Abstract

This paper takes the case of the proposed building of the Traveston dam on the Mary River in Australia to examine the ways postcolonial power relations are played out in city/regional relationships to further the interests of the city. Postcolonialism is concerned with unravelling multiple histories of colonisation, and identifying the reproduction, contestation, ambivalence and transformation of modes of domination and subordination in colonial relations. Political contingencies and contestations by residents, farmers, traditional Indigenous owners and environmentalists seeking to protect endangered species are examined to highlight the dominance of Western anthropocentric, technocentric, and eurocentric epistemologies in political, ecological, environmental, bioethical debates.