Culture, Country and Carbon: An exchange across the Timor Sea (Wai Mata Films, 18 mins: English/Tetum)
Lisan: The importance of culture in carbon forestry in Timor-Leste (Wai Mata Films, 12 mins: English/Tetum/Makasae)
Dir: Lisa Palmer, The University of Melbourne
This session examines the experience of two Indigenous communities, from Timor-Leste and Australia, who are involved in carbon trading schemes planting trees and managing fire. While the exchange between these Timorese and Australian Indigenous community members is grounded in the shared experience of violent and oppressive colonial legacies, both groups are now focussed on the socio-cultural and environmental repair of their communities. Despite vastly different postcolonial circumstances, broadly shared Indigenous governance practices underpin their ongoing struggles over land, resources, food, language, and cultural recognition. In this context, carbon markets are valued as one way of enabling Indigenous wellbeing and potentially increasing the outside value and recognition given to Indigenous governance processes.
Foregrounding the Indigenous governance, labour and more-than-human care involved in the schemes, the first film Lisan examines the ways in which farmers in Timor-Leste program grow trees to sell carbon credits to the international market. This reforestation initiative is locally founded and controlled. It is built upon lisan, the deep social relationships people have with each other, their environment and their ancestors.
The second film Culture, Country and Carbon makes visible the diverse capacities, skills and customary structures on which these locally produced environmental markets depend in two nation-state contexts. It encourages viewers to question why some forms of governance and labour are made or remain invisible and unvalued, and suggests new ways of thinking about the work, care and responsibility underpinning such schemes.