Bioregionalism: A Context for Sustainable Patterns of Living
Ron Nicholls. February 2004
Bioregional borders should be understood as a way of helping human beings to conceive a new-old way of living with the land.
Introduction
I approached Urban Ecology late in December 2003 to see if it were possible to arrange some volunteer work and get more of an insight into the ongoing eco-city project that is developing at Sturt Street. After much reading about environmental issues over the years and although having some insights into the principles of sustainable communities I was eager to get some first hand experience of a real live project.
After a short meeting with Barbara Sheppard and Andrew Tidswell I was given a number of possible research tasks to choose from. After some thought I decided to embark on a topic to research the bioregional boundaries in South Australia and their relevance for the Ecopolis/Urban Ecology/ Christie Walk project.
Bioregionalism has often been linked with the various forms of land use associated with Indigenous groups and Urban Ecology adopted the term Tandanya Bioregion as part of its official address or designation of place in 1993. After many years teaching at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (University of Adelaide) and more recently completing a degree in Aboriginal Studies I was intrigued with the connection with the Kaurna people implied by the name Tandanya.
The Concept of Bioregionalism
The concept of Bioregionalism originated from the writings of Gary Snyder and Peter Berg in California throughout the 1970s and stemmed in part from the notion that the growth of socially and ecologically just societies requires a deep understanding of place. Both Snyder, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, and Berg, were committed to the establishment of sustainable social and ecological communities. Each stressed the importance of the relationship between social change and the natural and cultural knowledges embedded in local systems and through their writings began to fashion a body of thought and teaching that have become the underlying tenets of the bioregional movement.
Although the term Bioregionalism resists any one definition or set of precepts a bioregion can be acknowledged in the words of Berg and Dasmann (1977) as, a "Living-in- Place" characterised by practices that adopt processes of balance between the social, cultural and ecological features of a region. Accordingly, a bioregion "refers both to a geographical terrain and a terrain of consciousness - to a place and the ideas that have developed about how to live in that place".
More recently Thayer (2003) argues that "the bioregional approach suggests a means of living by deep understanding of, respect for, and, ultimately, care of a naturally bounded region or territory". Berg coined the term "reinhabitation" to refer to the process of relearning to "live- in-place" that has been injured or exploited by exploitative practices. Bioregionalists also see the cultural and ecological boundaries of place as transcending the present political boundaries given to regions and also looked to the heritage of indigenous peoples, their cultures and values as integral to the building of a new logic of sustainable societies. This conception of place has evolved as an alternative to the present predominantly consumer-driven alienated sense of place often represented by the ever-expanding urban centres within a globalised world. Importantly, Bioregionalism continues to emerge, and can act, as a context for sustainable, decentralised regenerative communities that are "best able to support the achievement of cultural and ecological sustainability" (Aberley 1999).
Tandanya Bioregion
The term Tandanya Bioregion was first used by founding architect Paul Downton to illustrate the cover of a brochure for the Second International Ecological City Conference 1992 in Urban Ecology Newsletter vol. 1 #1 in 1992. The title subsequently appeared in Volume 1 of the Catalyst Newsletter of the Halifax Project in April 1993 and was adopted in the official newsletter of Urban Ecology Australia in issue number 5 July 1993. The name Tandanya was first recorded by Daisy Bates in an interview with an important Kaurna woman Ivaritji who was the daughter of King Rodney (sometimes "Jimmy Rodney") and a woman from the Clare district called Tankaira. This place name associated with the Adelaide area was probably originally Tharnda Kanya and is literally translated "Red Kangaroo Rock". It has been estimated that the Kaurna people have occupied the Adelaide Plains area for between 50,000-120,000 years and are believed to have one of the oldest living cultures. Anthropologists argue that before the coming of the settlers the Kaurna were the original inhabitants of the Adelaide plains and that their societies developed highly distinctive values, behaviour and relationships that allowed them to forge an adaptable, sustainable lifestyle stemming from an organic and integrated view of the world.
Early historical accounts identified the many small groups associated with particular areas of the country as the "Adelaide tribe" and their territory was loosely associated with the Fleurieu Peninsula area stretching from Cape Jervis in the south to Crystal Brook in the north.
Anthropologists have identified the culture and customs of the Kaurna as similar to the group of tribes of the Lake Eyre Basin, Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas, the Flinders Ranges and Mid-north. The Mount Lofty Ranges acted as a natural boundary between the groups of the Murray/South-East culture groups and the Kaurna and both groups had different forms of social organisation and kinships patterns. According to David Suzuki (1997) one of the defining features of Indigenous cultures is their sense of identification and affinity for the land. He argues that "traditional cultures live in an animated world… Human beings are included in this totality of creation, participating in various ways in the creative mind of the living earth. Instead of being separated from the world because of their unique consciousness, they belong to a conscious world in which everything else is in a process of continual creation".
This sense of connection with nature associated with Indigenous spirituality and values coupled with the natural association with a geographically bounded area that embraces a local ecosystem can create a space for a new social behaviour. A social behaviour that promotes and enriches natural systems and relationships and enhances the recognition of a shared cultural and geographical history of a life-place. According to Klyza (1999) "Bioregional borders should be understood as a way of helping human beings to conceive a new-old way of living with the land".
The recognition by Urban Ecology of its affinity with the original custodians of the land by the use of the term Tandanya Bioregion emphasises the cultural Adelaide plains. This expanded sense of place can in effect help to emphasise the fundamentally social nature of boundaries and serve as a focus for our thinking regarding the role of humans within natural systems. A renewed focus such as this can help us to reassess our relationship to the natural landscape and its health, our role within the wider biological community and provide opportunities for initiatives such as the Christie Walk project to develop within the self-organising patterns of a sustainable ecological framework.
References
Aberley, D. 1999, "Place: Thinking about bioregional history", in Bioregionalism, edited by Michael Vincent McGinnis, Routledge, London.
Berg, P. & Dasmann, R. 1977, "Strategies for Reinhabiting the Northern California Bioregion", Seriatim: Journal of Ecotopia, 1 (3): 2-8.
Suzuki, D.1997, The Sacred Balance, Allen and Unwin, Sydney.
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