murray river country:
an ecological dialogue with traditional owners
Jessica Weir
Aboriginal Studies Press, 2009
Murray River Country discusses the water crisis from a unique perspective — the stories of the river country’s resilience from the Aboriginal people whose traditional country incorporates the inland rivers. Jessica Weir wants to move readers beyond questions of how much water will be ‘returned’ to the rivers, to understand that our economy, and our lives, are dependent on river health. She uses different knowledge traditions to reveal unacknowledged assumptions that trap our thinking and disable us from acting. Jessica Weir believes that to create new possibilities for action we need to challenge our fundamental philosophies about water. By shifting our perspectives about water in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia’s agricultural heartland, Murray River Country goes to the core of our national understandings of who we are and how we can live in this country.
"Place, country, and care are at the heart of this wise book, which is so astutely responsive to the diverse, active Aboriginal individuals and nations of the Murray–Darling Basin. Like the Central Valley of California near where I live, where vast rivers and wetlands have been engineered to produce a precarious and poisoned breadbasket for settler empires, the Murray–Darling Basin cries out for new practices of care from all of its people. Weir’s book gives me hope that these blasted places and the lives of so many species, human and not, might again be whole, in new ways and old."
Professor Donna Haraway, University of California at Santa Cruz
"Weir demonstrates that there is only one narrative and it encompasses both the claims of the water managers and their critics; both the settler and Indigenous narratives."
Professor Richie Howitt, Macquarie University
"This is a really positive book with some original and creative suggestions for ways forward."
Dr Libby Robin, Australian National University and the National Museum of Australia
"Weir’s originality is innovative and inspirational. She captures the MRC Indigenous people’s holistic approach in reading the ecological statements of managing water and the benefits of this for everyone and the MRC’s ecology."
Dr Payi-Linda Ford
Book Launch
Murray River Country was launched by Monica Morgan, Yorta Yorta Elder and John Doyle at the Melbourne Writers Festival on 29 August 2009.
