Changing Waters: environmental cycles, local actors, and global

change in coastal Arnhem Land, Australia

Marcus Barber

James Cook University

Townsville, Australia

Acknowledge and thank the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land in Northern Australia, particularly the Madarrpa and the Djalkiripuyngu of Blue Mud Bay,

and residents of Galiwinku and Yirrkala

Introduction

• Yolngu people share related languages, a kinship system, and similar patterns of land and sea ownership

• Continuities and differences with Indigenous peoples from elsewhere in Australia

Nhulunbuy

Blue Mud Bay

Galiwinku

Yirrkala

Yilpara

Water Culture• Land and sea integrated in Yolngu

cosmologies • Important relationships between

freshwater, brackish water, and saltwater• Flows and transformations of water are a

major means of expressing:• Ancestry • Identity• Fertility• Spirituality• Politics• Ownership

Struggles for Water

• Land rights granted after struggles in previous decades

• Gave de facto control over rivers• Major issue for Yolngu people has been

intertidal and saltwater rights• Successful intertidal zone court case in

Blue Mud Bay ended in 2008

Water Struggles

• Lack of control over one aspect of water affects the whole of Yolngu life• Ongoing struggles against imposed compartmentalisations:

- of land and sea- saltwater and freshwater- people and country- spiritual powers and everyday human life

Water Struggles

• Concerns about unsustainable resource exploitation• Sea rights case a claim for recognition • But also a claim for sustainability • Awareness of new challenges and new changes

“the high tides used to only come once a month. But now the monsoons cause

them more often. Climate change….you used to see yellow clouds in the east, but

not anymore.”Ngulpurr Marawili

“The trees are flowering early. The saltwater is coming into the freshwater.

The world has changed” Wuyal Wirrpanda

“Yolngu have been here for 50,000 years and we have survived many changes in the past. It is going to affect you guys

not me. Because I’ve done it in the past. If the store runs out of food, that will

simply make people go back to the bush and start eating healthy again.”

Joe Gumbula

• Diversity of Indigenous peoples in Australia• Struggles for rights, for recognition, and for sustainability• Continuities rather than compartmentalisations• New challenges posed by global warming• Indigenous knowledges are dynamic and evolving- syntheses of old and new• Such knowledge can give confidence• Not just passive victims of changes caused elsewhere, but actively working for their own futures

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

• Yolngu people of Arnhem Land

• UNESCO- IHP program

• James Cook University

• Marine Conservation Biology Institute

• Australian National University

• Northern Land Council