Indigenous Studies

Nowadays the indigenous people as a worthy of their Indigenous Ecological Knowledge (IEK), recognition of rights and interest are engaged in environmental management. The development of environmental management, which is a feature of system dynamics of complex social-ecological and IEK’s integration is identified by it to be accompanied by western science to make an increment in the attributes of the systemwhich is associated with sustainability. Indigenous people of Australia are engaged in environmental management in association with multiple stakeholders like Scientist, governments, producer groups and others. The range of mechanism they use for environmental management are indigenous and co-managed protected areas, natural resource management, native title agreements, water planning processes, endangered species initiatives, etc. Approaches are made to build a global understanding of the processes of western science integration and IEK to manage the sustainability of the environment. But the integration is also affected by a variety of factors including adaptive co-management context, approaches to inquiry into IEK, etc. Though there is a tremendous impact of colonial processes of territorial acquisition and state formation still the indigenous people of Australia claim their sovereign rights and interests to collective self-determination and control over their customary estates. The primary goal of this assignment is to develop an assessment that will be useful in analyzing the approaches to integration of IEK and western science, interrogating the characteristic of indigenous engagement in Australian environmental management and consider implications for management of sustainability insocial-ecological systems (SES) (Bohensky et al. 2013 p.20). Indigenous land and sea management also meanto take care of the country, which includes different individual, groups, and organizations across Australia to undertake a broad variety of natural resource, environmental, and activities related to management of cultural heritage. An economy based on conservation which is associated withcultural, health, and social benefits, mainly in the areas of remote regions have been made due to the initiative taken by the government in development of Indigenous land and sea management. To make these opportunities reach their maximum potential some institutional reforms, better recognition of Indigenous management of sea country and a little bit of financial support will be required.

The indigenous organization and group assert their cultural obligation to take care of their traditional estates. They also have established their own ranger groups so that they can manage their asserted land successfully by perusing involvement in the national parks management. A new direction have been shown to the present-time Indigenous land management agencies by making government independent establishment of theNatural Resource Management Office in 1990 andAboriginal Ranger service in 1983 on Kowanyama Land  and Palm Island (Whitehead 2012).

Previously, government agencies used to follow a monopoly while managing the national park and employing rangers. In the early days, the Indigenous ranger group has to rely on Community Employment Department Program (CEDP). The income of some of this groups are supplemented through the funding from the non-government sources and fee for the service contract. Commonwealth Employment Program in Natural and Cultural Resource Management (CEPANCRM) is an organization of Australia which provides contract employment opportunities for the aboriginal people of Australia (Hill et al. 2013). CEPANCRM made an evaluation which shows that indigenous people of around 8,490 got employment on contract basis atMarine Park,(Mackieand Meacheam 2016. pp.1-18.) national park, crown land and about one third among these projectshave resulted in starting off own land management, heritage consultancies,contracting tourism and teams enterprises by the indigenous community organization,.

Joint management used in parks like the  national parks,the interference of royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, (Anthony 2016 p.11) and Indigenous ownership and the Coastal Zone Inquiry are some of the other significant common wealth initiatives that paved the way of the foundation for the policy and funding support and further legal recognition of engagement of indigenous people in land and sea management (Foucault 2013).  The managing, monitoring and patrolling Aboriginal land areas that is given back to Aboriginal people due to theland assortments or the recognition of native title continuation under Native Title Act 1993 (Australian Law Reform Commission, 2015). The ranger groups of indigenous origin are increased in number. As a result, they got their engagement in sea and land management activities in areas which were not conventionally under the ownership of indigenous people, but it lies in the traditional and sea estate of the group involved.  Appreciation can be given to agencies of government and the broader community for they have to change the trend of indigenous employment in land and sea management from tenure based to country based.

The responsibilities and rights of caring of the country mainly sea and land estates, under the supervision of other knowledge holder and initiated elders, was undertaken by the clan group and individuals which are to be inherited to their future generation in pre-colonial times. Though these cultural practices and rights are nevertheless underpin present time activities land and sea management. But it has been evolved and adapted with time and is produced by a variety of territory, regional, local, national and state arrangements made by institute.

The number of Indigenous sea and land management groups which are community-managed or organization are several hundred around Australia. Most of them are totallyflourished Indigenous land and sea management agencies are employing specialist research andplanning staffs as well as the operational ranger, mostly with Traditional Owner governance arrangements complementary to local community councils or separate. However, some are there which compromise ranger groups employed by local community councils only. Majorities of these organization and groups are located in remote communities in central and northern Australia still indigenous ranger groups and other caring for the country initiatives occurs throughout Australia.

Indigenous organizations that supportor coordinate locally present groups of ranger and other sea and land management initiatives, and also regional organizations working in the mainstream, such management bodies of natural resource that have direct programs and policies to provide support to natural resource management, Indigenous employment in environmental or cultural heritage management is referred to as the regional level of arrangement.The council of Aboriginal land and sea and “Native Title Representative Bodies” are the regional indigenous organization; they systemize a research planning of broad range of, policies, and activities of on- ground, incorporating the employment and training of the rangers. The names of some of the regional organization are Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN), North Australian Land and Sea Management Alliance (NAILSMA), Torres Strait Regional Authority, Girringun Aboriginal Corporation, etc.

MLDRIN comprises of ten owner groups which are traditionally present along the river Muray and its tributaries (Smyth and Jaireth  2012); NAILSMA is an alliance of Carpentaria Land Council, Northern Land Council, and Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation (Fitzsimons et al. 2012 pp.51-57). It coordinates sea and land  management activities across the northern Australia, a statutory body established by Commonwealth legislation is Torres Strait Regional Authority  and the main work of it is to provide support for island based ranger group, and plays an outstanding role in coastal and marine management and research, fisheries, including continuous harvest of marine turtles and dugong and also takes of combat coastal erosions which occurs due to sea level rise and climate change, (Smyth and Isherwood 2016p.307) and Girringun Aboriginal Corporation which deals with the sea and land management activities on favor of nine tribal groupsin North Queensland between Innisfail and Ingham (Taylor  2014).

A varying level of legislative programs and policies are there to support the indigenous employment in land and sea management are provided by state and territory governments. These policies are Strategies undertaken to provide employment of indigenous people in government agencies, provide assistance for the management of the indigenous protected areas, give recognition of aboriginal rights to use and access the traditional, protection and registration on indigenous heritage sites, etc.

However, recently there are much betterment is made for the recognitionof Indigenous involvement in land and sea management in State and Territory legislative and policy recognition have been done still discrimination remains between jurisdictions. Funding for Indigenous land and sea management I approved on a long-term basis by Northern Territory Government. 
 

Figure: Map of Australia Showing location of Indigenous Protected Area Project

(Source: Australia State of Environment)

Many Indigenous land and sea management organization are extensively relying on funding provided by government programs though they are independent of the direct control of the government. But some group which has longer establishment have made diversified sources of funding by making a partnership with research institutions, non-government conservation groups, and private sectors. Besides funding, there are also several noteworthy challenges present in the establishment, maintenance, and development of community-based environmental management organization in remote areas.

By withstanding all these difficulties, the Indigenous land and sea management organizations are increasing in number. They are also successful in demonstrating the effectiveness of these organizations. The indigenous people of Australia are modifies according to   the foremost environmental, climatic and sea level changes for about five decades, and it is not a matter to surprise that the reaction of these people in respect to certain  environmental changes will be different than the response of the people who have recently arrived here. Though it is true that more than for 30 years the government mainly Commonwealth Government is providing fund to the Indigenous land and sea management but development in the other support and increment in funding is achieved in recent years (Zurba et al. 2012  pp.1130-1142).

Anthony, T., 2016. Deaths in custody: 25 years after the royal commission, we've gone backwards. Green Left Weekly, (1092), p.11.

Australian Law Reform Commission, 2015. Connection to country: review of the Native Title Act 1993: final report.

Bohensky, E.L., Butler, J.R. and Davies, J., 2013. Integrating indigenous ecological knowledge and science in natural resource management: perspectives from Australia. Ecology and Society, 18(3), p.20.

Fitzsimons, J., Russell‐Smith, J., James, G., Vigilante, T., Lipsett‐Moore, G., Morrison, J. and Looker, M., 2012.Insights into the biodiversity and social benchmarking components of the Northern Australian fire management and carbon abatement programmes. Ecological Management & Restoration, 13(1), pp.51-57.

Foucault, M., 2013. Politics, philosophy, culture: Interviews and other writings, 1977-1984. Routledge.

Hill, R., Pert, P.L., Davies, J., Robinson, C.J., Walsh, F. and Falco-Mammone, F., 2013. Indigenous land management in Australia: extent, scope, diversity, barriers and success factors.

Mackie, K. and Meacheam, D., 2016. Working on country: a case study of unusual environmental program success. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, pp.1-18

Smyth, D. and Isherwood, M., 2016. Protecting sea country: Indigenous peoples and marine protected areas in Australia. Big, Bold and Blue: Lessons from Australia's Marine Protected Areas, p.307.

Smyth, D. and Jaireth, H., 2012. Shared governance of protected areas: Recent developments. National Environmental Law Review, (2), p.55.

Taylor, E., 2014. Collaboration on Country: Participatory Evaluation of the Girringun Indigenous Protected Areas.

Whitehead, P., 2012. Indigenous Livelihoods-Background Paper.North Australian Indigenous Land & Sea Management Alliance (NAILSMA).

Zurba, M., Ross, H., Izurieta, A., Rist, P., Bock, E. and Berkes, F., 2012.Building co-management as a process: problem solving through partnerships in Aboriginal country, Australia. Environmental management, 49(6), pp.1130-1142.