Project Leader: Mr David Epworth, consultant, Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation, Cairns, Queensland

Project 4.3.2 (4)

Summary | Study sites | Progress | Project team |

Summary

Aboriginal communities and non-Aboriginal researchers are both concerned about sustainable land use yet often have difficulty communicating and working together. This project funded by the TS-CRC, the Key Centre for Tropical Wildlife Management at Northern Territory University and Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation aimed to bridge that gap.

The first part of the project aimed to help communities prioritise their land-management strategies. Nick Smith, a Northern Territory University researcher, will work with Aboriginal communities of Cape York and use a database of culturally significant plant species for Aboriginal communities in northern Australia to establish what sort of landscapes are important for those communities and what threatening processes on those landscapes are of most concern.

A second part of the project examined how best to commercialise culturally significant plant resources sustainably. It will investigate the markets that exist for bush-tucker and the various options for cultivation and harvesting.

Study sites

Following discussions with a number of community groups two sites were established to host the on-ground work of the project. The first is on the Wik peoples' lands on the central west of Cape York Peninsula around the township of Aurukun. The Wik have five language groups whose collective name has come to represent one of the seminal stages of the debate over use and management of land where Native Title continues. Their lands run from the coast through seasonal wetland areas and into extensive savanna areas dominated by Eucalyptus tetradonta woodland communities.

The second site is the former Silver Plains cattle station. Located on the central east coast of the Peninsula, the Silver Plains pastoral lease was bought back by the Queensland Government a number of years ago. Through an extended process of negotiation with the State, an imaginative and comprehensive resolution of apparently competing interests in land has been developed. It is expected that the land will be transferred in the near future with the key conservation areas, centred on the pristine McIllwraith Ranges contiguous with the Iron Range National Park, to be gazetted as Aboriginal National Park and other areas to be transferred to the four groups of traditional owners as Aboriginal Freehold. There will be conservation regimes across the Aboriginal Freehold areas and Aboriginal involvement in the management of the national park areas.

Progress

The initial stages of the project focused on developing collaborative relationships with two land-owning groups on Cape York Peninsula. One was the Wik and Kugu peoples on the central-west coast and the other the Kuku Thaypan group of eastern central Cape York.

The final report from this project, Collaborative Research Possibilities in Cape York, is now complete and was presented to the TS-CRC in 2001. It found that the key areas where support is required to address changes on Wik and Kugu lands are:

• inability of traditional owners to get back on to country continues to be the greatest impediment to the re-establishment of proper ecosystem process;
• inappropriate burning regimes of neighbouring landholders, particularly on pastoral leases and national parks, are also of great concern;
• inability to re-establish proper burning because of lack of access to country;
• encroachment of weeds and potentially harmful pasture species, such as Andropogon guyanus (gamba grass) and Calopogonium muconoides (calopo).

Balancing populations of pigs also requires collaborative attention. While pigs are an important food source, they cause a lot of damage to natural environments and eat bush tucker foods like yams and turtle eggs. Monitoring the impact of pigs has begun, and a campaign of establishing fires near hatching turtle nests to deter pigs was also instigated.

These land-management issues arose as a result of European influence and would benefit from an approach combining western scientific and traditional practices. Commercial development of resources is also an area of interest. However, the report argues that if western scientific researchers wish to form constructive, collaborative research relationships with indigenous people, then new, socially relevant methods of doing research must be adopted. Collaborative research must take into account different, but equally valid knowledge systems in order to be beneficial. This issue of knowledge transfer has become vitally important as traditional knowledge is in danger of being lost and the need to formally educate Wik, Wik Way and Kugu youth in such knowledge was identified as an urgent priority.

Project team

Nick Smith, NTU
Peter Whitehead, KCTWM