Central Land Council

Rose Report Two

Introduction

This report presents information on Aboriginal perceptions of land management issues. The report is part of a Cross-cultural Land Management Project undertaken by the Central Land Council (CLC) with funding support from the National Landcare Program. The information presented in this report was collected over a period of eighteen months and represents the views of wide variety of Aboriginal people canvassed directly by the researcher. Information comes from Aboriginal men and women across a wide age spectrum. They include people who are traditional owners of the country on which they live and people who no longer reside on their traditional lands. The opinions expressed about land management issues therefore come from a variety of perspectives and clearly cannot be expected to be concordant over a wide range of issues. They do, however, provide a valuable insight into Aboriginal world views and the level and diversity of understanding from which efforts to reconcile Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal attitudes must be made. A number of issues relating to the interpretation of the information in this report are raised in following sections.

Background to this report

It has been repeatedly identified that there is a paucity of information on Aboriginal perceptions and aspirations of land use and land management issues. As a result there is a gulf between Aboriginal and non- Aboriginal Australians which results in a great deal of misunderstanding and possible conflict over land use and management issues. A lack of understanding of Aboriginal motives and desires has resulted in inappropriate programs being developed for Aboriginal people and many misconceptions about the likely outcomes of Aboriginal land ownership. There has been little attempt to identify the land management issues of concern to Aboriginal people and to relate them to those of the broader society. These issues are of increasing concern to non-Aboriginal land managers as Aboriginal people gain further access to their lands as a result of the Native Title legislation and the proposed Aboriginal Land Fund.

The lack of information on Aboriginal attitudes has a number of implications. Firstly, there is little Aboriginal control over the processes of policy formulation or the development of programs to deal with land management issues. As a result the capacity of Aboriginal people to deal with the land management that they perceive and face on a daily basis is severely reduced. Secondly, there is not a clear understanding of the implications of Aboriginal land ownership and management in relation to issues such as conservation and the future development of Aboriginal land. The marginalisation of Aboriginal interests from much of the discourse on land use and management issues is the result of the reproduction of processes which have previously reduced their (Aboriginal) concerns to "welfare issues", to be addressed as optional extras, if and when the goals of regional or national economic policies have been achieved. Aboriginal people have to operate in a policy environment which is largely alien to their interests. Forces external to Aboriginal society are major factors affecting Aboriginal land use and management. Even the concept of self management is itself the result of external definition. The rules of property law and scientific concepts of land use and resource management provide the western framework in which Aboriginal people must act or their motives and rights can be called into question. The structures set up within organisations dealing with Aboriginal land are largely based on this externally imposed framework as resources are only made available where programs fit in with the dominant (non-Aboriginal) view of what is appropriate.

Contemporary Aboriginal land management is therefore a mixture of: resource use and management which fits in with the dominant view of what is appropriate thereby achieving some measure of support, and traditionally based resource use and management, the majority of which continues to be marginalised both economically and conceptually. For example funding support for pastoralism has far outstripped that available for any other form of land use, while issues such as subsistence are marginalised both in terms of economic policy and in debates about specific land uses. The first report prepared for the Cross-cultural Land Management Project stressed the need for the development of an Aboriginal land management agenda which would allow Aboriginal people to define their own priorities and programs to support their land management aspirations. This report provides an insight into some of the dimensions of this agenda and in doing so examines some of the issues which will need to be focussed on to help reconcile cross-cultural attitudes to land and resource use. Aim of the report To document Aboriginal perceptions of land use and resource management issues. Method of information collection Open ended interviews were conducted with Aboriginal men and women from communities and outstations across the Central Land Council area (See Map 1).

Respondents were selected on the basis of their availability and willingness to answer questions. In many communities several visits were made to give the community more time to become familiar with the researcher and to enable contact with a broader section of the community. Eighteen months field research period was necessary to look at not only the expressed attitudes and perceptions of those being studied, but also how people's attitudes are expressed in their social context and how and what accommodations are being made to new information and influences.

Seventy two communities and outstations were visited during this period with around 400 people providing information. Visits ranged from one or two days to repeated visits at different times adding up to two or three weeks in some communities. (Appendix 1 contains a list of Aboriginal community names, animal names and other Aboriginal words used in this report with a guide to their pronunciation). Included in the interviews were a range of people from the elderly and middle aged, through to young people who expressed ideas about their future aspirations. Respondents ranged from those who had a formal education and some level of skills training to those with no formal education. On the whole, however, the respondents who were most willing to provide information, and who are therefore most highly represented in this report, were men of middle age and above. The interviews were conducted on an informal basis, loosely based around the series of questions provided in Appendix 2. In practice, however, the range of responses from different communities resulted in a spectrum of interview types from focus groups to unstructured discussion and observation.

Some interviews were able to canvas the full range of issues while others spent more time on particular issues of importance to people with only occasional reference to land management issues. It is important to recognise, however, that in the broader picture the results obtained from these methods are not diminished by the fact that practical constraints limited the employment of a single qualitative method. The results for each region are drawn from a combination of qualitative approaches, as discussed above, which serve both to strengthen the information produced and to provide some insight into social effects such as the influence of group dynamics on responses.

Communities were contacted prior to visiting and the aims and activities of the proposed research were discussed with the community council and other community representatives. On visiting communities I usually employed the services of an interpreter, either formally or through the agency of a community member with an interest in the issues under discussion. Visits were usually made to outstations and to other sites which were the focus of issues raised by the community. In many cases these visits resulted in some requirement for my ongoing involvement in the resolution of practical issues of more immediate concern to the respondents than the documentation of attitudes and perceptions. Such contacts were, however, important in gaining a better appreciation of the level of services available to communities for land management issues. These contacts also provided a better understanding of the level of community awareness of land management issues and access to resources to deal with those issues. These are important factors helping to form people's perceptions and attitudes.

Limitations

The information presented must be understood within a particular context. In the case of this report it is information collected and interpreted largely by non-Aboriginal people. It is important to recognise the limitations which this places on the material presented. Firstly, as a researcher with a scientific background in biology and land management I bring to the work a particular view of land management issues which will influence the information collected. This "agenda" would clearly have influenced the sorts of question I asked, my reactions to the responses provided and would have had an influence on the way people constructed their responses. Communication was a significant limitation on this work.

Although interpreters were used at every availability it is clear that effective communication over land management issues is difficult. Many of the discussions recorded during field work have been left out of this report because communication was poor and there was little understanding of the questions being asked or the information sought. By its very nature this report risks imposing definitions on Aboriginal people. Because of this I feel it is important that the information presented is not used in a prescriptive manner. It should instead be seen as indicative of attitudes and perceptions and to demonstrate the need to develop effective consultation and negotiation procedures.

At the same time it should provide a more substantive basis for the development of these procedures. It should not be used to identify people's attitudes to particular proposals or as a basis for refining development proposals to circumvent the consultation process. There are a number of important issues related to the interpretation and presentation of cross-cultural information which are discussed further in Appendix 3 of this report. The information on which this report is based cannot be used to draw quantitative conclusions about the levels of Aboriginal support for any particular aspirations and perceptions expressed. In some cases where an opinion or attitude is widely recorded this will be stated but it cannot be taken to be "the opinion of Aboriginal people". Many of the issues discussed in this report are abstract and present special difficulties for cross-cultural communication. The information presented may give some insight into how ideas and notions of land management have filtered across cultural boundaries; which have had the most impact and which have had little, despite the recognised difficulties in translating ill defined concepts.

Structure and content of report

Chapter 2 focuses on the relationship between Aboriginal people and the land. This relationship is seen as being of primary importance to the identity of Aboriginal people, and an understanding of its nature and implications is fundamental for all that follows in terms of land and resource use. Chapter 3 presents information on Aboriginal views of land management or "caring for country". Aboriginal people have a different conceptual framework from which they understand their relationship with the environment. This chapter examines some of the dimensions of this framework and highlights the activities Aboriginal people see as priorities for the management of their land. The following chapters examine Aboriginal attitudes to land degradation, pastoralism, tourism, conservation, feral animals and mining. These chapters therefore represent Aboriginal views on categories of land uses and land use issues that have been defined externally to Aboriginal society. Information is presented in a number of different formats throughout this report. The primary format is an interpretive conversational analysis which provides the responses of respondents together with background information. These are then discussed and conclusions drawn from them. At the beginning of each chapter a selection of respondents' statements are highlighted to provide the reader with an impression of the diversity and nature of Aboriginal attitudes. Each chapter concludes with a summary and recommendations.