledge of the connectivity of surface and subsurface flow patterns comes from understandings of great beings occupying these underground channels. These reciprocal relationships promote cultural responsibility. Landscapes are living and breathing entities that have their own agency to change people, and themselves change in response to people. Envisaging landscapes as living and embodied entities can move us beyond a preoccupation with notions of landscape compartments viewed in spatial and temporal isolation towards a contextual and situated perspective of responsive, biophysicaland-cultural landscapes. Rather than reinforcing unhelpful dualisms between Indigenous knowledges and western scientific understandings by relativistic accounts, this paper illustrates how, drawing upon emerging insights in relationality and hybridity by Braun (2004), Lane et al. (2011), Whatmore (2002), Wylie (2009) and others, a frame based on relational thinking across geography offers some suggestions towards seeing landscapes, and research with them, as more than a technical process. Moving beyond viewing the relational as quaint or romantic, this relational perspective allows two fundamental interrelated shifts: (1) allowing landscapes the agency and freedom to speak back; and (2) that the decisions that researchers make about their studies are always social ones, as the worldview and perspective from which they approach their questions are already positioned

as a social and ethical choice. These hybrid spaces recognize long-standing respectful relationships between people – regardless of culture – and are not based on simple relativism whereby worldviews are assumed to be able to participate equally. Thinking with the landscapes in which we work has implications – the way in which we see strongly influences what there is to see. Our ways of thinking about landscapes are not somehow separated from whence they came; scientific practices themselves are socially constructed (Latour, 1993, 2005; Sarewitz, 2004). A recognition is required that, in many research situations, relationships rooted in reciprocation between human and biophysical domains are clearly entangled and cannot be dislocated from their cultural moorings without significant consequences (Cruikshank, 2005). Of course, this entanglement varies according to the issue being addressed: for example, in developing a formula for predicting sediment flux in a river, then a level of disentanglement is both required and valuable. It is understanding the wider context of the framing of the research questions, and their implications, that is at issue here: knowledge pluralism that pays close attention to the situated nature of the questions addressed by physical geographers is required.

2 Building upon convergent landscape perspectives as the foundation of place Geographic notions of place provide a platform for more nuanced reading of common threads of knowledge emerging from geomorphology, cultural geographies and Indigenous understandings of landscapes. Just as the geomorphic landscape is one which is ‘perfect’ (Phillips, 2007), the relational underpinning of contingency, becoming and co-constitution of spacetime underpin processes of place-making. The reciprocity of people and place frames knowledge production processes in relation to landscapes, wherein each landscape is a unique manifestation


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of the convergence of biophysical-and-social processes. This mutual co-constitution means that biophysical landscapes are not clean slates or containers ready to be inscribed with meaning (Massey, 2005; cf. Sauer, 1963). Notions of belonging and identity are deeply embedded in these relationships. From this perspective, we can begin to imagine the landscape as a moral relationship (Cruikshank, 2005). Ethnogeomorphology begins from this articulation of connection. This connection between humans and physical landscapes has historically shaped cultures and how we ‘make sense’ of the world. These biophysical-andcultural landscapes are lived and living entities that are inscribed with overlapping stories – stories of connection, care, love, angst, foreboding. Place, then, entails a perfect storm of relationships between landscapes and those who inhabit, and are embedded within, landscapes. As Tsing (2004) contends, placemaking is ‘sticky’ and irrevocably local, but it is also a universal process. Such principles and practices could lay a foundation for our duty of care for ecosystem rehabilitation (Higgs, 2003). While there is significant convergence of knowledges through place, it is also crucial to use ethnogeomorphology to examine differences and, in particular, controversies between worldviews, as power is clearly not evenly distributed (i.e. who speaks for landscapes is historically and politically derived). While ethnogeomorphology begins to recognize the emergent nature of knowledges between different worldviews as a frame to be able to communicate, it also illuminates the nature of contestation of knowledge production in that process. By opening up a way of seeing landscapes as overlapping stories, ethnogeomorphology also calls into question dominant ways of seeing landscapes and how they can marginalize other views. These interfaces of knowledges – of hegemonic discourses that remain dominant in environmental decision-

making – illustrate important controversies in the way in which an external nature is posited as neutral (Castree, 2005; Demeritt, 2002; Latour, 1993; Sarewitz, 2004). In this way, being able to see these overlapping stories through an ethnogeomorphic lens allows for consideration, and reframing, of dominant discourses of disconnection. This situating of worldviews does not in itself deal (in one step) with disrupting power relations and their unequal distribution, but this discussion and deliberation is one frame that can begin to render visible these discourses – to engage in conversations about landscapes as sites of place. Ethnogeomorphology recognises the importance of the need for ‘grounding’ of place in the physical landscape, but not as a static utopia. Geomorphic landscapes are themselves educational: they teach of constant and unpredictable change and the need for situating relationships in context. That context shifts according to different senses of place and identity (see also Phillips, 2006). Ethnogeomorphology is a perspective which recognizes the primacy of context in being able to see multiple, and connected, relational scales. Ethnogeomorphology is significant to physical geographers as it provides a frame through which overlapping, and contested, stories begin to emerge, rather than adhering to only one frame. We refer to this singular frame as a monological view, or allowing only one way of thinking, or worldview. Importantly, we argue that there are different worldviews that co-exist in landscapes without which explanations and interventions (such as research studies, or policy decisions) become incomplete at best, and erroneous at worst. Prospectively, physical geographers could have an important role in transforming communication beyond reinforcing monological discourse towards spaces of multiple conversations (from dialogue to ‘multilogue’). Geography has centre stage in generating lessons on place and processes of decision-making.


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3 Implications for geographic discourse Prospectively, ethnogeomorphology offers a grounded view towards communication paths that promote and enhance synergies between human and physical geography. Critical and creative realignment among various cultural and physical geographers is moving towards imagining landscapes as simultaneously geomorphic and cultural entities (see also Massey, 2001, 2003, 2006; Rhoads, 2004, 2006). Theoretical premises of relational and process thinking could create an integrating concept for situating and contextualizing knowledges within geography. Understanding context, whether it be biophysical, cultural or methodological, opens discourses between ontologies firmly rooted in connectivity and dynamic change, centring on landscapes with different stories (i.e. ontological pluralism, or multiple ways of thinking about landscapes – see Howitt and Suchet-Pearson, 2003). A radical contextualist approach to scale shifts away from hegemonic notions of time and instead evokes time understood as a ‘contraction and dilation’ (Crang and Travlou, 2001). Emerging teachings from fluvial geomorphology emphasize that a river is what it does (one simple example here is lag effects), wherein contemporary adjustments cannot be known without a basis of seeing multiple timescales simultaneously. From this perspective, time is not linear, nor forwardly sequential, but, put simply, multiple times are all happening at the same time. These multiscalar relations affect current relationships. Longevity also helps to develop understandings of identity through social and cultural enactment and reproduction through place-based connection, as illustrated in the case studies. Assumptions based on linear time (past-present-future) in time-spaces, for example, and subsequent associations of identity creation around place (based on this time linearity), can significantly affect communication between people who hold relational

worldviews. This was illustrated by the case studies of the Yorta Yorta Nation, the Maiyoo Keyoh, and Sto:lo Nation. In the context of environmental negotiation, holding a monological worldview that is able to reduce landscapes to technical processes, and assuming that others will adhere to that worldview, constitutes continued colonialism. Conceptual development is required that takes account of notions of dynamic time-spaces. Ethnogeomorphology responds to this challenge, engaging the landscape as a point of departure in thinking through what it would mean to think in multiple times. Various methodological implications emerge from such reframed perspectives within geographic discourse. First, emergence is created within a place. Second, there needs to be careful consideration of controversies in the space of knowledge production when emergent places are placed in juxtaposition. Tacit knowledge passed down through stories and narratives provides a sophisticated methodology that is itself emergent – it breaks down notions of linear time and human/nature binaries (Cruikshank, 2003, 2005; Phillips, 2012). For example, the stories of travelling routes may also hold important teachings about relationality and thinking about the connectivity of time-space; narratives and stories that are weaved/woven in landscapes. To the Yorta Yorta, Dreaming and creation stories literally inhabit the landscape. Inevitably, questions of morality cannot be separated from landscapes of home, giving a moral context for ‘caring for Country’. Finally, ethnogeomorphic investigations extend beyond positivist philosophy which assumes an inherent disconnect between researchers and their topic of study, framing understandings in terms of an external, objective reality. Moves towards relational geomorphology start to open up wider philosophical questions about the ways in which researchers are agents of change in the studies that they undertake (e.g. Tadaki et al., 2012). Non-deterministic approaches to landscape


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analysis provide fertile ground in the engagement space between physical and human geography.

VI Conclusion The common threads of emergent and contingent perspectives of landscape and connection present a tenable platform with which to consider ontological and epistemological restructuring of geographic inquiry. This restructuring is a form of a mutating hybrid (Hulme, 2008) that moves beyond deterministic knowledge of landscapes themselves. Spaces of dialogue such as ethnogeomorphology or relational geomorphology are direct examples of the collision spaces referred to by Demeritt (2009). Ethnogeomorphology grounds and situates the analytical landscape of emerging connectivity thinking (in geography and wider afield) in the landscape of lived experience. In this grounding, points of convergence, or synergy, between landscape perspectives from a critical geomorphology and Indigenous knowledges from Australia and Canada have been used to establish an ethnogeomorphic perspective on landscapes as mutually constituted biophysical-and-cultural entities. The geomorphic landscape itself provides a way to think through, and with, multiscalar (including multiple time) and process-based practice. Notions of contingency, emergence and space-time continuum underpin insights into place-making as an integral component of ‘living’ landscapes. Processes of landscape connection are context dependent. This hybrid space presents fertile ground for further analysis, prospectively providing an appropriate pathway for collisions across pluralistic intercultural spaces of dialogue, or spaces of engagement across human and physical geography. Stories and narratives which emerge from a living landscape perspective look to (and illustrate) the interconnectedness of understandings derived from divergent perspectives.

By providing a situated frame of multiple knowledges, ethnogeomorphology also points to important lessons that emerge from the controversies between different knowledges. These controversies engage a historical and politicized nature of negotiations of very different landscapes, for example in environmental negotiation. Ethnogeomorphology is suggested as a frame that can begin a conversation about landscapes as overlapping sites of different place-based engagements, some of which have been dominant, with significant consequences for those who do not adhere to these views. This discussion extends well beyond what are often sidelined as ‘Indigenous issues’, because place-based relations, and nature-culture connection, are common among all. Ethnogeomorphology contributes to an emergent critical physical geography that questions monological views of landscapes and the passivity of physical landscapes that are considered as physical spaces ready to be inscribed with meaning. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the Yorta Yorta Nation (particularly Lee Joachim), Maiyoo Keyoh Society (Jim Munroe and all the Keyoh families) and Sto´:l¯o Nation (Sonny McAlsie) as co-researchers for this work. The ethnographic research on which this paper is based entailed seven years of fieldwork and contributions to environmental policy with our Indigenous colleagues. The research projects were undertaken with financial support from the Centre for Social Inclusion, Macquarie University, as well as the Faculty of Environmental Studies and Faculty of Graduate Studies, York University, Canada. Thanks also to our colleagues at Macquarie and York Universities, Doctors Sandie Suchet-Pearson, Peter Mulvihill, Robin Roth, and Ravi de Costa, for substantive contributions to development of the broader research projects. Ethics approval for this research was obtained from the Macquarie University Ethics Review Committee (reference: HE27NOV2009D00206 and HE27NOV2009-D00206) for the Australian fieldwork and from the Office of Research Ethics at York University for the Canadian


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fieldwork (reference: 2008-172). Our thanks also go to the two anonymous reviewers who made the review process a progressive one.

Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes 1. ‘Indigenous’ is deliberately capitalized, following discussion by Johnson et al. (2007) of decolonizing discourse around Indigenous rights in the global context. 2. Molle (2009) asserts that catchment/basin management, or a focus on rivers, has dominated conversations around natural resources management. We argue that understandings of geomorphology and physical landscapes provide an effective way of starting this conversation through contextualizing scales of contingent relationships. However, it is certainly not the only way; for example, Hulme (2009) reports on related work in ‘cultural climatology’. 3. ‘Indigenous’ and scientific knowledges are clearly contested terms and classifications of understanding (Agrawal, 1995). It is not the purpose of this paper to re-engage dualistic positions between a homogenous ‘Indigenous knowledge’ and western scientific knowledge. Rather, we outline some emergent spaces of knowledge that could be useful in working towards an ethical and effective communication frame. We are also not arguing that each Nation or people connect to landscapes in the same way, nor to the same geomorphic phenomena.

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