This talk draws on recently conducted oral history interviews in the Murray Darling Basin to explore the kinds of stories people tell about environmental change and environmental justice; marginalised narratives of resistance and empowerment; and the ways experiences of the past and present shape imaginings of the future. And I ask: what are the stories historians might tell that can move us forward and frame our futures with imagination, compassion and hope?
Professor Katie Holmes is Professor of History and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Inland at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. She lives on unceded Wurundjeri country. Her work integrates environmental, gender, oral and cultural history and she has a particular interest in the interplay between an individual, their culture and environment. Her recent research is on the cultures of drought in regional Victoria, and water cultures and conflicts in Australia’s Murray Darling Basin. Her books include Spaces in Her Day: Women’s diaries of the 1920s-1930s (1995), Between the Leaves: Stories of women, writing and gardens (2011), and the co-authored Reading the Garden: the Settlement of Australia (2008), Mallee Country: land, people, history (2020) and Failed Ambitions: Kew Cottages and Changing Ideas of Intellectual Disability (2023). Katie is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Science Australia, and was the Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Visiting Chair in Australian Studies, Harvard, 2023-24.