Kaanju Ngaachi - Land and Resource Management - Knowledge and Information Transfer

Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation received a grant from The Christensen Fund from 2006-09 for the project 'Conservation and transfer of Indigenous knowledge and land and resource management, Kaanju Ngaachi, Wenlock and Pascoe Rivers, Northern Australia'.

The purpose of the project is to support the 'on country' conservation and transfer of local knowledge held by core Traditional Owners of the northern Kaanju Ngaachi centred on the Wenlock and Pascoe Rivers in Cape York Peninsula, Northern Australia.

The project aims to:

support the intergenerational transfer of language and knowledge on northern Kaanju Ngaachi to facilitate the strengthening and enhancement of local cultures and communities and the links between cultural and biological diversity across the region.

Our aims are achieved through:

the active engagement of Traditional Owners in land and resource management on country and
the digital documentation of northern Kaanju knowledge and information about the environment and ecology and its integral connection with people and cosmology.

The project considers northern Kaanju perspectives and systems of Indigenous intellectual property, cultural heritage, language and knowledge, society and kinship, Indigenous land management, land tenure and governance, and the interdependence of these facets of Indigenous life-worlds with biological and cultural diversity.

The project seeks to develop appropriate strategies for the documentation, storage, retrieval, conservation and utilisation of local Indigenous knowledge and information, while supporting the active engagement of young people and Elders on country.

Why this project is important

Despite increasing engagement in globalization and new technologies, Indigenous peoples in northern Australia (as with other Indigenous peoples across the world) are extremely concerned about the maintenance of their culture. Traditional Owners living at Chuulangun have repeatedly expressed concern about the rate at which Elders and knowledgeable people are passing away and the consequential loss of local Indigenous knowledge and language. The loss of this unique and important knowledge, along with the loss of linguistic diversity, is as significant to Cape York ecologically as are the current physical changes threatening biodiversity. This trend is a concern worldwide as natural ecosystems and cultures are being destroyed by acculturation and the encroachment of inappropriate and unsustainable development. A growing body of literature on endangered languages, vanishing cultures, and biodiversity loss all highlight the gravity of this situation (see for example Maffi 2000. On Biocultural Diversity. Linking Language, Knowledge and the Environment. Washington D.C.: The Smithsonian Institute Press).

After extended periods of forced dispossession from traditional lands the Kaanju language and knowledge is now endangered. It is extremely urgent that support is given to reverse the loss of local knowledge and language and the consequent deterioration of biocultural and biological diversity. While numerous reports have highlighted Indigenous concerns that traditional cultural knowledge is under threat, largely these have not articulated into the necessary support to facilitate the maintenance of Indigenous knowledge and language. The most important strategy in this respect is support for Indigenous people to be actively engaged on country, and support for the permanent reoccupation of traditional homelands. In Cape York, many Aboriginal custodians are not only elderly, but due to limited support for homelands development and poor health, are confined to centralised towns and communities. This project then is an important step in support, as well as acting as an incentive for the active engagement of Indigenous people on their Ngaachi. It is also necessary in order to maintain biocultural diversity in central Cape York before it is lost for all future generations.

Further, the integrity and persistence of our culture and our unique connection with the environment are under threat in the current Australian government policy environment that is questioning the viability of small remote Indigenous homelands communities. We aim to dismantle a myth that remote Aboriginal homelands-based communities are 'cultural museums'. Moreover, Indigenous traditional homelands communities are resilient, viable and rich contributors to national and global cultural and biological diversity.

Indigenous knowledge

For countless generations northern Kaanju people have nurtured and been nurtured by the land and resources, and also by the Stories and our 'Old people' who continue to occupy the land. Like our ancestors, northern Kaanju people today continue to be sustained by Ngaachi - we value the land and resources for our physical and spiritual well-being and we continue to utilize resources for our diet, for traditional activities such as material culture, and in our traditional medicine and healing.

Northern Kaanju people have a broad and detailed knowledge of the ecology of our traditional homelands and associated resources. Our ecological knowledge includes information about the identification and description of species and habitats, species behaviour, life history and distribution, seasonal references, the effects of fire, and sacred information to do with religious philosophy. Kaanju knowledge is based on many thousands of years of empirical observations and sustainable land and resource use and management and has been passed down through Kaanju bloodline to the current generation of northern Kaanju owners, managers and lawmakers living on traditional homelands. Underlying this immense knowledge base is a cosmological worldview where Kaanju people 'belong' to the land and are under the management of ancestral beings that formed the land and associated resources.

Locally owned and originated

Importantly, northern Kaanju people living on Ngaachi at Chuulangun have initiated this project, and all project work will be conducted 'on country'. That is, discussions about people's country and their interaction with country will take place on their traditional lands, using methods and approaches identified as being culturally appropriate by Kaanju people. A 'ground up' approach driven by Traditional Owners has ensured that northern Kaanju Elders retain control and ownership of the project and its outcomes. Thus, the primary means for knowledge conservation and transfer has been the engagement of Elders and young people in land management activities on their traditional homelands. These activities are outlined in the Kaanju Homelands Land and Resource Management Framework, as well as in the Kaanju Ngaachi Wenlock and Pascoe Rivers Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) Management Plan.

Project Coverage

This project involves the digital storage of Indigenous knowledge and language in accessible and culturally appropriate forms, such as databases and on the Kaanju Ngaachi web site. As part of this process the project has explored issues dealing with the use of digital technologies to document, store and transmit local Indigenous knowledge. Importantly, it has helped to build the capacity of local Indigenous people to develop locally originated and locally owned digital representations of culture. Aboriginal participants in the project have been actively engaged in the recording of knowledge, the use of digital technologies, and computer-based activities including the development of the project web page, databasing and the digital storage of the project results, and the production of a CD-ROM and DVD.

A further objective of the project has been to examine and record the economic, ecological, political and cultural factors that govern knowledge transfer and management activities. The cultural coverage has included knowledge about:

Plants, animals, habitats and their interactions (ecosystems)
Land, sea and watercourses
Air and sky; climate and weather patterns
Society, kinship and relations with the land
Resource use and management
Fire management
Cosmology
Cultural heritage including oral histories of Indigenous people's experiences of white contact, removals and dispossession, and mining and pastoral activities on Traditional country
Management of knowledge (as an important component of Kaanju land and resource management is the management of information about it).

Indigenous Intellectual Property

As with all projects initiated by the Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation, particularly those that consider Indigenous knowledge, this project has been undertaken under the strictest guidelines in order to ensure the protection of the Indigenous Intellectual Property (IIP) rights of the project participants. The Intellectual Property of the participants includes the whole body of cultural practices, resources and knowledge systems that have been developed, nurtured and refined (and continue to be developed, nurtured and refined) by particular northern Kaanju individuals and families and transferred and maintained by particular individuals and families from generation to generation as part of expressing and maintaining their cultural identity and sustaining the land and associated resources as is their right and obligation as Traditional Owners of particular country. This body of knowledge includes but is not limited to scientific, economic, technical and ecological knowledge (including medicines and sustainable use of flora and fauna), language, spiritual knowledge, kinship and genealogical information, and cultural environmental resources (including minerals and species).

The particular northern Kaanju people involved in this project are descended from key northern Kaanju ancestors. These particular individuals and families have a broad and detailed knowledge of the ecology of their traditional homelands and associated resources. This Kaanju knowledge is based on many thousands of years of empirical observations and sustainable land and resource use and management and has been passed down through particular Kaanju bloodline to the current generation of northern Kaanju owners, managers and lawmakers living on homelands. Underlying this immense body of knowledge is a cosmological worldview where Kaanju people 'belong' to the land and are under the management of ancestral beings that formed the land and associated resources, and are also the 'source' of particular knowledge.

Importantly, for the particular northern Kaanju families associated with the upper Wenlock and Pascoe Rivers, the focus of this project, management entails not only the management of land and resources, but also the appropriate management of knowledge and information about it. For instance, some knowledge is freely available (public knowledge), some knowledge and information belongs to the realm of the restricted (sacred knowledge), while other knowledge and information falls into a category between public and sacred. Further, Kaanju governance and cosmology determine who can have access to what knowledge (e.g. only authorised persons can have access to sacred knowledge) and how such knowledge can be utilised. Thus Indigenous traditional law and custom govern the ownership, protection and exploitation of the existing Intellectual Property of the project participants. The owners of such knowledge will in the course of the project carefully consider what knowledge is used, how it is used, and where it is going. Importantly, the Owners of such knowledge will also carefully consider to what extent the use of such knowledge in the course of the project will see benefits for the land and resources and the people associated with the land and resources. The particular 'Story' (Ancestral Being) associated with that resource and knowledge will be a major consideration as under Kaanju cosmology a number of species (including plant species) represent totems for particular northern Kaanju families.

The body of Indigenous knowledge utilised in the course of this project has included both knowledge and information that fall in the realm of public knowledge, and knowledge and information that fall in the category in between public and sacred knowledge. While sacred knowledge will not be used directly in the course of the project, such knowledge will inform how the Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation and the particular northern Kaanju participants in the project conduct themselves in relation to their Intellectual Property and other people engaged in the project.

Project Outcomes and Impacts
The folllowing outcomes have been achieved:

Strengthening of local knowledge and links to biodiversity.
Support for the active engagement of northern Kaanju people on Ngaachi.
Generation of opportunities for transfer of local knowledge and language from Elders to young people on Ngaachi.
Improved traditional owner articulation on appropriate methods for knowledge conservation and transfer.
Strategies for long term knowledge conservation projects.
Increased capacity of Indigenous peoples to deal with digital technologies, including training of young people in multi-media and digital technologies (use of camcorder, digital camera and film editing software).
Development of culturally appropriate models for digital representation and transfer of information including data basing of knowledge.
Production of a CD-ROM and 12-minute DVD documentary that communicates the project, northern Kaanju Ngaachi and its people, and the interdependence of biological and cultural diversity.
A page on the Kaanju Ngaachi website communicating about the project and presenting local knowledge systems and information (where appropriate).
Some 60 hours of footage taken entirely on homelands, including the completion of short Indigenous knowledge documentaries.
Support for sustainable reoccupation of traditional lands by Aboriginal people.

This has been an extremely important project locally, regionally and globally. As noted above the consequences of losing the local knowledge held by Indigenous people is also a loss of biodiversity. In the longer term the northern Kaanju knowledge conserved and transferred as part of this project will be used to inform ongoing land and resource management on northern Kaanju Ngaachi thus significantly contributing to biocultural and biological protection locally, regionally and globally.

We would like to acknowledge The Christensen Fund for providing the grant that made this project possible. We also thank Nikki Michael and Heidi Douglas for their technical and logistical support.