[Air-L] COVID-19 seminar #7: "Seeing Indigenous Land Struggles in COVID-19, " Dr Will Smith, Dr Noah Theriault, Dr June Rubis

[Thao Phan]

*COVID-19 seminar #7: Dr Will Smith, Dr Noah Theriault, Dr June Rubis*
https://smiththeriaultrubis-seminar.eventbrite.com.au
<https://smiththeriaultrubis-seminar.eventbrite.com.au>

Please join us for the FINAL seminar in the COVID-19 seminar series,
co-hosted by the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship & Globalisation
<https://www.deakin.edu.au/adi> (ADI) and the Science and Society Network
<https://scienceandsocietynetwork.deakin.edu.au/> (SSN).


*Title:*Seeing Indigenous Land Struggles in COVID-19


*Abstract:*Popular and academic commentary on the multispecies assemblage
of COVID-19 has focused extensively on its nebulous animal origins. Bats,
civets, snakes, pangolins, and birds have all found themselves implicated
as possible hosts for the novel virus. A multispecies exploration of
COVID-19 appropriately highlights the profitable and violent commodity
chains that connect mass consumption of wild animals to global
‘biodiversity hotspots.’ Yet, perversely, this move has also worked to
erase reference to the peoples who actually coexist with these lifeforms.
In this talk, we examine what is rendered invisible when ‘exotic’ animal
origins are fetishized. Throughout Southeast Asia, the ancestral
territories of indigenous peoples are the ultimate source of wildlife
destined for consumption throughout the region. Drawing on examples from
the Philippines and Malaysia, we explore how indigenous struggles for land
and livelihood are central, not marginal, to understanding the emergence of
a zoonotic pathogen like SARS-CoV-2.

*About the speakers:*

Will Smith is an Associate Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute
at Deakin University. He is an anthropologist and human geographer whose
research critically explores environmental governance, indigenous
livelihoods and climate change in the Philippines. He is the author of
Mountains of Blame: Climate and Culpability in the Philippine Uplands
(University of Washington Press, 2020).

Noah Theriault, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Carnegie Mellon
University, studies how global-scale forces shape the lives of rural and
urban communities in the Philippines, with particular attention to the
everyday practices through which those forces are enacted, contested, and
potentially transformed. This includes a long-term study of indigeneity and
biodiversity conservation in Palawan and more recently a political ecology
of infrastructure in Manila.

As a former conservation biologist, June Rubis, Postdoctoral Fellow at
University of Sydney, has about twelve years experience with wildlife
conservation fieldwork in both Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo. She also
has work experience on Indigenous land rights issues, working alongside
with local activists in Malaysian Borneo (Sarawak and Sabah), on campaigns
to resist mega-dam development in Borneo. She also studies decolonial
Indigenous approaches to biodiversity conservation in Sarawak. Much of her
approach to her work follows along the teachings of her late Bidayuh
father. She holds both an MSc in Environmental Change and Management and a
DPhil (PhD) in Geography & Environment, from the University of Oxford.

*Watch the seminar:*

Seminar will be available to stream on YouTube live. Access using the live
link: <https://youtu.be/eJsN8Ym85y4>https://youtu.be/AD29NDsvwkc

Date/time: Tuesday 9th June, 10am - 11:30am (Australian Eastern Standard
Time, GMT+10)

Q&A with the speaker to follow. To send questions/participate in the chat,
you'll need to sign-in using a YouTube account
<https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-comment-on-youtube?r=AU&IR=T>.
If you have any questions, please send to ssn-info at deakin.edu.au

The talk will also be recorded and available on the SSN Youtube Channel
<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVYFQV_UFX9CLreqpNzanVA>.

Did you miss our last seminar? Watch it here!
<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtH1AbnJ7AFApbhh29fL5kqjNFdD_0eID>