Emergent sovereignties: Pragmatism, experiment, and affect within collaborative Indigenous wildfire management in southeast Australia

This article examines the resurgence of Indigenous peoples’ presence and knowledge in environmental management in southeast Australia, a region with an ongoing history of settler colonial dispossession. Drawing on the concept of “survivance”, the article explores the dynamics of intercultural interactions between Indigenous organisations and settler state agencies through a focus on cultural fire management collaborations. These collaborations have grown significantly in scope and number over the past decade – notably in the aftermath of the 2019–2020 Black Summer wildfire season – with partnerships emerging at different scales and supported by different legal and financial arrangements. Based on interviews with Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals engaged in partnerships at local, regional, and statewide scales, the article reveals the forms of pragmatism, experimentation, and affect that sustain them within a broader settler colonial context. Rather than seeing such formations as co-optative or liberating, the article argues for their crucial importance in understanding Indigenous sovereignty as an emergent practice in tension with the settler state.