Community-Based Management of Saltwater Country, Northern Australia
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Local/Global Encounters
Community-Based Management of Saltwater Country, Northern Australia
SAMANTHA MULLER
ABSTRACT Dominant social and political constructions of ‘saltwater’ assume marine environments to be common property resources, justifying jurisdiction and management responsibilities by the State. However, in northern Australia ‘saltwater country’ is gaining recognition as a cultural landscape with customary law defining ownership and management rights and responsibilities. Samantha Muller looks at the role of the Dhimurru Sea Country Plan in asserting community-based management strategies through a self-defined planning process founded in local aspirations and concerns. She argues that in challenging statist discourses of saltwater ownership, management and planning, Dhimurru offers insights for ‘post-development in practice’. KEYWORDS colonization; commons; decision-making; cultural transformation post-development
Introduction ‘Water’and its role in development has been questioned and challenged beyond conceptions of water as a value-neutral physical element to its recognition as a strategic resource often controlled by states. New holistic perceptions of water acknowledge the human and cultural ways in which water is valued in our lives and therefore ‘cultural water’ has become a topic of debate (Lahiri-Dutt, 2006). Western cultural relationships with ‘saltwater’, oceans and its resources have been fiercely protected by concepts of mare liberum or ‘freedom of the seas’ in which there are no individual property rights (Russ and Zeller, 2003). Colonization in Australia has used dominant western values of mare liberum to erase customary sea rights from the public imaginary. Consequently, the state has justified jurisdiction and management of the ‘commons’ of oceans for commercial benefit and conservation. Marginalized groups, including Aboriginal traditional owners, have been excluded from decision-making processes despite attempts to ‘include’ the ‘participation’of Aboriginal people. In the Northern Territory of Australia, most attempts have failed to secure satisfactory outcomes or to shift power balances in these resources (Scott, 2003; NOO, 2004; Yunupingu and Muller, in prep). As such, ‘saltwater country’ and its resources have historically remained outside the assigned jurisdiction of ‘development’ opportunities for Aboriginal traditional owners. However, Aboriginal traditional owners have successfully been challenging legal and Development (2008) 51, 139–143. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100465
Development 51(1): Local/Global Encounters managerial jurisdictions for sea country to assert their rights and interests in sea country and its role in their own definitions of ‘development’. Yolngu Aboriginal traditional owners from northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory have won the first stages of their legal battle for recognition of their connection to sea country. For Yolngu, there has never been a separation between land and sea. There has certainly not been the sort of separation that
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