Socially just conservation : towards collaborative hunting management of green turtles and dugongs in the Great Barrier Reef world heritage area, Australia

Abstract

Indigenous communities worldwide face multiple challenges to maintain their unique cultural identity and value systems. In the natural resource management arena, these challenges include the imposition of western solutions to environmental management and biodiversity protection. This imposition has caused the dispossession or relocation of Indigenous peoples from their lands, a loss of traditional ecological knowledge, social disempowerment and economic inequity. Indigenous peoples are responding to these challenges by asserting their cultural identity, developing cultural re-vitalisation programs, and actively participating in western political processes for ongoing involvement in the environmental and natural resource management domain. Nonetheless, to date, many of these programs are faltering or have failed in their long-term implementation. Using a case study approach, examines this issue through an examination of Indigenous hunting of threatened species in a protected area. The research is based on the contention that language matters, as it is an enabling tool which reveals the knowledge and power relations in natural resource management. Compares perspectives held by Indigenous people on the one hand and government Management Agencies on the other, about traditional hunting, planning and the management of Green turtles (Chelonia mydas) and Dugongs (Dugon dugon) in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. To compare these perspectives, a combination of discourse analysis, historical analysis and participant observation is used to analyse the development, implementation and subsequent failure of the Hope Vale Turtle and Dugong Hunting Management Plan, ’Guugu Yimmithirr Bama Wii: Ngawiya and Girrbithi.