Lara Daley¹

¹University Of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW

This paper is based on research undertaken as a participant/researcher in the G20 counter-mobilisations and its two main gatherings, Decolonization Before Profit and the Peoples’ Convergence, in Meanjin/Brisbane in 2014. Using the time-places of the counter-mobilisations as a thinking ground, I engage the need to rethink urban anti-capitalist politics and urban geographical undertsandings in relation to Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies and struggles. I do this from my position as a non-Indigenous person, learning to learn my place, relationships and responsibilities situated as both a social movement participant and researcher on stolen lands and Indigenous Country. Taking direction from Indigenous thinking and critique in Indigenous/settler colonial contexts, I bring Martin Nakata’s conceptualisation of the dynamic and multi-dimensional interactions of Indigenous and non-Indigenous domains to rethinking and re-engaging the urban as sets of time-place coordinates and relationships produced through and as ongoing colonisation and Indigenous presence. In doing so, I suggest that approaching the urban as a cultural interface offers a way for both urban geography and radical politics to be situated and to struggle in and over the city addressing migrant-coloniser complicities, engaging Indigenous struggles on their own terms and attending to the more-than-human and Country in and as the city.

Biography:

Lara recently submitted her PhD thesis in Human Geography at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She is a casual academic and a member of Yandaarra, a Gumbaynggirr and non-Gumbaynggirr research collective working to build a better understanding of Gumbaynggirr-led caring for Country on Gumbaynggirr Country (mid-north coast NSW).