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"Mother Earth births everything for us.
Father sky carries the water and oxygen for us to breathe."

Yuin Elder Max Dulumunmun Harrison, 2009

A Living Data Arena is convened to explore ways to compose a message to Antarctic Treaty nationals at the conference Antarctic Connections at the End of the World: Understanding the past and shaping the future.

25th January 2019

Barkanji artist Maddison Gibbsquestions freshwater ecologists about the fish kills in her country on the Murray Darling River, New South Wales.

TRANSCRIPT

Maddison:
Have you done any studies about the fish kill?

Scientist 01:
Yeah, our research group has heaps to do with that through our supervisor who wrote a recommendation not to catch water further up the Darling so there aren't any fish kills, and it got ignored.

Maddison:
So the government doesn't want to listen...

Scientist 01:
No no no... it's totally political.

Scientist 02:
How does it make you feel, doing all this hard science work to collect evidence?

Scientist 01:
It's just a microcosm of how the world works. If you're an environmentalist in Australia, that's what it is.

Maddison:
So do you have a personal connection to it, or is it just, like, what you do?

Scientist 01:
I think any environmental work I'd have a personal connection to... as a person from Earth... and when you see everything getting trashed, and more vigorously.

Scientist 02:
I was brought up in a household that was aggressively dark green. So it's a little bit astounding when you talk to people who weren't...

Maddie:
Yeah...

Scientist 02:
This gulf of understanding, of values really... For me it's pretty normal to be concerned.