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Focusing on the coexistence of competing and contested interests in intercultural natural resource management ( NRM) systems in Australia and Malaysia, this paper explores the ways in which ontological pluralism and the interplay of socio-cultural, political-economic and biophysical influences shape NRM systems. We aim to foster a discursive space in which to reframe the challenges of capacity building in the rapidly changing spaces of intercultural NRM systems. The paper synthesizes the conceptual arguments of field research to conclude that capacity deficits of dominant institutions, processes and knowledge systems drive many systemic failures in land and sea management affecting Indigenous peoples. We advocate urgent action to build intercultural competence and new capacities and competencies in those institutions. The paper reframes intercultural NRM in terms of coexistence and invites wider debate about these 'new geographies of coexistence' in intercultural NRM systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This collaboratively written paper takes the reader on a journey to Bawaka, in North East Arnhem Land, northern Australia, to explore how a Yolŋu ontology of co-becoming can inform natural resource management ( NRM) theory and practice. By focusing on the process of gathering and sharing miyapunu mapu (turtle eggs) and the foundational Yolŋu concept of wetj, we challenge NRM to take seriously Indigenous ways of knowing and becoming, and to attend to the vibrant, more-than-human relationality of our world. We discuss this relational cosmology, highlighting the importance of being aware and attentive, as well as the underlying ethical imperative of responsibility and obligation. We argue that as important as the concept of Caring for Country has been for NRM in Australia, it is critical that the human imperative to care for Country is balanced with a multi-directional and beyond-human understanding of the human- Country relationship. This requires engagement with the ways Country also cares and acknowledgement that humans are part of Country and not separate from it. We therefore propose a reframing, that we not only Care for Country but Care as Country. This has implications for understanding the ways that humans can and should relate to the environment as they exist together through co-becoming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caring as the ontological and epistemological foundations of nursing: A view of caring from the perspectives of Australian nurses In a study using unstructured interviews to explore nurses’ understanding and interpretations of caring in nursing, one of the major themes emerging from the data is that through caring for patients, nurses discover the meaning and nature of nursing and what it means for them to be nurses. In the process of caring for patients, nurses further develop and understand the knowledge and skill of caring which constitutes the knowledge base of nursing. The data also show that nurses, in their practice, continue to define, develop and shape the meaning and knowledge of caring in nursing. From the evidence of this study, this paper argues that caring can be considered as the ontological and epistemological foundations of nursing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human geography has driven substantive improvements in methodologies and applications of Geographic Information Systems ( GISs), yet Indigenous groups continue to experience erasure in geographic representations. GIS ontologies comprise categorised labels that represent lived contexts, and these ontologies are determined through the shared worldviews of those labelling spatial phenomena for entry into GIS databases. Although Western ontologies and spatial representations reflect Western understandings of human experience, they are often inappropriate in Indigenous contexts. In efforts to be represented in courts and land management, Indigenous groups nevertheless need to engage Western spatial representations to 'claim space'. This paper examines what GISs are and do and shows that GIS technology comes with strings attached to the myriad social contexts that continue to shape the field of GIScience. We show that Intellectual Property Rights Agreements can sever and control these 'strings'; the agreement between the Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation and university researchers reframes GIS from a technology of erasure to a technology of opportunity that enables Indigenous groups to define their own engagement. The visual and narrative outputs will contribute important understandings of the environmental crisis facing the Murray- Darling Basin and connect older and younger generations through knowledge sharing. We conclude the application of GIScience is never simply technological but always has potential to empower particular communities. Applying GIS technology to new circumstances is an engagement of new relationships in the social praxis of technology transfer, where worldviews meet and negotiations are made over what exists and how we know. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropologists have described Aboriginal Australian personhood in various ways. In 1986, Myers spoke about the tension between autonomy and relatedness that he identified as intrinsic aspects of Pintupi identity. More recently, Keen (2006) has identified the extension of Yolngu persons in time and space; others have described Aboriginal personhood as 'dividual.' Based on ethnography from the northwest Kimberley region of Western Australia, I argue that one way of characterizing personhood is as an ontology of embodied relatedness. In this, I draw inspiration from Ashforth's (2011) approach to relational realism, in which he extends the field of relations under consideration to entities beyond the human. I also consider Viveiros de Castro's (2009) synthesis of kinship, exchange, and magic to argue that the relationship between these can be understood through the embodied relationality that is at the core of cultural conceptions of the person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]