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Indigenous rights and interests in Wild Rivers
Indigenous people have strong cultural and spiritual links with wild rivers. The healthy streams, wetlands, waterholes and estuaries that make up a wild river are fundamental to the daily activities, customary practices and wellbeing of resident Indigenous communities.
Traditional Owners fishing and gathering in the Aurukun wetlands. Photo: Kerry Trapnell
Wild rivers owe much of their health to millennia of stewardship and ‘caring for country’ by Indigenous people. The exclusion of these people from their stewardship role, including river management decisions, has hastened the degradation of so many of our river systems. That is, Indigenous knowledge and way of caring for country and rivers has largely been dominated by the western approach of dam, clear and irrigate, which creates major river health problems.
Declining health of rivers as a result of mismanagement also erodes Indigenous cultural associations, leading to loss of connection to country and the natural world. This undermines the basis of Indigenous traditional ownership and the maintenance and transmission of ecological and cultural knowledge through the generations.
Most wild rivers in Australia, and in particular in Queensland, are located in areas where Indigenous people make up much of the local population and are either land holders in their own right or hold strong native title claims to the land. It is therefore critical that the protection of wild rivers includes recognition of native title and the active participation of Indigenous communities.
Wild river protection and management is also an opportunity for the greater integration of traditional ecological knowledge with conservation science. This means hundreds of generations of Indigenous environmental knowledge and cutting-edge science could together guide conservation planning for wild rivers.
The Indigenous Wild River Ranger program in Queensland is an important first step in the recognition and participation of Indigenous people in wild river protection. Announced by the Queensland Government in 2006 as a result of campaigning by The Wilderness Society, up to 100 new Indigenous ranger positions will be created to actively manage the wild rivers of Far North Queensland. This also helps to create a new ‘conservation economy’ in the North where economic and community development restores and nurtures the environment, rather than degrading it.
The major challenge now is to resolve the issues of land rights and native title and ensuring full inclusion of Indigenous people in all aspects of wild river protection and management.
Read more about The Wilderness Society's work with indigenous communities on Cape York Peninsula (PDF, 0.1mb)
For more on indigenous rights and environment protection issues, see the Native Title and Protected Areas Project site - www.indig-enviro.asn.au