Yolngu places and people : taking aboriginal understandings seriously in land and sea management

Abstract

In this thesis I look at the work of managing Yolngu Aboriginal estates by the Dhimurru Land Management Aboriginal Corporation (Dhimurru) and Yolngu Aboriginal communities of NE Arnhem Land. I examine the practices of doing contemporary land and sea management at Dhimurru drawing on work I did at Dhimurru assisting in the development of a plan of management for the Yolngu place, Nanydjaka (Cape Arnhem in English), and negotiating a curriculum/pedagogy for Dhimurru Yolngu Rangers.\n\nI examine the mobilisation strategies of the environmental sciences and Yolngu knowledges which together perform the 'object of management' in Dhimurru's practice, 'Nanydjaka/Cape Arnhem', as a multiplicity: a Yolngu-managed place. Showing `Nanydjaka/Cape Arnhem' as a multiplicity (multiple but partially connected objects) allows us to understand place as multiple materialities performed through sets of routine, but quite often very different, sets of practices. The work of managing 'Nanydjaka/Cape Arnhem' is the work of managing multiple realities within which the object of management is continually performed as partial, messy, contingent and local.\n\nI contend that in order to take Yolngu understandings seriously in land and sea management we need to understand Dhimurru's unique ontology as a knowledge landscape characterised by an emergent methodology I call 'journeying-naming-tracing'. I examine episodes in the training of Yolngu Aboriginal rangers through Dhimurru, Batchelor College and the Parks and Wildlife Commission of the Northern Territory. Comparing these different episodes we can see that they are an education/training in differing methodologies of knowledge making. The rangers were being sensitised to, and disciplined in working different `ontological tensions' as they were trained to 'manage Nature/"the environment"' and to 'manage Yolngu places/people'. Through a critique of four episodes in ranger training, I suggest that an effective curriculum/pedagogy for trainee Yolngu rangers will make these ontological contrasts explicit and employ a methodology of `journeying-naming-tracing'.