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After the fire, Beyond the Waters - Thriving future

Date & Time: 25th October 10:00 am - 12:30 pm. Maldhan Ngurr Ngurra, Lithgow Transformation Hub ,154 Mort St, Lithgow NSW

A  little more about the session

Join people living on the front lines of the climate emergency.  Participants in this opening plenary think about how climate change has come with new threats and uncertainties for regional towns and communities in New South Wales and elsewhere in Australia, reflecting on the role that mutual aid and community resourcefulness play in broader response to climate change.

Biographies

sharonAuntie Sharon Riley

Auntie Sharon is a proud Wiradjuri elder. She takes pride in having extensive experience in site identification and assisting with remedial work on Aboriginal rock art sites. She has been involved with major works across the state and heavily in the local area. These include Aboriginal place identifications and declarations, site training, rock art remedial work, community liaison for the management of sites, and ecological restoration and bushfire recovery work and management frameworks for a protected Aboriginal area.  Sharon leads site awareness training, rock art graffiti removal training, community projects, and workshops for cultural understanding, art interpretation, and traditional practices. This includes leading culturally based mental health programs and firefighter training, and teaching cultural burning to emerging Wiradjuri leaders to then support the broader community in undertaking cultural burns to care for Country. Sharon has led successful major funding submissions including recent Heritage NSW and Black Summer Bushfire Recovery Grants. Sharon is also leading the establishment of an Indigenous ranger program through NIAA, which has recently secured registration.
Jason DJason De Santolo

Jason is Garrwa and Barunggam and Professor of First Nations Land Justice in Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research and Assoc. Dean (Indigenous Research) at UTS. He has worked in higher education for over two decades, combining legal training with creative methodologies to further Indigenous rights and environmental justice.

DavidDavid Conyers

Born the son of an English orphan soldier settler farmer near Bathurst NSW. School vice-captain Bathurst High 1976. Australian government apprentice of the year 1981 Refrigeration trades. Fifty-year association with Rugby union as a player, coach, referee and administrator across 6 continents.  Goodwill missions to Pacific nations, India, Uganda and Europe promoting rugby and delivering aid and support to disadvantaged communities through the power of sport. Undergraduate and master’s degrees in sports science as a 50-year-old. From American universities. Founder  Fridgy’s for Eugowra delivering a disaster relief mission to re-air condition an entire town and a $400k volunteer services and products to the Tsunami damaged township.

Stephen H Stephen Healy

Stephen Healy is a geographer and an Associate Professor in the School of Social Science and  Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. His work draws on insights from Marxian, feminist and psychoanalytic theory to understand processes of social transformation. Healy's current work encompasses two Australian Research Council projects centred around economies of waste and reuse. By drawing on perspectives from diverse economies, discard studies, and design, he aims to foster a shared understanding of social innovation, opening up new political possibilities for more inclusive and just forms of a circular economy. Collaborating with Associate Professor Abby Mellick Lopes, Healy is also co-leading a three-year project that focuses on climate change adaptation in the context of social housing providers. This research endeavour seeks to explore innovative strategies for climate resilience within social housing communities. He is co-author of Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming our Communities with J.K. Gibson-Graham and Jenny Cameron. His works have appeared in Geoforum, Antipode, Emotion Space and Society, Environment and Planning D, and the Annals of the American Association of Geographers. He is treasurer of the Community Economies Institute and associate editor of the Journal Rethinking Marxism.