09/04/2025
Good morning Zedders! On today's show we are continuing our series on Disasters, Crisis, and Collective Futures - so far in the series we've looked at disaster capitalism (how capitalism both causes and profits from disasters), and crisis colonialism (how colonialism uses times of crisis to create or expand frontiers of exploitation, dispossession, and extraction, and how the colonial apparatus excels at managing crises in ways that can quash emerging solidarities and resistance). We've also talked about disaster communism, and how times of crisis and disasters can present ruptures through which we can glimpse, and experience, ways of living together otherwise - and what it might take to defend those ruptures from the colonial crisis managers who would like us to turn back towards the state, rather than towards each other.
To help us dig into these phenomena further, we are joined by the incredible Gudanji and Wakaja woman Rikki Dank, co-director of Gudanji for Country. In an interview recorded last week with Anna and Nat, Rikki spoke with us about the impact fracking has on lands and waters (in what you might know as the Beetaloo Basin, NT), and the way fracking contributes to and escalates the climate crisis alongside other environmental catastrophes. And she places this contemporary crisis in a much longer standing emergency of colonial extraction on Aboriginal land, and the systematic and violent dispossession of the Aboriginal People to enable that extraction.
Alongside this, Rikki also spoke about her family's long history of resistance to colonial dispossession and extraction, and the practices of care and solidarity and love and refusal and determination that have maintained this staunch resistance, and maintained people and kin.
This is a huge chat and we won't get to all of it on the live broadcast, but we'll be releasing the full interview on our podcast in the coming days. We're so grateful to Rikki for helping us better understand the nature of disasters, to position colonialism as a long-standing and ongoing disaster, a sometimes slow but constant violence, in which emergencies are common (just not evenly distributed). Emergencies are not exceptional. And crucially, Rikki demonstrates how Aboriginal People have steadfastly held open spaces of rupture and possibilities, maintaining and recreating ways to care for kin and Country and fight for futures on their land, that are vital and beautiful.
Tune in from 9-10am on 4ZZZ for this chat, along with lots of new and local music. And make sure you're following Gudanji for Country on socials, you can also sign up to their newsletter to stay in the loop on the brilliant work they do (link below).
