Exploring multispecies mourning with Dr Sophie Chao
Environmental anthropologist Dr Sophie Chao is this year’s keynote speaker for the Sydney Environment Institute’s flagship event, the Iain McCalman Lecture. We sit down with Dr Chao to learn more about her research which considers interdisciplinary themes of Indigeneity, ecology, capitalism, health, and justice in the Pacific. Her research, often centred in the Indonesian-occupied region of West Papua, delves into the challenges faced by Indigenous communities, particularly the Marind People, as they navigate issues stemming from mass deforestation, monocrop oil palm expansion, and the erosion of ancestral connections to the land.
What are you most excited to share at the upcoming Iain McCalman Lecture?
"I’m feeling incredibly grateful for the unique opportunity to share the stories and knowledges I have been entrusted with by my Indigenous companions in West Papua, where I conduct ethnographic research. I’m hugely looking forward to centring these stories and knowledges in my lecture and in doing so, attempting to do justice to Indigenous experiences and theories of change in an increasingly threatened and unevenly shared planet."
What led you to specialise in environmental anthropology?
"I came to academia from a prior career in the human rights sector, where I was investigating social and environmental injustices in the Southeast Asian palm oil sector. It was this early work that first brought me to visit West Papua, where I met the Marind communities whose lives and worlds are both at the heart of this lecture, and central to many of my ongoing research endeavours. It was Marind’s richly complex and incisive understandings of more-than-human relations, violence, and care that brought me to eventually specialize in environmental anthropology and the environmental humanities as a PhD candidate and subsequently, as a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer."
Central to Dr Chao's work is the concept of "multispecies mourning." Grounded in the philosophies, practices, and protocols of the Marind People, her exploration involves understanding how they weave sago bags for collective healing, create songs inspired by encounters with roadkill, and transplant bamboo shoots as part of customary land reclaiming activities.
I hope to play a role in shaping this future environmental anthropology alongside others by bringing to the fore Indigenous ways of being in and interacting with the world, from which we have deeply valuable lessons to learn - not just as scholars, but also as fleshly human beings, as members of differently positioned communities of life, and as bodies intricately bound with the ecological shifts reconfiguring existences on earth.
How do you navigate the ethical considerations and challenges inherent in studying Indigenous communities?
"Navigating the path between extractivism and integrity, in all its ethical, political, epistemic, and methodological dimensions, is something that I continue to struggle with, and that I cannot assume to have done well – or well enough. My attempts in this respect are multi-pronged. They include involving my Marind friends in the design of research projects, methods, and questions from the very outset – from co-drafting human ethics applications, to discussing writings in detail prior to publication, and deciding jointly which stories would be made public, where, for what reason, and sometimes, why not."
As society grapples with the repercussions of climate change and ecological crises, Dr Chao's insights into multispecies mourning offer a unique perspective on how communities can simultaneously commemorate and resist the losses incurred by capitalist incursions.
How do you see the future of environmental anthropology evolving, and what role do you hope to play in shaping it?
"I see environmental anthropology and consonant fields like the environmental humanities and political ecology playing a growingly central role in scholarly knowledge production but also in the space of public advocacy, engagement, and practice. It’s becoming increasingly clear that these different realms of thinking and acting cannot sustainably exist separate from one another - not least in light of the urgent socio-environmental crises affecting the planet across local and global scales."
Dr Chao hopes her lecture will open peoples’ eyes, ears, minds and hearts to Indigenous philosophies and practices of caring for non-human life, without the distortion of racial colonial capitalism.
Register here for the 2024 Iain McCalman Lecture which will be held in the University of Sydney’s Great Hall on Monday 11 March 2024.
Sophie Chao is a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award Fellow and Lecturer in the Discipline of Anthropology at the University of Sydney. Her research investigates the intersections of Indigeneity, ecology, capitalism, health, and justice in the Pacific. Chao is author of In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua and co-editor of The Promise of Multispecies Justice. At the University of Sydney, Chao co-leads the Sydney Environment Institute’s Biodiversity, Conservation, and Culture Research Theme with Thom van Dooren. She previously worked for the Forest Peoples Programme in Indonesia, supporting the rights of forest-dwelling Indigenous peoples to their customary lands, resources, and livelihoods. She is of Sino-French heritage and lives and works on unceded Guringai lands.