Acknowledging Country properly

Australians and many around the world were shocked late in May by the announcement that a major mining company, Rio Tinto, had destroyed a 46,000 year old Aboriginal site, Juukan Gorge, in the Pilbara in northwest Australia. While consistent with mining approvals given under state legislation, its destruction contravenes global cultural heritage standards (Langton 2020), and led to the eradication of one of the oldest sites of human occupation in the world. The destruction has highlighted the weakness of Western Australia’s cultural heritage protection legislation, and Commonwealth government failure to invoke an over-riding power. Adding to the outrage, the CEO spoke on television apologising for causing hurt to the Traditional Owners – but not for destroying the site. Meanwhile, many are urging the Western Australian Minister for Aboriginal Affairs to remedy the legal position so that such destruction cannot happen again. As we write, more information is coming out of an inquiry, and suggests the company had alternate but less profitable options to mining this particular area: Traditional had not been made aware of these alternatives (Wahlquist 2020).

Forty-six thousand years is a mind-blowingly long time. This must be among the oldest sites of recorded human use and attachment to Country in the world and long precedes the last ice age. Four-thousand-year-old genetic material from this site also provides a direct connection with the current Traditional Owners. All Australians, and citizens of the world, are privileged to be associated with such sites, and should cherish them. We all use metals and minerals, but they have multiple sources, and are not dependent on the mining of any single site. As consumers, we do not need to sacrifice one, or even many, sites in order to stay supplied with minerals and keep industry profits flowing.

Non-Indigenous Australia is increasingly acknowledging the Country and Traditional Owners (elders past, present and emerging) of the land on which a meeting takes place. Yet acknowledging Country properly should go much further. It would involve supporting Indigenous people in caring for Country, while acknowledging their pre-eminence in doing so. As the case of Pilbara mining brought home, it would involve thinking twice before destroying sacred and archaeologically significant areas, and ensuring the legal supports exist to deter such destruction – and are used.

Acknowledging Country properly would respect its Custodians. It would involve fully respecting Indigenous knowledge, and ways of knowing – entire philosophies about how the tangible and spiritual components of our world inter-relate – in parity with the sciences. Universities, scientists, and environmental professionals are moving in this direction. Indigenous knowledge has developed in concert with ways of living with Australia’s environments, over millennia. It is arrogance to assume both reductionist and systems-focused sciences, less than 12 generations old (compared to 2300 in the Pilbara) are superior. A good place to begin is the tenet ‘Healthy Country, Healthy People’: recognition that people are more likely to thrive when their Country is thriving, or vice versa, and treating that as a holistic management principle. We also recommend recently released guidelines and case studies in Our Knowledge, Our Way in caring for Country (Woodward et al. 2020).

A proper acknowledgement of Country would involve a shift in values, to foster healthy landscapes and water systems, species and habitats, for their own sakes as well as providing some ‘natural resources’ to support human living. The terms ‘environment’ and ‘natural resources’ refer to much the same natural features, yet have very different connotations – though both unfortunately are human-centric.

Australia has just released a new national agreement on Closing the Gap. This agreement retains similar goals of reducing Indigenous disadvantage to the 2008 version (on which far from sufficient progress was made), with some additional distinguishing features. This time the agreement has been created in partnership with Aboriginal representatives, around Indigenous-defined priorities, and seeks to empower Indigenous communities and organisations to work with governments to fulfil the goals and meet the targets. This time, a cultural and environmental goal is included, to ensure Indigenous people ‘maintain distinctive relationships with land and waters’, and that cultures and languages are strong. Translated to targets, this means:

By 2030, a 15% increase in Australia’s landmass subject to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s legal rights or interests, and by 2030, a 15% increase in Australia’s landmass subject to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s legal rights or interests in the sea.

By 2031, there is a sustained increase in number and strength of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages being spoken.

As Bond (2020) notes, this ambition is yet to be translated into program and financial commitments. It is a step in the right direction, recognising that culture and connection with Country are vital to Indigenous people’s quality of life – as well as the importance of providing the capacity to overcome their disadvantages in national society. Everyone benefits from interaction with healthy, green and blue environments, and many suffer from solastalgia - a sense of loss and depression - when environments they care about are damaged.

As environmental policy-makers, managers and knowledge-creators, members of the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand and readers of this journal can do much to promote a proper acknowledgement of Country. We suspect that New Zealand, with the reforms pursued under the Treaty of Waitangi Tribunal since 1975, and much greater respect for and structural inclusion of Tangata Whenua (people of the land) in national affairs, offers examples for Australia though there are known omissions such as in marine resource rights (Baldwin et al. 2019).

Beginning with this issue, this journal follows a few predecessors in introducing an Indigenous acknowledgement on our covers. We thank the publisher, Taylor & Francis, for its strong support in this. This journal has maintained a strong focus on Indigenous contributions and concerns, since the very first issue – and first Indigenous author – in 1994. We have an Indigenous Board member, Hirini Matunga (since 2006), numerous articles, and a special issue on Indigenous Water Management in 2019 edited by Sue Jackson and Bradley Moggridge, and our work is enhanced by Indigenous reviewers. Meanwhile we commend the EIANZ for forming an Indigenous Engagement working group, which is working towards a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) and considering a range of other initiatives for the Institute. EIANZ has recently released a statement of objectives on Indigenous Engagement (EIANZ 2020). We welcome the inclusion of inspirational Indigenous speakers in the Institute’s new webinar series, beginning with Bruce Pascoe on 28 May 2020, on ‘Re-examining the history of Aboriginal land management – Why this is important for environmental professionals’. We are aware of various colleagues working closely with Traditional Owners in environmental impact assessment and environmental management endeavours, and partnering to connect Indigenous knowledge and environmental management work with meeting Indigenous aspirations in managing Country and improving community well-being. May this grow.

Articles in this issue

Our lead item is highly pertinent to our theme of acknowledging Country, and the potential link to reducing disadvantage. Petina Pert, Rosemary Hill, Catherine Robinson, Diane Jarvis and Jocelyn Davis report a spatial analysis of whether investment in Indigenous land and sea management is dedicated to places where it can also provide culturally appropriate socio-economic development. They note that very few studies of the spatial distribution of such investment, or of effects on socio-economic disadvantage, which is unevenly distributed across Australia. Their analysis covers investment 2002–2012, but the patterns are not expected to have changed since then. They found the investment had been distributed to areas with high potential for multiple benefits, while making significant contributions to the conservation of globally valued conservation and cultural assets. They recommend continued use of spatial analysis and prioritisation, towards co-benefits.

Breanna Powers, Anne-Gaelle Ausseil and George Perry also used spatial prioritisation, in a study of the extent and types of ecosystem services provided in multi-functional landscapes in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand. These relationships, and trade-offs among them, are important in making land management decisions where ecosystem function and human livelihoods are concerned. Unsurprisingly, they found high provision of ecosystem services in indigenous forests. The methodology offers prospects for making agriculture more sustainable, for instance by placement of vegetation buffers to improve clean water regulation and reduce soil erosion, while maintaining agricultural productivity.

Priya Agarwal, Tim Werner, Ruth Lane and Julia Lamborn point out that, at least in Australia, local government authorities have an important role in diverting wastes that would otherwise go to landfill, including through recycling of domestic wastes. The effectiveness of recycling had not been assessed, however. Their survey of all Victorian councils identified challenges for the councils, including high costs, contaminated supplies owing to resident inability to differentiate, inconsistencies between councils, and information gaps which could be remedied by expansion of the local government reporting framework. The authors identify a need for a national data collection policy to improve reporting and hence management.

Challenges in encouraging diverse types of landholders to adopt sustainable farming and land management practices are well known, but difficult to solve. Theresa Groth-Joynt, Allan Curtis, Emily Mendham and Eric Toman provide new insight into this issue, with an analysis of farmer occupational identity and its relationship to implementation of certain sustainable farming practices. They found that those with a stronger sense of identity as farmers were more likely to have implemented the practices. Their results, in northern Victoria, showed landowners identified as full-time, part-time, hobby and non-farmers. The first two tend to focus on farming as a business, and part-time farmers are more similar to full-time farmers than they are to hobby and non-farmers. Assuming hobby and non-farmers are similar, by grouping them as ‘lifestylers’, is also misleading and misses opportunities for engagement. These two categories give a higher priority to biodiversity and amenity values associated with their properties. The article raises numerous suggestions for engagement with these different categories of landowner.

In another behavioural study, Suzanne Guiness, Grainne Maguire, Kelly Miller and Michael Weston studied attitudes towards dog management on Victorian beaches. Restriction of dog walking is a common conflict issue, given the importance of nature conservation around beach habitats, against public expectations of dog freedom in open spaces. The study showed complex demographic factors associated with attitudes to dog walking on beaches, among residents and visitors. These assist targeting of stakeholder groups for awareness raising. While there was general support for regulations, other studies by the same team had found low compliance. The study found a belief that dogs off-leash are still under the owner’s control and unlikely to trouble wildlife.

Other news

The most recent impact factors – a metric used to gauge the influence of a journal – have been released. AJEM has held the pleasing level of 1.16 (rounded), a very slight decrease from 1.2 for 2018.

Editor’s tip: An effective title

A title is highly important to attract a reader’s attention, and to guide the reader as to what to expect from the article. A good title will be engaging, informative without being too detailed, and use potential keywords to highlight what it is about. Use of jargon depends on the journal and its readership; we do not advise it for interdisciplinary journals. Styles vary somewhat between disciplines. In the physical sciences, there has been a marked shift from informative but long and boring titles to short, almost journalistic statements purportedly summing up the article. These work better, but in our view often overstate and oversimplify the findings.

Acknowledgements

We thank Alan Chenoweth FEIANZ CEnvP, Co-Chair of EIANZ Indigenous Engagement Working Group, for advice towards this editorial.