MANAGING COUNTRY

An Overview of the Prime Issues

u

Introduction

The beginning of this new century marks an important stage in significant changes that
have been affecting indigenous management of both the lands and the coastal regions of
Australia. These changes are both internal and external. Externally, at the global scale,
increasing recognition of the impacts of unsustainable use of natural resources and their
transferability between and within countries has fostered concern with questions of
long-term sustainability. Internally, ongoing legal action and negotiations between
indigenous and dominant cultures and institutions about indigenous rights to land and
resources and indigenous approaches to management of country have begun to reshape
the policy landscape.
Over the last three decades sustainable development, broadly defined as development
that 'meet[s] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future gener-
ations to meet their own needs' (WCED 1987 :43), has become an increasingly power-
ful paradigm. Its exact definition remains elusive. Nevertheless, as landmark reports such
as the World Conservation Strategy (IUCN 1986) and the World Commission on Envi-
ronment and Development (WCED 1987), and debate at key international meetings
such as the 1972 Stockholm conference on 'Limits to Growth' and the 1992 Rio Con-
ference on Environment and Development, have shown, it is a process generally under-
stood to have some common elements. These include a balancing of the demand for
economic advancement against its impact on natural resource use and on social systems,
within a framework of intergenerational and intragenerational equity (for example,
Meadows et al. 1972; Barbier 1987;Adams 1990; Diesendorf & Hamilton 1997). Thus,
while economic advancement remains a prime consideration in sustainable development
thinking, the extension of that focus to include natural resource use and biodiversity
conservation along with recognition of the impact of people's social and cultural attrib-
utes has been widely accepted.

3
 Contemporary Indigenous Management

Agenda 21, the 'action plan' for sustainable development that resulted from the 1992
Rio Conference, was accepted by most participating governments, including Australia.
Australia's state of the environment report (SOEAC 1996), one of the responses to
Agenda 21, accords with the multidimensional framework of this plan in stressing that
the resources of the continent must be used in ways that benefit not only present but
also future generations. Such a holistic approach conforms closely with the approach
that indigenous Australians take to working on country. Contemporary indigenous
management of country therefore offers vital lessons for enhancing sustainable devel-
opment in Australia.
For indigenous peoples throughout the world, traditional ecological knowledge, the
unique body of knowledge of the environment that they hold, is a key component of
their approach to resource management. Its value has now been widely recognised,
through reports such as Our Common Future (WCED 1987), through publications such
as Suzuki and Knudtson's Wisdom ef the Elders (1992) and Stevens's Conservation through
Cultural Survival (1997), and through a wide range of international meetings and discus-
sions in which indigenous people from many different countries have participated. By
sharing their knowledge and experiences with first peoples from other continents,
indigenous Australians have come to recognise that their contribution to sustainable
resource management is globally important and does not occur in isolation (Williams &
Baines 1993). Indigenous Canadians, for example, also take a holistic approach to work-
ing on country, combining the sustainable harvesting of wildlife with income generation
and the maintenance of social identity and social integrity (Usher 1996; Eerkes 1999);
and, more recently, indigenous groups in a number of southern African countries have
also introduced such approaches to wildlife management (IIED 1994; Suchet, this
volume). Global sharing of such experiences is also inextricably mingled with global
moves for the legal recognition of indigenous land rights, virtually a prerequisite for the
practical implementation of traditional ecological knowledge in land management.
Global dissemination of such political information has also promoted the empowerment
of each group, because discriminatory policies and programs within separate countries
now attract global attention, often unwelcome to unsympathetic governments (see, for
example, Burger 1987).
In Australia, as in some other countries with identifiable indigenous minorities, these
global shifts have been complemented by a period of rapid change in many of the gov-
ernment policies and programs which affect indigenous peoples. These have included
partial recognition of indigenous people's rights to lands and natural resources through
land grants by governments and, since 1992, through registration of native title rights;
government-funded acquisition ofland for dispossessed indigenous groups; and official
abandonment of the assimilationist policies that had overtly set out to force indigenous
people to conform to majority lifestyles and suppress their cultural uniqueness, in favour
of self-determination. While the extent to which these changes are likely to overcome
the extremely disadvantaged situation ofindigenous groups remains debatable, they have
had a significant impact. In particular, governments now recognise a large portion of the
Australian continent (some 15 per cent) as being under some form of indigenous own-
 An Overview of the Prime Issues 5

ership, and also acknowledge that the indigenous role in resource management will
increase as a result of the recognition of native title. This means that indigenous man-
agement of Australia's lands and coastal regions is a major issue now and for the future.
Although Australia overtly subscribes to the principles ofAgenda 21 and is thus com-
mitted to more sustainable approaches to resource use, achieving the necessary changes
in attitudes is not easy. Nevertheless, it is now increasingly recognised that the way that
Australia's lands, seas, and natural resources have been exploited over the past two cen-
turies is quite unsustainable. This unsustainability reflects dominant approaches to nat-
ural resource use and management that developed without reference to indigenous
peoples and their knowledge systems for localised modes of economic production. This
is an important underlying factor in the multifaceted environmental crises that Australia
currently faces.
As Debbie Rose (1996) eloquently reports, indigenous people throughout Australia
express extremely strong feelings for their country and manifest these into ethics of care
and custodianship. Such strong feelings emerge in several of the contributions to this
book, notably those by Moore, and Lowe and Davies (chapters 7, 18). However, pathways
for indigenous people to move from this powerful sense of attachment to practical
approaches to 'caring for country' are very different now from what they were in former
times. Today, indigenous people strongly reassert that they rightly have a role in manag-
ingAustralia's lands and coastal regions, a role in which their traditional ecological knowl-
edge will be significant. But at the same time they, like other Australians, must perform
' that role in country suffering from widespread environmental degradation caused by
decades of misuse through non-indigenous resource exploitation. Indigenous knowledge
\'
alone is inadequate to address this degradation and to restore degraded resources.As many
of the chapters in this book describe, indigenous people are actively working with scien-
tists in many regions to promote understanding and synergies between their respective
knowledge systems and to explore how these can be applied together in contemporary
management of country.
Ifindigenous approaches to the management of country are to be effective, they must
take on the significant challenges posed by very contentious issues.The remainder of this
chapter overviews some of these. They concern the regional imbalance in distribution
of lands that are recognised as indigenous owned, the coexistence of indigenous and
non-indigenous tenures and other rights to lands and seas, and the relationship of these
characteristics to resource management policies and programs being pursued by gov-
ernment and by indigenous groups. Invariably, these issues are interconnected.

Regional imbalance

The passage of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 197 6 marked the start
of a very positive period in the recognition of indigenous land rights in Australia. Not
only have claims and grants under this legislation resulted in the recognition of around
half of the Northern Territory as inalienable freehold Aboriginal-owned land, but the
6 Contemporary Indigenous Management

Less than 1OOkm2

-t- Indigenous Held Freehold
• Indigenous Held Leasehold
o lndlgenous Held Reserve
0 ~

~BART
Greater than 100km3
Bl Indigenous Held Freehold
CJ Indigenous Held Leasehold
D lndigenousHeldReserve
ll!!!¥Dll Indigenous Held Freehold National Park

D CapllalClty Based on map supp/led by Indigenous Land Corpomtfon 2000

Figure 1.1 Indigenous-held land, August 2000

Act also provided a catalyst for indigenous people in other parts of the country to assert
their determination for similar rights.As summarised in this volume (see chapter 2), the
strength of such legislation has varied between different states and many indigenous
peoples have been frustrated by the inequities that have arisen. Nevertheless, these move-
ments have still resulted in the recognition of significant areas of the continent as indige-
nous land through some form of tenure granted by governments. Figure 1.1 presents a
snapshot of the distribution of these lands in 2000.
Much of the indigenous land shown in figure 1.1 is held under inalienable free-
hold title granted through an Act of Parliament. In some cases the title to these lands
is held in trust by a central organisation, with a lease granted to a local indigenous
group. Some smaller freehold blocks and about a hundred pastoral leases have been
purchased on the open market by government-funded schemes and returned to
indigenous groups, usually with covenants restricting their resale. In the Northern Ter-
ritory most of these leases have now been converted to inalienable freehold title, fol-
lowing successful claims under the 197 6 Act. Governments have also granted a number
of special-purpose leases over small areas ofland. These have either been excised from
non-indigenous-owned pastoral leases to create living areas for dispossessed Aborigi-
nal groups; or, in towns like Alice Springs, they are living areas for Aboriginal people
from the surrounding region who are now temporary or permanent urban residents.
Some areas of land that were set aside for Aboriginal use in the nineteenth and early
 An Overview of the Prime Issues 7

twentieth centuries remain as Crown Reserves for Aboriginal purposes, particularly in

Western Australia.
Popular arguments against further recognition of indigenous land rights often cite
that already 15 per cent of the country is owned by only 2 per cent of the popula-
tion-the proportion of the total Australian population who identify as Aboriginal or
Torres Strait Islander-and that this is unfair to non-indigenous people. Such simplis-
tic arguments fail to take account of the uneven spatial distribution of the lands that
have been recognised as indigenous owned. They also ignore spatial imbalance in the
distribution of economically valuable resources between indigenous-owned lands
and other lands. Indigenous groups in fact own far less than 15 per cent of the most
productive land of Australia, and far more than 15 per cent of the land that is least
productive in economic terms.
Figure 1.1 clearly illustrates that most indigenous-held land is in the centre and trop-
ical north of Australia, in arid/semi-arid and monsoonal areas. To a large extent these
lands were the only areas made available by governments for indigenous groups to claim
because non-indigenous people saw them as offering little, if any, economic potential,
particularly for agriculture or grazing. The prime value of most of these lands to the con-
temporary Australian economy is for mining, and governments do not generally recog-
nise indigenous ownership of any economic mineral resources.
Indigenous-owned pastoral stations, most of which are in the Kimberley area of
Western Australia and in the Northern Territory, are typically economically marginal.
Government purchase occurred partly because they were cheaply valued and hence able
to be purchased with the meagre funds available. As Young (1995) describes, many of
them have also been plagued with financial and technical management problems, result-
ing from inadequate assessment of indigenous people's experience in managing all ele-
ments of such enterprises. Phillpot (chapter 14, this volume) describes one approach to
improving the capacity of Aboriginal pastoral company directors to deal with the 'mys-
terious' world of non-indigenous business and thus be able to overcome the legacy of
mismanagement on their country. The Central Land Council (CLC), which represents
Aboriginal landowners in the southern parts of the Northern Territory, has long con-
tinued to grapple with these issues and, as a consequence, their staff initiated participa-·
tory enterprise planning with cattle station owners (Tilmouth & Mitchell 1998). This in
turn led to CLC's land assessment and planning program, described by Gambold in
chapter 12.
Indigenous groups whose country lies in southern and eastern Australia, where most
urban centres and agricultural regions are located, have had little land returned to them.
Most of the land in these regions has long been held by private interests and is not avail-
able for government grant. Government schemes, such as that currently operated by the
Indigenous Land Corporation (see chapter 2), have led to some land purchase for indige-
nous groups in these regions. However, because of the high market valuations and small
property sizes, only small areas ofland are involved.While these lands may be highly sig-
nificant culturally, they often offer only limited prospects for indigenous groups to earn
significant income.
8 Contemporary Indigenous Management

Recognition of indigenous rights to land, whether through government grants, land

purchases or native title, has undoubtedly transformed the bargaining power that indige-
nous people in Australia have to assert their own priorities for management of country
through moral, legal and practical mechanisms. However, geographical imbalances in
indigenous land rights legislation have had profound implications for working on country.
In particular, different tenures mean different degrees of control over decisions about coun-
try, and different opportunities for negotiating agreements to share the use of country.
Some groups, such as the people ofYirrkala in northeast Arnhem Land and the
Kowanyama people of southwest Cape York, have been relatively fortunate-they hold
secure title to their lands and are in a position to establish indigenous-controlled land
and coastal management initiatives (see chapter 6, and box 3.1). Indigenous groups such
as these have been at the forefront of efforts to develop their own community ranger
services (Young et al.1991;Langton 1998), to stimulate the development of appropri-
ate curricula for land management education (Hill 1992; boxes 9.2, 9.3, this volume),
to collaborate with scientists in biological survey, land use planning and wildlife man-
agement projects (Roberts et al. 1996; Kennett et al. 1997; chapters 12, 13, 15, this
volume), and to manage their lands for protection of natural as well as cultural heritage
values (see box 3.4). In contrast, most indigenous people from southern and eastern
regions ofAustralia experience severe limitations. Much of what they have achieved in
management of country, or are likely to achieve in future, involves compromise
between their own rights and interests in land and resources and powerful competing
interests (see chapters 7, 18, 19).
The Australian High Court's Mabo case decision in 1992, which finally gave legal
recognition to indigenous peoples as the prior owners of Australia, ushered in a fresh
chapter in the contemporary scene for indigenous management of country. Manage-
ment outcomes for areas where native title is recognised remain generally unclear
because only a small proportion of native title claims have been resolved and because the
common law related to native title is still evolving. However, it seems inevitable that
indigenous people's control over Australia's lands will expand. Their rights to use land
and resources and to be involved in decisions about land uses are already being more
widely recognised and this recognition will increase.As Smyth (chapter 4) and Suther-
land and Muir (chapter 2) stress, though, the situation in terms of Australia's seas and
marine resources remains less positive.
To what extent will recognition of native title rectify the imbalance between the dif-
ferent regions of Australia in the extent of recognition of indigenous rights? At present
the external boundaries of the several hundred native title claims lodged by indigenous
groups encompass about half of Australia, including many densely populated regions.
However, native title is held to have been legally extinguished on lands held under non-
indigenous freehold and exclusive leasehold tenures and, since significant areas of such
lands exist within the external boundaries of many claims, the actual area ofAustralia that
is under claim is smaller. Most of the land where native title has been extinguished lies in
the densely settled urban and agricultural regions-these same regions where indigenous
people have benefited least from return ofland through government grants and purchases.
 An Overview of the Prime Issues 9

In addition, because of past government assimilation and dispossession policies that

have fractured people's cultural connections to country, indigenous groups whose coun-
try is in urbanised and agricultural regions will have greatest difficulty satisfying the
courts that they have retained the ongoing connection to country that is required as
'proof' of their status as native title holders. It thus seems inevitable that the regions
where native title will be most widely recognised will coincide with those where indige-
nous statutory rights to land have already been most widely recognised-in sparsely
populated arid and monsoonal regions. This suggests that the spatial unevenness that
characterises contemporary indigenous rights to land and resources will continue. On a
national scale, this inequity has led to tensions between 'northern' and 'southern' indige-
nous groups in the past and it will continue to present challenges to solidarity among
indigenous groups in their negotiations with governments.

Coexistence

Indigenous rights to Australia's land and resources are nowhere completely exclusive.
They coexist with various other tenures and with government rights to regulate land
use. Managing the coexistence of indigenous rights and interests with these other tenure
and management systems is a significant challenge for indigenous groups, governments,
and broader Australian public and corporate communities.
As noted above, where they own land in inalienable freehold title, indigenous people
can generally assert a high level of control over both access to their land and over the
way in which they use it. However, on leasehold land they are subject, to varying degrees,
to stricter government controls over land use. For example, indigenous-owned pastoral
leases, like non-indigenous-owned leases, typically include a requirement to pay rent to
the government and may include minimum stocking levels for livestock. Indigenous
groups who fail to comply with these provisions risk termination of their leases.
Governments use regulation to manage land and resource use, both to encourage
improved sustainability and to ensure that individual landowners do not cause undue
impact on the natural environment of the land they own, as well as on neighbouring
lands and landowners. While indigenous groups may support the overall goals of such
regulation, they also, as a matter of principle, often view the government's efforts to reg-
ulate their own land use as unauthorised imposition. This is essentially because, whether
overtly or implicitly, they assert their right to self-determination based on their own
inherent sovereignty.
Sovereignty encompasses the power to govern over the land and resources of a ter-
ritory, to make laws that apply to the people living in a territory, and to represent those
people in dealings with other nations. In contrast to other territories colonised by
Britain, such as Canada, New Zealand and the USA, where indigenous groups typi-
cally renounced at least some elements of their sovereignty when they signed treaties
with the British Crown, no indigenous group in Australia has ever ceded its sover-
eignty to any foreign power or to any Australian government. While the terms of the
10 Contemporary Indigenous Management

treaties made in other British colonies were often violated, these instruments have
continued to provide a legal and contractual basis for the relationship between indige-
nous peoples and governments. In Canada, for example, they have been instrumental
in the establishment of indigenous land claim legislation (see, for example, Asch 1984)
and in regional agreements about land and resource ownership and management
(Richardson et al. 1994).
In Australia, as well as the lack of any treaties, indigenous people were not recognised
as citizens until 1967, and they had no say in drafting the provisions of the national or
state constitutions. Hence they have had no role in establishing the basis for the con-
temporary powers of governments. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that many indige-
nous groups assert, whether by their words or their actions, that the power of
governments to regulate contemporary use of lands and waters is illegitimate. Thus, for
example, some Aboriginal people living in agricultural regions have continued to hunt
even where this contravenes government laws. In these cases hunting is not so much an
economic necessity as it is an important way for people to maintain contact with their
country and express cultural identity. The hunters may know that it is illegal but, beyond
the practical problems of getting caught and prosecuted, they rarely care, maintaining it
is their right. It is now a right that the recognition of native title in Australia has con-
firmed, in some circumstances (see chapter 2).
The High Court's Mabo decision did not make any finding about the legitimacy or
unjustness of the British acquisition of sovereignty over Australia (see Reynolds 1996a).
Judges in the Mabo case did explore this issue to some extent but concluded that they
could not make any finding about it since the High Court's authority itself derives from
this assumption of sovereignty. Since there is no higher legal authority within Australia
than the High Court, this means that Australian indigenous peoples cannot pursue their
claims about the illegitimacy of British sovereignty in Australian courts. Further, their
access to the International Court ofJustice is limited since it is established to hear cases
brought by national governments. However, political action to address the sovereignty
issue is possible. Since the 1970s there have been several campaigns calling for a treaty
and these calls have again become prominent in this new century, with indigenous polit-
ical leaders, and non-indigenous supporters of the reconciliation movement, arguing
that a treaty is needed to provide a firm basis for reconciliation and for coexistence of
indigenous peoples and other cultural groups in Australia.
In spite of the limitations of the High Court Mabo decision on the issue of sover-
eignty, it was a great legal victory for indigenous peoples and their supporters. It con-
firmed what indigenous people had always believed and what had often been debated
earlier in Australia's history (Reynolds 1992, 1999)-that indigenous ownership of
country had originally extended across the entire Australian continent; and that this
ownership had subsequently been unjustly denied in the evolution of the Australian gov-
ernment system ofland ownership. The recognition of native title by the High Court in
1992 has, nevertheless, caused much controversy because it requires coexistence of
indigenous and non-indigenous tenure rights across much of Australia, particularly on
pastoral leases, national parks, and foreshore reserves. This prospect was initially viewed
 An Overview of the Prime Issues 11

with considerable hostility and fear by rural and mining industry groups, and this atti-
tude is still strong in some sectors.
Recognition of native title has also focused national attention on the thorny ques-
tion of boundaries, both those that spatially delineate the countries of different indige-
nous groups, and those that define the areas ofland held by non-indigenous people and
institutions. Some resource developers, notably in the mining industry, have doggedly
pursued definitive mapping of the boundaries of the traditional estates of indigenous
groups, believing that this will provide indisputable identification of individuals and
groups with whom they are required to negotiate (see Davis & Prescott 1992). Such an
approach ignores the essential 'fuzziness' of indigenous country boundaries that has long
allowed for the sharing of natural resources in times of food shortage and that has also
enabled country to be cared for by others if its key owners and guardians became inef-
fective (see Sutton 1995;Young 1999).
Today a key area for negotiation among indigenous peoples concerns the resolution
of 'overlapping claims', a term commonly used to describe situations where two or more
indigenous groups have lodged native title claims over the same land. The term itself
glosses over the complexities of the relationships that indigenous groups have to each
other and to country by implying that only one, if any, of the claims can be valid. The
complexities of these relationships cannot be adequately considered here. However, it is
important to note that the tactic used by some resource developers-of favouring one
compliant indigenous group as legitimate, resourcing their claims, and empowering that
group to assert its interests over those of other groups-is a considerable ongoing source
of stress and conflict among many indigenous groups. It can greatly inhibit their coming
to any contemporary accommodation about their respective interests in country. Nei-
ther is there any evidence that use of this tactic has delivered what resource developers
seek-freedom from the risk that indigenous rights and interests in country will disrupt
their projects. More appropriate and effective responses by resource developers to 'over-
lapping claims' and 'boundary disputes' between indigenous groups involve respect and
equitable treatment for all the groups involved, while supporting them to negotiate with
each other about their respective rights and interests.
Australia's pastoral rangelands have been the main focus of conflicts over recognition
of native title. In 1996 the High Court, after hearing legal arguments about land tenure
in a case brought by the Wik people of north Queensland, established that native title
could coexist with government grants of pastoral leases. This is because pastoral leases, a
uniquely Australian form ofland tenure, which were designed to enable governments to
regulate the expansion of livestock grazing into the rangelands, were not intended to
exclude Aboriginal people from use of their traditional lands (Reynolds 1987, 1996b).
However, by the 1990s, most pastoral leaseholders presumed that, because they occupied
the land and had improved its facilities for livestock grazing, it was their exclusive prop-
erty. The Wik decision undermined this belief, even though it also clearly established that
native title rights continued to exist subject to the rights of the pastoral lessee and not vice
versa. As a result of the decision, pastoralists' demands for perpetual lease or freehold
tenure rights, and the extinguishment of native title on pastoral leases, greatly intensified.
12 Contemporary Indigenous Management

If these demands were met there would be a massive consolidation of Australia's range-
lands into the ownership of a relatively small number of affluent people and corporations
(Damania 1998). Amendments to the Commonwealth Native Title Act 1993, made in
response to these calls to limit the impact of the Wik decision, have been criticised inter-
nationally as being racially discriminatory, as Sutherland and Muir (chapter 2) discuss.
The Native Title Act, as Sutherland and Muir further discuss, does provide for legally
recognised negotiated agreements, termed Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUAs)
that can accommodate the coexistence of indigenous and non-indigenous rights and
interests in country. So far most of these agreements relate to proposals for mineral and
petroleum exploration and production on lands subject to native title claim.Agreements
over coexistence on pastoral leases are still few. However, a small but growing number of
non-indigenous farmers are now advocating negotiated agreements, through an organ-
isation called Rural Landholders for Coexistence (see Stark 2000), as the mechanism to
settle the issue of overlapping rights and coexistence. This initiative is a practical expres-
sion of reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous inhabitants of Australia.
Such efforts are held back, though, by the deep-seated racism which can be prevalent in
rural localities.
Joint management arrangements in national parks, as Smyth (chapter 5) discusses, are
currently the best examples of negotiated agreements about the coexistence of indige-
nous and non-indigenous tenure rights. Nine of Australia's 5800 marine and terrestrial
protected areas are now managed under formal joint management agreements. While
existing arrangements typically rely on specific Acts of Parliament encompassing grant
of title to indigenous groups coupled with leaseback arrangements for the management
of the land by the government as a park, recognition of native title is likely to lead to an
increasing number of joint management agreements in the future being concluded
under the ILUA provisions of the Native Title Act. Such agreements are likely to recog-
nise that indigenous people's customary laws regarding their ow~e_rship a11c:l_ 1!1a!lage-
ment rights and re_sponsibilities in the protected area-that is, their native title-are an
integral -and valid part of the legal structures for management of the park. This would
provide a basis for management that encompasses the protected area's value in indige-
nous customary law, along with its value as part of Australia's protected area system.
For indigenous groups whose country lies in the more densely settled parts ofAustralia,
this kind of approach provides one of the only opportunities for their native title to be
recognised and given meaning in contemporary management.
For over a decade, issues concerning protected area management have been instru-
mental in bringing indigenous groups from diverse regions ofAustralia together to share
their experiences (see, for example, Birckhead et al. 1992). While they necessarily oper-
ate under different state and territory systems for land rights and for protected area man-
agement, indigenous peoples from different states and territories nevertheless share
much common ground in their interfaces with government management of protected
areas. Recently they have combined in negotiating with the Commonwealth govern-
ment to ensure that the Indigenous Protected Areas program enables support for
 An Overview of the Prime Issues 13

dispossessed groups to negotiate joint management of protected areas as well as for those
who already hold title to lands of high conservation value (see chapter 2, and box 3.4).
Protected areas issues are therefore encouraging cooperation between indigenous people
who have land rights and those who do not, and helping them to overcome their mutual
tensions and work towards coexistence. The involvement of indigenous people in pro-
tected area management has also been a stimulus for the entry of many of them into the
tourism industry (see Zepp el 1999), and has provided the initial inspiration (Morgan et
al. 1986) for the establishment of community ranger services by some indigenous land-
holding groups.
Although many non-government conservation organisations in Australia have
reformed their management policies over the past decade to accommodate indigenous
rights and interests in the ownership and management of protected areas, it cannot be
assumed that all of their members, let alone the general voting public, support these
moves. Indeed in the case of some parks in the more densely settled regions ofAustralia,
opposition to the recognition of Aboriginal rights, particularly in relation to hunting,
has been extremely vocal (Ponte et al. 1994; Guy 1996). Clearly much negotiation,
debate and compromise are still needed if there is to be significant progress on issues of
coexistence in protected areas.
Finally, coexistence is also required to accommodate the rights and interests of native
title holders and those of other indigenous people who hold title to land through gov-
ernment grants of freehold or leasehold tenure. These complex issues, which are poorly
understood by non-indigenous Australians and by many sectors of government, present
a new challenge for understanding what it means for indigenous groups to be 'working
on country'. Although this issue is minor in the Northern Territory and in northern

--
South AusJralia,..where the land rights legislation has granted land to traditional owners
who are typically also native title holders, this is not the case in some other parts ofAus-
tralia. In New South Wales and Queensland, for example, grants of statutory title have
been made to organisations representing the people who are resident on the land in
question, not all of whom are necessarily traditional owners or native title holders. These
others include people who have moved to the area recently or who were earlier reset-
tled under protectionist and assimilationist policies. While traditional owners or native
title holders often recognise that such people have legitimate ties to the land in question,
tensions can also arise. Moore (chapter 7), Lowe and Davies (chapter 18), and Feary
(chapter 19) discuss some of these.
People who are not traditional owners or native title holders do not, in accordance
with the principles of indigenous customary law, have clear authority to speak for the
land and to make decisions about its future management, even though they may be
strongly interested in such questions. Mechanisms for securing coexistence in these sit-
uations are basically similar to those relevant to the coexistence of indigenous and non-
indigenous rights to land. They involve talking through issues, developing options for
new approaches, trade-offs, and compromise. Inevitably those who participate in such
discussions have to consider their future goals and what strategies can be adopted to
14 Contemporary Indigenous Management

achieve them. Mediation and formal agreements about rights and responsibilities may
also be involved. These intra-community negotiations are a vital step that, if omitted, can
hinder indigenous groups from focusing on practical problems related to the manage-
ment of their country.

Indigenous demography and resource rights

At the most recent national census (1996), a total of 352 970 Australians identified them-
selves as Aboriginal orTorres Strait Islander, approximately 2 per cent of the country's pop-
ulation.This count, which indicated an annual indigenous growth rate of6.6 per cent from
1991 to 1996, was considerably above that expected. However, as Taylor (1997) points out,
it is within acceptable bounds, given that the number of people who are choosing, for the
first time, to identify themselves as indigenous appears to be still increasing. This phenom-
enon is related to the end of the assimilation policy era, when many indigenous people
concealed their identity to avoid discrimination, or were separated from family and com-
munity and unaware of their indigenous heritage. Taylor also suggests that increased inter-
marriage between indigenous and non-indigenous people, with children commonly
identifying themselves as indigenous, helps to explain this significant increase.
Indigenous population distribution in 1996 showed the dominance of New South
Wales and Queensland, with 55 per cent of the indigenous population between them;
and other major concentrations in Western Australia (15 per cent) and the Northern Ter-
ritory (13 per cent). The other states and the ACT shared the remaining 17 per cent of
the population. Almost three-quarters of indigenous people lived in urban centres, both
large and small, leaving only 27.4 per cent in rural localities. This shows a 10 P.er cent
increase since 1991 in the urban indigenous population and a corresponding decrease in
the rural sector. Taylor (1997) speculates that rural-urban migration is a prime factor in
this change, although a further influence is due to urban areas being more likely than
rural regions to have a higher proportion of people who are identifying as indigenous
for the first time.
What are the implications of this population distribution for indigenous resource use
and looking after country? Clearly the distribution contrasts markedly with the geo-
graphical distribution of land now held by indigenous groups (figure 1.1 )-indeed, it is
to some extent a mirror image of this distribution. In reality this means that, for a high
proportion of indigenous people, the opportunities to look after country are very lim-
ited-their country has largely been alienated and it is likely that they have been phys-
ically excluded even from visiting it. Under such circumstances it is astonishing that
indigenous residents of major cities such as Sydney or Melbourne have retained so much
knowledge of where their country is and strong feelings about the need to look after it.
In urban centres in other states, such as Alice Springs and Darwin in the Northern Ter-
ritory ot even Adelaide, physical access to country has been easier and the upholding of
customary responsibilities more possible.
 An Overview of the Prime Issues 15

Population mobility is another important factor to consider when linking indige-

nous population distribution and the question of caring for country. Many indigenous
people are highly mobile-travelling around their country, between their country and
the cities or towns where they live, and visiting other regions of Australia. This stands in
stark contrast to the assimilation era during which indigenous groups in all parts of the
country were encouraged, and at times forced, to abandon their country in favour of life
in government and mission settlements. For many Aboriginal groups, such as those in
central Australia, this meant being relocated to live with other language groups in cen-
tralised settlements outside their traditional country. Until the 1970s lack of physical
means of transport, coupled with lack of sympathy from administrators committed to
weaning people away from their old lifestyles, made return to country extremely diffi-
cult for most. It was only with the dawn of the land rights era and the shift to a more
self-determining government policy that people began to reassert their original linkages
to the land. As the Commonwealth government's investigation into the 'homelands'
movement that resulted from these changes (HRSCAA 1987) stresses, the establishment
of hundreds of outstations back on people's country from the 1970s onwards overtly
expressed the strength of those ties.
This return to rural localities through the homelands movement has been a trend
completely the reverse of the rural-urban population movement among non-indigenous
populations (Young & Doohan 1989). However, it does involve a relatively small pro-
portion of the total indigenous population of Australia. At a national scale, the trend
among indigenous populations is towards increasing urbanisation, as discussed above.
Some indigenous families in southern and eastern states have followed the example from
the central Australian homelands movement, migrating from towns to rural lands pur-
chased on their behalf through government-funded schemes. But most do not have this
option. In such regions, declining rural economies and the withdrawal of services from
rural towns are influencing both indigenous and non-indigenous people's decisions to
move to larger towns and cities.

The impact of colonial history

As the preceding comments suggest, Australia's indigenous policies and programs are a
major factor explaining current population distributions and variations in the extent of
dispossession and dislocation that indigenous people suffered. All aspects of the assimila-
tion policy have affected contemporary expressions of looking after country. The most
dramatic impacts have been from coercing people to move off their country into cen-
tralised settlements where they could more easily be indoctrinated in non-indigenous
concepts of education, attitude to work and sedentary lifestyles in general; and encourag-
ing people to adopt non-indigenous technologies, to renounce their own knowledge sys-
tems and languages, and to discard their own customary resource management practices.
The effects of assimilation are most strongly seen in southern and eastern Australia, not
 16 Contemporary Indigenous Management

only in the cities but also in country towns and small rural settlements, because indige-
nous people of these regions have long been a minority in their own country.
There is a widely held stereotype, perpetuated in the media in Australia and abroad,
that 'real' indigenous people are to be found only in the 'outback' and the 'undeveloped
north' ofAustralia, and not in the agricultural and urban regions in the south.This glosses
over the extent of the negative impacts of colonising activities and institutions on those
indigenous people who live in the remoter regions ofAustralia, as well as ignoring many
other aspects of contemporary realities. In fact, all across Australia there are indigenous
people who are in close relationships with their land and sea country. Everywhere there
are also 'those who do not know where their country is ... those who have just found
it; others who have never left it but find others [people] now own it; ... others who were
dragged from it, or just left of their own accord to find work somewhere else during
political and economic hard times' (Langton et al. 1999:54).As the chapters from coastal
New South Wales in this volume (chapters 7, 18, 19) show, indigenous people in the
densely settled regions of Australia may feel no less closely connected to their country
than their counterparts in the north and centre, even though cultural change in the past
.two centuries has been most dramatic in these regions.
T'
(
~
.(/ (
Compared to those in southernAustralia,indigenous peoples in the centre and north
of the continent have directly retained more knowledge of the practical and ~piritual
aspects of management of country. Experiences of living on country are well remem-
' bered by older people who can still pass on their experiences to the succeeding gener-
ations. Thus, in the 1970s, the growth ofland rights movements in central Australia also
encompassed a growing cry for return to country, expressed by those who had been
forced away from livelihoods that had combined living on their traditional country with
working on pastoral stations by changes to award conditions in the pastoral industry.
These people had become fringe dwellers in towns like Alice Springs. Their cry for
return to their country led to the purchase of some stations and to the granting of small
excisions from other pastoral leases, which would allow them to settle back on their
country. Their concern for the care of that country, in its spiritual, ecological and eco-
nomic dimensions, was the prime reason for this movement.
Urban-based indigenous service organisations, such as Tangentyere Council, played
vital roles in helping people to realise such aspirations in Alice Springs (Heppell &
Wigley 1981) and elsewhere. As Marc Wohling's description of contemporary visits to
country (chapter 11) illustrates, such organisations continue to provide vital support for
people living on, or trying to maintain contact with, their country. Although the exci-
sion movement faced strong opposition and had to negotiate innumerable political and
administrative obstacles, it still focused attention on the fundamental issue. Indigenous
people might be removed from their lands in body, but that did not mean that they had
been spiritually and mentally removed, and their determination to reinforce their ties to
country was unshakeable. Altogether, the key message from considering the impact of
Australia's colonial history on the management of country is that personal separation
does not necessarily spell loss of commitment to looking after resources in the proper
 An Overview of the Prime Issues 17

way, and that indigenous cultures have shown remarkable strength in fulfilling that com-
mitment in the face of enormous odds.

The Legacy of environmental degradation

Indigenous Australians are also confronted with the universal problem of redressing the
problems arising from over two centuries of misuse of the continent by non-indigenous
farmers, graziers, fishers, and land managers, encouraged by scientific advisers with lim-
ited understanding of the fragility of the resource base.While it is undoubtedly true that
indigenous Australians have long modified the Australian landscape through use of fire
(see chapter 21, this volume) and specific techniques in harvesting flora and fauna, it is
the changes that have occurred since major non-indigenous settlement that are the most
profound. During that time there has been a marked loss of biodiversity, particularly
among medium-sized mammal species in the arid and semi-arid areas, due largely to the
activities of introduced predators such as foxes and cats and to competition from live-
stock and from feral herbivores, ranging in size from camels to rabbits. In central Aus-
tralia, as elsewhere, the loss of native mammals is still a cause of profound sorrow-it not
only demonstrates the unhealthy state of people's country in the present era but it is also
a spiritual loss. Uluru, for example, enshrines a number of key Dreamings that describe
the activities of the mala men in guarding the integrity of the place-but ma/a, the now
highly endangered rufous hare wallaby, has not been seen around the Rock for many
decades. Looking after Uluru properly should, in indigenous eyes, encompass the return
of the mala.
Examples such as this provide graphic illustration of the effects of environmental
degradation on indigenous aspirations for managing country. Indigenous perceptions of
land management issues related to environmental degradation, as Bruce Rose's (1995)
report from a wide range of indigenous landholders in central Australia reveals, demon-
strate general concern over biodiversity loss and awareness of the impact of feral animals
and vegetation change through intensive cattle grazing. People also generally comment
that, because of the build-up of high levels of ground litter, and the growth of unpalat-
able grasses and weeds, 'the country has gone to rubbish-it needs to be burned'. Indige-
nous use of fire for the management of country remains one of the most controversial
issues, although, with improved non-indigenous understanding of the process as a land
management tool, conflicts are less traumatic than in past times (see Head & Hughes
1996; Latz 1996).
Through regaining control over their country, indigenous people have inevitably
inherited the problems stemming from non-indigenous land use. Recognition of this by
government extension officers and land management scientists has been limited-indige-
nous groups have been criticised for slow response to these problems and have received
only meagre practical help to redress them. Many indigenous-held pastoral leases, for
example, were so degraded through overgrazing that their potential for successful
 Contemporary Indigenous Management

commercial ventures was never high. When they failed that was attributed to indigenous
incompetence rather than the sorry state to which the land had already been reduced.
Even more recent pleas for help to deal with the rubbish generated by non-indigenous
resource use, as expressed in this volume in relation to marine debris and the effect on
turtle and dugong survival (chapters 6, 15), have drawn only limited responses.They need
to be listened to much more seriously.As many of the chapters in part III imply, improv-
ing communication between non-indigenous land and marine resource management sci-
entists and indigenous people depends on more effective listening (see, for example,
chapters 10, 11, 13, 14). More effective communication continues to hold the key to con-
temporary indigenous efforts to redress the effects of environmental degradation and
return the country to health (see chapters 12, 13, 15).

Diversity, difference, and management of country

Non-indigenous Australia often fails to recognise the diversity that exists within indige-
nous society. This has resulted in an 'us and them' approach to understanding resource
management needs. Indigenous society, like any society, is enormously diverse and pro-
grams need to incorporate that diversity into approaches that are more locally and
regionally based. The growth of indigenous-based programs, as described here by
Robinson and Nanikiya,Wohling, Gambold, and Nesbitt and others (chapters 6, 11, 12,
13), is to a large extent an expression of the need for recognition of diverse needs.These
programs also show that achievements in this area have stemmed mainly from initiatives
by indigenous people and organisations rather than from interventions by governments.
Indigenous diversity has many faces-cultural, social, environmental, economic,
political/institutional. The wide range of information and experiences generated
through such diversity can be highly beneficial when shared between people and groups.
Thus, proper management of country needs the combined input of men and women, of
young and old, if it is to encourage sustainability; and this also needs to bring together
people with different spiritual and cultural responsibilities for all aspects of country.But
diversity, if not properly acknowledged and catered for, can also be destructive. Many
indigenous communities face huge and unsympathetic external pressures to prove or
improve their viability and internal cohesion, even though their members have suffered
social disruption and trauma over a number of generations. This poses a difficult
dilemma-should they try to suppress their internal diversity in the cause of presenting
a united front that is more likely to gain them favourable reactions in the mainstream; or
should they openly express the fundamental realities of that diversity, in the hope that
non-indigenous mainstream administration will accept this and adjust its approach
accordingly? Either approach raises problems.
Indigenous diversity is coupled more generally with profound differences between
indigenous and non-indigenous perceptions of the trappings of managing country. For
decades indigenous land managers have largely been forced to search the mainstream for
assistance, conforming to policies and programs that do not accord with their priorities
and that cannot serve them adequately. Not surprisingly, their participation in such pro-
 An Overview of the Prime Issues 19

grams has been quite limited and hence their access to government funding to manage
country has been inadequate (see, for example, Young et al. 1991).As recent analysis of
this issue demonstrates (Orchard et al., in preparation), little has changed.
A key point here is communication. Methods of communication employed by sci-
entists, government extension officers and other key government practitioners, outlined
here by Liddle in chapter 10, have been deficient in many ways and the need to remedy
these deficiencies remains unfulfilled. It requires not only a broadly based change in atti-
tude and perception on the part of non-indigenous resource management practitioners,
but also, at the local scale, particular efforts to develop specific programs to meet specific
needs. Phillpot's description (chapter 14) of one such small program, designed to assist
indigenous directors of pastoral companies to conduct their businesses according to
mainstream legal and administrative requirements, is but one example of such an
approach. Gostin's examination (chapter 16) of how visiting country with traditional
r t
owners can help young indigenous undergraduates to improve their own understanding
and communication skills concerning land is another.
Regardless of the positive effects that such small-scale efforts might have, the overall
problem remains-the mainstream non-indigenous approach to the management of the
Australian continent is fragmented, separating land and sea, water and soil, rangeland and
coast rather than integrating all the elements that affect each other. Above all, it fails to
support the holistic approaches universally followed by indigenous people. In these
approaches, country can only be properly managed through complete integration not
only of physical aspects of the environment but also of the social and economic activi-
ties, including the needs of those whom the country must sustain. This management
must accord with the spiritual domain that expresses people's relationships to land. Over-
coming that particular barrier requires far greater commitment to negotiation, as an
integral part of the reconciliation process. As chapters 18, 20, and 22 show, meaningful
negotiation has many dimensions and can be difficult. It is, nonetheless, a vital part of
successful management of country for present and future generations.

Conclusion

The issues and challenges identified above do not pretend to be comprehensive. But they
form core elements of the frameworks within which contemporary indigenous people
are working on country in Australia. And they also challenge non-indigenous scientists,
policy makers and other practitioners. Contributors to this volume provide a wealth of
detailed case studies that illustrate how these challenges are being addressed, and also the
extent to which these efforts meet or fail to meet the aspirations of indigenous peoples.

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20 Contemporary Indigenous Management

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 An Overview of the Prime Issues 21

Latz, P. 1996, Buslifires and Bushtucker:Aboriginal Plant Use in Central Australia, Institute for
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 22 Contemporary Indigenous Management

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Further reading

Davies,]., Higginbottom, K., Noack, D., Ross, H. &Young, E. 1999, Sustaining Eden:
Indigenous Community Based Wildlife Management in Australia, International Institute
for Environment and Development, London.
Fourmile, H. L. 1996, 'Making Things Work: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Involvement in Bioregional Planning', Approaches to Bioregional Planning, Part 2, Back-
ground papers to the Conference, 30 Oct-1 Nov 1995, Melbourne, Department of Envi-
ronment, Sport and Territories, Canberra, pp. 145-27 4.
Horton, D. (ed.) 1994, The Encyclopaedia efAboriginal Australia: Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander History, Society and Culture,AIATSIS, Canberra.
Jackson, S. 1997, 'A Disturbing Story:The Fiction of Rationality in Land Use Planning
in Aboriginal Australia', Australian Planner, 34(4), pp. 221-6.
Jacobs, P. & Mulvihill, P. 1995, 'Ancient Lands: New Perspectives.Towards Multi-Cultural
Literacy in Landscape Management', Landscape and Urban Planning, 32, pp. 7-17.
Lane, M. 1997, 'Aboriginal Participation in Environmental Planning', Australian Geo-
graphical Studies, 35(3), pp. 308-23.
Sutton, D. 1989, Dreamings: The Art efAboriginal Australia,Viking, Ringwood, Victoria.
Sutton, P. 1995, Country: Aboriginal Boundaries and Land Ownership in Australia, Mono-
graph 3,Aboriginal History, Canberra.
Wensing, E. & Sheehan,]. 1997, Native Title: Implications for Land Management, Discussion
Paper no. 11,Australia Institute, Canberra.
 An Overview of the Prime Issues 23

Useful web pages

Aboriginal Studies WWW Virtual Library The Internet Guide to Aboriginal Studies
<http:/ /www.ciolek.com/WWWVL-Aboriginal.html>
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies <http:/ /www.aiat-
sis.gov.au/>
BlackTracka-a search engine on Aboriginal issues <http://www.koori.usyd.edu.
au:8080/>
Cape York Land Council <http:/ /www.cylc.org.au/>
Central Land Council <http://www.clc.org.au/>
Indigenous Land Corporation <http:/ /www.ilc.gov.au/>
Northern Land Council <www.nlc.org.au>
New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council <http://www.daa.nsw.gov.au/daa/
nswalc.html>
Our Culture: Our Future-report on Australian Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual
Property Rights <http:/ /www.icip.lawnet.com.au>
Tropical Savannas Cooperative Research Centre <http:/ /savanna.ntu.edu.au/>