2024 International Association for Promoting Geoethics medal awarded to Prof. Anne (Wagaba) Poelina
https://www.geoethics.org/geoethics-medal
National and international recognition
Anne Poelina is one of Australia’s most respected Indigenous leaders renowned for her practical wisdom and intelligence, respectful advocacy, authenticity and ethical values. A Nyikina Warrwa woman from the Kimberley region of Western Australia, she is a human and Earth rights advocate, active community leader, academic researcher, scientist and filmmaker. She is also the go-to person for National and State Governments seeking Indigenous advice on river systems, our sacred Waters of Life. Her global writing on ‘Voicing Rivers’ with the Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) – her people’s ancestral creator being – as lead author, champions the overarching rights of ancestral personhood, beyond nature-based Earth rights. She advocates place-based, eco-centric, kin-centric, and spirit-centric governance nested in bioregions, a societal model that aligns with First (pre-human) Law used by Indigenous Australians for 65,000+ years to successfully manage their 500+ diverse autonomous societies while maintaining a pristine environment, free of wars of conquest.
Her current research explores (i) the need to store rather than extract carbon as the basis for the just energy transition needed for planetary health and wellbeing, and (ii) First Law and its pathways to co-exist with human laws (legal pluralism). The University of Notre Dame’s Nulungu Research Institute she chairs is a collaboration of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, each with extensive practical and theoretical knowledge, working for transformative, decolonising eco-cultural outcomes. An engaging public speaker, she uses ancient and contemporary Indigenous Australian stories to point to solutions required for planetary health and wellbeing, highlighting traditional ecological knowledge, elements of First Law and nature’s inherent rights. Her enduring work is centred around the majestic Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) and its right to live and flow including national and global advocacy for jurisprudence to give Mother Earth a legitimate, legal voice in the sustainable workings of the natural world.
As Managing Director of Madjulla Inc., she is a leader in Indigenous remote community development, empowering individuals and communities. The co-designed and managed Majala Wilderness Centre in Balginjirr is now a central hub and home for remote education, training, eco-cultural events and conference facilities in the Kimberley region. As an Indigenous multi-disciplinary scientist, Poelina and her scientific and legal colleagues are building on the complexity of systems thinking with action-based global societal adoption and adaptation efforts, strengthening collective professional, political, economic, legal and spiritual capacity. A shared geo-ethics of care is steadily creating an evidence base for sustainable lifeways and forms of bio-regional governance. Collective values of intellectual freedom, honesty, integrity, inclusivity and equity are woven through initiatives related to geo-heritage, geo-diversity, geo-conservation, prevention, adaptation, and geo-education, designed to protect the well-being of all life in our collective home.
Her messaging has been consistent for decades, informed by her elders, ancestors and Country. Her most recent contributions can be appreciated by listening to her September 2024 Scipod audiobook, The Key to Solving Climate Change May Lay in Indigenous Wisdom and by viewing the final episode of Al Jazeera International’s recent 10-part series, All Hail the Planet.
In Anne’s words:
‘Ngajanoo Nilawal. My name is Wagaba, Professor Anne Poelina. As an Indigenous woman. I am born into a world of ‘we’ not ‘me’, with an inclusive worldview, free of notions that separate culture and nature (our non-human family). We learn from our ancestral beings, elders and diverse flora and fauna (our totems) how to be good and decent human beings, living the ‘geo-ethics of care’. And most importantly, we learn to live in accord with the ‘Law of the Land, not man’ – First Law.” “It is why we know that (as Greg Campbell’s 2022 book, Total Reset shows) the sustainability of all life on our planet requires implementing Indigenous traditional knowledge and law systems. Mother Earth needs the love and care of people to maintain Country, Living Waters, and multispecies justice. It is time to create peace with Indigenous people and nature, and live geoethically.‘