Kategori: News in English

US President Donald Trump appears to have abruptly upended America’s most trusted alliances with European countries since taking office just two months ago. But are we misreading the cues?

In addition to putting pressure on Ukraine to secure a deal to end the war, he has suggested the US may no longer honour its commitment to protect NATO allies that aren’t meeting the bloc’s guideline of spending at least 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defence spending.

These tough tactics have had some results. European countries have committed to spending beyond 2%, as Trump has demanded. And his drastic positions on Ukraine have suddenly been reversed. The horsetrading over what this means for NATO isn’t over yet, but Trump’s resourcefulness in this second term should not be underestimated.

A top Pentagon official is now calling on Australia to similarly increase its defence spending from 2% to 3% of GDP.

Australia has not managed to avoid Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium, although this accounts for a small fraction of its output and international trade – and no allies have been exempt from his tariffs. Other countries have chosen to retaliate, but Australia would be wise not to do so.

Should Trump’s recent actions, however, make Canberra worry about his commitment to the broader US-Australia alliance?

Emotional reactions over Trump should be avoided. There’s no real reason to fear a potential alliance abandonment. The US and Australia have plenty of compelling, enduring and overlapping interests that make a Trump about-face unlikely.

Deep, mutual ties

Those inclined to be critical of the US alliance and the AUKUS agreement have barked loudly about Trump’s recent actions. Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in particular, has warned of Australian leaders being part of a “conga line of sycophants” paying homage to Trump and not being more forthright in their criticism of his policy decisions.

Others have declared “the special friendship is over” and called for a drastically more independent Australian foreign and defence policy. This is premature and counter-productive.

Turnbull is arguably trying to shame Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton into following his lead and challenging Trump more forcefully. But how would that help with a man who evidently revels in escalating tensions?

There is a clear need to put emotional reactions to the side and weigh Australia’s national interests dispassionately.

Australia is heavily invested in the United States for its security and wellbeing. The AUKUS agreement alone will see Australia spending A$368 billion in the coming decades on nuclear-powered submarines.

Australia is also hugely invested in American defence technology across the sea, air, land, space and cyber domains. Overall, Australia invests over A$1 trillion each year in the US – by far its largest destination for overseas investment.

The US, in turn, has a demonstrated interest in having a bigger security presence in the Indo-Pacific region in a way that might even improve great power relations. And as defence expert Des Ball once said, Australia is a “suitable piece of real estate” to accommodate this increased presence.

Australia already hosts shared intelligence facilities at Pine Gap, US Marine Corps facilities in Darwin and shared submarine facilities near Perth. Jointly funded upgrades of the Tindal air base will soon accommodate American B-52 bombers, too.

Washington is also heavily invested in Australia. The US is the biggest foreign direct investor in Australia by a country mile – and also enjoys a trade surplus with Australia.

A US Marine Corps combat aircraft participating in a formation flight over Darwin in 2022.
US Department of Defense/Supplied

Boosting regional ties

With so much in flux, though, Australia does need to increase its defence spending.

Australia’s boutique force, structured as it was for the unipolar moment, when the world was dominated by one power (its ally, the US), is no longer fit for purpose. It needs to muscle up, and quickly. A scheme for national and community service would help.

Indeed, what most critics are calling for reflects many of the arguments made in the Australian Foreign Policy White Paper of 2017, written when Trump last came to office. I describe this as Australia’s “Plan B”. It was not dismissive of the US alliance, but looked to mitigate the risks associated with a more transactional and less predictable US leadership.

More can be done, though. Australia should also look to bolster its diplomatic, security and economic cooperation with regional partners in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

As part of this, Australia should avoid cutting its aid to the region and offer better options to Pacific partners – what I have called a “grand compact” with Pacific Island states, or even a Pacific federation.

In addition, more security and development cooperation is needed with nations further afield, such as Japan, India and South Korea.

We should avoid making upfront commitments to a land war in Asia or Europe, though. We have only recently recovered from the setback in regional defence relations from the distraction of the distant, US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We need to muscle up, yes. But let’s not think we can make much of a difference on the ground as part of a peacekeeping force for Ukraine. It’s best to support Ukraine with resources from afar and remain focused on bolstering regional ties.

The danger of overreacting

Pundits are also questioning whether the US can still be counted on in regional long-term defence and security planning.

I contend we are in danger of overreacting to the early moves of a presidency in a hurry to make significant changes. Rather than the sky falling in, we are in the midst of a storm.

It is not pretty. But we should wait for the dust to settle.

Trump’s tariff threats against Canada have caused an unprecedented rift between the two neighbours.
Frank Augstein/AP

We also should recognise the limits of Australian power, authority and reach when it comes to influencing US behaviour. We have tended to be a middle power without large-power pretensions. We no doubt can do more to stand up for ourselves, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves in terms of what this means for the relationship with Washington.

Trump evidently sees the world as “multipolar”, meaning a world dominated by several powers, notably the US, China and Russia.

While comparisons between Trump’s interactions with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Franklin D Roosevelt’s wartime dealings with Joseph Stalin are flattering to the US president, they aren’t as far-fetched as some critics would claim. They reflect a hyper-realist and transactional approach to foreign policy, where (to quote Thucydides) “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”.

While Trump advances such an approach to international relations, it is important to remember how invested the US and Australia are in one another.

Like Australia, the US is a continent-spanning, federal, cosmopolitan, English-speaking, New World, common-law, free-market, bicameral, constitutional and broadly still liberal democracy. We still talk about “shared values” because of these persistent overlaps. And these overlaps have driven the alignment of these two countries’ priorities for generations.

In Trump’s new, transactional and multipolar world view, the US needs Australia more than it needs Europe. (Though, it should be noted, despite Trump’s tough words for Europe, the US still has more than 100,000 US military personnel there.)

Over the longer term, Australia’s unique geography and shared history mean it matters in the great game of containing its main competitor, China, from dominating East Asia and the Pacific.

This is an enduring American interest and a longstanding Australian concern. Australia, therefore, will continue to be a Pacific partner. The deterrent effect from this solidarity remains the best bet to help prevent the outbreak of another war in the Pacific. Läs mer…

Almost half of Australians will experience mental health problems in their lifetime. Recent floods, droughts, cyclones, bushfires and the COVID pandemic have increased distress in the community.

Yet, many people who need mental health services are unable to access them. Cost, stigma and availability of mental health workers are barriers to care. Australia also has a critical shortage of mental health workers. And by 2030, it’s predicted we will be missing 42% of the mental health workforce needed to meet the demand.

To partially address this gap, the Australian government has committed to investing A$135 million in digital mental health programs if re-elected.

Online mental health programs can be more innovative and less expensive than other types of therapy. But do they actually work? Let’s assess the evidence.

What are digital mental health services?

Digital mental health services vary widely. They include online or app-based mental health information, symptom tracking tools, and learning or skills programs. These tools can be accessed with or without support from a therapist or coach, with some using generative generative artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

The umbrella term “digital mental health services” also includes peer-support networks, phone helplines and human-delivered phone, chat, or video-based telehealth services.

Services such as Mindspot, for example, offer online assessment, feedback and referrals to online treatments that have optional therapist support.

The MindSpot website online assessments and treatments. It’s funded by the Australian government.
Mindspot (screenshot)

Digital mental health services target a range of mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, trauma and eating disorders. Some are designed for specific groups of people, including culturally diverse communities, LGBTQIA+ people, new parents and young people.

With so many digital options available, finding the right program can be challenging. The government-funded Medicare Mental Health portal was set up to help Australians find evidence-based services.

This website outlines Australians’ options for mental health support.
Medicare Mental Health (screenshot)

Do they work?

A 2020 review of the evidence found almost half of people who used online programs for common mental health conditions benefited.

This review included online programs with self-directed lessons or modules to reduce symptoms of depression or anxiety. These programs were as effective as face-to-face therapy, but face-to-face therapy required on average 7.8 times more therapist time than online programs.

The evidence for other types of digital mental health programs is still developing.

The evidence for smartphone apps targeting mental health symptoms, for example, is mixed. While some studies have reported mental health benefits from the use of such apps, others have reported no differences in symptoms. Researchers suggest these apps should be used with other mental health supports rather than as standalone interventions.

Similarly, while AI chatbots have received recent attention, there is uncertainty about the safety and effectiveness of these tools as a substitute for therapy.

Chatbots, such as the AI “Woebot” for depression, can give users personalised guidance and support to learn therapeutic techniques. But while chatbots may have the potential to improve mental health, the results are largely inconclusive to date. There is also a lack of regulation in this field.

Early studies also show some benefits for digital approaches in treating more complex mental health conditions, such as suicidal thoughts and behaviours, and psychosis. But more research is needed.

Do users like them?

Users have reported many benefits to digital mental health services. People find them convenient, accessible, private and affordable, and are often highly satisfied with them.

Digital services are designed to directly address some of the major barriers to treatment access and have the potential to reach the significant numbers of people who go online for mental health information.

Digital supports can also be used in a “stepped care” approach to treating mental health problems. This means people with less complex or less severe symptoms try a low-intensity digital program first before being “stepped up” to more intensive supports. The United Kingdom’s National Health Service’s Talking Therapies program uses this model.

The NHS Talking Therapies program includes the option of learning self-guided cognitive behaviour therapy techniques.
NHS/Every Mind Matters (screenshot)

But some people still prefer face-to-face services. Reasons for this include problems with internet connectivity, a perceived lack of treatment tailoring and personal connection, and concerns about quality of care.

Some Australians face challenges with digital literacy and internet access, making it difficult to engage with online services.

Privacy concerns may also discourage people from using digital platforms, as they worry about how their personal data is stored and shared.

What do clinicians think about them?

Mental health professionals increased their use of digital mental health tools (such as telehealth consultations) markedly during the COVID pandemic. Yet many clinicians struggle to use these tools because they have not received enough training or support.

Even when willing, clinicians face workplace barriers which make it difficult to incorporate them into their practice. These include:

limited funding and reimbursement
unclear policies related to liability and risk management, data storage and security
workflow disruptions, such as integrating these tools into existing systems, training clients to use them, and monitoring their use.

Some patients and clinicians prefer in-person therapy.
VH-Studio/Shutterstock

Some clinicians remain sceptical about whether digital services can truly match the quality of in-person therapy, leading to hesitation in recommending them to those who might benefit.

What needs to happen next?

With mental illness and suicide estimated to cost the Australian economy $70 billion per year, there are strong personal, social and financial reasons to support innovative solutions that increase access to mental health services.

But for digital approaches to reach their full potential, we need to upskill the mental health workforce and support organisations to include digital technologies into their practice.

It’s also important to improve awareness of digital mental health programs and reduce the barriers to accessing these services, or we risk leaving behind the very people who need them the most.

For Australians with more complex mental health issues, or those for whom digital mental health treatment hasn’t worked, access to in-person therapy and other mental health treatments should remain available. Digital mental health programs are one part of the mental health care system, and not a replacement for all types of care.

If you or anyone you know needs help or support, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Läs mer…

Motorsport fans are getting their first taste of racing this year, with the opening grand prix of the 2025 Formula One (F1) season starting in Melbourne today.

But it’s not just the cars people should be watching. In a sport where milliseconds determine champions and conditions push the human body to its limits, drivers’ racing suits have evolved from a simple fire protection tool to a sophisticated performance tool.

In fact, today’s F1 suits represent something of a technological revolution that could determine who stands on the podium.

Driving at 300km/h in 50°C for two hours

F1 drivers compete at nearly 300 kilometres per hour while enduring cockpit temperatures of up to 50°C.

In case of an accident, they are required to wear multilayer fireproof clothing, including long underwear, a balaclava, gloves, and a helmet. But this can severely restrict the body’s natural cooling mechanisms.

Research has found that during races in extreme heat, skin temperature quickly rises from normal levels (32–33°C) to over 38°C, with hands and forehead sometimes exceeding 39°C.

This isn’t just uncomfortable for drivers. It also increases the risk of dehydration, muscle cramps, cognitive impairment, heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

Developers of driving suits therefore have a challenging job. They must design garments that provide maximum fire protection while also allowing drivers to maintain peak cognitive and physical performance for roughly two hours in extreme heat.

F1 drivers compete at nearly 300 kilometres per hour while enduring cockpit temperatures that can reach up to 75°C.
Joel Carratt/AAP

A driver-centred approach to design

Fire protection remains the primary function of racing suits. Because of this, flame-resistant synthetic materials such as nomex, oxidized polyacrylonitrile and polybenzimidazole are used for the suit. Wool is also prevalent in the inner layers, because of its flame-resistant characteristics.

But racing suits are also now designed to improve driver comfort and movement.

For example, the racing suits of motorsport company Alpinestars, which supplies the McLaren F1 team, feature pre-curved sleeves and legs that match the natural driving position. This reduces the energy drivers expend fighting against their clothing.

Alpinestars’ suits also have minimal seams around the elbow joints. This increases flexibility and eliminates pressure points during the continuous small steering adjustments drivers make throughout a race. The suits also have elasticated inserts and multiple panels around the elbow which reduces material bunching at this crucial joint.

Sportswear company PUMA, which supplies the Ferrari and Aston Martin F1 teams with driving suits, adopt similar features in their driving suits.

But this attention to joint mobility extends beyond elbows.

F1 suits are flexible and loose fitting around the arms. They also incorporate elasticated panels in the lower back region and seamless shoulder epaulettes. This means the suits move naturally with the driver and minimise resistance.

Adjustable features such as elasticated waists and belts allow drivers to personalise their suits. They can also request specific modifications, such as where ventilation openings are placed, based on their individual comfort needs.

The result is a racing suit that functions as a second skin, tailored precisely to each driver’s body and movements.

Cooling the elbows

Racing suit manufacturers have also developed advanced approaches to keep drivers cool as well as safe.

Research has demonstrated that advanced fabrics with improved air permeability (how air passes through the fabric) and breathability (how moisture and heat passes through the fabric), as well as reduced thickness, could reduce core temperature rise by 40% compared to thicker and tighter types of materials.

Fabric manufacturers have engineered breathable fabrics for the suit and inner layers. Product developers also strategically place ventilation zones and internal cooling systems with technology that draws moisture away from the skin in the suits to help drivers manage their core temperature

These thermal management features are carefully tailored to different body regions.

For example, knowing that elbows experience a 6–7°C temperature increase during racing, suit designers make the suit thinner in this region to improve air flow and use materials capable of adjusting their thermal properties to temperature.

The impact of these design innovations goes beyond basic comfort. They translate directly to competitive advantage. When body heat is better managed, drivers can think more clearly and have better reaction times.

F1 drivers wear multilayer fireproof clothing, including a balaclava.
Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/AP

The road ahead

The development of racing suits continues to accelerate, with several emerging technologies promising even better performance and safety.

Reflective elements are showing particular promise for thermal protection by reducing the rate of skin temperature increase compared to conventional racing suits.

Wearable technology built into the fabrics of suits can also monitor drivers’ physiological changes, and help predict performance changes and enhance safety during racing.

The emerging popularity of electric racing series such as Formula E is also changing the environmental challenges drivers face.

Electric cars generate far less heat and noise than traditional race cars. This shift may prompt a reevaluation of suit requirements. It may potentially allow for designs that prioritise driver comfort and performance over heat management, while maintaining their fire safety properties.

The next time you watch a F1 race, look beyond the fancy aerodynamics and engine performance. Observe who emerges from their cockpit looking relatively fresh after two long hours of driving. The competitive advantage might not be in the car alone. It might be woven into the fabric protecting the driver inside the car. Läs mer…

When the invitation for artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino to represent Australia at the 2026 Venice Biennale was rescinded, the statement from Creative Australia’s board said their selection now posed “an unacceptable risk” and “could undermine our goal of bringing Australians together”.

This is at odds with the 2023 cultural policy Revive, which stresses inclusion, cultural diversity and increased participation from under-represented voices.

Sabsabi had been criticised for two works.

You (2007) features a sophisticated manipulation of images – loaded with ambiguity – of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, well before the organistion was proscribed as terrorist.

Thank You Very Much (2006) is an equally ironical work consisting in 18-second video montage of the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks overlaid with imagery of George W Bush thanking the American public prior to launching devastating attacks on the Middle East.

These are nuanced works, produced 20 years ago in differing political circumstances, and previously shown without critique. They have been taken out of context and misunderstood.

At the same time as this controversy unfolded, it was revealed the National Gallery of Australia requested permission from curator Rosanna Raymond and the Indigenous SaVAge K’lub art collective to cover up the Palestinian flags in their larger tapestry on display. Raymond is still shocked that such a step was taken.

Surely this runs counter to the imperative in the nation’s cultural policy Revive, to provide “a place for every story”.

Australian artists have long featured political figures or political statements in their work. Who gets to be political in Australian art?

‘Pragmatism of cruelty’

Civil society is built on freedom of expression. At certain times artists, steeped in ideas of the avant-garde but with a contemporary inflection, feel an urgency to respond to cultural fissures.

The Vietnam war was one such fissure.

In the early 1970s Australian society was divided over participation in this American-led war, and Moratorium marches were held across the nation.

Ann Newmarch, a member of the radical Progressive Art Movement (PAM) opposed to American imperialism, focused on the Vietnamese women caught up in the conflict.

In her evocative Vietnam Madonna (1975), she portrays a mother trying to protect her children.

This was a PAM poster, produced to be widely distributed. Its anti-American message merged with feminist statements about motherhood was easily understood. It was hung in students’ quarters, artists’ studios and factory canteens.

Ann Newmarch, Vietnam Madonna , 1975, screenprint, ink on paper, 67.0 x 42.0 cm (image), 76.1 x 56.2 cm (sheet).
Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Amanda Martin, collection of Flinders University Museum of Art 5012, © the estate of the artist

Another fissure in Australian society is our treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.

Alex Seton’s moving memorial Someone died trying to have a life like mine (2013), showing 28 life jackets carved in marble, refers to the lives lost in May 2013 when a boatload of men, women and children washed up against the rocks at Cocos Island, and 28 empty life jackets were found on the beach.

Installation view: 2014 Biennial of Australian Art: Dark Heart, featuring Someone died trying to have a life like mine by Alex Seton, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.
Photo: Mark Pokorny.

Setons’ installation evokes a shared humanity – people hoping for a better life. It was shown in Nick Mitzevich’s 2014 Adelaide Biennial exhibition, Dark Heart, in which his operating premise was that the open generosity of the Australian psyche had been replaced by a dark uncaring national soul.

Joanna Mendelssohn in her exhibition review called it “the terrible pragmatism of cruelty”.

Speaking out

Artists are the conscience of the nation, often giving visual form to beliefs and ideas ahead of their more widespread acceptance.

Ben Quilty’s highly emotive series depicting traumatised and psychologically wounded soldiers who had fought in Afghanistan shone a light on a subject no-one wanted to touch.

Ben Quilty, Captain S, after Afghanistan, 2012.
© Australian War Memorial, CC BY-NC

Quilty’s in-your-face expressive canvases of 2012 moved audiences and politicians profoundly. Not only was post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) real, governments had to deal with it. PTSD is now talked about more openly as an issue veterans live with.

Hoda Afshar works in a similar vein. Her moving photographic portraits in Agonistes (2020) show men and women who chose to speak out about wrong-doing in the military, intelligence, and other government agencies. They live with devastating consequences.

Hoda Afshar, Agonistes, 2021, Installation view at the Ramsay Art Prize 2021, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.
Photo: Saul Steed. Image courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Meeanjin/Brisbane.

Her whistleblowers are shown with chiselled features, white faced and immobile: they are warriors for the truth. For Afshar it is “the essence of tragedy”.

For many, her portraits are a call for action for injustice. Afshar’s moving work was shown to much acclaim in a recent Art Gallery of New South Wales solo exhibition, A Curve in a Broken Line.

Erasures of history

Glass artist Yhonnie Scarce, of the Kokotha and Nakuna people, employs her medium to draw attention to the erasure of history about our nation’s First Peoples. None more powerfully than in her moving Thunder raining poison (2015) commissioned for the Tarnanthi Festival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

This five-metre high installation consisting of 2,000 opaque glass yams symbolically recreates the mushroom cloud released by British atomic tests at Maralinga, South Australia. It led to poisonous chemicals raining down on nearby Aboriginal people and destroying their land.

The disjuncture between the glistening presence of the glass and the shocking reality it evokes brings a shameful history alive. This important work was rapidly acquired by the National Gallery of Australia, while a related work, Death Zephyr (2017), features a hovering mist of poisonous clouds over Aboriginal lands. It is in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The war on Gaza

The current cultural fissure, the war in Gaza, has had a profound effect on the lives of many including Mike Parr. Parr is a celebrated performance artist, who has been creating work on a variety of political issues for decades.

In December 2023, he was dropped by his gallerist, Anna Schwartz, after he painted words including “Palestine”, “Israel” and “apartheid”, and the sentence “Hamas raped women and cut off the heads of babies” on the walls of her gallery during an artwork.

Australian artist Mike Parr performs Towards an Amazonian Black Square in 2019.
AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts

Despite this, Parr’s commitment to this political cause has continued. In a blind painting durational performance at the 2024 Adelaide Festival, he inscribed the words “Gaza is a Warsaw Ghetto” and “Free Palestine” as under-painting in his black square homage to the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich.

Thought-provoking encounters

Australia has a rich history of artists actively engaging in political issues, and of such work being shown without timidity in state and national galleries, arts festivals and biennials.

All the artworks discussed here have been shown in such spaces. Galleries provide mediated, safe environments in which curatorial expertise is employed to display artworks in ways that promote meaningful and thought-provoking encounters between the viewing public and the work on display.

They are there to promote debate, to advance thought and to navigate cultural fissures. Läs mer…

In the Miles Franklin archive in the State Library of New South Wales there are two brown, cloth-bound volumes, titled, “When I was Mary-Anne, A Slavey”. The thick, handwritten pages are amended with glued paper inserts copied from the missing diary the author of My Brilliant Career kept for roughly a year between April 1903 and April 1904.

In an accompanying summary, on which Franklin based her 1904 letter to the Bulletin about the experience, she wrote:

Some people wonder what domestic servants have to complain about […] No one could understand the depth of the silent feud between mistress and maid without, in their own person, testing the matter …

There is a picture of Franklin in the archive too, dressed in her “get up”: a black-and-white tunic and apron, with a lacy parlour cap pinned atop her piled-up brunette hair. The photograph, taken in a studio in Melbourne, is captioned “yr little mary-anne”. She beckons you into her impersonation.

Miles with very long hair.
State Library of New South Wales

Along with the letters Franklin wrote or received during the year, the summary and photo authenticate her little known upstairs–downstairs experiment in Sydney and Melbourne, which she details in the manuscript. She cooked in flammable kitchens, plunged her hands into steaming washing up, and swept the dust that scattered behind her employers’ shoes.

In today’s Instagram culture, it is improbable that a celebrity like Franklin could work incognito and not be recognised. But this was the Edwardian era of the early 1900s, when a photograph was a special occasion and names were known more widely than faces. Franklin loved that a lady she’d once met at a government reception unknowingly flung her coat at her when she opened the door, and that she stoked the fire while guests discussed My Brilliant Career.

Bronte of the bush

Aged 21, Franklin dazzled Australia with her debut novel. Published in 1901, My Brilliant Career inspired young women to write to her about their own frustrations and dreams. She denied her novel was autobiographical, to little effect. She was compared to novelist Charlotte Bronte and to Marie Bashkirtseff, the Russian–Parisian teen artist who declared in her memoir, “I am my own heroine”.

Russian–Parisian teen artist Marie Bashkirtseff, who Miles was compared to.
Musee d’Orsay

Despite Franklin’s later fervent wish that My Brilliant Career’s heroine, Sybylla Melvyn, would be forgotten, the book endured. It became a feminist literary classic, and in 1979 a film, produced by Margaret Fink and directed by Gillian Armstrong. Today, her cultural touchstone continues with her bequest of the Miles Franklin Literary Award and recent stage adaptations of My Brilliant Career. The Stella literary prize is named in her honour, after her first given name, Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin.

Franklin’s iconic success is, however, misleading. Like many authors, she experienced fame and acclaim, but minimal royalties, in part due to an unfair contract for colonial authors with her Edinburgh publisher, William Blackwood and Sons. Books were also a luxury during the punishing Federation drought, which lasted from 1895 to 1902.

Franklin could have married. Her grandmother took every opportunity to remind her she was expected to wed. “Have you found anyone you like better than yourself?” she archly asked.

Instead, she disappeared into undercover journalism.

Stunt girl reporters

Franklin was likely inspired by the “gonzo” women journalists known as “girl stunt reporters”, who disrupted male-dominated journalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

To prove their journalistic chops, they risked their safety and health to go undercover and expose factory exploitation and illegal abortion clinics. Most famously, New York reporter Nellie Bly feigned hysteria to gain admission to the city’s public women’s mental health institution for ten days in 1887. Their stories captivated audiences, as much as their daring.

American journalist Elizabeth Banks transported the trend to London, where she worked as a servant, leaving her poodle, Judge, with a friend. Her reports in “In Cap and Apron” for the Weekly Sun caused a sensation, and Banks’ memoir Autobiography of a Newspaper Girl was reviewed in Australia in late 1902 and early 1903.

Apart from Catherine Hay Thomson’s investigation of Kew Asylum and Melbourne Hospital in 1886, the “stunt girl reporter” only noticeably appeared in Australia in 1903.

That year, the fledgling New Idea magazine published a series of undercover articles, including about experiences such as working in a tobacco factory and applying for domestic service at an employment agency. Unlike Franklin, the New Idea journalist stopped there, while Franklin spent a full, gruelling year as a servant.

The “servant question” was an ideal local investigation. The newly federated Australia was growing due to the wool industry – “on the sheep’s back”. But in the cities, factories were an alternative engine for young women’s employment rather than domestic service. Fretting “mistresses” complained about the dearth of remaining girls available.

Servants retorted that if they were treated better, perhaps they would stay. One suggested scandalously that mistresses should give references about how they treat servants to prospective hires, pre-dating contemporary suggestions that owners and agencies should prove their fitness as landlords to tenants.

The debate around “the servant question” exposed Australia’s myth of equality. Franklin’s family was no exception. While drought drove her parents off their farm, Stillwater, to a plot in Penrith (then a rural town outside Sydney), they were cultured and educated. Franklin’s wealthy grandmother ran a station in the Snowy Mountains, on which Franklin based the elegant homestead, Caddagat, in My Brilliant Career. A governess or nurse was acceptable, she wrote in her accompanying summary to her manuscript, but “a servant raised considerable horror among my circle”.

Franklin was undeterred. As well as a new writing project, she needed money and a roof if she wanted to live in the city rather than at home. Suffragette Rose Scott, who called Franklin her “spirit child”, invited her to stay. But while Franklin appreciated the support, at times Rose was suffocating.

Revealing the independent streak that would define her life, Franklin wrote, “it was imperative I get work to sustain myself”.

Sufragette Rose Scott called Miles her ‘spirit child’.
State Library of New South Wales

‘This suppression!’

Franklin’s real servant pseudonym was “Sarah Frankling”, a play on her middle name and her surname. “Mary-Anne”, at the time a well known slang name for servants, was only used for the manuscript, to hide identities.

Franklin’s live-in domestic servant positions included kitchen maid, parlour maid and “general” servant. She worked in a terrace she dubbed a “cubby house”, an upmarket boarding house, a harbourside villa, a wealthy merchant home, and mansions in Sydney and Melbourne. Franklin stayed a maximum of two months at each post for a year in total, after which she planned to write.

Senator and High Court judge Richard Edward O’Connor and his large family were her most high-profile employer. Their mansion, Keston, which is close to the prime minister’s Sydney residence, Kirribilli House, and the boarding house around the corner survive, as does the terrace, near Bronte in the city’s eastern suburbs. All are now apartment buildings.

Keston House, Kirribilli, was home to Miles’ most high-profile employer.
City of Sydney Archives

In the manuscript, Franklin recounts that she rapidly lost weight and felt her spirit become “suppressed” by the monotony and tiring nature of servant work. Depending on the number of staff and her duties, she hand-rolled heavy, wet clothes through a washing mangle; served pre-breakfast tea and toast in bed, which she thought was an obscene indulgence; cooked and served full hot breakfasts and dinners daily; waited on guests in the boarding house’s dining room, nicknamed “the zoo”; cleaned the guest rooms and parlours; and helped at high-society balls. She kept fires burning in winter and sweated through heavy housework and cooking in summer.

The hours were brutal. She usually woke at dawn, and only finished after the evening dinners were served, or if she was a kitchen maid, after she cleaned the mess away. Not all her employers offered a luxurious whole afternoon off per week. She worked through burns sustained on the job, and was brought to tears by a mistress who ordered her to change her carefully arranged hair. The house’s Irish cook opined that the mistress was threatened by Franklin’s “toy figure” and “fairy face”.

As the months passed at different employers, fatigue turned to anger, and loneliness to friendships with fellow servants. It is heartening to see a snobby young Franklin mature and change as she rubbed tired elbows with those she previously saw as beneath her status. She cheekily flirted with a lovestruck tradie, just as she traded Shakespearian quips with an intrigued young naval officer staying at the posh boarding house.

When Scott learned Franklin was working as a servant, she chided her for not refusing the conditions as an example to others. However, Franklin knew any insolence or objection meant instant dismissal, ruining her research and current livelihood.

Scott also misread Franklin’s long-term goal – writing the servant book. In her diary, Franklin recorded what she could not say out loud. She cynically noted that “to be sensitive would be unfortunate” for a servant. “The maid must not want for pleasure,” Franklin warned, “because she will have no time to gratify it”. Be presentable but not too pretty, she advised; be polite but not so fancy or fussy to refuse tiny, “ill-aired” servant quarters next to the laundry.

The servant year confirmed her lifelong views of marriage as stifling. Echoing My Brilliant Career, Franklin vented her feminist frustration in the diary entries. She wrote of the terrace’s “Mistress”: “sooth, when a woman of ordinary intelligence gives the whole of her time, brain and energy to the running of a miniature establishment”.

As for the husband, an irritated Franklin wrote that he was “boss of his own backyard and lord of his little suburban dining room”.

Miles as a servant. The servant name she used in her manuscript was ‘Mary Anne’.
State Library of New South Wales

Biographers brush over servant year

Biographies of Miles Franklin have largely followed the traditional “cradle to grave” of her life, in which the critical servant year has been brushed over like a quick sweep of the biographical floor. One of Franklin’s first biographers, Marjorie Barnard, dismissed Mary-Anne as of little interest.

Jill Roe, author of the epic biography Stella Miles Franklin, read the existing Mary-Anne draft manuscript, describing it in her book as Franklin’s “social experiment”. Yet even Roe is succinct about Mary-Anne, compared to other years in Franklin’s eventful life. Roe lists Franklin’s known servant employers, admires her pluck and commiserates over it not being published due to concerns she had defamed her employers. (Franklin’s pseudonyms for her employers were chiffon thin, so easily identifiable.)

There were other intractable problems too with the manuscript, though Franklin may have edited another draft before submitting it for publication. The existing draft is overlong, unwieldy and inconsistent in its point of view. Franklin switches between “I” and later, “Mary-Anne”, as if she fully collapses into her servant life.

Despite her failure to find a publisher for her manuscript, Franklin continued her journalism. She began writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, which suited her fast writing style, and helped her earn money with a pen.

In 1908, Franklin joined the women’s trade union movement and advocated for working women, all the while working on her own novel, writing and resisting the status quo of the Edwardian era. She finally returned to literary acclaim with the award-winning All That Swagger in 1936, a colonial saga of a pioneering family, and another historical series she wrote under the pseudonym “Brent of Bin Bin”.

Upon her death in 1954, tributes reported that “Australian literature lost one of its great figures”.

The ‘servant question’ remains

Franklin’s investigation of the servant question now seems quaint. Appliances have changed from washing mangles and melting iceboxes to sleek stainless steel and glossy white machines that beep and hum in the background.

Yet demand for service remains. “Servants” are still in our lives; they just answer to an app rather than a bell. They clean our houses while we are out, or they are chefs on call who cook meals delivered by mobile waiters on electric bikes and scooters who brave traffic as they dash to door to door. Uber and Dido chauffeurs compete to pick us up from wherever we happen to be.

The exploitation remains, too. At the extreme, the Sri Lankan Embassy in Canberra has been ordered to pay $117,000 in back wages to its domestic servant, paid 90 cents an hour. More broadly, Fair Work last year moved to protect gig workers in the share economy, recognising its endemic lack of rights and risks.

Since Franklin’s Mary-Anne, low-wage service work has been revisited periodically by writers interested in social justice. In 1933, inspired by Jack London, George Orwell chronicled the months he spent impoverished and doing menial jobs in Down and Out in Paris and London.

In 2001, Barbara Ehrenreich published the acclaimed Nickel and Dimed, about working and living on minimum wage. Elisabeth Wynhausen wrote an Australian version, Dirt Cheap: Life at the wrong end of the job market in 2005. Alexandrea J. Ravenelle brought the history full circle in 2019 with her collected stories of 80 gig economy workers in her book, Hustle and Gig. All these authors had similar conclusions to Franklin: low-wage service work is grinding and exploitative.

At its core, the servant question hasn’t changed at all since Franklin’s investigation over a hundred years ago.

Miles Franklin Undercover by Kerrie Davies is published by Allen & Unwin Läs mer…

Since the start of this year, all New Zealand schools have been required to use structured literacy to teach reading and writing – including the country’s 310 primary and intermediate Māori-medium kura (schools that teach in te reo Māori).

This curriculum change was part of the National-led government’s plan to lift educational achievement. At the heart of the new policy appears to be the desire to apply structured literacy across the board – regardless of the educational context – in an explicit on-size-fits-all approach.

While work has been done to develop the new literacy resources in te reo Māori, and they will undoubtedly be welcomed by kura, the blanket application of structured literacy could cause more problems than it actually solves.

Is structured literacy needed?

Structured literacy focuses on teaching children to read words by following a progression from simple to more complex phonics – the practice of matching the sounds with individual letters or groups of letters.

However, unlike English, te reo Māori is a transparent language – the written form is completely phonetic with a 100% consistent match between symbol and sound. This makes learning to read and write in te reo Māori a different and easier task than in English.

There is no extensive research showing a general reading and writing problem in Māori-medium schools that requires a structured literacy approach to “fix”.

Instead, pushing structured literacy into Māori-medium schools seems to be driven by an ideological commitment to this teaching approach rather than an actual need.

In Febraury, Education Minister Erica Stanford announced structured literacy resources for all primary and intermediate Māori-medium kura.
Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

Te Tiriti o Waitangi and consultation

There is also no indication that genuine consultation with Māori took place before the government made the announcement. In 2024, there was a trial with a small number of teachers and facilitators. But this falls far short of genuine involvement of Māori as the Treaty partner.

Further work by the Ministry of Education continues to be limited, with a focus on testing and validating imposed literacy assessments and getting feedback from Māori teachers as “end-users”. This is not consultation. It is using Māori teachers to provide data with which to refine an existing product.

According to a 1986 report from the Waitangi Tribunal, te reo Māori is a taonga (treasure) that Māori must have control of. It’s for Māori to decide on changes and innovations in the teaching and learning of the language.

The government’s introduction of structured literacy without full Māori involvement takes the language away from its guardians.

More than words

Language is simultaneously many things. For example it is both a “code” and an inherent part of cultural identity.

The code view of language positions it as a tool to carry information you wish to communicate.

However, seeing te reo Māori as part of a way of understanding the world places value not just on words, but also on the way the language is inherent in Māori thinking, history, experience and actions.

It is clear the government prioritises a code view of language in which literacy is a technical competence needed to achieve the outcomes set through the national curriculum.

For example, according to Education Minister Erica Stanford, the literacy packs were designed for children “learning through te reo Māori”.

The word “through” positions te reo Māori as a code that carries the “learning”. It is the national curriculum that is being learned and te reo Māori is reduced to the instrument carrying it.

This view means the cultural importance of te reo Māori in terms of whakapapa and being Māori could be pushed further into the background by a focus on structured literacy.

Learning as a performance

The promise of phonics checks at 20, 40 and 55 weeks of schooling could also over-emphasise the need for technical competence over the broader view of language.

For example, the ministry website supporting structured literacy offers this video of a student completing a phonics check.

Despite instructions and discussion between teacher and student clearly showing the student hears all the sounds of te reo Māori well enough to have a conversation, the phonics check reduces te reo Māori to a performance in which sounds must be classified as the same or different.

Teaching and testing this way risks reducing competence in te reo Māori to a set of standardised performances.

Missing the richness of te reo

While schools are important in the revitalisation of Indigenous languages, they are just one component and cannot achieve this goal alone. If language development happens entirely within a school system, without being an integral part of a larger community of language development, a “school version” of the language can develop.

This could end up being more aligned with the government’s aims for students than language revitalisation and Indigenous emancipation.

Te reo Māori is an endangered heritage language according to statistical modeling. The most important purpose of working in te reo Māori is not simply to develop reading and writing skills, but to be part of a full language revitalisation.

The aim is for te reo Māori to be living and flourishing within communities, passed within whānau from generation to generation and ensuring te reo itself is a central element in being Māori.

Te reo Māori is not an instrument to be used by the government to achieve curriculum outcomes. It is, above all, an inherent part of mātauranga and whakaaro Māori (Māori knowledge and thought), and vital for Māori emancipation.

This places a responsibility on the government to ensure any innovation in kura Māori is driven by Māori. Läs mer…

In response to President Donald Trump’s declaration of a “national energy emergency,” the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently listed hundreds of energy and infrastructure projects that would be eligible for fast-track permitting.

The projects, which include oil pipelines, natural gas power plants and mining projects, were already under review. But the possibility of accelerated permitting raised concerns that without effective oversight, the projects might be allowed to alter or destroy hundreds of acres of wetlands or risk contamination of drinking water sources.

Facing a backlash from environmental groups, the Corps removed the list and said it would follow up with a refined version.

But based on my experience as an environmental law professor and former government lawyer, it’s not clear that the claimed emergency conditions warrant fast-tracking major projects with minimal environmental review or public scrutiny.

Dealing with emergencies under the law

To be sure, swift action is often necessary in an actual emergency to prevent loss of life or property damage. A levee breach during a storm may require emergency repairs, including placing rocks, dirt or sand to contain flooding. An advancing inferno may call for hasty felling of trees to create firebreaks. Or a bridge collapse may necessitate prompt debris removal and reconstruction.

Work to prevent imminent flooding qualifies as an emergency under U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rules.
Citizen of the Planet/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Existing environmental laws and regulations largely account for such circumstances. For instance, the National Environmental Policy Act generally requires federal agencies to analyze and publicly disclose the environmental impacts of their actions. In emergencies, however, agencies may comply with this requirement through “alternative arrangements” such as a shortened public comment period or a report on environmental impacts after the fact.

Similarly, the Endangered Species Act bars federal actions that jeopardize protected species. But there are limited exceptions for emergency circumstances. When there is a federally declared disaster, for example, the Endangered Species Act allows the president to exempt projects to repair or replace public facilities when necessary to prevent the disaster from recurring. Examples of such projects include rebuilding a highway, bridge or railway.

President Trump’s declaration

President Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency invokes the National Emergencies Act, which allows the president to follow emergency procedures that have been spelled out in other federal laws. For instance, the Stafford Act enables federal support in an emergency for services to protect lives, property, public health and safety, or to lessen the threat of a catastrophe.

But a declaration of an emergency does not allow a president to waive or ignore all other legal requirements. The declaration must specify the law or laws whose emergency provisions are being activated.

In this situation, the declaration calls on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “to identify planned or potential actions to facilitate the (n)ation’s energy supply that may be subject to emergency treatment” under the Corps’ permitting process. That process is governed by Section 404 of the Clean Water Act and related statutes.

How the Corps’ regulations handle emergencies

Section 404 of the Clean Water Act requires project developers to apply to the Corps for a permit to discharge dredged material or other dirt or soil into “waters of the United States.” This term encompasses relatively permanent bodies of water as well as wetlands connected at the surface to those permanent waters. Many construction projects, such as pipelines or housing developments, require a Section 404 permit because they cross water bodies or involve the fill of adjoining wetlands. The standard procedure for processing a permit application includes public notice, a public comment period and preparation of environmental documentation, followed by the agency’s decision.

In emergency situations, the Corps’ regulations allow the use of “special procedures” for processing applications – which the regulations do not specifically spell out. Instead, agency officials must tailor the process to the circumstances of each case. According to the Corps, in some situations an appropriate response to the emergency might include “a public notice to clarify permitting procedures for dealing with the clean up and repair caused by these events.” Immediate approvals may be appropriate for work to prevent flood damage from an approaching storm, but inappropriate for reconstruction after that storm.

The October 2024 collision of a cargo ship with a bridge in Baltimore constituted an emergency allowing adjustments of environmental protection regulations.
AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

The “national energy emergency” declared by the president does not qualify as an emergency under the Corps’ regulations. Those regulations define an emergency as “a situation which would result in an unacceptable hazard to life, a significant loss of property, or an immediate, unforeseen, and significant economic hardship” if the standard permitting procedures were followed.

Guidance from the Corps suggests flooding and hurricanes as “example(s) of emergency situations caused by a natural disaster.” A further example includes “a catastrophic … failure … due to an external cause,” such as “a bridge collapse after being struck by a barge.”

Even if a situation qualifies as an emergency under the Corps’ regulations, the agency must make reasonable efforts to take comments from other agencies and the public.

Furthermore, neither these regulations nor the emergency declaration excuses the Corps from its duty to comply with other laws. Under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Corps would still have to analyze and publicly disclose the environmental impacts of federal actions, though it perhaps could use those “alternative arrangements” like a shortened comment period. And under the Endangered Species Act, the Corps still can’t harm endangered species unless a permitted project would repair or replace public facilities in a declared disaster area.

If the Corps’ promised revisions to the list of emergency projects look anything like the original version, expect a flood of lawsuits – which will seek to challenge any permits granted under emergency procedures. Läs mer…

US president Donald Trump thrust Greenland to the centre of global politics when he proposed to buy the vast, icebound island at the start of the year. With the world watching, Greenlandic voters went to the polls on March 11 2025 and delivered a landslide victory for a party that told Trump, “We are not for sale.”

Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark and its struggle for independence is a major political battleground. Both the right-wing Demokraatit (Democrats), now the largest party, and the socialist Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) that they recently decimated are pro-independence. However, they also want a slower independence process than the populist-nationalist Naleraq, which also did well in the election.

While foreign observers may have had their attention drawn to Greenland by Trump, they shouldn’t look away now. The outcome of this election has made a fossil-fuelled future for Greenland more likely, just when the escalating climate crisis demands an urgent global transition to renewable energy.

Crucial to Greenland’s future is its base of economic production. Greenland is estimated to have some of the world’s largest untapped oil and gas resources.

According to the US Geological Survey, the basin off Greenland’s east coast alone contains 31 billion barrels of oil equivalent and west Greenland about half of that. If this was all recoverable, Greenland could become one of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers.

But these fossil fuels are extremely difficult to extract. The unwelcoming terrain – a vast ice sheet on land, icebergs at sea – led successive fossil fuel companies to give up their hunt for oil and gas. At the moment, Greenland’s fossil fuels simply are not technically and commercially viable to get out of the ground.

Against this backdrop, IA passed a ban on all fossil fuel exploration and extraction when it came to power after the 2021 election. It was justified by the negative impacts a fossil fuel industry would have on the country’s fragile environment and the global climate, as well as domestic fisheries, which total 98% of Greenland’s export value.

The ban fits within a global movement to cut not just the use of fossil fuels, but also their supply. The rationale is that extraction of fossil fuels must end to stop them from further increasing climate change. After the ban, Greenland joined a group of like-minded countries known as the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, which have all implemented similar legislation.

Other members include Costa Rica, France and Sweden. Most impressive is Denmark – the first significant oil and gas producer to commit to a phaseout of fossil fuel production, albeit by the late year of 2050. Nevertheless, global efforts to end fossil fuel supply continue to gain pace, even if major producers like the US are going in the opposite direction.

No oil until after independence

Oil was not a major theme in the 2025 election campaign. Indeed, a new party proposing an independent Greenland energised by fossil fuel extraction called Qulleq (literally “oil”, a reference to Inuit oil lamps) failed to win a single seat in the 31-seat parliament, the Inatsisartut.

Chairman of Demokraatit, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, celebrated his party winning 30% of the vote.
EPA-EFE/Mads Claus Rasmussen

Despite Qulleq’s failure, the dramatically remade political landscape will allow significant changes to the future of fossil fuel production. Five of six parties support reconsidering the fossil fuel ban, with only IA maintaining strong opposition. More than ever before, oil must be understood in relation to the prevailing independence sentiment.

Greenland’s resources are not owned by Denmark. This ended with legislation in 2009 and 2020 which granted the Greenlandic state full control of the territory’s subsurface. However, as Denmark continues to pay an annual block grant to support the Greenlandic economy, currently around €600 million (£503 million), Denmark is entitled to half of any profits from natural resources up to the block grant value.

Based on pre-election statements by the parties, there will be no parliamentary majority to begin oil exploration, let alone extraction, for now. Naleraq and the centre-left Siumut are both open to pumping oil, but only once Greenland is able to retain 100% of the revenues, which means once the Danish block grant is abolished following independence.

Faced with the difficult prospect of building a post-colonial nation, fossil fuels are a tempting but dangerous way to secure the economic foundation of an independent Greenland. Yet, in the long shadow of Denmark’s colonial role, only the people of Greenland can determine the future of the world’s largest island.

What happens to Greenland’s oil and gas will have major implications not just for the Greenlandic people, but for the rest of the world. As one of the places most vulnerable to the consequences of the climate crisis, Greenland is already feeling the effects of a fossil-fuelled world. If the new government chooses to use extraction as its path to political and economic independence, it will have a devastating impact on the entire planet.

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Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far. Läs mer…

December 2025 will mark the 10th anniversary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report and its Calls to Action. Other forms of reconciliation are also happening among Indigenous communities that had previously been unconnected but share common experiences of systemic removal at the hands of powerful institutions.

This new reconciliation includes two Indigenous groups that narrowly missed one another at a very specific and dark time in Canadian history now coming back together under new terms — their own.

In southern Ontario, the similar yet distinct experiences of two groups of Indigenous people, both displaced from their homes and families and compelled to live in colonial institutions, played out separately, just 40 kilometres apart: First Nations children sent to the Mohawk Institute and Inuit patients sent to the Hamilton Mountain Sanatorium.

Indigenous survivors and organizations have been working for decades towards local and national forms of truth-telling. As a result, these chapters in the centuries-long saga of Indigenous resistance and resurgence continue to be more deeply understood in terms of historical and contemporary realities in Indigenous communities — as well as to the history of Canada.

A team of scholars and organizations, of which I am proud to be a member, is working to pull as much information as possible about these events into the daylight and use it to understand and advance the ongoing recovery from these experiences.

Children’s shoes placed on the steps leading up to the site of the former residential school, the Mohawk Institute, in Brantford, Ont., in November 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nick Iwanyshyn

Two colonial institutions

The Mohawk Institute — a residential school remembered as the “Mush Hole” for the poor quality of its food — operated in Brantford, Ont., from 1831 to 1970.

During that time, more than 4,600 schoolchildren, most of them Haudenosaunee people from the Six Nations of the Grand River and nearby communities, were separated from their families and made to live at the school.

There, they were forced to learn English and to provide unpaid labour for the institute’s own operation and for neighbouring farms, all while enduring efforts to assimilate them into colonial society. Many were abused.

The last decades of the Mush Hole overlapped with the period when the nearby Hamilton Mountain Sanatorium, perched above the city’s west end on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment, treated more than 1,200 Inuit tuberculosis patients.

Between 1948 and 1963, Inuit were sent south from communities thousands of kilometres away in Nunavut. For a period, the “San,” as it was called, represented the largest year-round settlement of Inuit in all of Canada. Some Inuit patients never saw their families or homes again.

Between 1958 and 1962, 1,272 Inuit were treated at the Mountain Sanatorium for tuberculosis.
(Black Mount Collection, Hamilton Public Library, Local History & Archives)

‘Re-neighbouring’ communities

Our multi-year project, called Re-Neighbouring as Reconciliation: Indigenous Stories of Resistance, is now in full swing. It aims to improve access to records and artifacts, to gather and share information with all who are interested and to facilitate progress and healing through research, cultural exchanges and education that will introduce people from Six Nations to their counterparts from Nunavut in a concept we call “re-neighbouring.”

However, our team faces political and logistical challenges in doing this work. Some records from the San, for example, are not yet accessible to surviving patients, their families and their communities. We are advocating to correct that, especially in view of the TRC’s Calls to Action advocating for greater openness from museums and archives.

Even finding a way to connect this history to the present is complicated — is something really an artifact if it has cultural value to a living community?

In collaboration with the Art Gallery of Hamilton, we are working to bring a collection of soapstone carvings created by recovering tuberculosis patients during their long convalescence in Hamilton back to their communities to be seen by the descendants of the people who sculpted them.

Together, we are taking a meaningful look at repatriating what rightfully belongs to these communities, including the records of their experiences and the products of those experiences.

The Cross of Lorraine erected in 1953 along the road leading to the old Hamilton sanitorium. The cross was erected as a reminder of the threat of tuberculosis.
(Vanessa Watts)

Healing and justice

The goal is for survivors and those impacted inter-generationally within their communities to get to know one another across these two territories. We want to show how they are interacting with one another through their independent diplomatic and sovereign relations on their own terms.

The best outcome would be for those who were directly impacted to see themselves reflected in a way that gives them a feeling of connection, and for young people whose families and communities were affected by these institutions to know that history and to feel empowered to guide the future of their own lives and their children’s lives.

This work is about more than gathering information and publishing research. Our guiding principles are healing and justice. Our hope is to recover Indigenous knowledge, and to build new connections and understanding among and between the affected communities.

It’s important that everyone should witness distinct Indigenous communities coming together and understand there is not one broad Indigenous entity, but many. All of them are reclaiming their pasts and charting new futures for themselves. Läs mer…

Beavers, those iron-toothed rodents with a talent for hydraulic engineering, can legally return to English river catchments after an absence of 500 years.

Castor fiber has been on the way back for the last two decades thanks to unauthorised reintroductions. But until a few weeks ago, an enclosure was the only home these semi-aquatic mammals could legally find in the UK.

Successive governments have hesitated to issue release licenses for beavers, given their ability to transform the environment in unpredictable ways. When it comes to mitigating and adapting to climate change, however, that’s their biggest asset.

This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage comes from our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed.

When the reign of Tyrannosaurus rex abruptly ended 66 million years ago, a “prehistoric beaver” was on the ascendancy according to Stephen Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh.

“It wasn’t a good time to be alive,” he says. An asteroid had smashed into Earth with the equivalent fury of several million nuclear bombs. But Kimbetopsalis simmonsae, with its buck-toothed incisors and appetite for leaves and branches, survived.

Within a few hundred thousand years, lush forests had returned. Filling the vacant niches left by vanished dinosaurs were mammals like Kimbetopsalis.

“This burst of evolution led to primates, which eventually led to us,” Brusatte says.

Beaver-like ancestors braved a mass extinction event to help mammals rise from the ashes. What could modern beavers do during another era of planetary crisis?

Read more:
How we found ’prehistoric beaver’ that helped mammals inherit Earth after dinosaurs were wiped out

Dam the carbon

Legal protections and synthetic materials that reduced demand for warm fur have allowed beavers to regain their former haunts in Europe and North America.

The famously industrious rodents have wasted no time in picking up where they left off: damming streams to create ponds in which they build their dome-like lodges, safe from predators that might prowl the banks opposite.

A beaver lodge on a lake near Bad Freienwalde, north-eastern Germany.
Ebenart/Shutterstock

This behaviour has a stunning effect on the surrounding environment – perhaps even the climate. That’s because beaver dams trap vast quantities of sediment rich in carbon that might otherwise heat the atmosphere, says Christine E. Hatch, a professor of geosciences at UMass Amherst.

Read more:
Beavers offer lessons about managing water in a changing climate, whether the challenge is drought or floods

You should take this good news with a pinch of silt, however. CO₂ emissions from human activity were probably well over 40 billion tonnes last year – another annual high. Expecting beavers to offset our emissions is unrealistic, not to mention unreasonable.

Beavers may be skilled at stowing carbon in the wetlands they create, but this advantage is being undone by feedback mechanisms kickstarted by climate change. For example, the warming Arctic is inviting beavers to expand northwards. Here, their antics threaten to speed up the thawing of permafrost that has kept world-warming methane locked up says Helen Wheeler, a lecturer in wildlife ecology at Anglia Ruskin University.

Read more:
Arctic heatwave: what warmer summers mean for the region’s wildlife

Shelter from the storm

Where beavers really shine is in their knack for soothing damaged landscapes.

“Renowned engineers, beavers seem able to dam any stream, building structures with logs and mud that can flood large areas,” Hatch says.

“As climate change causes extreme storms in some areas and intense drought in others, scientists are finding that beavers’ small-scale natural interventions are valuable.”

The changes beavers make can help land hold onto water and release it slowly, which eases flooding and stalls drought. Compare this with human design innovations like tarmac, which radiates heat and allows storm water to slough off in torrents.

While the concrete dams that people construct bar the way for migratory freshwater fish, some of Earth’s most threatened animals, beaver dams present no such obstacle.

“One reason may be that the fish can rest in slow pools and cool pond complexes after navigating the tallest parts of the dams,” Hatch says.

Beaver wetlands do excel in blocking one thing, however: wildfires.

“Recent studies in the western US have found that vegetation in beaver-dammed river corridors is more fire-resistant than in areas without beavers because it is well watered and lush, so it doesn’t burn as easily,” Hatch says.

All of these qualities make beaver wetlands a fantastic refuge for a range of wildlife, particularly as ecosystems nearby are wracked and warped by rising temperatures and extreme weather. Even our towns and cities could be made more liveable with their help, as water evaporating from these ponds cools the air during heatwaves and absorbs flood water during a deluge.

Geographers Joshua Larsen (University of Birmingham), Annegret Larsen (Wageningen University) and Matthew Dennis (University of Manchester) are slightly more cautious.

“Unless the water bodies are very large, or high in number, this [effect] tends to diminish rapidly with distance from the water. This would make it difficult to rely upon beaver ponds for cooling benefits for human settlements,” they say.

Read more:
Beavers can do wonders for nature – but we should be realistic about these benefits extending to people

Nonetheless, allowing beavers to recover a fraction of their former abundance will make the effects of global heating less severe.

“Beavers are showing that their impacts can offer added levels of ecosystem resilience to a changing climate that we would be wise to embrace,” they add. Läs mer…