Huhana Smith, Massey University - New Zealand, and Michael Mel, Australian Museum Diverse indigenous lives whose worlds are undergoing further profound transformation Navigating for a place in the slipstreams of hurtling change: Stories of encounter and engagement between the old and the new from the highlands of Papua New Guinea In presenting a co-authored keynote, the experiences of iwi and hapū Māori and indigenous tribes from Papua New Guinea converge to inform on diverse lives whose worlds are undergoing further profound transformation. Whether it is lands, water, climate, material things, social, political, and economic formations and spaces, or architectural settings, engineered landscapes and urban worlds, this presentation acknowledges a range of vulnerabilities for coastal Māori communities in Aotearoa New Zealand, or urban and remote communities in Papua New Guinea. In our current respective research projects, we combine Indigenous and specialist knowledge to enhance distinct interactions between human and ‘other-than-human’ entities. We, as members of our communities, will share holistic perspectives of how our contemporary indigenous art with contemporary digital media, design and sciences might experiment, inform, contest and overcome the susceptibilities that our cultures, lands, waterways and environments face. Our efforts are to reconfigure our Pacific environments with visualized and performative strategies that will ensure resilient peoples within resilient futures.
