Plumwood Inc.

Hi! We are Plumwood Incorporated, a non-for-profit trust organisation committed to caring for the legacy of Val Plumwood and further decolonising her vision of eco-cultural change.

As a volunteer group of artists, activists, and scholars, we were initially formed by friends and colleagues after Val’s death in 2008, to ensure Val’s former home on Plumwood Mountain remained an educational ‘hub’ of environmental humanities scholarship and activism. Contributions from earlier configurations of the Plumwood Inc. committee included establishing wider environmental humanities networks such as the Plumwood Mountain Journal and the Bush Retreats for Eco Writers (BREW) residency program.

In recent years, we’ve begun to reflect on our own colonial positionality and acknowledge that real eco-cultural change must start with decolonisation. After the 2019/2020 Black Summer Fires, we began to build relationships with local Elders and custodians working within the Batemans Bay Local Aboriginal Land Council (BBLALC). In 2024, we officially returned the stolen land of Plumwood Mountain to the BBLALC and into the care of local custodians such as the Walbunja Rangers.

We now continue to care for Val’s legacy as the guests and tenants of the BBLALC: managing Val’s heritage-listed house and gardens atop Plumwood Mountain, overseeing her intellectual property and copyright, and facilitating access to her ‘living museum’ and ex-situ archives. 

After many years of rebuilding after the damages of the Black Summer Fires and building new relationships with traditional custodians, we are now focusing on expanding our public program of place-based residencies and events. We hope you can join us as we work together with the BBLALC to reconfigure the power dynamics of environmental and cultural heritage conservation, fostering decolonial environmental cultures on Plumwood Mountain and beyond.