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Indigenous Cultural and Natural Resources Management and Mobility in Arnhem Land, Northern Australia

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Abstract

Many programmes formally engage Australian Indigenous people in land and sea management to provide environmental services. There are also many Indigenous people who ‘look after country’ without rewards or payment because of cultural obligations. We investigated how Indigenous peoples’ mobility in and around two communities (Maningrida and Ngukurr) is affected by their formal or informal engagement in cultural and natural resource management (CNRM). Understanding factors that influence peoples’ mobility is important if essential services are to be provided to communities efficiently. We found that those providing formal CNRM were significantly less likely to stay away from settlements than those ‘looking after their country’ without payment or reward. Paying Indigenous people to engage with markets for CNRM through carbon farming or payments for environmental services (PES) schemes may alter traditional activities and reduce mobility, particularly movements away from communities that extend the time spent overnight on country. This could have both environmental and social consequences that could be managed through greater opportunities for people to engage in formal CNRM while living away from communities and greater recognition of the centrality of culture to all Indigenous CNRM, formal or otherwise.

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Notes

  1. According to Aboriginal creation stories, country is home to ancestral beings which created all aspects of the land on their journeys, leaving traces that are imbued with spiritual significance (Rose 1992). We use the term ‘country’ for Indigenous-owned traditional land and sea, and ‘looking after country’ to describe traditional Indigenous resource management in which the natural and cultural aspects are inseparable, in contrast to western land management practices.

  2. Kinship defines a ‘social organisation’ and provides strict rules on the ways in which Aboriginal people should behave towards each other, defining a person’s position within their network of relatives. Kinship relationships in Aboriginal culture are very different to any Western system, with incompatibility between networks inhibiting some types of communication (Ranzijn et al. 2009).

  3. Up from 193,000 in 2006 (+10 %).

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Acknowledgments

The research was funded by ARC Discovery Grant DP0987528. We would like to thank Bev Sithole for helping to develop the questionnaire and all respondents in Maningrida and Ngukurr for their time and contributions. We would like to thank Stephen Hamilton for editorial advice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University, Ellengowan Drive, Darwin, NT, 0909, Australia

    Kerstin K. Zander & Dean Carson

  2. Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, 0909, NT, Australia

    Kerstin K. Zander & Stephen T. Garnett

  3. Colmar Brunton, Darwin, NT, Australia

    Desleigh R. Dunnett

  4. Traditional owners from Maningrida & members of the Aboriginal Research Practitioner’s Network (ARPNet), Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Australia

    Christine Brown & Otto Campion

  5. Traditional owners from Ngukurr & Members of the Aboriginal Research Practitioner’s Network (ARPNet), Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Australia

    Cherry Daniels, Grace Daniels, Edna Nelson, Geraldine Daniels & Godfrey Blitner

  6. School of Medicine, Flinders University, Nurioopta, 5355, SA, Australia

    Dean Carson

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  1. Kerstin K. Zander
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  2. Desleigh R. Dunnett
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  3. Christine Brown
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  10. Dean Carson
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Zander, K.K., Dunnett, D.R., Brown, C. et al. Indigenous Cultural and Natural Resources Management and Mobility in Arnhem Land, Northern Australia. Hum Ecol 42, 443–453 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-014-9657-5

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