The Aboriginal Waterscape

Disease was introduced to Sydney cove when the first fleet arrived in Botany Bay on the 24th of January 1788. The outbreak of disease had many effects on both European and Aboriginal communities. Whilst many of the effects from the event have lingered over to today’s communities in many ways.

Describe and explain Australian Indigenous people’s historical and contemporary connections to land and sea and the resources derived from them. How have settler discourses associated with colonization affected these connections to country?

Along this journey created by nature, the river interacts with man’s influence to encapsulate the full geographic experience of this region. The succession of dams along the river’s path is a major contribution to how man has decided to mesh with the river. The dams have created reservoirs for water supplies, harnessed energy to provide electric power to the southwestern region, and controlled flooding. Flood control was the main concern at the time between the years 1905 and 1907 when large floods broke through the irrigation gates and destroyed crops in California. The flooding was so large it actually created a 450 square mile sea, named the Salton Sea. As a result of this major disaster, ideas were formulated to

Surrounding the Great Barrier Reef are the aboriginal inhabitants and Torres Strait Islanders. Their connection goes back for 60,000 years. There are 70 tribes across the Great Barrier Reef relying on the reef but are experiencing major problems, pollution and mining.

Aboriginal land use practices centred on the sustainable use of the land. Aboriginal Australians practiced a form of agriculture known as ‘fire stick agriculture’. This involved utilizing fire to hunt animals, by setting fire to vegetation to draw prey into the open. Doing this also increased the availability of new grass and vegetation to feed animals. Minerals from the burnt vegetation are absorbed into the soil, increasing its fertility and therefore the abundance of vegetation in the area. Ensuring that there was enough feed for animals in the wild allowed Indigenous Australians to maintain population levels of the species they hunted in a sustainable manner for thousands of years.

foreign audiences alike when it won best short film in both the Melbourne International Short

According to Vass, Mitchell, and Dhurrkay (2011), the incidence of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, renal disease, cardiovascular disease and chronic obstructive airway disease among Indigenous Australians is quite significant. In addition, the presence of mental health conditions and infectious diseases such as scabies, skin infections and rheumatic fever has also attributed considerably to the disease burden (Vass, et al, 2011). As a disability support worker, I had the opportunity to look after indigenous clients. With my experience working with them, it shed some light on me with how they value their culture and gave me an insight on their view about health concerning issues. I had my misconceptions about how aboriginal people

At some point of our lives we have been asked or have heard the question, what can we not live without?. Many of us will not hesitate to mention family, friends, food, water, and other living essential we find futile to our survival. If we place these living essentials in order of importance some of us may place family over water. If you then think about it, we can live without our family, but we cannot live without water. Water gives us life its in our fruits, foods, and drinks. Without water we would not be alive and healthy for the most part. The importance of water is substantial and California is currently experiencing one of its worst droughts in history. The planet itself is also undergoing global warming, which only contributes to a more severe drought occurring in California. Droughts in California’s history did not have the contributing factor of Global warming diminishing their severity. California’s drought and Global warming share a common link in the factor that would contribute to the severity of the drought we are currently experiencing in California and

California has always had a warm climate, yet its supply of water has rarely been affected. In 2014 California’s water shortage issue truly began. Due to low amounts of snow in the winter in recent years, California has tried to equal out these shortages by drilling water from underground aquifers. Yet, underground aquifers recharge much slower than surface water sources. California has already made significant drawbacks to attempt to limit the amount of water they use, so these aquifers can recharge. But still resources continue going down and the Central Valley Aquifer’s water level is rapidly declining. Luckily, on April 7, 2017 the drought stage of emergency in California was ended. Yet the issue isn’t truly resolved. Glen MacDonald

For this paper water structures and infrastructures were selected as focus points because the longer we wait to fix issues with them, the more expensive it will get, in other words, we are in a race against time. Studying the past it is easy to see how water availability made population explode in an area such as Southern California, where savvy marketing and great politics made it happen. Particularly, for Los Angeles and for the purposes of public narrative, Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert does a great job at understanding and identifying the politics and key figures in getting water to Los Angeles. Great hydrologic structures were created using both manpower and water politics. It is important to state that there are connections between water, politics, environment, and geography when analyzing what the biggest problems involving water structures and infrastructures (Reisner.) We must think of water as both a socio-political issue and a natural resource, whose fate is molded by the understanding of its connectivity to itself, man-made structures, geography, environment, and society. The classes taken in this program have taught us ideals that in order to become a great water resource manager, one must master the political and scientific knowledge to make decisions that are prosperous for society and the environment. Furthermore, one must know the United States’ hydrological history in order to gain manipulation upon the system that makes it both thrive and deteriorate.

In his book, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Marc Reisner’s main thesis is to show the inefficiency, greed, and inherent difficulty in the American West’s never-ending struggle to turn its unwelcoming desert into a lush garden. One of his main sub-points is that the West is not meant to support millions of people. It has a wide range of geographic challenges throughout the entire region. Its inconsistency and diversity is a primary cause of its water problems. For example, Reisner notes that the West consists of “plains so arid that they could barely support bunchgrass; deserts that were fiercely hot and fiercely cold; streams that flooded a few weeks each year and went dry the rest; forests with trees so large it might take days to bring one down; . . . hail followed by drought followed by hail;” (23).

Water is vital to the survival of man. Settlers fought over it, farmers depend on it, and communities rely on it. Fort Huachuca and Sierra Vista are no exception. Located in one of the driest states in the U.S., they rely on the San Pedro River watershed for water. Barbara Tellman and Diane Hadley’s (1999) book Crossing Boundaries, talks of travelers in the 1800s who were amazed to see cottonwood lined streams of the San Pedro after traveling for days in desert uplands (p.11). Fort Huachuca was established because of the water source at the foot of the Huachuca Mountains, needed by Captain S.M. Whiteside, his troops and their horses (Price, 2003, p31). In 1902 Congress enacted the National Reclamation Act, signed by President Theodore Roosevelt. The Act recognized the importance of water to western development. Sierra Vista continues to grow, the use of ground water increases causing the water table to drop. As the water table drops, more human, plant and animal life are affected. To understand the significance of water in the Sierra Vista/ Fort Huachuca area, it is important to know where the water comes from, why it is so important and how it can be protected. Sierra Vista’s water is not infinite. There may not be enough

The focus of chapter three was about the federal irrigation systems, which was caused by weather events. The year of 1880’s, South Dakota and nearby states survived a natural disaster. South Dakota was hit by a blizzard and in the result of that suffer from a drought right after. This is when people began to search for new homes and a place that had water and a fertile land. The drought affected most the farmers that lived in that area due to the inexperienced with irrigation. The drought helped irrigation companies start businesses to better the farming industry. Unfortunately, most of the businesses failed and shut down very quick. The state of California initialed an attempt to create a plan to conserve and ration out water. The outcome

Simply stated, knowledge can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you use it. Arguably, the inherent purpose and power of knowledge lies in the ability to use that knowledge to make good changes to things around you. The “Individuals and Societies” module explored the implications of knowledge and how we should use knowledge to make changes with respect to our water crisis. In Josh Viers lecture entitled “California Water Wars,” he presented the fact that California, more specifically, is facing a water crisis. Viers states that one reason for this water crisis is the phenomenon of the Sierra Nevada facing monumental shifts in climate change. He posits that the Nevada is shifting from a snow-dominated to rain dominated flow regime, that there is now an earlier timing of snowmelt, and that there are now longer dry seasons (Viers). The purpose of this lecture was two-fold, to inform us about our current and past actions and to warn us that changes need to be made to prevent the exacerbation of our water crisis. Viers urged us to look at the data and see that our actions

The quality of living spaces is closely associated with a range of both positive and negative physical, mental, social, and health conditions (Bailie 2007). In Australia, many Aborigines live in severe socioeconomic disadvantage conditions. In 2008 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey (NATSISS) marks out that over a quarter of Aboriginal people live in houses with major structural problems. Poor housing states are extensive in Aboriginal groups all around the country (Memmot et al., 2010). There are reports of destruction of houses by aboriginal households (Memmot et al., 2010). The reason for such behaviour is unknown and whether it is due to poor architectural design, social and personal problems or different