In this paper we theorise climate fiction in the context of Dirrayawadha: Rise Up, by Anita Heiss (2024). Dirrayawadha: Rise Up is a literary novel that narratises historical truths in a dialogic encounter. Through an exploration of love, resilience and resistance, the novel recounts early moments of invasion while simultaneously revealing the links between colonial violence and environmental crisis. We examine four excerpts from the novel to illustrate how the narratisation of historical truths and usage of literary devices and language works. We also show how the translanguaging in the novel, where some sections shift between English and Wiradyuri, enable the text to transcend some of the limitations of English. The novel reveals how the genesis of environmental crisis in so-called Australia begins in the first moments of invasion. Heiss (2022) argues the need for settlers to read more First Nations writing as a form of truth-listening (Kwaymullina, 2020).

Indigenous Peoples in Canada are comprised of First Nations, Inuit and Métis and are the youngest and fastest growing population in the country. However, there is limited knowledge of how they are affected by multiple sclerosis (MS), the most common nontraumatic neurological disease of young adults, with Canada having one of the highest prevalences in the world. In this narrative review, we outline the limited studies conducted with Indigenous Peoples living with MS in Canada and the gaps in the literature. From the limited data we have, the prevalence of MS in Indigenous Peoples is lower, but the disease appears to be more aggressive. Given the dearth of Canadian data, we explore the worldwide MS studies of Indigenous populations. Lastly, we explore ways in which we can improve our understanding of MS among Indigenous Peoples in Canada, which entails building trust and meaningful relationships with these communities and acknowledging past and ongoing injustices. Furthermore, healthcare professionals conducting research with Indigenous Peoples should undergo training in cultural safety and data sovereignty, including principles of ownership, control, access and possession to have greater engagement with Indigenous communities to conduct more relevant research. With joint efforts between healthcare professionals and Indigenous communities, the scientific research community can be positioned to conduct better, more appropriate and desperately needed research, ultimately with improvements in the delivery of care to Indigenous Peoples living with MS in Canada.

This article investigates whether environmental planning law can demonstrate ethical responsibility for its role in settler colonialism. Planning law contributes to settler colonialism by diminishing, excluding, and eliminating alternative views of land that are fundamental to First Nations culture, philosophy, and law/lore. The article adopts a transnational legal frame that recognizes and promotes First Nations as sovereign. The investigation is focused primarily on the planning law system in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, while being guided by interpretations and applications of the rights of First Nations peoples by courts in Canada. It is argued that state planning law in NSW fails to give effect to ethical responsibility because its operation continues to dominate and marginalize Aboriginal legal culture by eroding the necessary ontological and epistemic relationships with land. However, there is potential for change. Opportunities to disrupt settler colonialism have emerged through bottom-up litigation, which has promoted interpretations, applications, and implementation of law that can be performed in ways that resonate with Canadian case law. While the absence of treaty or constitution-based rights protection in NSW and Australia means that the transplant is not seamless, the article argues that laws should not be interpreted and applied in ways that perpetuate settler colonialism where alternative interpretations can lead to a different outcome.

Increasing rates of dementia in First Nations populations require culturally grounded approaches to dementia diagnosis and care. To respond to the need for a culturally appropriate cognitive assessment tool, a national team of health services researchers and community partners, guided by a Nakoda Advisory Group, aimed to adapt the Canadian Indigenous Cognitive Assessment tool for a Nakoda First Nation in Carry the Kettle First Nation, Saskatchewan, Canada. The adaptation of the CICA for a Nakoda First Nation community resulted in a slightly modified version of the CICA signalling that the CICA requires minimal adaptation to be used in different First Nations contexts.

Bell’s palsy is acute facial palsy due to inflammation involving the facial nerve related to infections. Rates have not been noted to differ by ethnicity. We studied the lifetime prevalence in First Nations and all other Manitobans in people with type 2 diabetes mellitus aged 7 and older in 2013–2014 and 2016–2017. We found a crude lifetime prevalence of 9.9% [95% CI 9.4–10.4%] in the First Nations population versus 3.9% [95% CI 3.8–4.0%] in all other Manitobans. It is unknown if there were differences in glycemic control. The increased prevalence was found in all five provincial health regions. This study indicates that ethnicity may be an important risk factor for Bell’s palsy.

This paper reflects on the national referendum for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament that took place in Australia in mid-October 2023. At the time of writing, the aftershocks from the failure of the referendum to gain the necessary majorities were still being felt keenly by many of the Voice advocates and supporters. The hurt and grief of many First Nations people were shared by millions of non-Indigenous “Yes” voters, while much reckoning continued in the subsequent weeks and months. The author here explores what might have been gained if more attention had been given to what an Indigenous Voice to Parliament might “sound like,” instead of the excessive focus on, and public discourse around what it might “look like.” Resources from the philosophies and physiology of voice, communication ethics, cultural studies, critical anthropology, Australian Indigenous writing and scholarship, and psychoanalytic politics are utilised to explore the connections between the human voice, vocal expression, hearing and listening, silence and song.

This discussion paper by a group of scholars across the fields of health, economics and labour relations argues that COVID-19 is an unprecedented humanitarian crisis from which there can be no return to the ‘old normal’. The pandemic’s disastrous worldwide health impacts have been exacerbated by, and have compounded, the unsustainability of economic globalisation based on the neoliberal dismantling of state capabilities in favour of markets. Flow-on economic impacts have simultaneously created major supply and demand disruptions, and highlighted the growing within-country inequalities and precarity generated by neoliberal regimes of labour market regulation. Taking an Australian and international perspective, we examine these economic and labour market impacts, paying particular attention to differential impacts on First Nations people, developing countries, women, immigrants and young people. Evaluating policy responses in a political climate of national and international leadership very different from those in which major twentieth century crises were addressed, we argue the need for a national and international conversation to develop a new pathway out of crisis.

This article uses historical-ecological insights for a re-reading of two little-known mid-twentieth-century Australian plays, Oriel Gray’s The Torrents and Eunice Hanger’s Flood, which highlight developments relevant to the environmental disasters of today. In particular, the article focuses on the significance of key cultural assumptions embedded in the texts – and a revival of The Torrents in 2019 – including those to do with land use in a period of accelerating development. This approach offers new insights into the dominance of mining, irrigation, and dam-building activities within the Australian ethos, landscape, and economy. One of these insights is the framing of development as progressive. The article thus also examines how development projected as progressive takes place amid the continuing denial of prior occupation of the land by First Nations peoples and of knowledge systems developed over thousands of years. The intersectional settler-colonialist-ecocritical approach here seeks to capture the compounding ecosystem that is modern Australian theatre and its critique. The intention is not to apply revisionist critiques of 1950s plays but to explore the historical relationship between humans, colonialism, and the physical environment over time. Denise Varney is Professor of Theatre Studies in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Her research is in modern and contemporary theatre and performance, with published work in the areas of ecocriticism, feminism, and Australian theatre. Her most recent book is Patrick White’s Theatre: Australian Modernism on Stage 1960–2018 (Sydney University Press, 2021).

Extreme heat and wildfires have health implications for everyone; however, minority and low-income populations are disproportionately negatively affected due to generations of social inequities and discriminatory practices. Indigenous people in Canada are at a higher risk of many chronic respiratory diseases, as well as other non-communicable diseases and hospitalization, compared to the general population. These wildfires occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic have demonstrated how disruptive compounding disasters can be, putting minority populations such as First Nations, Metis, and Inuit tribes at increased risk and decreased priority. Going forward, if the necessarily proactive mitigation and preparedness steps are not undertaken, the ability to attenuate health inequity in the indigenous community by building resiliency to wildfire disasters will be significantly hampered.