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Light pollution’s impact on Indigenous cultures
By ABBE WHITFORD
In many cultures across the world, there has historically been a strong connection to the stars, the constellations, and the Cosmos.
This is true globally, but also for the Indigenous peoples of Australia and the Torres Strait Islands which is the focus in this bite.
In Australia, the view of the stars is used to help to tell stories and lessons that have been passed down for generations.
Indigenous Australians from Victoria accurately observed the variation in the brightness of Betelgeuse, which is encoded in a story.
The stars and moon are also used to encode information and knowledge that can be used for things like navigation, food economics, and predicting the weather and seasons.
The position of the Emu in the sky (the Emu can be seen in the dust clouds of the Milky Way, Fig.1) can be used to determine good times to collect emu eggs, as its position can be related to the breeding behaviours of emus.
Across the globe our view of the sky is fading. Light pollution is impacting our view of the stars, as urban expansion and the lighting that comes from that, especially poorly designed lighting and LEDs, are making our view of the stars in the sky fainter and fainter.
Figure 1: The Emu in the sky above a rock engraving, which has been used by Indigenous Australians to determine the timing to collect emu eggs for eating.
This thus also has an impact on Indigenous cultures and the connection they have with the sky, and this impact is addressed by the authors of the paper summarised in this bite.
As the sky fades, the connection that Indigenous Australians have with the sky is also fading and being destroyed.
The authors note that this is a form of ‘slow violence’; harm, which is difficult to notice and occurs gradually, creating and fuelling conflict. In the case of light pollution it is destroying our human connection to the sky.
The authors also point out that light pollution impacts wildlife significantly, and potentially has negative effects on human health.
While the authors of this paper have focused on light pollution and its effect on the Indigenous and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia, it is in fact a global issue.
Since light pollution is caused by urban expansion and economic growth, the development of solutions requires much work to ensure that large communities and cities develop policies and approaches to reduce it.
Fortunately, some efforts are being made to maintain darkness in parts of Australia, in dark sky parks such as the Warrumbungle Dark Sky Park; the Warrumbungle National Park is the home of the Kamilaroi people, who have a strong connection to the Pleiades constellation.
Figure 2: Light pollution visible from Siding Springs Observatory. Cropped from Figure 3 in the paper.
Dark sky parks have also been implemented across the globe (see this bite and a global list of dark sky parks here).
Dark sky parks keep lighting low and lights facing downwards in order to preserve the view of the sky. They also may switch out lights for those that have less blue light and more red light; the red light has less of an impact on our eyes and ability to see the night sky. Low impact lighting can also be implemented in urban areas.
Despite the existence of dark sky parks, increasing urban expansion still threatens our view of the night sky. Figure 2 below shows the light coming from different cities in Australia surrounding Siding Springs Observatory.
The expanding light pollution is destroying a part of Indigenous culture in Australia, but is also impacting all of us.
The authors of a report (Duane W. Hamacher, Krystal De Napoli, and Bon Mott – Whitening the Sky: light pollution as a form of cultural genocide) point out that solutions to the problems caused by light pollution will require a trans-disciplinary approach with research conducted by various disciplines coming together to develop new approaches to the issue.
However, it also should involve input from the Indigenous groups instead of only Western ideas and philosophies.
- Abbe Whitford is a third year PhD student at the University of Queensland, studying Large Scale Structure cosmology with galaxy clustering and peculiar velocities, and using Large Scale Structure to measure the properties of neutrinos.
- Image credit: The Emu in the Sky. Barnaby Norris and Ray Norris, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
