Investigating systemic change to empower Indigenous Australians to manage culturally significant entities
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2024-04
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Melbourne Authors
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School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences
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PhD thesis
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Open Access
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© 2024 Teagan Goolmeer
Abstract
Increasingly scientists are acknowledging the importance of Indigenous participation in effective biodiversity management, encompassing Indigenous owned lands and sea country, traditional management techniques and Indigenous people themselves as land and sea managers. Importantly, the positive outcomes are two-fold for nature conservation and for the wellbeing of Indigenous people, when Indigenous people are meaningfully empowered to manage country. As both the value and the size of the Indigenous Estate grows, some Indigenous Australians claim that legislations and relevant strategies and policies have not kept up with the aspirations and needs of Indigenous Australians. We firstly, investigate the barriers and opportunities for Indigenous groups in achieving their obligations to manage Country under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). We undertake a detailed review of literature and offer thematic findings of best practice actions to ensure Indigenous Australians actively participate in biodiversity conservation. Secondly, we explore how Culturally Significant Entities can be used as a tangible hook for policymakers and conservation practitioners to integrate Indigenous Knowledge into national legislation, biodiversity strategies and planning mechanisms. Using Structured Decision-Making and biocultural objectives, we provide a pathway for Indigenous leadership to make decisions for the designation and collaborative management of Culturally Significant Entities. We then apply these findings to a place-base setting with Bundjalung experts and develop a Bundjalung-led approach to the sustainable management of Culturally Significant Entities. Governments and conservationists have a responsibility to enable the integration of Indigenous Knowledge into biodiversity conservation management mechanisms. While the way forward for the recognition and true collaborative management of Culturally Significant Entities is achievable, the real challenge for governments will be supporting and empowering Indigenous Australians and their governance structures under an entrenched patriarchal western paradigm, to implement enduring change.
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Indigenous Knowledge, Culturally Significant Entities, Indigenous-led, Indigenous self-determination, Shared-decision making, Collaborative management