Plant-Human Futurisms in the Australian Tropics: Native Grasses and the Carbon_Dating Art Project

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.24.2.2025.4097

Keywords:

native grasses, socially-engaged art, plant blindness, Indigenous Futurisms, Australian Tropics, plant-human relations

Abstract

The tropics have been first to suffer from the effects of unsustainable practices on land and sea. The Carbon_Dating project (2019 to 2025)—an artwork and cultural campaign designed to provoke a re-imagining of human-grass futures that builds relationships with native grasses—has worked in Far North Queensland, Australia, with two First Nations participants: Mbabaram Elder, knowledge-holder, and ethnobotanist Gerry Turpin, and Kuku Yalanji Master Weaver and artist Delissa Walker Ngadijina. Using traditional knowledge and creative works to forge new imaginaries that selectively choose or refuse those of the coloniser, the contributions of these two participants are an assertion of Indigenous relationalities in the tropics, and offer others a way of re-imagining plant-human futures in the wider world.

Author Biographies

Tania Leimbach, University of New South Wales, Australia

Tania Leimbach (PhD) is a Lecturer in the Environment and Society Group within the School of Humanities and Languages at University of New South Wales. She has a research profile contributing to environmental communication scholarship and recent discourse in the environmental humanities, particularly theorisations of affect and ecologically oriented creative practice. Tania’s PhD thesis draws on various accounts of agency and the rise of new museology to explore environmental leadership in the cultural sector.

Keith Armstrong, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Keith Armstrong (PhD) is an experimental artist profoundly motivated by issues of social and ecological justice. His engaged, participative practices provoke audiences to comprehend, envisage and imagine collective pathways towards sustainable futures. He has specialised for thirty years in collaborative, experimental practices with emphasis upon innovative performance forms, site-specific electronic arts, networked interactive installations, alternative interfaces, art-science collaborations and socially and ecologically engaged practices. Keith’s research asks how insights drawn from scientific and philosophical ecologies can help us to better invent and direct experimental art forms, in the understanding that art practitioners are powerful change agents, provocateurs and social catalysts. Through inventing radical research methodologies and processes he has led and created over sixty major art works and process-based projects, which have been shown extensively in Australia and overseas, supported by numerous grants from the public and private sectors.

Jane Palmer, University of Southern Queensland, Australia

Jane Palmer (PhD) is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Heritage and Culture, at the University of Southern Queensland. She has research interests in the use of ethnographic storytelling methods in post-conflict or marginalized communities, to explore the processes of trauma, grief, resilience and adaptation. She has undertaken ethnographic fieldwork in Aceh, Indonesia and in regional and remote Australia, and has published in the areas of ethics, Australian studies, fieldwork methodologies and futures studies.

Delissa Walker Ngadijina, Kuku Yalanji Master Weaver, Cairns, Australia

Delissa Walker Ngadijina (b.1990) is a Kuku Yalanji master weaver based in Cairns, Far North Queensland. Brought up in Mossman and Daintree learning traditional practices, Delissa is part of a large, culturally active family. Since 2018 weaving has become a full-time passion and responsibility. Delissa Walker’s works have been collected and exhibited nationally. In 2017 she was a finalist in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA). In recent years, her woven contemporary works have included wearable pieces featured in First Nations runways. Her cultural focus is teaching weaving at schools and cultural events, ensuring this once almost eradicated practice lives on.

Gerry Turpin, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia

Gerald Turpin is an Mbabaram man from north Queensland with familial links to Tableland Yidinji, Nadjon, and Kuku Thaypan. Mr Turpin began his more than 30-year career with the Queensland Government, with the Queensland Herbarium's Ecological Survey and Mapping team. He is now a senior ethnobotanist and leads the Tropical Indigenous Ethnobotany Centre (TIEC) at the Australian Tropical Herbarium in Cairns. Mr Turpin works tirelessly with many Traditional Owner groups on Cape York, across Queensland and around Australia. As an Indigenous ethnobotanist, he has a strong cultural commitment to facilitating effective partnerships that support Indigenous communities to protect, manage and maintain their cultural knowledge on the use of plants. Through his work, Mr Turpin has helped ensure that the botanical, biocultural and language knowledge of Traditional Owners is recorded, shared and passed forward to future generations within Indigenous communities. In 2025 he was awarded a Public Service Medal (PSM) Queensland for outstanding public service to Ethnobotany and championing Indigenous science and research.

References

AFAC. (2017). Fire Risks from the Management of Gamba Grass in Northern Australia. https://www.afac.com.au/docs/default-source/doctrine/fire-risks-from-the-management-of-gamba-grass-in-northern-australia-revised.pdf?sfvrsn=16&download=true

Ahlqvist, T., & Rhisiart, M. (2015). Emerging pathways for critical futures research: Changing contexts and impacts of social theory. Futures, 71, 91-104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.07.012

Alizzi, A. (2024). Utopianism, eco-criticism and colonial fantasy: Germaine Greer's White Beech as a case study in settler futurity. In B. Carlson, M. Day, S. O'Sullivan, & T. Kennedy (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Australian Indigenous Peoples and Futures (pp. 210-225). Routledge.

Aloi, G. (2020). Editorial. Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture (51), 10-11. https://www.antennae.org.uk/back-issues-1

Armstrong, K. (2022a). Carbon Dating: A brief history. Carbon_Dating Project. Retrieved 30 October 2023 from https://www.carbondating.art/learnings/a-brief-project-history

Armstrong, K. (2022b). Carbon_Dating: Interview with Gerry Turpin, Ethnobotanist. Carbon_Dating Project. Retrieved 30 October 2023 from https://www.carbondating.art/learnings/gerry-turpin-ethnobotanist

Armstrong, K., Davis, D., & Higgins, A. (2022). Carbon Dating: Exhibition. Carbon_Dating Project. Retrieved 30 July 2024 from https://www.carbondating.art/live/exhibition

Benitez, C. J. R., Chwala, G. L., Lundberg, A., & Nyeck, S. N. (2024). Queering the tropics: A cartography of tropical materialism, queer ecology and spectral tropicality. eTropic, 23 (1), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.23.1.2024.4079

Birch, T. (2017). ‘The Lifting of the Sky’: Life outside the Anthropocene. In J. Adamson & M. Davis (Eds.), Humanities for the Environment: Integrating Knowledge, Forging New Constellations of Practice (pp. 195-209). Routledge.

Buisson, E., Fidelis, A., Overbeck, G. E., Schmidt, I. B., Durigan, G., Young, T. P., . . . Silveira, F. A. O. (2021). A research agenda for the restoration of tropical and subtropical grasslands and savannas. Restoration Ecology, 29 (S1), 1-18.

Capelin, L. (2024). Artist's notes. In B. Jackson & K. Armstrong (Eds.), Carbon_Dating Exhibition Catalogue (pp. 14-15). https://www.carbondating.art/live/catalogue-page

Carlson, B. (2024). The future is Indigenous. In B. Carlson, M. Day, S. O'Sullivan, & T. Kennedy (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Australian Indigenous Peoples and Futures (pp. 9-25). Routledge.

Carlson, B., Day, M., O'Sullivan, S., & Kennedy, T. (Eds.). (2024). The Routledge Handbook of Australian Indigenous Peoples and Futures. Routledge.

Centre for Global Indigenous Futures. (2024). Centre for Global Indigenous Futures (website). Retrieved 8 December 2024 from https://www.globalindigenousfutures.com/

Chao, S. (2022). (Un)worlding the Plantationocene: Extraction, extinction, emergence. eTropic, 21 (1: Special Issue. Tropical landscapes: Nature~culture entanglements), 165-191. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3838

Chao, S., & Enari, D. (2021). Decolonising climate change: A call for beyond-human imaginaries and knowledge generation. eTropic, 20 (2: Special Issue. Tropical imaginaries and climate crisis), 32-54. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.2.2021.3796

Cornum, L. (2015). The space NDN's star map. The New Inquiry, 36: Stars (January). https://thenewinquiry.com/the-space-ndns-star-map/

Creet, J. (2009). Calling on witnesses: Testimony and the deictic. Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, 1 (1), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.3402/jac.v1i0.4622

Deloria, V. (1999). Spirit and Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr., Reader (B. Deloria, K. Foehner, & S. Scinta, Eds.). Fulcrum Publishing.

Dillon, G. L. (Ed.). (2012). Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction. University of Arizona Press.

Dillon, G. L. (2016). Indigenous Futurisms, Bimaashi Biidaas Mose, Flying and Walking towards You. Extrapolation, 57 (1-2), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.3828/extr.2016.2

Flannery, M. C. (2019). Interview with Maura C Flannery: Drawing trees to see and appreciate them. Plants People Planet, 1 (3), 150-152. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.47

Gibson, D. J. (2008). Grasses and Grassland Ecology. Oxford University Press.

Hall, M. (2011). Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany. State University of New York Press.

Hartnett, R. (2021). Climate imperialism: Ecocriticism, postcolonialism, and global climate change. eTropic, 20 (2: Special Issue. Tropical imaginaries and climate crisis), 138-155. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.2.2021.3809

Helguera, P. (2011). Education for Socially Engaged Art. Jorge Pinto. https://www.sholetteseminars.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Helguera-Pablo_Socially-Engaged-Art.pdf

Henry, R., Ramoutsaki, H., Long, D., Acciaioli, G., Foale, S., Pocock, C., . . . Wood, M. (2023). Weedy life: Coloniality, decoloniality, and tropicality. eTropic, 22 (1: Special Issue. Decolonizing the tropics), 236-269. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.22.1.2023.3985

Hobart, H. J. K. (2021). Atomic histories and elemental futures across Indigenous waters. Media+Environment, 3 (1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1525/001c.21536

Hogan, L. (2017). Backbone: Holding up the future. In J. Adamson & M. Davis (Eds.), Humanities for the Environment: Integrating Knowledge, Forging New Constellations of Practice (pp. 20-32). Routledge.

Inayatullah, S. (2013). Futures Studies: Theories and methods. In N. Al-Fodhan (Ed.), There's a Future: Visions for a Better World (pp. 36-66). BBVA.

Jackson, B. (2024). Fields of Vision. In B. Jackson & K. Armstrong (Eds.), Carbon_Dating Exhibition Catalogue (pp. 4-9). https://www.carbondating.art/live/catalogue-page

Jackson, B., & Armstrong, K. (Eds.). (2024). Carbon_Dating Exhibition Catalogue. https://www.carbondating.art/live/catalogue-page.

Jose, S. B., Wu, C.-H., & Kamoun, S. (2019). Overcoming plant blindness in science, education, and society. Plants People Planet, 1 (3), 169-172. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.51

Kimmerer, R. W. (2020 (2013)). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Penguin.

Knapp, S. (2019). Are humans really blind to plants? Plants People Planet, 1 (3), 164-168. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.36

Krishnan, S., Moreau, T., Kuehny, J., Novy, A., Greene, S. L., & Khoury, C. K. (2019). Resetting the table for people and plants: Botanic gardens and research organizations collaborate to address food and agricultural plant blindness. Plants People Planet, 1 (3), 157-163. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.34

Kwaymullina, A. (2018). Literature, resistance, and First Nations futures: Storytelling from an Australian Indigenous women’s standpoint in the twenty-first century and beyond. Westerly, 63 (2), 140-152.

Kwaymullina, A. (2024). Indigenist Futurisms. In B. Carlson, M. Day, S. O'Sullivan, & T. Kennedy (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Australian Indigenous Peoples and Futures (pp. xxiii-xxiv). Routledge.

Law, L. (2019). Interview with Lucinda Law: Finding inspiration in plants - the life and work of a botanical artist. Plants People Planet, 1 (3), 146-149. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.50

Lawrence, A. M. (2022). Listening to plants: Conversations between critical plant studies and vegetal geography. Progress in Human Geography, 46 (2), 629-651. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325211062167

Leimbach, T., & Palmer, J. (2022). #AustraliaOnFire: Hashtag activism and collective affect in the Black Summer fires. Journal of Australian Studies, 46 (4), 496-511. https://doi.org/10.1080/14443058.2022.2121744

Lundberg, A., Vasques Vital, A., & Das, S. (2021). Tropical imaginaries and climate crisis: Embracing relational climate discourses. eTropic, 20 (2), 1-31. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.2.2021.3803

Marcos-Walias, J., Bobo-Pinilla, J., Iglesias, J. D., & Tapia, R. R. (2023). Plant awareness disparity among students of different educational levels in Spain. European Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 11 (2), 234-248. https://doi.org/10.30935/scimath/12570

McKim, S., & Halpin, C. (2019). ‘Plant blindness’ is obscuring the extinction crisis for non-animal species. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/plant-blindness-is-obscuring-the-extinction-crisis-for-non-animal-species-118208

Milojević, I., & Inayatullah, S. (2015). Narrative foresight. Futures, 73, 151-162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.08.007

Murray, L. A. (1982). Eric Rolls and the golden disobedience. Quadrant, 26 (12), 44-53.

Neidjie, B. (1988). Story about Feeling. Magabala Books.

Nsah, K. T. (2022). The ecopolitics of water pollution and disorderly urbanization in Congo-Basin plays. Orbis Litterarum, 77 (5), 314-332. https://doi.org/10.1111/oli.12323

Nsah, K. T. (2023). Conserving Africa's Eden? Green colonialism, neoliberal capitalism, and sustainable development in Congo Basin literature. Humanities, 12 (3), 1-24. https://doi.org/10.3390/h12030038

Nsah, K. T., Malung, L. N., & Ngunyam, N. M. (2023). The slow integration of sustainability into contemporary theatre and performance practices in Cameroon. Peripeti, 37, 58-71. https://tidsskrift.dk/peripeti/article/view/135191/179950

Nyberg, E., Hipkiss, A. M., & Sanders, D. (2019). Plants to the fore: Noticing plants in designed environments. Plants People Planet, 1 (3), 212-220. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.40

Odenthal, F. (2020). Preventing fire with fire (interview with Victor Steffensen). Fair Planet. Retrieved 9 November 2021 from https://www.fairplanet.org/story/preventing-fire-with-fire/

Palmer, J., Walsh, A., & Batorowicz, B. (2022). Parallel futures? Indigenous resurgence and the haunting of the settler. Futures, 141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2022.102969

Parks, C. (2014). Blades of grass: On ecopoetry and an unnatural world. LA Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/blades-grass-ecopoetry-unnatural-world/

Pedrera, O., Ortega-Lasuen, U., Ruiz-González, A., Díez, J. R., & Barrutia, O. (2023). Branches of plant blindness and their relationship with biodiversity conceptualisation among secondary students. Journal of Biological Education, 57 (3), 566-591. https://doi.org/10.1080/00219266.2021.1933133

Petty, A. (2013). Field of nightmares: Gamba grass in the Top End. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/field-of-nightmares-gamba-grass-in-the-top-end-12178

Pluymers, K., & Oresky, M. (2020). Composting in the herbarium. Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture (52), 157-172. https://www.antennae.org.uk/back-issues-1

Rose, D. B. (2013). Slowly ~ writing into the Anthropocene. TEXT (Special Issue 20: Writing Creates Ecology and Ecology Creates Writing), 1-14. http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue20/Rose.pdf

Rose, D. B., & van Dooren, T. (2017). Encountering a more than human world: Ethos and the art of witness. In U. Heise, J. Christensen, & M. Niemann (Eds.), Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities (pp. 120-128). Routledge.

Sanders, D. L. (2019). Editorial: Standing in the shadows of plants. Plants People Planet, 1 (3), 130-138. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10059

Saunders, M. (2024). Future Tweed: Envisioning the possibilities of Bundjalung Country, community and culture through speculative fiction. In B. Carlson, M. Day, S. O'Sullivan, & T. Kennedy (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Australian Indigenous Peoples and Futures (pp. 322-335). Routledge.

Scherer, D., & Sanders, D. L. (2020). Plantrootweaving. Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture (52), 25-33. https://www.antennae.org.uk/back-issues-1

Simões, H., & Ferreira, S. (2023, 28 August-1September). Biodiversity and plant blindness in pre-service teacher education European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) Conference, Cappadocia, Türkiye.

Simpson, L. B. (2017). As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance. University of Minnesota Press.

Steffensen, V. (2020). Fire Country: How Indigenous Fire Management Could Help Save Australia. Hardie Grant.

Stroud, S., Fennell, M., Mitchley, J., Lydon, S., Peacock, J., & Bacon, K. L. (2022). The botanical education extinction and the fall of plant awareness. Ecology and Evolution, 12 (7), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.9019

Teare, B. (2013). Companion Grasses. Omnidawn.

Theriault, N., Leduc, T., Mitchell, A., Rubis, J. M., & Gaehowako, N. J. (2020). Living protocols: Remaking worlds in the face of extinction. Social and Cultural Geography, 21 (7), 893-908. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2019.1619821

Thomas, H. (2019). Grass blindness. Plants People Planet, 1 (3), 197-203. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.28

Tothill, J. C., & Hacker, J. B. (1983). The Grasses of Southern Queensland. University of Queensland Press.

Vujaković, P. (2019). Battle of the giants: Plants versus animals in idealised landscapes of 'deep time'. Plants People Planet, 1 (3), 188-196. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10058

Walker Ngadijina, D. (2024). Artist's notes. In B. Jackson & K. Armstrong (Eds.), Carbon_Dating Exhibition Catalogue (pp. 34-35). carbondating.art.

Walker Ngadijina, D., & Armstrong, K. (2023). 'The Native Fence', Delissa Walker Ngadijina, Carbon_Dating carer (Kuku Yalanji woman) working on Yirrganygji Country/Cairns: Video interview with Josaphine Seale, Cairns Brisbane, carbondating.art. https://www.carbondating.art/community-sites/yirrganydji-country-grasses

Wandersee, J. H., & Schussler, E. E. (1999). Preventing Plant Blindness. American Biology Teacher, 61 (2), 82-86.

Whyte, K. P. (2018). Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1 (1-2), 224-242. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848618777621

Wilson, L. (2013). The Hundred Grasses: Poems. Milkweed Editions.

Downloads

Published

2025-04-21

How to Cite

Leimbach, T., Armstrong, K., Palmer, J., Walker Ngadijina, D. ., & Turpin, G. . (2025). Plant-Human Futurisms in the Australian Tropics: Native Grasses and the Carbon_Dating Art Project. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 24(2), 150–173. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.24.2.2025.4097

Issue

Vol. 24 No. 2 (2025): Tropical Futurisms: Making Futures

Section

Art Practice

License

Copyright (c) 2025 CC-BY

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who submit articles to this journal agree to the following terms:

1. Authors are responsible for ensuring that any material that has influenced the research or writing has been properly cited and credited both in the text and in the Reference List (Bibliography). Contributors are responsible for gaining copyright clearance on figures, photographs or lengthy quotes used in their manuscript that have been published elsewhere.

2. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License that allows others to share and adapt the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, or publish it in a book), with proper acknowledgement of the work's initial publication in this journal.

4. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access or The Open Access Citation Advantage). Where authors include such a work in an institutional repository or on their website (i.e., a copy of a work which has been published in eTropic, or a pre-print or post-print version of that work), we request that they include a statement that acknowledges the eTropic publication including the name of the journal, the volume number and a web-link to the journal item.

5. Authors should be aware that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License permits readers to share (copy and redistribute the work in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the work) for any purpose, even commercially, provided they also give appropriate credit to the work, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do these things in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests you or your publisher endorses their use.