Noongar ecomusicology in southwest Australia

The vitality of eco-centric Noongar language and song traditions Indigenous to Western Australia’s urban-rural southwest region has been continually compromised by environmental and social upheaval since the onset of settler-colonisation in the nineteenth century. The Noongar region is today recognised as an area of globally significant biodiversity under significant threat, and a global drying hotspot. This article considers how revitalising and publicly sharing Noongar expressive culture could destabilise the separation between nature and culture imposed and maintained by settler-colonial systems. It positions Noongar performance revitalisation in the transdisciplinary field of ecomusicologies, considering the potential for Indigenous expressive culture to help move the needle on nature-culture challenges and motivate action on pressing global environmental issues. While many Indigenous communities are engaging in processes of revitalising culture, language and performance across Australia, the ecological and social benefits of revitalised Indigenous performance genres are yet to be fully realised and understood, especially in urban-rural contexts. Given the primary function of Indigenous expressive culture to maintain reciprocal relationships among communities and everything in landscapes, broader public engagement with Indigenous performance could productively enrich perceptions of local environments among all Australians. Still, tensions exist between the resource-intensive demands associated with reaching large audiences through festival productions and the eco-friendly, community-focused motivations for Noongar language and performance revitalisation.