The community garden is an experimental research site, and an Aboriginal activist platform for cultural revival and reclamation. Cherokee Professor Jeff Corntassel argues that under conditions of colonialism, Indigenous identity is defined by ‘struggling to reclaim and regenerate one’s relational place-based existence by challening the ongoing, destructive forces of colonisation’ (‘Re-Invisioning Resurgence: Indigenous Pathways to Decolonization and Sustainable Self-Determination’, p.88). In a similar vein, Mohawk scholar Taiake Alfred, together with Corntassel, emphasise the importance of cultural resurgence in order to reconstitute Indigenous peoples and nations following the violent fragmentary forces unleashed by colonial powers, so that ‘Indigenousness is reconstructed,reshaped and actively lived as resurgence against the dispossessing and demeaning processes of annihilation that are inherent to colonialism’ (‘Being Indigenous: Resurgences Against Contemporary Colonialism’, p.612)
This section of the website documents some of the cultural revival experiments and activities, directed by Aboriginal peoples, that the community garden hosts and supports.
References
Armidale Aboriginal Community Garden 