ANZCA 2023

The first session after the keynote at ANZCA 2023 is on media, truth, and democracy, and starts with John Budarick. He begins by highlighting the considerable challenges to liberal media and democracies, from a range of interconnected crises; but from a different perspective journalism is constantly in crisis as it deals with the changing environments within which it operates.

It’s a Wednesday in November and I’m in Wellington for ANZCA 2023, my final conference for this year, where I’ll also present a keynote tomorrow morning. We start today with the first of the conference keynotes, however, by Maria Bargh, who begins with the customary acknowledgments of the peoples, places, and more-than-human aspects of the lands upon which we meet – and this is also related to the theme of the conference, ka mua, ka muri, or ‘walking backwards into the future’. This refers to the way we are out of balance with each other and with the planet – in our use of resources, in our perspectives on history and politics. This is a difficult predicament that needs to be confronted – ideally through shared ownership and collaborative governance models.

Maria suggests that there are several examples that provide pointers to solutions for this. One draws on Whanaungatanga – kinships and relationships: one collective in the South Island of New Zealand have a 500-year plan for land, resources, and community, for instance, and this governs the sustainable operation of their enterprises; these provide for participating families and sustain traditional practices (in farming and other fields) as well as reconnecting people to each other and the land and forcing them to look to the future.

A second example are projects for bioremediation, addressing the industrial contamination of lands – but without removing the contaminated soil altogether and by instead using longer-term in situ remediation approaches that draw on a range of fungi and tree species that are especially efficient at removing toxins from the soil. This represents a more caring relationship with the land, combining Māori and Wwestern scientific approaches.