AMplify - Conversations at the Australian Museum

Join Indigenous systems ecologist Chels Marshall and facilitator Dr Mariko Smith to discuss how deep cultural knowledge not only overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius but may help reverse the damaging effects of 200 years of Eurocentric land and sea management practice into the future.

Eddie Mabo’s native title claim changed the foundation of this nation’s land and sea law by proving that First Nations people had, through interconnecting social and ecological knowledge systems, lived sustainably and harmoniously on country for millennia.

Professor Tim Flannery outlines his manifesto for humanity’s survival of the “climate emergency” in the Australian Museum’s (AM) inaugural Talbot Oration. The event was held free to the public on Thursday 3 June 2021 at 6:30PM in Hintze Hall at the Australian Museum.

In his speech, Professor Flannery made the case for using Australia’s approach to COVID-19 as a model for responding to climate change, outlined in his new book, The Climate Cure: Solving the Climate Emergency in the Era of COVID-19. Professor Flannery spoke about the opportunity for Australia to lead in addressing the climate crisis and implement a prompt, effective, science-led government policy on management – and survival – of the climate threat.

Following the keynote address, Professor Flannery was joined by Professor Veena Sahajwalla and multi-award-winning journalist Rae Johnston for a panel discussion moderated by former AM president, businesswoman and sustainability adviser Sam Mostyn AO discussing solutions and actions the public can take to help minimise climate change impact.

Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim McKay in discussion with Professor Tim Flannery.

Glenn Murcutt AO (with Sandra Sully)

Architect Glenn Murcutt is globally acclaimed for his environmentally sensitive, sustainable and quintessentially Australian designs. The sole practitioner, teacher and critic, counts his childhood in Papua New Guinea and his father’s inspiring guidance, informed by the ideas of Henry David Thoreau, as profound influences. Murcutt has received every significant award including the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the Alvar Aalto Medal and the AIA Gold Medal.

Recorded live at the Hallstrom Theatre in the Australian Musuem on 25 June 2019.

Albert Namatjira by Franchesca Cubillo (with Tracey Holmes)

Born on the Hermannsburg Lutheran mission in the Northern Territory in 1902, the life of iconic master painter and Western Arrernte man Albert Namatjira was entangled in virulent racial politics. Franchescha Cubillo, Churchill Scholar and Senior Curator Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art at the National Gallery of Australia, offers insights into the Hermannsburg Movement, the artist’s magnificent paintings and enduring legacy.

Recorded Live at the Hallstrom Theatre in the Australian Museum on 18 June 2019.

Mark Carey- The Culture and Politics of Ice

University of Oregon’s Mark Carey explores the fundamental role of glacial ice in global economics and politics and within our imaginative, historical and colonial narratives. Much more than just a barometer for climate change or pristine nature, glacial ice has been an elemental force in human history, fundamental to global politics and central to the quest to make oceans, mountains and the polar regions safe for global markets.

Recorded on the 22 October 2019 at the ANZAC War Memorial in Sydney.

HumanNature Series: Lessons on resilience from a bamboo bridge

Katherine Gibson and Juan Francisco Salazar (Western Sydney University) explore life within the rhythms of nature in resilient community economies.

For more than half a century, a 1.5 km handmade bamboo bridge spanned the Mekong River in Cambodia. It was constructed annually as the waters of the river subsided, and dismantled as they rose again with the monsoon rains, until in 2017, it was replaced by a concrete structure permanently connecting the island community of Koh Paen to the bustling city of Kampong Cham.

What can a bamboo bridge teach us about ingenuity and resilience, respect for renewable materials and ethical living? Interspersed with clips from their film commemorating this beautiful, ephemeral bridge, Katherine Gibson and Juan Francisco Salazar illuminate local practices harnessed to diversify livelihoods and build economic resilience.

Recorded at the ANZAC War Memorial in Sydney on 20 August 2019.

Andrea Gaynor - Armoured histories: radical remembering for the Anthropocene

Hold the past to account with Andrea Gaynor, University of Western Australia as she proposes `radical remembering’ to actively confront the challenges of the Anthropocene. Climate breakdown, annihilation of entire species, dwindling topsoil and fresh water, food shocks and plastic oceans led 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg to admonish the assembly of wealthy and powerful at the 2019 World Economic Forum to ‘act as if our house is on fire. Because it is’.

Recorded 12 November 2019 at the ANZAC War Memorial.

Bruce Pascoe’s ground-breaking research completely reconsiders the notion of pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians as hunter-gatherers.

Explore and challenge the colonial myths that have often underpinned efforts to justify dispossession in this fascinating discussion. Reading the diaries of early explorers, both with and against the grain, Pascoe retells Aboriginal history and argues that it is time to take a new look at Australia’s past.

Bruce Pascoe is Bunurong/Tasmanian Yuin man and an award winning author and story teller. His most recent book is Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? (Magabala Books, 2014), which won both the Book of Year and the Indigenous Writers Prize (joint winner) in the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. His other books include Night Animals, Fox, Ruby Eyed Coucal, Shark, Ocean, Earth, Bloke, Cape Otway, Convincing Ground, Little Red Yellow and Black Book, and Fog a Dox. Bruce is a board member of the Aboriginal Corporation for Languages and First Languages Australia and a past Secretary of the Bidwell-Maap Aboriginal Nation. He lives in Gipsy Point, Far East Gippsland with his wife, Lyn Harwood, and two children and three grandchildren.

Recorded in the Hallstrom Theatre at the Australian Museum on 18 Oct 2018.

Environmental martyrs put their bodies and lives on the line, risking imprisonment, violence or burial in a shallow grave in the dead of night. Some activists remain anonymous, while others gain posthumous fame and power, their deaths becoming a rallying call for others to join the cause.

Rob Nixon, Professor in Humanities and Environment at Princeton University, and author of the award-winning Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, explores the surge in environmental martyrdom around the world over timber, water, land and mineral rights. Martyrdom is direct action in extremis, he says. But why are so many people sacrificing their lives? And what is the relationship between the fallen martyr and the felled tree?