Billionaire couple focus their fortune on conservation — and profit
January 17, 2025 2:36 PM Subscribe
Billionaire couple focus their fortune on conservation — and profit.
In the middle of Tasmania (Australia) sits a 5000-hectare property once used for sheep grazing. But when the sheep farmers left, an unlikely buyer moved in.
Wedgetail is a private company investing in projects around the world that restore ecologically valuable areas.
It was founded by Lisa Miller, who purchased the Quoin in 2021.
A zoologist by training, Ms Miller said the property contained a variety of different ecosystems.
“The Quoin is a patchwork landscape of areas that are in relatively good condition, and areas that have been quite degraded,” she said.
Many threatened plant and animal species call the Quoin home, but so do feral deer and introduced grasses that prevent the native species from thriving.
Restoring the property is a challenging and costly task, made possible by an incredibly successful business venture.
Ms Miller is married to billionaire Cameron Adams, the co-founder of Canva — a popular online graphic design tool.
According to Forbes Magazine, he’s Australia’s 25th richest person.
The couple is investing much of their fortune in conservation.
“We’ve been able to take some of that capital, and we really wanted to deploy it against our mission around improving outcomes for biodiversity and nature loss in conjunction with climate change,” Ms Miller said.
Wedgetail also gives loans to businesses that are having a positive impact on the landscape, and grants to non-profit organisations regenerating valuable areas.
Wedgetail is a private company investing in projects around the world that restore ecologically valuable areas.
It was founded by Lisa Miller, who purchased the Quoin in 2021.
A zoologist by training, Ms Miller said the property contained a variety of different ecosystems.
“The Quoin is a patchwork landscape of areas that are in relatively good condition, and areas that have been quite degraded,” she said.
Many threatened plant and animal species call the Quoin home, but so do feral deer and introduced grasses that prevent the native species from thriving.
Restoring the property is a challenging and costly task, made possible by an incredibly successful business venture.
Ms Miller is married to billionaire Cameron Adams, the co-founder of Canva — a popular online graphic design tool.
According to Forbes Magazine, he’s Australia’s 25th richest person.
The couple is investing much of their fortune in conservation.
“We’ve been able to take some of that capital, and we really wanted to deploy it against our mission around improving outcomes for biodiversity and nature loss in conjunction with climate change,” Ms Miller said.
Wedgetail also gives loans to businesses that are having a positive impact on the landscape, and grants to non-profit organisations regenerating valuable areas.
the 'conservation districts' I've seen are just a way for rich people to ensure nobody else can move in close to their property holding, while getting a tax benefit for the privilege.
a billion dollars for Canva??? "Canva has raised a total of $560 million in venture capital"
Mind-boggling. but I guess when you charge $10+/mo and you have millions of people paying that, it gets to the billions pretty quick...
posted by torokunai2 at 3:31 PM on January 17 [4 favorites]
a billion dollars for Canva??? "Canva has raised a total of $560 million in venture capital"
Mind-boggling. but I guess when you charge $10+/mo and you have millions of people paying that, it gets to the billions pretty quick...
posted by torokunai2 at 3:31 PM on January 17 [4 favorites]
In light of the shitfight over FB, it's actually physiologically surprising to find some online tool I use where the owner isn't a literal Nazi or other more garden variety piece of shit, let alone actually re-investing their money into something useful. Like I had to take a moment to re-calibrate my breathing. I use the free version of Canva a lot and always grumble a bit at how many of the elements I need are behind a paywall; I'm a bit more motivated to drop a buck here and there now.
posted by Jilder at 3:43 PM on January 17 [9 favorites]
posted by Jilder at 3:43 PM on January 17 [9 favorites]
I was one of the early Canvanauts (as they call themselves), working there for 16 months across 2015-2016. The job involved a pretty serious pay cut for me, but I was burnt out after working in streaming video (“How many ads can we cram in this before people stop watching?”) and it was so nice to work on a product with no ads, and that people loved enough to pay for. Cam was a colleague and a friend, and I met Lisa and their kids on many occasions. Melanie (CEO) and Cliff (COO) interviewed me and I worked with them on a daily basis. I didn’t always agree with every decision they made, but it was clear to me that their ambition did not extend to screwing over users. Even back then, when Canva was far from the unicorn it is now, the founders put their principles into action. I remember in particular a company offsite in Manila (we had a large team there) where the entire company spent a day giving back. I went with a group of colleagues to a shelter for women and kids who had been sex-trafficked, and we played games and I taught them to knit and it was one of the most meaningful things I’ve done in my whole tech career.
It’s wild to me now to see people that I am still Facebook friends with referred to as some of the richest people in the country. No, billionaires shouldn’t exist. But I’m really happy to see that these three continue to do good with their fortunes, and I’m proud to have contributed in some tiny way to important projects like the Quoin in Tasmania.
posted by web-goddess at 3:55 PM on January 17 [22 favorites]
It’s wild to me now to see people that I am still Facebook friends with referred to as some of the richest people in the country. No, billionaires shouldn’t exist. But I’m really happy to see that these three continue to do good with their fortunes, and I’m proud to have contributed in some tiny way to important projects like the Quoin in Tasmania.
posted by web-goddess at 3:55 PM on January 17 [22 favorites]
This sounds amazing and heartening, but my reaction to the “—and profit” tag at the end is that I seriously doubt a billionaire could fail to profit at whatever they do.
Honestly, I'm glad that the story here is that a billion dollars is profitable enough to fund this, and not like "we've found a way to make money pretending to conserve nature while screwing over both taxpayers and nature itself."
posted by pwnguin at 4:35 PM on January 17 [5 favorites]
Honestly, I'm glad that the story here is that a billion dollars is profitable enough to fund this, and not like "we've found a way to make money pretending to conserve nature while screwing over both taxpayers and nature itself."
posted by pwnguin at 4:35 PM on January 17 [5 favorites]
>No, billionaires shouldn’t exist.
Collecting $10/mo for a tool that (at least) competes ably with its more expensive competition is a 100% triumph of entrepreneurial free-market capitalism.
Like the motion picture industry and television (I am reminded that one of the lovely Malibu mansions turned into ash last week previously had housed the writing team behind 80s TV's The Wonder Years) people providing very useful tools and media content to each other for a $10/mo cost is a pretty decent economy.
George Harrison complained about confiscatory taxation in 1966, when his publishing income over $500k in today's dollars was taken at that 19/20 rate. There's probably a happy medium here somewhere.
posted by torokunai2 at 5:19 PM on January 17 [5 favorites]
Collecting $10/mo for a tool that (at least) competes ably with its more expensive competition is a 100% triumph of entrepreneurial free-market capitalism.
Like the motion picture industry and television (I am reminded that one of the lovely Malibu mansions turned into ash last week previously had housed the writing team behind 80s TV's The Wonder Years) people providing very useful tools and media content to each other for a $10/mo cost is a pretty decent economy.
George Harrison complained about confiscatory taxation in 1966, when his publishing income over $500k in today's dollars was taken at that 19/20 rate. There's probably a happy medium here somewhere.
posted by torokunai2 at 5:19 PM on January 17 [5 favorites]
You don't become a billionaire getting people to pay you $10/month for something useful, though. That's based on investors' hope that you'll turn into a rival for Powerpoint and get the big bucks selling to companies instead consumers. Once you take investor money, it's over. You can delay but not prevent.
I still appreciate what they're doing here, though. Land is much after in the hands of the aristocrats than in control of the companies the aristocrats run.
posted by McBearclaw at 5:55 PM on January 17 [3 favorites]
I still appreciate what they're doing here, though. Land is much after in the hands of the aristocrats than in control of the companies the aristocrats run.
posted by McBearclaw at 5:55 PM on January 17 [3 favorites]
the 'conservation districts' I've seen are just a way for rich people to ensure nobody else can move in close to their property holding, while getting a tax benefit for the privilege
Around here the tax benefits attach restrictions to the land that prevent development. Even though it sometimes ends up as a defacto privacy fence for the donor it still preserves that environment. And in a way that can't be reversed by heirs. Bears/wolves/frogs/plants/birds/etc. don't much care that their home is there only because of some rich person playing the system.
posted by Mitheral at 6:49 PM on January 17 [6 favorites]
Around here the tax benefits attach restrictions to the land that prevent development. Even though it sometimes ends up as a defacto privacy fence for the donor it still preserves that environment. And in a way that can't be reversed by heirs. Bears/wolves/frogs/plants/birds/etc. don't much care that their home is there only because of some rich person playing the system.
She then creates a false colour composite, which makes it easier to assess the health of the vegetation.One of my first jobs out of university was sitting at a 36x48 digitizer attached to an AlphaStation circling trees with a puck on a plot that had been sourced from an IR aerial photo and a regular photo. We could tell how healthy the trees were from the false colour print and the regular one gave us the location of all the trees. I'm guessing that could be done automagically by programs now but at the time it was right on the cutting edge of what was possible with GIS programs.
posted by Mitheral at 6:49 PM on January 17 [6 favorites]
>become a billionaire getting people to pay you $10/month for something useful
$100/yr from 16 million customers = $1.6B/yr; with an assumed 10 year arc of success, that's ~$16B on the table . . . that's the beauty of software, both in its traditional media (music, film, video) form and computer applications. The first unit of your product can cost millions to produce – and that cost is your "moat", in addition from any IP protection you enjoy – but replication and fulfillment is essentially free after that.
Adobe had become such a tumorous octopus that it gave this critical submarket to Canva.app as a gift I guess. It never occurred to me that it could be worth one billion dollars, but the raw numbers check out.
somebody get me a time machine; screw inventing MtG in 1991, I'm inventing Canva...
posted by torokunai2 at 6:51 PM on January 17 [4 favorites]
$100/yr from 16 million customers = $1.6B/yr; with an assumed 10 year arc of success, that's ~$16B on the table . . . that's the beauty of software, both in its traditional media (music, film, video) form and computer applications. The first unit of your product can cost millions to produce – and that cost is your "moat", in addition from any IP protection you enjoy – but replication and fulfillment is essentially free after that.
Adobe had become such a tumorous octopus that it gave this critical submarket to Canva.app as a gift I guess. It never occurred to me that it could be worth one billion dollars, but the raw numbers check out.
somebody get me a time machine; screw inventing MtG in 1991, I'm inventing Canva...
posted by torokunai2 at 6:51 PM on January 17 [4 favorites]
When I become a billionaire, I will do something even better...
Good on these folks.
posted by Windopaene at 7:08 PM on January 17
Good on these folks.
posted by Windopaene at 7:08 PM on January 17
Tasmania has an active aboriginal Land Back movement. See also. Indigenous people shaped and maintained the landscape of ancient Tasmania.
I'm never going to like to see a rich white couple rhapsodising about protecting nature through their private ownership of huge areas of land that was ethnically cleansed of its indigenous population. As they say, "The Quoin is located on the lands of the Palawa in Lutruwita/Tasmania." Do the Palawa have access to this land of theirs, under your private ownership? Does your vision of a laboratory of regeneration include letting the Palawa steward the land the way they did for thousands of years?
posted by Rhedyn at 1:37 AM on January 18 [3 favorites]
I'm never going to like to see a rich white couple rhapsodising about protecting nature through their private ownership of huge areas of land that was ethnically cleansed of its indigenous population. As they say, "The Quoin is located on the lands of the Palawa in Lutruwita/Tasmania." Do the Palawa have access to this land of theirs, under your private ownership? Does your vision of a laboratory of regeneration include letting the Palawa steward the land the way they did for thousands of years?
posted by Rhedyn at 1:37 AM on January 18 [3 favorites]
Rheydn: Actually, it does look very much like they're letting traditional owners steward the land using traditional techniques:
"Tasmanian Aboriginal people have been managing the land for tens of thousands of years, partly through the use of fire to promote soil fertility and vegetation regrowth.
In Tasmania, a grassland will naturally become a sedgeland, then a woodland, and then a forest. To prevent this ecosystem shift, you need to burn the Lomandra (traywuna) when it gets to a certain density. Sedges are critical habitat for small mammals, as well as providing a sheltered location for tree seedlings, but they aren’t edible by grazers or browsers and will take over grasslands if left to their own devices.
While we have the privilege of being The Quoin’s custodians, we are using ecological burns to manage these grassland ecosystems. In addition, we're excited to be welcoming Tasmanian Aboriginal people to the property later this year, to engage in cultural burning across the landscape. "
That's obviously a press release, but this doesn't look like the situation you get elsewhere were conservation is set up to be a fence that keeps other people off private property. They're being pretty active about involving the community in the regeneration.
posted by Jilder at 4:04 AM on January 18 [4 favorites]
"Tasmanian Aboriginal people have been managing the land for tens of thousands of years, partly through the use of fire to promote soil fertility and vegetation regrowth.
In Tasmania, a grassland will naturally become a sedgeland, then a woodland, and then a forest. To prevent this ecosystem shift, you need to burn the Lomandra (traywuna) when it gets to a certain density. Sedges are critical habitat for small mammals, as well as providing a sheltered location for tree seedlings, but they aren’t edible by grazers or browsers and will take over grasslands if left to their own devices.
While we have the privilege of being The Quoin’s custodians, we are using ecological burns to manage these grassland ecosystems. In addition, we're excited to be welcoming Tasmanian Aboriginal people to the property later this year, to engage in cultural burning across the landscape. "
That's obviously a press release, but this doesn't look like the situation you get elsewhere were conservation is set up to be a fence that keeps other people off private property. They're being pretty active about involving the community in the regeneration.
posted by Jilder at 4:04 AM on January 18 [4 favorites]
Okay, but what do those Tasmanian Aboriginal people who are coming in by invitation to do the burning get for it? Do they have access to the land at other times? Do they get to decide what/where/how/when to burn? Do they have any stewardship role that isn't completely dictated by the whim of the private owners? Can they live on the land? I hope they're at least paid.
I'm very used to seeing rich people's/corporations' "rewilding" land grabs say all the nice sounding things about community involvement, creating tourism jobs, etc etc. Usually it means they hold a lot of meetings and listen politely and then plan to do whatever they want. If this new development for the Quoin was good from the Tasmanian Aboriginal perspective I'd expect to find sources from them talking about what it means and what it might make possible. I haven't been able to find any.
posted by Rhedyn at 4:29 AM on January 18 [2 favorites]
I'm very used to seeing rich people's/corporations' "rewilding" land grabs say all the nice sounding things about community involvement, creating tourism jobs, etc etc. Usually it means they hold a lot of meetings and listen politely and then plan to do whatever they want. If this new development for the Quoin was good from the Tasmanian Aboriginal perspective I'd expect to find sources from them talking about what it means and what it might make possible. I haven't been able to find any.
posted by Rhedyn at 4:29 AM on January 18 [2 favorites]
You're welcome to drop them the same email I'd send to ask, but given they're giving access to high schools I'm pretty certain they're not going to cut off the locals. I also have mates who live in rural Tasmania and it's a bit wilder than the rest of the country, and those big stations rarely have active boundary management. It's unlikely anyone would give a damn if people just showed up for cultural practices on the property. 5000 hectares is north of 12000 acres. It's a lot of land.
Like it is possible not to be a ratbastard about it. If anything, this is kind of a reminder that you can run a tech business and not be a prick to your employees as a matter of course, and then attempt to do something good with the money afterwards.
posted by Jilder at 5:05 AM on January 18 [2 favorites]
Like it is possible not to be a ratbastard about it. If anything, this is kind of a reminder that you can run a tech business and not be a prick to your employees as a matter of course, and then attempt to do something good with the money afterwards.
posted by Jilder at 5:05 AM on January 18 [2 favorites]
I'm not sure how to put this, either, and I've sat with it for a bit, but your suggestion that the Palawa should have the opportunity to live on the property makes me think you have an idea of a displaced continuous Indigenous culture in Tasmania that these rich people are erecting barriers around.
This simply isn't the case. Colonisation was a massive disruptive force for Tasmania's first people, to the point they were erroneously declared extinct. Tasmania's a pretty hostile place to live, so there was maybe a population of 4000 people across 12 language groups at the time of settlement. By the turn of the century, the majority of them had been killed - around 140 remained. They lost their languages completely, resulting in a wholesale reconstruction effort from remaining fragments in the 70s and 80s. Since then there's been a lot of work put in to rediscover their cultural practices and pass them on to their communities, but the damage inflicted on to Indigenous Tasmanians was so thorough it's sometimes incorrectly called the only successful British genocide.
Trawulwuy man Professor Greg Lehman, also the Pro Vice Chancellor of University of Tasmania, writes,
"The cost of two centuries of struggle has been savage de-culturation, a massive fracture in the continuity of Woorady's mythology with the experience of contemporary life. While Palawa skills such as necklace-making and muttonbirding survived, and family-based oral histories continue to form the basis of Palawa unity, knowledge of ceremony and mythology has been diminished. "
All this has me needing to stress to you that there is likely limited information on what the cultural practices around this property were, whose country it was, what their practices were, and what the appropriate way to actually do land back is in this context. The involvement of the University of Tasmania is a good sign, as they've been involved with the cultural rebuilding from the start. And as an Australian, I'm 100% down with letting some settlers pay for the massive amount of work it's going to take to get the place back to how it ought to be, without putting the actual workload on the shoulders of the Palawa themselves. They don't need to drop us a press release every time something of benefit happens to them, either.
I'm from Queensland, so I'm quite a bit further north, so this reflects my understanding from quite a distance, and I'd welcome correction from folks more in the know than me.
posted by Jilder at 6:09 AM on January 18 [5 favorites]
This simply isn't the case. Colonisation was a massive disruptive force for Tasmania's first people, to the point they were erroneously declared extinct. Tasmania's a pretty hostile place to live, so there was maybe a population of 4000 people across 12 language groups at the time of settlement. By the turn of the century, the majority of them had been killed - around 140 remained. They lost their languages completely, resulting in a wholesale reconstruction effort from remaining fragments in the 70s and 80s. Since then there's been a lot of work put in to rediscover their cultural practices and pass them on to their communities, but the damage inflicted on to Indigenous Tasmanians was so thorough it's sometimes incorrectly called the only successful British genocide.
Trawulwuy man Professor Greg Lehman, also the Pro Vice Chancellor of University of Tasmania, writes,
"The cost of two centuries of struggle has been savage de-culturation, a massive fracture in the continuity of Woorady's mythology with the experience of contemporary life. While Palawa skills such as necklace-making and muttonbirding survived, and family-based oral histories continue to form the basis of Palawa unity, knowledge of ceremony and mythology has been diminished. "
All this has me needing to stress to you that there is likely limited information on what the cultural practices around this property were, whose country it was, what their practices were, and what the appropriate way to actually do land back is in this context. The involvement of the University of Tasmania is a good sign, as they've been involved with the cultural rebuilding from the start. And as an Australian, I'm 100% down with letting some settlers pay for the massive amount of work it's going to take to get the place back to how it ought to be, without putting the actual workload on the shoulders of the Palawa themselves. They don't need to drop us a press release every time something of benefit happens to them, either.
I'm from Queensland, so I'm quite a bit further north, so this reflects my understanding from quite a distance, and I'd welcome correction from folks more in the know than me.
posted by Jilder at 6:09 AM on January 18 [5 favorites]
The thing is, and I acknowledge that I am not Australian and am opining on this from the other side of the world, but: in these questions my rule is always to look for the statements that are directly from the indigenous group and trust in those first. And in this case I see an active Land Back group with official status and elected representation saying they are seeking further returns. And I see statements that they, and their culture, were not as wiped out as the dominant narrative would have led people to believe (amusingly, you have linked to me the same article that I linked in my original reply to you).
Everywhere that has an active struggle for decolonisation has a dominant narrative that the indigenous group was diminished to the point of irrelevancy, that their original cultural practices have been lost, that they are somehow not urgently relevant or not sufficiently authentic and therefore their voices are not required. Always. So I don't take that narrative at face value, even when the people telling it are well meaning. I look for what the indigenous groups themselves are saying.
I would put slightly more faith in the Quoin owners' statement if the Tasmanian Aboriginal people they will be welcoming to engage in cultural burning were named (not necessarily as individuals, but as a group or organisation). It would be a lot better if there were a joint statement. As it is it comes across more like they are just invoking the image of indigenous participation (it also sort of troubles me that they refer to their own burning as "ecological" and what the invited group will be doing as "cultural"). For example, maybe they are working with a group like this? And if so, why not say so, why not have whoever it is be an equal participant in the public statement?
posted by Rhedyn at 7:18 AM on January 18 [2 favorites]
Everywhere that has an active struggle for decolonisation has a dominant narrative that the indigenous group was diminished to the point of irrelevancy, that their original cultural practices have been lost, that they are somehow not urgently relevant or not sufficiently authentic and therefore their voices are not required. Always. So I don't take that narrative at face value, even when the people telling it are well meaning. I look for what the indigenous groups themselves are saying.
I would put slightly more faith in the Quoin owners' statement if the Tasmanian Aboriginal people they will be welcoming to engage in cultural burning were named (not necessarily as individuals, but as a group or organisation). It would be a lot better if there were a joint statement. As it is it comes across more like they are just invoking the image of indigenous participation (it also sort of troubles me that they refer to their own burning as "ecological" and what the invited group will be doing as "cultural"). For example, maybe they are working with a group like this? And if so, why not say so, why not have whoever it is be an equal participant in the public statement?
posted by Rhedyn at 7:18 AM on January 18 [2 favorites]
Also, I'd like to point out that in your very own link, Greg Lehman also writes:
Seeking self-determination through co-management of land is widespread among Indigenous people, although success is limited by factors such as the establishment of capitalism, the commodification of Indigenous culture and the subsuming of difference. Unity with nature is a characteristic of Indigenous ontologies throughout the world. This can provide solutions to land management issues, as there is not the separation from nature that dominates Western thought. The relationship of Tasmanian Aborigines with the land occurs in the sense of what we do, what we see and what we believe. Revelation of creation myths welds us to a sacred landscape in Tasmania which is profoundly home. This is why we say that 'the land owns us'. Involving the Palawa community in management of land provides an opportunity for us to discern new meanings in the land, that can supplement the scientific approaches of Western land managers. The Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service is providing increased opportunities for Palawa participation in management of national parks. Tasmanian Aborigines desire re-empowerment in land management and are prepared to explore co-management with non-Aboriginal agencies, to continue relationships with land that has not been despoiled by Western exploitation – much of which exists in national parks.
Note his use of the term "co-management" which to me implies something a good bit more than just being invited to do a "cultural" burn.
posted by Rhedyn at 7:36 AM on January 18 [1 favorite]
Seeking self-determination through co-management of land is widespread among Indigenous people, although success is limited by factors such as the establishment of capitalism, the commodification of Indigenous culture and the subsuming of difference. Unity with nature is a characteristic of Indigenous ontologies throughout the world. This can provide solutions to land management issues, as there is not the separation from nature that dominates Western thought. The relationship of Tasmanian Aborigines with the land occurs in the sense of what we do, what we see and what we believe. Revelation of creation myths welds us to a sacred landscape in Tasmania which is profoundly home. This is why we say that 'the land owns us'. Involving the Palawa community in management of land provides an opportunity for us to discern new meanings in the land, that can supplement the scientific approaches of Western land managers. The Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service is providing increased opportunities for Palawa participation in management of national parks. Tasmanian Aborigines desire re-empowerment in land management and are prepared to explore co-management with non-Aboriginal agencies, to continue relationships with land that has not been despoiled by Western exploitation – much of which exists in national parks.
Note his use of the term "co-management" which to me implies something a good bit more than just being invited to do a "cultural" burn.
posted by Rhedyn at 7:36 AM on January 18 [1 favorite]
Everywhere that has an active struggle for decolonisation has a dominant narrative that the indigenous group was diminished to the point of irrelevancy, that their original cultural practices have been lost, that they are somehow not urgently relevant or not sufficiently authentic and therefore their voices are not required. Always. So I don't take that narrative at face value, even when the people telling it are well meaning. I look for what the indigenous groups themselves are saying.
This is kind of telling me you are not going to be receptive for just how thorough the extirpation of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people really was. Like friend, they have a conlang now that's made of hazy bits remembered from like, a single digit number of elders, they are working to relearn and retransmit their cultural practices down to stuff like canoe building. Sometimes the story has an ugly ending and it takes work to repair.
Like this is not a claim of "well they're irrelevant, let's lock them off their land", it's more we're still trying to work out who's fucking land it was to give back in the first place. It means that when we do discover a site of significance in Tasmania, that's where the focus is, not some mostly dead farm. And it's why you get cultural burns where they don't name the tribe, because it'll be a multi-tribal group made up of people who were lucky enough to stay connected. Most of Landback in Tasmania - and in Australia as a whole - is focused on native title and establishing traditional ownership through the courts. Indigenous groups nationally focus their efforts there, because that's where the strongest outcomes tend to be. Tasmanian claims are harder due to the deculturation Lehman talks about, and there's only so much manpower to go around. There's also a lot of sites like the Quoin in Tasmania - half abandoned farmland left to rot. I know a fair few people down there who are squatting on abandoned land, and I can't imagine a bigger boulder to tie around the Palawa than asking them to manage it, co or otherwise, in addition to the other work they're doing.
I'm not saying you're in the wrong for asking the questions, incidentally, I'm just saying there's a huge chunk of context you're missing and the impulse to dismiss claims of significant damage to the culture of the Palawa is part of that. Like your objection to 'cultural' and 'ecological' burns - that's pretty standard language for a burn that's done to eradicate pests, done cool with a specific technique used by Indigenous people across Australia. It's distict from fire prevention burns done in the traditional way.
posted by Jilder at 5:06 PM on January 18 [3 favorites]
This is kind of telling me you are not going to be receptive for just how thorough the extirpation of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people really was. Like friend, they have a conlang now that's made of hazy bits remembered from like, a single digit number of elders, they are working to relearn and retransmit their cultural practices down to stuff like canoe building. Sometimes the story has an ugly ending and it takes work to repair.
Like this is not a claim of "well they're irrelevant, let's lock them off their land", it's more we're still trying to work out who's fucking land it was to give back in the first place. It means that when we do discover a site of significance in Tasmania, that's where the focus is, not some mostly dead farm. And it's why you get cultural burns where they don't name the tribe, because it'll be a multi-tribal group made up of people who were lucky enough to stay connected. Most of Landback in Tasmania - and in Australia as a whole - is focused on native title and establishing traditional ownership through the courts. Indigenous groups nationally focus their efforts there, because that's where the strongest outcomes tend to be. Tasmanian claims are harder due to the deculturation Lehman talks about, and there's only so much manpower to go around. There's also a lot of sites like the Quoin in Tasmania - half abandoned farmland left to rot. I know a fair few people down there who are squatting on abandoned land, and I can't imagine a bigger boulder to tie around the Palawa than asking them to manage it, co or otherwise, in addition to the other work they're doing.
I'm not saying you're in the wrong for asking the questions, incidentally, I'm just saying there's a huge chunk of context you're missing and the impulse to dismiss claims of significant damage to the culture of the Palawa is part of that. Like your objection to 'cultural' and 'ecological' burns - that's pretty standard language for a burn that's done to eradicate pests, done cool with a specific technique used by Indigenous people across Australia. It's distict from fire prevention burns done in the traditional way.
posted by Jilder at 5:06 PM on January 18 [3 favorites]
Dude. I am not in any way dismissing that there was incredible damage to the Palawa, that most of them were killed, that it was genocide, that they are rebuilding from fragments. What I am saying is that none of that is an excuse not to foreground their voices and prioritise their choices. You are writing lengthy explanations to me of how it all is and why the Palawa shouldn't be bothered with the Quoin because they have enough to deal with. But you aren't citing Palawa voices saying so, and you seem to be ignoring the Aboriginal Land Council website that I have cited twice, which seems to have plenty to say about this and certainly suggests that they very much want further land donations. Why are you so happy to speak for what they want rather than deferring to what they actually say?
Generally I find indigenous groups use the internet like everyone else. They make websites for their organisations, they hang out in subreddits, they use social media, they write papers. It's not hard to find them and see what their take on things is. But mostly people don't.
posted by Rhedyn at 10:07 PM on January 18 [1 favorite]
Generally I find indigenous groups use the internet like everyone else. They make websites for their organisations, they hang out in subreddits, they use social media, they write papers. It's not hard to find them and see what their take on things is. But mostly people don't.
posted by Rhedyn at 10:07 PM on January 18 [1 favorite]
Generally I find indigenous groups use the internet like everyone else. They make websites for their organisations, they hang out in subreddits, they use social media, they write papers. It's not hard to find them and see what their take on things is. But mostly people don't.
You said you looked for Indigenous writing about the Quoin and found nothing. I looked too. I have some context for why this is likely, and if you're not comfortable with that I don't know what else to tell you. That understanding is built on experiences with landback in Queensland, and the bit where people only got so many hours in the day, the work is large, and a press release on a site of limited significance is going to be way down the list of priorities.
Broadly it looks to me that between the partnership with UoT and the connections they're building locally they're making some solid steps. They've only been on site for three or four years, which is nothing on a property that big and that remote. Maybe we'll hear more later from Palawa voices about it, both negatively or positively. But for now it really does look like this is one of those rare moments where some rich prick is putting their money where their mouth is.
posted by Jilder at 12:55 AM on January 19 [2 favorites]
You said you looked for Indigenous writing about the Quoin and found nothing. I looked too. I have some context for why this is likely, and if you're not comfortable with that I don't know what else to tell you. That understanding is built on experiences with landback in Queensland, and the bit where people only got so many hours in the day, the work is large, and a press release on a site of limited significance is going to be way down the list of priorities.
Broadly it looks to me that between the partnership with UoT and the connections they're building locally they're making some solid steps. They've only been on site for three or four years, which is nothing on a property that big and that remote. Maybe we'll hear more later from Palawa voices about it, both negatively or positively. But for now it really does look like this is one of those rare moments where some rich prick is putting their money where their mouth is.
posted by Jilder at 12:55 AM on January 19 [2 favorites]
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posted by heyitsgogi at 3:00 PM on January 17 [10 favorites]