An aerial view of a mine in Naga City, Cebu in the Philippines. Residents sued the mining companies and state actors following a deadly landslide that killed over 70 and is believed to have affected over 8,000 people in 2018 (2019). In my thesis, I theorize an epistemology of extraction consisting of three dimensions; the erasure of lived experiences, legal categories as fixed boundaries of knowledge, and manipulating courts. 

Ethnographic work, interviews and conversations with mining-affected residents, combined with legal documents obtained from this civil case in Naga City demonstrate this epistemological framing of mining violence. Moving away from mining quarries as sites of violence, I used an epistemological lens to frame the rule of law as a site of mining violence.

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An Epistemology of Extraction

Colonialism and capitalism's geographic dimension features prominently in historical and contemporary narratives embedded in urban and rural spaces. In processes of territorial configuration, land dispossession and social transformation hold hands in a coercive process that pushes Indigenous People, working class, and indignant communities to peripheral spaces. 

Over 9,000 fisherfolk families face relocation to public government housing projects on Bantayan Island in the Philippines. Since typhoon Haiyan in 2013, the government has designated many coastal areas as danger zones while also investing heavily in tourism.

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What does life look like on different islands? That's the simple and perhaps naive question that started my research about islands as geographic and social spaces. As a new migrant to Australia, I was skeptical of the narrative shaped by western academics, tourism, policymakers, and generally a “white” Australia(n system and culture), with a skewed view on island and Indigenous cultures. 

“Our island life has changed,” says Crystal Love, a transgender Tiwi Woman and activist from the Tiwi Islands. Spanning Australia and Aotearoa, this work looks at islands as social and physical places. Coming from Bantayan Island in the Philippines, I wanted to focus on shared experiences of island life beyond contested narratives prevalent in the global imaginary. 

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An archival project containing a collection of objects from 1996 to present. Through digital rendering, a series of 3 dimensional models represent a select number of physical objects from my archive. 

The project challenges the role of science in the classification of flora and fauna, favoring what are considered credible epistemologies. Ultimately, my interest lies in examining entrenched colonial systems.

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The struggles of rural communities suggest the fragility of an Australian identity in which land and those who work the land play a vital symbolic role. Technology is affecting industries in rural Australia. Employment opportunities are pulling younger generations towards urban centers, away from farms. This is changing regional towns where socio-economic shifts are inextricably linked to the environment. 

Filmed during the harvest season in Parkes, Central NSW in Australia, Harvest documents the farmers, their work and relationship to the land. In doing so, it examines the myth of Australia. This is my conversation with Chris Orr, a farmer and musician.

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Throughout 2015 and 2018, I interviewed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, environmentalists, and activists while working as a freelance journalist in Sydney. These conversations broadly cover themes related to sovereignty in the Australian context, naming practices, and the state as a colonial occupational bureaucracy.  

The original interviews generally are anywhere between 15 to 90 minutes, but only short audio grabs or quotes were used in radio features and articles. This on-going project aims to put these interviews and subsequent publications in conversation to do justice to the breadth of those interviews and the work the interviewees are involved in.