Aboriginal gardening : plant resource management in three Central Australian communities (original) (raw)
Horticultural experimentation in northern Australia reconsidered
Did the banana, yam and taro arrive in Australia at the hands of Europeans or come across the Torres Strait 2000 years before? Reviewing the evidence from herbaria histories and anthropology, the authors propose a 'hierarchy of hypotheses' and consider a still earlier option, that these food plants were potentially grown in Australia at least 8000 years ago, while it was still joined to New Guinea. This hypothesis, first proposed by Jones and Meehan in 1989, locates early horticultural experiments among peoples too often seen as inveterate hunter-gatherers.
From custom to market: plant use in central Australia
In many central Australia Aboriginal communities, native plant use contributes to wellbeing and knowledge and to cultural natural resource management. A significant body of literature describes the procurement of plants for the bush foods 1 industry, including supply through wild-harvest and through horticultural production. Knowing and integrating equivalent ways of valuing Aboriginal knowledge and the use of plants in customary exchange as well as in market supply chains is important. This requires understanding the particularities of local drivers and factors of desert systems, in which customary value systems are as essential as the national and international legal frameworks protecting Indigenous intellectual property.
Botanists, Aborigines and native plants on the Queensland frontier
Land and Language in Cape York Peninsula and the Gulf Country , 2016
By the 1920s, it was well understood by missionaries, scientists and botanists that the spread of grazing and agriculture into the interior posed the final threat to the remaining Aboriginal populations. Botanists were also aware that Aboriginal economies were collapsing with the increasing competition for the plants which formed the staples of Aboriginal diet, and that the cattle herds were in large part responsible for this economic disaster. This paper examines the work of these botanists for an ethnohistorical understanding of the demise of Aboriginal economic activities. Their records represents a rich record of the nature of the Aboriginal plant food economy and a window on the competition of the most educated colonists for the resources that would support ever-expanding herds of cattle and food for the colonists and the English market.
Aboriginal Australians are being employed through federally funded programs to undertake natural and cultural management (NCRM) of their ancestral country. These Aboriginal Ranger programs aim to provide economic and cultural opportunities for Indigenous communities to achieve positive environmental and conservation outcomes by drawing on Aboriginal knowledge and cultural connections to country. A major component of Ranger work is the eradication of plants categorised as environmental weeds by land managers of various government and non-government agencies. Despite Aboriginal Ranger programs intending to foreground local Aboriginal perspectives to direct their work, Rangers predominantly manage environmental weeds according to the mainstream ecological paradigm. This thesis argues that the wholesale imposition of mainstream environmental weed discourse on Aboriginal NCRM programs disables Aboriginal Rangers from basing their weed management on culturally-embedded perspectives. Based on my field research in the western and central Kimberley region of Western Australia, I show that Rangers and elders belonging to Bardi-Jawi, Bunuba, Ngurrara, Nyikina Mangala, Nyulnyul and Wilinggin country have nuanced, yet clear, understandings of ‘healthy country’ and the landscape change caused by plants. Through participant observation and field interviews, Rangers and elders from these groups challenged the current species-based approaches to weed classification and control and demonstrated that their views on weeds do not align with dominant environmental weed discourse and management. Instead, they highlighted the contextual and relational nature of weeds by linking them and their effects to the Aboriginal concept of ‘healthy country’. Significantly, these views are similar to the arguments made by ecologists and social scientists that are critical of mainstream invasion ecology and management of environmental weeds. Common to both groups are that weed problems are culturally and contextually specific and that weed management needs to maintain cultural and environmental values within changing landscapes by working alongside these changes, rather than constantly working against them. These points of overlap provide vindication for Aboriginal Rangers to control weeds through a greater emphasis on site-based, rather than species-based management. Site-based management allows Rangers to connect their weed work to local and culturally specific visions for healthy country; integrate weed management into other aspects of Ranger work and in doing so frame weed management as promoting healthy country rather than destroying plants; and meet the practical constraints of Ranger work by focusing on a manageable scale.
Central Australian native plant business literature and research synthesis
This working paper provides a focused review and discussion of literature, research and industry conversations pertaining to the use of native plants of inland central Australia, particularly those procured by Aboriginal people in remote drylands. It integrates key factors from bush foods plant business research with reference to complex systems theories used to (re)frame what we understand about the interrelationships of plants, knowledge and society in this arid region. The customary economic intersections stem from a small research project about the incorporation of customary practice and knowledge that is in everyday community use into social enterprise or other markets, value chains and systems of production. The paper seeks to integrate what we know through such research partnerships with Aboriginal custodians, harvesters and entrepreneurs with theories and policies relevant to the human geographic context of remote inland central Australia, and with a wider industry-focused literature related to horticultural development of agribusinesses. In addition, conversations with industry stakeholders reflect on the current policy discourse and its lack of reflection of remote inland central Australian networks, values and priorities in Australian Government northern development agendas.Formative findings from a research conference paper delivered at the Taiwan Austronesia 2016 conference: Community Economy, Market System and Transnational Trade Agreement (Lovell, 2016) reflect some questions and findings about current Aboriginal native plant use at an intersection with the health of people and the ecology of central Australia. Excerpts are included here, with further analysis towards incorporating central Australian native plants use, and their protection and value as assets of Aboriginal people and lands, into development scenarios based on ecological health and wellbeing outcomes. The public policy context and agenda are discussed in light of how they intersect and reflect the networks, agency and activity. This necessitates reframing the problem of a marginal remote inland that is associated with northern Australian development policy to include a functional remote and networked domain, albeit far away from the coastline-dominated discourse of Australian governments’ northern development agenda.
Plant conservation in Australia: Current directions and future challenges
Plant Diversity, 2017
Australia is a large, old and flat island continent that became isolated following the breakup of the Gondwanan super continent. After more than 40e50 M years of independent evolution, approx. 600,000 e700,000 species now call Australia home. More than 21,000 of these species are plants, with at least 84% of these being endemic. Plant taxa are protected, conserved and managed under a range of legislation at the State-and Territory-level as well as Federally for matters of national significance. This can create issues of misalignment among threatened species lists but generally there is cooperation among conservation agencies to reduce misalignments and to manage species irrespective of jurisdictional borders. Despite significant investment in programs designed to assist the recovery of Australian biodiversity, threatened plants in particular appear to be continuing to decline. This can be attributed to a range of factors including major threatening processes associated with habitat loss and invasive species, lack of public awareness of the cultural and socioeconomic value of plant conservation, and our relatively poor understanding of basic species taxonomy and biology, especially for those species that have specific interactions with pollinators, symbionts and herbivores. A recent shift in Federally-based conservation programs has been to identify 30 key plant species for recovery through the setting of measurable targets, improving the support provided to recovery teams and encouraging industry, business and philanthropy to support conservation actions.
Across western New South Wales agricultural practices have led to significant changes in the distribution and abundance of many native plant species. These changes have occurred due to past clearing practices and the introduction of grazing and pest animals. It is likely that such changes have affected the distribution of plant species used by Aboriginal peoples, and that formerly rich plant resource areas may also have changed. Here an attempt is made to map contemporary high aboriginal plant resource areas in the Yantabulla area (lat 29° 55'S, long 150° 37'E) of far western New South Wales, using kriging interpolation. High aboriginal plant usage resource areas were not found to be correlated with any particular vegetation assemblage, although Lignum Shrublands comparatively had the lowest scores. Site species richness was correlated strongly with sites of high abundance of aboriginal resource use. It is hoped that by identifying contemporary high resource locations, new understandings of the landscape can be developed by traditional owners and conservation land managers.
2019
The Australian Government's funding of land management by Aboriginal communities aims to enable them to manage natural and cultural resources according to their values and aspirations. But this approach is countered in the case of weed management, where the emphasis is on killing plants that are identified on invasive alien species lists prepared by government agencies. Based on field research with Bardi-Jawi, Bunuba, Ngurrara, Nyikina Mangala and Wunggurr land managers in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, we observed that 27 of 35 weed control projects followed the government agency weed lists for species-led control. Of these 27 projects, only two were considered successful in meeting Aboriginal cultural aspirations. In most of the other cases, the list-based approach generated frustration among Aboriginal rangers who felt they were engaged in purposeless killing. In contrast, we found that elders and rangers preferred site-based approaches that considered landscape and vegetation management from their culturally specific and highly contextual geographies of 'healthy country'. We outline instances where ranger groups have adopted site-based management that has been informed by geographies of healthy country and argue that such an approach offers a better alternative to current list-based weed control and produces positive outcomes for Aboriginal communities.
Botanical Knowledges Settling Australia
Between 1896 and 1924, the collections of the herbarium, library, museum and gardens at the Sydney Botanic Gardens became a substantial archive of botanical knowledges. This thesis examines the production and movement of these botanical knowledges within transnational networks associated with the Sydney Botanic Gardens. Each of the collections gathered specimens of plants, plant material and plant information. Some of these botanical knowledges came from Australian landscapes and Australian people, but others came from countries, institutions and individuals located all over the world. In addition to gathering this material, the Sydney Botanic Gardens also sent botanical knowledges out into the transnational network of botanical knowledges. This mobilisation enabled the institution to support the intensification of colonial settlement. By examining the scientific practices produced from plants, plant material and plant information I clarify the connection between transnational botanical knowledges and emergent environments of settlement. The collections accumulated during the directorship of Joseph Maiden provide the primary sources for this thesis and include herbarium specimens and illustrations, books, reports, bulletins, scientific publications and remnant plantings in gardens. The first part of the thesis examines the production of botanical knowledges; in particular collecting, naming, and corresponding.
2018
The Australian Government's funding of land management by Aboriginal communities aims to enable them to manage natural and cultural resources according to their values and aspirations. But this approach is countered in the case of weed management, where the emphasis is on killing plants that are identified on invasive alien species lists prepared by government agencies. Based on field research with Bardi-Jawi, Bunuba, Ngurrara, Nyikina Mangala and Wunggurr land managers in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, we observed that 27 of 35 weed control projects followed the government agency weed lists for species-led control. Of these 27 projects, only two were considered successful in meeting Aboriginal cultural aspirations. In most of the other cases, the list-based approach generated frustration among Aboriginal rangers who felt they were engaged in purposeless killing. In contrast, we found that elders and rangers preferred site-based approaches that considered landscape a...
Negotiating belonging: plants, people, and indigeneity in northern Australia
This article focuses on human-plant relations, drawing on ethnographic research from northern Australia's Gulf Country to address the concept of indigeneity. Just as the identities of ‘Indigenous’ and ‘non-Indigenous’ people in this region are contextual and at times contested according to the vernacular categories of ‘Blackfellas’, ‘Whitefellas’, and ‘Yellafellas’, so too the issue of what ‘belongs’ in the natural world is negotiated through ambiguities about whether species are useful, productive, and aesthetically pleasing to humans, as well as local understandings about how plants and animals came to be located in the Gulf region. At the same time, plants’ distinctive characteristics as plants shape their relations with humans in ways which affect their categorization as ‘native’ and ‘alien’ or ‘introduced’. Focusing our analysis on three specific trees, we argue that attention to the ‘plantiness’ of flora contributes significantly to debates about indigeneity in society and nature. At the same time, our focus on human-plant relations contributes important context and nuance to current debates about human and other-than-human relations in a more-than-human world.
Routledge Companion to Landscape and Food, 2018
Since the turn of the millennium, there has been a burgeoning interest in, and literature of, both landscape studies and food studies. Landscape describes places as relationships and processes. Landscapes create people's identities and guide their actions and their preferences, while at the same time are shaped by the actions and forces of people. Food, as currency, medium, and sustenance, is a fundamental part of those landscape relationships. This volume brings together over fifty contributors from around the world in forty profoundly interdisciplinary chapters. Chapter authors represent an astonishing range of disciplines, from agronomy, anthropology, archaeology, conservation, countryside management, cultural studies, ecology, ethics, geography, heritage studies, landscape architecture, landscape management and planning, literature, urban design, and architecture. Both food studies and landscape studies defy comprehension from the perspective of a single discipline, and thus such a range is both necessary and enriching.
Australian Aboriginal people have used plants for food and me
2005
Abstract: The Australian Aboriginal people have used plants as medicine and food for thousands of years, however, this traditional knowledge is documented only to a limited extent, and is in danger of being lost. The Indigenous Bioresources Research Group (IBRG) aims to help Australian Aboriginal communities to preserve their customary medicinal knowledge, and to provide information that can be used for their cultural or educational purposes, as well as for scientific advancement. This work is undertaken in close collaboration with Australian Aboriginal communities in New South Wales. The project is multidisciplinary, combining an ethnobotanical and an ethnopharmacological approach, which includes biological and chemical investigations, as well as developing best practices for protecting traditional knowledge. This paper describes the general strategy of the project as well as methods used in the ethnopharmacological study. Ethnobotanical databases are set up for each participating ...
Priorities for enhancing the ex situ conservation and use of Australian crop wild relatives
Crop wild relatives-the wild cousins of cultivated plants-are increasingly recognized for their potential to contribute to the productivity, nutritional quality and sustainability of agricultural crops. However, the use of these genetic resources is dependent upon their conservation in genebanks and consequent availability to plant breeders, the status of which has not been comprehensively analyzed in Australia. Such conservation assessments are given urgency by reports of increasing threats to natural populations due to habitat destruction, climate change, and invasive species, among other causes. Here we document Australian wild plants related to important food crops, and outline their priorities for ex situ conservation. Given that no major domesticated food plants originated in the country, Australia's native flora of crop wild relatives is surprisingly rich, including potentially valuable cousins of banana, eggplant, melon, mung bean, pigeonpea, rice, sorghum, sweetpotato, soybean, and yam. Species richness of the wild relatives of major food crops is concentrated in the northern and northeastern tropical regions, in the Northern Territory, Western Australia, and Queensland. Geographic priorities for collecting of these taxa for ex situ conservation, due to the limited representation of their populations in genebanks, largely align with areas of high species richness. Proposed dam building and agricultural expansion in northern Australia make conservation action for these species more urgent. We outline key steps needed for enhancing the ex situ conservation of Australia's heritage of major food crop wild relatives, and discuss the critical activities required to increase their use.
In: Eldridge, D. and Freudenberger, D. (eds). People and Rangelands: Proceedings of the VI International Rangelands Conference. Vol. 2, 19-23 July 1999, 1999
Most mining operations in Australia are in the Australian rangelands and nearly all these operations require the re-establishment of native vegetation as their end land use, or are exploring this option. In some cases there are conflicts between pastoral wish lists of the best foraging species and desired outcomes by regulators for ecosystem reconstruction, which is not necessarily focused on pastoral production issues. However, research associated with minesite rehabilitation over the last thirty years has greatly expanded our knowledge of the biology of the flora and fauna of rangelands and our ability to re-establish native flora and fauna on disturbed pastoral land.
The emerging weed challenge of managing native plant species: What are we doing in New South Wales?
2014
Plant species that are native to Australia can be significant weeds of primary production and the environment, both within and outside their endemic ranges. Of the 6049 taxa native to New South Wales, over 165 (2.7%) are considered to be weedy within their indigenous range. With only one exception, none are managed as noxious under the New South Wales Noxious Weeds Act 1993. Two groups of native species are managed as noxious weeds. With one exception, the first group includes a range of 14 tree, shrub, vine and epiphytic species found in northern and eastern rainforests and high rainfall areas. These species are generally of concern outside their endemic range, for example sweet pittosporum (Pittosporum undulatum Vent.), some lilly-pilly species (both Acmena and Syzygium species), bower vine (Pandorea jasminoides (Lindl.) Schum.) and staghorn fern (Platycerium superbum de Jonch. & Hennipman). The exception is coastal teatree (Leptospermum laevigatum (Gaertn.) F.Muell.), a species t...