Towards Decolonisation of Australia's Protected Area Management: the Nantawarrina Indigenous Protected Area Experience

Management of Australia's National Parks and Protected Areas originally developed according to the United State's ‘Yellowstone’ model. Aimed primarily at preserving ‘wilderness’ areas, this form of protected area management has excluded indigenous habitation and land management, effectively colonising these landscapes. Since the 1980s indigenous exclusion from protected area management has been contested in the public sphere. Indigenous peoples have become involved in protected area management in various ways, such as the joint management of national parks. However, greater indigenous control is necessary to truly decolonise protected area landscapes and fully recognise the importance of indigenous Australians in land management. This paper explores a new initiative in protected area management: the Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) program. IPAs are established through voluntary declaration of indigenous land with the aim of enhancing indigenous control of protected area landscapes. Nantawarrina, the first declared IPA, is considered as a case study. Although some manifestations of colonialism are still evident in the Nantawarrina IPA, the program has made some significant contributions to the decolonisation of protected area management in Australia.     

Ways of Belonging: Reconciliation and Adelaide's Public Space Indigenous Cultural Markers

As an arguably ‘post colonial’ society, Australia is evolving its particular identity and sense of self, but reconciliation with its Indigenous peoples remains a significant political and cultural issue. Social inclusion or marginalisation is reflected in the construct of the civic landscape and this paper traces and contextualises public space Indigenous representation or ‘cultural markers’, since the 1960s in Adelaide, South Australia, the Kaurna people's land. This paper identifies social phases and time periods in the evolution of the ways in which Indigenous people and their culture have been included in the city's public space. Inclusion of Indigenous peoples in civic landscapes contributes not only to their spiritual and cultural renewal and contemporary identity, but also to the whole community's sense of self and to the process of reconciliation. This has the potential to provide a gateway to a different way of understanding place which includes an Indigenous perspective and could, symbolically, contribute to the decolonisation of Indigenous people. An inter‐related issue for the colonising culture is reconciliation with the Indigenous nature of the land, in the sense of an intimate sense of belonging and connectedness of spirit through an understanding of Indigenous cultural landscapes, an issue which this paper explores. The paper also sets out suggestions for the facilitation of further Indigenous inclusion and of re‐imagining ways of representation.     

‘All mucked up’: sharing stories of Yolŋu–Macassan cultural heritage at Bawaka,north-east Arnhem Land

From the eighteenth-century Macassan traders from the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi made regular visits to northern Australia, where with the help of Yol?u, Indigenous Australians living in north-east Arnhem Land, they collected trepang (sea cucumber) for trade. Along with sharing language, technology and culture, the Macassans and Yol?u involved built relationships that are celebrated today in Yol?u art, songs and stories. While the trepang trade had officially stopped by 1906, resonances of this complex relationship continued and still continue today. This paper shares a number of stories told by one particular Yol?u family about this heritage and reflects on the ways in which for Yol?u, the tangible heritage (artefacts), intangible heritage (stories) and the land itself are locked in a symbiotic relationship where each depends on the others to define their existence. Looking after, or protecting this heritage, is therefore about attending to place, and the nature, storytellers, objects and stories contained within it.     

‘My Country is like my Mother…’: respect,care, interaction and closeness as principles for undertaking cultural heritage assessments

Investigation of social values is essential to understanding relationships between people and place, particularly in Indigenous cultural heritage management. The value of long-term ethnographic studies is well recognised, however, such approaches are generally not possible in many heritage studies due to time or other constraints. Qualitative research methods have considerable potential in this space, yet few have systematically applied them to understanding Indigenous peoples’ relationships with place. This paper reports on a qualitative study with Alngith people from north-eastern Australia. It begins by exploring the embodied, experiential nature of Alngith peoples’ conception of Country and their emphasis on four interrelated themes: Respect, Care, Interaction and Closeness when describing relationships to Country. We suggest that Alngith people-to-place relationships are underwritten by these ideals and are central to local expectations for respectful, inclusive heritage practices. The results also reveal new perspectives and pathways for Aboriginal communities, and heritage managers dissatisfied with the constraints of ‘traditional’ cultural heritage assessment frameworks that emphasise archaeological methods and values. The paper further demonstrates how qualitative research methodologies can assist heritage managers to move beyond the limitations of surveys and quantitative studies and develop a deeper understanding of Indigenous values, concepts and aspirations (social values).     

Towards Equity in Indigenous Co‐Management of Protected Areas: Cultural Planning by Miriuwung‐Gajerrong People in the Kimberley,Western Australia

Delivery of the potential mutual benefits for biodiversity conservation and Indigenous peoples through protected area co‐management remains challenging, with partnership arrangements frequently delivering inequitable outcomes that marginalise Indigenous interests. In the Kimberley region of Western Australia, Miriuwung‐Gajerrong people initiated a Cultural Planning Framework to help achieve greater equity in planning for co‐management of the first Indigenous‐owned protected areas managed with the state. Analysis of the negotiation and delivery of this Indigenous‐controlled planning initiative concluded it made a key contribution in shaping an equitable intercultural space for ongoing negotiation of co‐management. A practitioners' model of related design concepts drawn from the analysis identified three factors of significance: a foundation platform of recognition of rights and interests; a set of effective organisations to support the roles of the key actors; and effective mechanisms for working together. The model proved robust when evaluated against international standards for best practice, suggesting it may be a useful tool for guiding better uptake of those standards. Interrogation of the two major theories underpinning these standards – common pool resource (CPR) and governance – demonstrated the theories are synergistic and inform different parts of the model. Both theories highlight the significance of Indigenous‐controlled planning. Attention to relational theory for interrogation of the intercultural space may help illuminate their relative importance. Further investigation of the potential of Indigenous‐controlled planning to build theory and practice in Indigenous co‐management of protected areas is recommended.     

The Indigenous Franchise and Assimilation

This article explores the connections between Indigenous enfranchisement and assimilation in Australia. Focusing on testimony given by Indigenous people to the 1961 Select Committee on Voting Rights for Aborigines, and assessing the political and discursive overlaps between enfranchisement and assimilation at this time, the article argues that enfranchisement could both demand and produce forms of social and cultural change that involved Indigenous people becoming more like settler Australians. Indigenous witnesses recognised and often welcomed the acculturation presaged by enfranchisement. But this embrace was not unanimous or unqualified, especially in evidence given by and on behalf of Indigenous people whose lives were partly or wholly beyond the reach of settler institutions.     

Control of Indigenous Archaeological Heritage in Ontario,Canada

Few Indigenous peoples have control over their heritage, despite international recognition of this right in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. In Ontario, Canada, the Ontario Heritage Act, R.S.O. 1990 regulates archaeology and grants licences to archaeologists to investigate archaeological heritage. Indigenous people want more control of their archaeological heritage in Ontario. To uphold Indigenous rights to archaeological heritage in Ontario, heritage legislation and policy needs to be revised and site protection increased. This paper recommends that Indigenous archaeological heritage in Ontario would be best protected by strengthening Ontario government land development policy and legislation to require the free, prior, and informed consent from affected Indigenous communities before removal of significant archaeological sites and remains from their ancestral territories.     

Global Application of Indigenous Archaeology: Community Based Participatory Research in Turkey

What does Indigenous archaeology offer archaeologists who do not work on Native land, at Indigenous sites, or with Indigenous people? This article demonstrates the broad applicability of Indigenous archaeology and the way it can be utilized by archaeologists working in any locale. Through recent fieldwork in south central Turkey working with a non-indigenous community of local residents near the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük, I demonstrate ways that the theories and methodology of Indigenous archaeology are a useful and relevant part of practice for archaeologists working in areas that are neither on Native land nor involve sites related to indigenous heritage. It also points to the need for further investigation into collaborative methods for the development of a set of best practices within archaeological and heritage management settings.     

Towards a Culturally Sustainable Environmental Impact Assessment: The Protection of Ainu Cultural Heritage in the Saru River Cultural Impact Assessment,Japan

Culturally sustainable environmental impact assessment (EIA) requires consideration of the impact of development on local people's cultural activities, including holding ceremonies, collecting resources, and learning skills, which are fundamental essences of Indigenous rights. While culturally sustainable EIA has become a common practice when a development project involves an Indigenous community, it is still argued that Indigenous cultural heritage is not adequately protected. This is due to the fact that Indigenous people do not always keep power in the post‐approval stage of EIA, or the lack of practical measures to minimise the impact of development projects on Indigenous cultural heritage and to enhance the possibility of reaching a consensus among stakeholders. The Cultural Impact Assessment of the Saru River Region in Japan was the first investigation of a site to preserve an ethnic minority culture, with regard to a dam construction. In the second phase of the assessment project, research staff members, some of whom are of Ainu ethnicity, suggested alternative ceremony sites and conducted experimental transplants to protect the local cultural activities. The long‐term investigation by research staff, in fact, influenced the direction of the dam construction. The developer agreed not to proceed with the construction until measures were taken to minimise the impact on cultural activities that would satisfy residents in the construction area. While still early to conclude that Indigenous participation in this assessment project has been successful, Indigenous participation has clearly enhanced the possibility of reaching a consensus. The project should be considered with other published EIA reports, in demonstrating a return from investing in EIA with Indigenous participation, with a practical means for realising Indigenous rights.     

New collaborations in old institutional spaces: setting a new research agenda to transform Indigenous-settler relations

ABSTRACT

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people navigate the social and political order of the Australian settler state in ways that seek to increase their personal freedoms and political autonomy. For some groups this means seeking a firmer place within the social, political and economic life of Australia, and for others it means navigating away, towards a more distant relationship based in the resurgence of Indigenous nationhood. This navigation is composed of multifaceted and multidirectional relations between Indigenous Australians, settler Australians, and the settler state. As a discipline, political science must move beyond the study of settler institutions and begin to engage more comprehensively in research that considers the dynamics and structures of Indigenous-settler relations as a matter of priority.     

‘Working for’ and ‘Working’ among Western Arrernte in Central Australia1

This article discusses some conflicts between kin‐ and market‐based society as they are reflected in the lives of Western Arrernte in and around Ntaria (Hermannsburg). Both political economy and cultural analysis provide accounts of concomitant ‘problems about work’ and training initiatives in remote communities. Neither brings together, however, the issues of economic marginalisation and a history of cultural difference with its own transformations. This discussion takes its departure from the Arrernte's attempts to reconcile kinship service (‘working for’) and paid employment (‘working’) in everyday practice. It demonstrates that this attempt is part of broader change concerning the ways in which hunter‐gatherer people in Australia have been compelled to adapt to a world of cash and commodities, and waged employment. In this discussion, the focus is on remote indigenous Australians today.     

An Indigenous Perspective on National Parks and Sámi Reindeer Management in Norway

Protection of nature for biodiversity, and for the material livelihoods of Indigenous peoples, have much in common. Indigenous relations to nature are, however, based on unity between use and protection, implying that human use is necessary for effective protection. Often protected areas include the homelands of Indigenous peoples, whose needs and rights are still being ignored to a large extent. This paper explores the effects of a plan for a significant increase of large nature protection areas in Norway, still under implementation. Most of the new protection areas are in the heartland of the Indigenous Sámi, whose core livelihood is reindeer management. The plan implies transfer of jurisdiction from Indigenous and local domains to formalised central domains. In several cases, this has provoked Indigenous and rural groups to organised resistance. In this case study, there are signs of new tensions between Sámi and other rural groups. Indigenous land use can be marginalised by park restrictions and increasing pressure from visitor activity. The Sámi response was to boycott the park management board leading to a stalemate. A robust solution seems to require consideration of deeper institutional levels.     

Monuments, Memory and Marginalisation in Adelaide's Prince Henry Gardens

Social and cultural dominance is (re)produced in the landscape by the exclusion or marginalisation of subordinate and minority groups. This paper illustrates the long-standing and ongoing exclusion of representations of indigeneity in and around Prince Henry Gardens, part of one of the most significant cultural and memorial sites in South Australia. Prince Henry Gardens is home to a large number of monuments and memorials that commemorate almost solely non-indigenous people and events. This is a selective and deliberate landscape of the dominant culture. It confirms a legacy of indigenous dispossession and is symbolic of ongoing marginalisation. While there have been recent compensatory initiatives by state and city agencies to create landscapes of reconciliation through symbolic gestures such as renaming parkland areas, these are argued to be contentious. They associate indigeneity with the city's margins, with violent places and public drunkenness, and perpetuate problematic associations between ‘real’ indigeneity and nature. The paper concludes with some ideas for new memorial landscapes intended to help construct a postcolonial Australian city.     

Ethnographic sound collections and Australian Aboriginal Heritage: Kaytetye song traditions remembered

ABSTRACT

Song was one of the principal methods of transmitting knowledge in the fundamentally oral societies of Indigenous Australia. As the breadth of song traditions has greatly diminished over the past 200 years, archival recordings of song now form a significant resource of intangible cultural heritage for Australia’s Indigenous people. The song performances recorded in the past are now being rediscovered, remembered and in some cases revived. This paper presents findings from a recent project involving the return of a set of poorly documented recordings of songs to Kaytetye people in central Australia. These newly discovered recordings, the earliest ever made of Kaytetye singing, are shown to be an important heritage resource for these communities. Working collaboratively with senior song experts in order to gain a better understanding of the meaning and cultural significance of various songs, I document the how this discussion of audio material generated important social-histories and memories, reinforced local understandings of rights in cultural heritage, and revealed both continuities and changes in Kaytetye ceremonial and song practice.     

Indigenous biocultural rights and the Blue Mountains: Local and international policy challenges

Indigenous knowledges play a critical role in addressing the environmental crisis, and the United Nations system has adopted a suite of international treaties to protect and strengthen Indigenous peoples’ rights, which are often described as biocultural rights. Because World Heritage Areas are nominated and monitored by UNESCO, an initial hypothesis in this study was that such areas would be subject to higher than normal standards in regard to Indigenous people’s biocultural rights. By reference to the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, Australia, this research examined how the international legislative framework influences conservation practices. We held semi-structured interviews with conservation and Indigenous local experts and compared park management practices in the Area against those used in an Indigenous Protected Area. Findings align with the literature and suggest that Indigenous and scientific knowledge systems can generate new insights for the Area and other sites. Yet, Indigenous knowledges are only marginally applied in practice. Some barriers to full participation of Indigenous people are specific to the colonial history of the area. Yet, findings point to a lack of action by Australian governments and UNESCO, and that needs to be redressed. The study calls attention to the need to support and resource Indigenous people to enable collaborative partnerships to yield significant benefits for biodiversity and protection of Country.     

Flogging a Dead Horse? Neo-Marxism and Indigenous Mining Negotiations

Historically, Indigenous Australians have been marginalised, both economically and politically, in mineral development processes in Australia. The Australian state structures the interaction between Indigenous people and mining companies through general legislation and policies, and is therefore a key determinant of the mineral negotiating environment. This paper examines the state's role in the negotiations for the Century Mine in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and argues that recent neo-Marxist theories offer the most cogent theoretical explanation of the state's behaviour. It contends that, despite a noted tendency to consign Marxist theorising to the history books, analysis of the behaviour of the state in the Century negotiations provides critical evidence of the continued relevance of neo-Marxist theories of the state.     

Indigenous free prior informed consent: a case for self determination in World Heritage nomination processes

Free prior informed consent is a critical concept in enacting the rights of Indigenous People according to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This paper outlines a case for the inclusion of free prior informed consent in World Heritage nomination processes and examines issues that are problematic when enacting free prior informed consent. Case research was used to analyse current issues in the potential nomination of certain areas of Cape York Peninsula, Australia. The authors’ reflexive engagement within this case offers insights into the praxis of developing a World Heritage nomination consent process. The outcomes of this research were: preconditions need to be addressed to avoid self-exclusion by indigenous representative organisations; the nature of consent needs to account for issues of representation and Indigenous ways of decision making; the power of veto needs to have formal recognition in the nomination process; and prioritising self-determination within free prior informed consent ensures the intent of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The paper contributes to the human rights agenda of Indigenous People and conservation management processes by helping address the issues that will be raised during a World Heritage nomination process.     

The marginalisation of Paralympic heritage

The impact of the Paralympic Games and disability sport upon the lives of people with disabilities and the perceptions of non-disabled society regarding people with disabilities has been immense. Yet examples of this disability sport and Paralympic heritage are all but invisible amongst the wider area of sports heritage. This paper will attempt to outline some of the possible reasons why this might be the case and cite some examples of how this apparent marginalisation of Paralympic heritage might be overcome as we move forward beyond the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.     

Australia's Indigenous Carbon Economy: A National Snapshot

Many Indigenous communities in Australia are well situated to provide greenhouse gas abatement and carbon sequestration benefits, but little is known about the factors affecting the capability of Australia's Indigenous organisations to participate in climate change mitigation strategies. This paper provides a ‘snapshot’ summary of certain aspects of Australia's Indigenous organisations' participation in carbon offset schemes. The snapshot provides insight into the degree to which Indigenous organisations are aware of carbon market opportunities in Australia, the level that these Indigenous organisations participate in or engage with carbon‐based economic enterprises, and the key pathways through which Indigenous carbon market opportunities are pursued. Analysis of data collected from a national survey conducted between 2011 and 2012 show that most obstacles to Indigenous participation in carbon offset schemes relate to land tenure arrangements; geographic and biophysical factors; low levels of requisite technical, human and financial resources; and appropriate recognition of Indigenous knowledge and cultural responsibilities. The snapshot also highlights the value of supporting regionally specific capacity‐building strategies to enable Indigenous people to participate in emerging carbon offset activities and the generation of associated ecosystem services. Cultural, socio‐economic or demographic factors that are also likely to influence the ability of many Indigenous communities to participate in carbon market opportunities are identified as important areas for further research.     

Unconventional Gas in Australia: Towards a Legal Geography

Recent commentary on future research directions for legal geography highlights the need for studies that are historically grounded and focused on human–environment interactions in rural settings. As a current, controversial land use in Australia, unconventional gas (UG) development provides an ideal lens through which researchers can investigate these themes. Utilising emerging international literature and current Australian examples, this paper surveys major trends in the Australian literature relating to UG, before exploring some of the ways in which Australian legal geographers might contribute constructively to community debates around this resource. Seeking to encourage further analysis, this paper contributes to this developing literature by focusing on two key areas: the various legal actors involved in UG development in Australia (including their regulatory choices, spatial interpretations, expertise, and influence) and the implications for legal geography where attempts are made to establish ‘social licence’ through contractual arrangements between industry and individual landholders. This article also delves into the place of Indigenous Australians in relation to UG extraction and the questions this resource raises about land use conflicts in Australia more generally – offering suggestions for comparative international studies and further critique at the domestic level.