Blue Mud Bay: An Ontological Shift?

“We are the Yolngu people, the traditional owners of land and sea estates in the Gove Peninsula region of North East Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Our relationship with the sea and its resources is fundamental to our religious, social and economic life and wellbeing. We continue in the footsteps of our ancestors in caring for and being guardians of our sea country” (Dhimurru Land Management Aboriginal Corporation 2007, p4).

“In the Yolngu world view, water is the giver of sacred knowledge, all ceremonies and lands. Whether it’s fresh or salt, travelling on or under the land, or in the sea, water is the source of all that is holy,” (Rose 1996, p32).

Since the appeal against the Blue Mud Bay decision was unsuccessful in July 2008, there has been a stream of commentary regarding its impact on other native title claims and on commercial fisheries and amateur anglers.

In all the material written about the Blue Mud Bay decision, one aspect remains poorly-covered: the extent to which the recognition of rights over territorial waters in the Blue Mud Bay area impacts the incorporation of Indigenous knowledges from the region into conservation and land management practices.

There is an association between ownership of a resource and successful management of a resource. Recent research, published in Science and reported in the Economist, found a direct correlation between the privatisation of fisheries through what are known as catch shares or Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) and the conservation of fish stocks.

While the traditional owners of Blue Mud Bay have had recognition of ownership over their land for a long time, the High Court’s decision granted exclusive rights regarding commercial and recreational fishing in the intertidal zone and tidal rivers to the low water mark. In the words of Wali Wunungmurra, the Chairman of the Northern Land Council, “this means that Yolngu people must now be included in any discussions and agreements about fishing, or any other business, on our lands to the low water mark. It also means that we can protect our sacred sites in the sea and take better care of our country.”

Blue Mud Bay is in the Dhimurru Indigenous Protected Area (IPA): 92,000 hectares near the Gulf of Carpentaria in North-East Arnhem Land and conservation programmes incorporating the local people have therefore been operating for some time. These are a part of the Dhimurru Yolnguwu Monuk Gapu Wana Sea Country Plan and include turtle recovery and satellite tracking, marine debris surveys, working as part of the Carpentaria Ghost Nets Programme, ethno-botanical survey of Melville Bay and coral monitoring. On its website, the Dhimurru Aboriginal Corporation lists investigating ways to incorporate western science-based management practice within traditional resource management as one of its fundamental objectives.

While the Dhimurru Sea Country Plan predates the original Blue Mud Bay decision in 2007 the Plan was a mechanism for Yolngu to articulate and define their management interests and customary rights in saltwater country despite having no formal legal jurisdiction at the time.

In his 2005 thesis on the relationship between the Yolngu people of Blue Mud Bay and water, Marcus Barber argues that the Dholupuyngu (literally ‘mud people’) people of Blue Mud Bay use their understanding of water flows as one basis for generating systems of coastal ownership. While non-Indigenous people use the word ‘Country’ as a synonym for land, for Indigenous people ‘Country’ is the English word most commonly used when referring to places they own and is a humanised realm with owners, stories, songs and Ancestry attached to it.

Since colonisation in Australia the legal system has used dominant western values of mare liberum to erase customary sea rights and the State has used this as a justification for the management of the ‘commons’ of oceans for commercial benefit and conservation. In contrast, for the Yolngu there has never been a separation between land and sea. Because Yolngu do not understand, think about or manage sea country differently to land and because traditional ecological knowledge is local, practical and embedded and is therefore most efficiently implemented within the cultural context in which it was developed, the Blue Mud Bay decision may allow a more effective incorporation of indigenous ecological knowledges into contemporary land and sea management practices in the area.

In fact, the return of ownership of traditional country has provided a significant opportunity in the area of biological and resource management for traditional owners although the issue of how to marry Indigenous ecological knowledge and Western science remains. There is still some way to go to achieve a vision of an economy that maintains and builds on Indigenous land, knowledges and management practices whilst creating genuine opportunities for employment, income and business development on Indigenous lands.

For the Dholupuyngu, sea ownership could have a significant positive impact on their capacity to conserve their ocean resources. While the ramifications of the Blue Mud Bay decision are still to be felt, the rhetoric coming from the Dholupuyngu shows a desire to work with non-Indigenous players, particularly in the area of fishing regulation. Wunungmurra talks of a “true” partnership regarding commercial and recreational fishing and quotes local traditional owner Djambawa Marawili as saying that, “there has to be real contact with the landowners so both Yolngu and whites are looking after the land, doing hand-in-hand, partner-to-partner, together".

But Barber goes even further than this; suggesting that an ontological shift in perceiving land and sea as inter-related, rather than separate, could have an impact on Western conservation efforts more broadly by facilitating the incorporation of Indigenous knowledges into these efforts. This shift, motivated by the Blue Mud Bay decision, could impact water preservation in other areas, such as that depicted in Altman and Branchut’s work on water in the hybrid economies in the Maningrida region.

Altman & Branchut note the paradox that largely irrelevant non-Indigenous ideas about water are informing policy in the region while local, relevant Aboriginal values are either being ignored or misunderstood. While water is increasingly a tradeable commodity from a Western perspective, its value for the local Aboriginal people is deeply culturally-embedded. These very different views about water and who owns it have resulted in what Altman & Branchut call ‘intercultural contestation’.

If the High Course can rule that Arnhem Land waters have been reserved for Aboriginal land owners, than it could be argued that terrestrial fresh water sources have been similarly reserved. What Altman & Branchut do not state outright but do imply, is that this decision could force the Northern Territory government to liaise with the local people and begin to incorporate local culturally-based knowledge into future water management plans. At the least, they recommend that a dialogue be opened with traditional owners and note that in the longer-term the activities of Aboriginal people on country could make a significant contribution to the maintenance of water quality and associated biodiversity.

According to Barber, this contribution could potentially be much broader. While he acknowledges that generalising is difficult because of the specificity of Indigenous knowledges to local environments, he believes that the greater understanding of the inter-connectedness of different aspects of the environment underpinning a Yolngu world-view can inform wider debates, such as those on climate change and provide a fresh perspective to non-Indigenous conservationists

“Understanding coastal country through water flows contributes to wider conservation concerns about the coastline; sewage and fertiliser runoff, river and groundwater quality, and the importance of estuaries as fish breeding areas...(and) draws attention to processes occurring on a broader scale, in terms of the relationship between weather, ocean and climate,” (Barber 2005, p210).

The Blue Mud Bay decision to give traditional owners the right to restrict access to the intertidal zone on the waters in their Country is an opportunity to fully-incorporate Indigenous knowledges into conservation practices. The ontological shift this decision represents, away from a Western view of the land and sea as being separate to an Indigenous worldview that sees land and sea as inter-related, also has implications for the incorporation of local knowledges into water management in other areas, such as Maningrida, and in wider debates, such as climate change.

Adapted from an essay submitted in October 2008 as part of my post-graduate diploma in Indigenous Knowledges

I am indebted to the following sources, among others, for this piece and would recommend further reading around these references:

Altman, J. C. 2008, ‘Understanding the Blue Mud Bay decision’, Crikey, viewed 20 September 2008, http://www.crikey.com.au/.

Altman, J. C. & Branchut, V. 2008, Fresh Water in the Maningrida Region’s Hybrid Economy: Intercultural Contestation over Values and Property Rights, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Working Paper 46, The Australian National University, Canberra.

A Rising Tide, The Economist, viewed 19 September 2008, http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12253181.

Armstrong, R., Morrison, J. & Yu, P. 2006, Indigenous Land and Sea Management and Sustainable Business Development in Northern Australia, North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance, viewed 20 September 2008, http://www.nailsma.org.au/.

Barber, M, 2005, ‘Where the Clouds Stand: Australian Aboriginal Relationships to Water, Place, and the Marine Environment in Blue Mud Bay, Northern Territory’, Unpublished (PhD) Thesis, Australian National University, Canberra.

‘Blue Mud Bay decision may impact Aust-wide indigenous rights', ABC News Online, viewed 21 September 2008, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/30/2319084.htm.

‘Blue Mud Bay 'sets precedent' for Torres fishery’, ABC News Online, viewed 21 September 2008, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/31/2319649.htm.

Dhimurru Aboriginal Corporation 2008, Goals and Objectives, viewed 27 September 2008, http://www.dhimurru.com.au/goals.html.

Dhimurru Land Management Aboriginal Corporation 2007, ‘Dhimurru Yolnguwu Monuk Gapu Wana Sea Country Plan’, in Waves, Vol. 13 No. 2, Marine and Coastal Community Network, p4, viewed 26 September 2008, http://oldmccn.iwayvietnam.com/article.php/id/1729/.

‘Land rights decision impacts NT fishing industry’, 7:30 Report online, viewed 21 September 2008, http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s1883439.htm.

Morrison, J. 2007, ‘Caring for Country’ in Altman, J & Hinkson, M., Coercive reconciliation: Stabilise, normalise, exit Aboriginal Australia, North Carlton, Victoria, pp249 – 261.
‘Northern Territory of Australia v Arnhem Land Aboriginal Land Trust [2008] HCA 29 (30 July 2008)’, viewed 21 September 2008, http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2008/29.html.

Peat, FD 1996, 'Indigenous Knowledge' in Blackfoot Physics: A Journey into the Native American Universe, Fourth Estate, London, pp 239 - 274.

Robinson, N 2008, ‘Aborigines' fishing rights in Blue Mud Bay upheld’, The Australian, viewed 25 September 2008, www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24101153-2702,00.html.

Rose, DB 1996, Nourishing Terrains, Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra.
Smyth, D 2007, ‘Sea Country Planning’ in Waves, Vol. 13 No. 2, Marine and Coastal Community Network, p3, viewed 26 September 2008, http://oldmccn.iwayvietnam.com/article.php/id/1729/.

Williams, G 2007, ‘Fishing Licences as an Opportunity – What Can We Learn About Ourselves?, in Waves, Vol. 13 No. 2, Marine and Coastal Community Network, 20, viewed 26 September 2008, http://oldmccn.iwayvietnam.com/article.php/id/1729/..

Wunungmurra, W 2008, ‘Journey goes full circle from Bark Petition to Blue Mud Bay’, ABC News Online, viewed 21 September 2008, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/14/2334855.htm.