Lived environmentalisms: Everyday encounters and difference in Australia's north

Abstract

This paper focuses on everyday encounters between environmentalists and Indigenous activists during a dispute around a proposed gas hub development in the Kimberley, NW Australia, to explore the possibilities of practising environmentalism differently. It makes visible the complexity, contestations and dilemmas of putting environmentalism into practice in particular places and calls for the specificness of how environmentalisms are negotiated and developed through encounters to be more carefully attended to. It draws on 32 face-to-face in-depth interviews conducted with activists from national Australian environmental organisations working in the Kimberley, Kimberley-based environmental groups, Kimberley Indigenous organisations, participant observations at protest camp site visits and analysis of campaign literature. Closely interrogating lived environmentalisms—how environmentalists put into practice their values in everyday encounters—reveals not only evidence of white environmentalists expanding their conceptions of the environment beyond dualisms and engaging with multispecies justice, but also a hesitancy and complexity in supporting Indigenous self-determination and a limited capacity to challenge colonial-capitalist frameworks.