Burocracy and Indigenous Knowledge

8/12/2019 Burocracy and Indigenous Knowledge

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Management Speak: Indigenous Knowledge and Bureaucratic EngagementAuthor(s): Sally Babidge, Shelley Greer, Rosita Henry and Christine PamSource: Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, Vol. 51, No.3 (WINTER 2007), pp. 148-164Published by: Berghahn BooksStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23181984.

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Management SpeakIndigenous Knowledge and Bureaucratic Engagement

Sally Babidge, Shelley Greer, Rosita Henry, and Christine Pam

Abstract: In this article we examine the concept of 'indigenous knowledge'as it is currently used in resource management discourse. In the process ofengaging with government agents and researchers in the bureaucracy ofresource management, indigenous knowledge is a powerful concept inthe legitimization of local indigenous practice as well as the recognitionof resource and socio-environmental management aspirations. Our useof the phrase 'management speak' frames our analysis of these bureaucratic engagements as process (management) and dialogue, rather thana 'space'. We do so in order to gain insights into the politics and practiceof these engagements that might go beyond recognition of indigenousinterests and toward more practical approaches. Our discussion drawson research conducted at Yarrabah Aboriginal Community in northernQueensland in relation to marine resource management in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.Keywords: Aboriginal community, Australia, indigenous knowledge,management speak, resource management, traditional owners

In this article we consider research agendas in relation to the concept of 'indigenous knowledge' with reference to a case study involving the Australian Aboriginal community of Yarrabah in northern Queensland. Over the past decade,there has been heightened interest in indigenous knowledge research withinthe international development arena, which is linked to the rise of environmental science and protected area management. At the same time, there has beena growing popular interest in indigeneity that has spawned heated scholarlydebates about its definition and about the concept of autochthony. Such debateslargely miss the point. The issue here is not about who is or who is not to becounted as indigenous, and what does or does not constitute indigenous knowledge; rather, the issue concerns the political and economic relationships that

Social Analysis, Volume 51, Issue 3, Winter 2007, 148-164doi: 10.3167/sa.2007.510307Berghahn Journals t

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Management Speak | 149

the practice of such a category implies (see Henry 2007). The research agendasof government and industry bodies provide a stage for marginalized peoplesto communicate strategically and assert political rights. However, after yearsof research into indigenous people's knowledge and use of the seas aroundtheir community, little has changed in terms of how 'traditional owners' andothers at Yarrabah perceive their involvement in managing the lands and seasaround them. Attention needs to be paid to the political economy of researchagendas and how the concept of indigenous knowledge, entangled with notionsof discrete and bounded culture, has been taken up and employed by the state,researchers, and research participants as a strategy of power.

Consultation between agents of the Australian state, researchers, and indigenous people is a significant part of resource and land management, especiallyin a liberal Australia that recognizes indigenous rights and interests in land.The domain of research and consultation we discuss here is organized interms of structural power (Wolf 1999). As with Foucault's (1979) concept ofgovernance, this notion of structural power must be understood as both a creative and limiting force. Yet as Agrawal (2005) has identified, much researchon indigenous knowledge grants little attention to relationships of power.Agrawal notes that studies of indigenous knowledge attempt what she callsa dual redemption. The goal is to demonstrate that indigenous knowledgeis valid, or as valid as science, and to prevent the loss of indigenous knowledge, that is, to salvage what may be lost to social change (ibid.: 73-74).While such ethnographies of indigenous knowledge are important in terms ofdemonstrating how people engage in various development processes on termsthat are favorable to them, or in ways that gain respect for their knowledge,they are caught in a paradox. As Agrawal (ibid.: 75) notes: [T]he spread ofwhat threatens indigenous knowledge is also precisely what many advocatesof indigenous knowledge seek to advance by identifying, documenting, collecting, and systematising indigenous knowledge. Agrawal suggests that thisparadox may be understood and perhaps resolved through better understandings of the nature of power.In this article we discuss some ways that indigenous knowledge is 'shapedby the workings of power', based on a short project we undertook at YarrabahAboriginal Community during the summer of 2005-2006. Our objective was toidentify possibilities for cooperative negotiations for the use and managementof the marine environments in the vicinity of Yarrabah between, among others, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) and traditionalowners.1 Our approach to the knowledge of coastal and marine ecosystems ofYarrabah people was not simply to document the content of this knowledgeas part of some fixed and coherent system of ideas and values. Instead, weexamined aspirations regarding local use and management practices and theirassociated bureaucratic engagements, and articulated how the process of indigenous knowledge is a form of 'management'. Indigenous knowledge in theseterms reflects socially relevant, strategic, and local practices of looking afterand regulating people and places, while also reflecting powerful discoursesregarding what it means to 'have' indigenous knowledge.



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150 | Sally Babidge, Shelley Greer, Rosita Henry, and Christine Pam

Indigenous KnowledgeIndigenous knowledge, sometimes referred to as 'traditional ecological knowledge' (TEK), is a concept that has become the target of research across manydisciplines (Agrawal 2005; Berkes, Colding, and Folke 2000; Bicker, Sillitoe,and Pottier 2002; Brush 1993; Sillitoe 2002; Sillitoe, Dixon, and Barr 2005).Much has been written about what indigenous knowledge might be, whatdistinguishes it from 'local knowledge', and how the concept is applied in thefield by researchers. Critiques of the folk science-taxonomy approach, in whichindigenous knowledge is treated as a mere list of resources (their names andproperties, according to indigenous people), abound. The discussion can belinked to impassioned debates regarding the notion of indigeneity (see Barnard2006; Dove 2006; Kenrick and Lewis 2004; Kuper 2003). These recall earlierpost-World War II essentialism-anti-essentialism and primordialism-constructivism debates in the social sciences. Thus, in an attempt to distance themselves from essentialism, some researchers today reject the category 'indigenousknowledge', in favor of 'local knowledge'. However, if we accept Schor's (1994:xiv) proposal that essence be rethought as a force for change and movement,as synonymous with empowering and dynamic identification rather than staticand divisive identity, then indigeneity can be conceptualized as an activesystem of identification, and indigenous knowledge a dynamic contemporaryprocess of management of people and place. At the same time, expressions ofagency are constrained by the particular hierarchies of power that form part ofthe bureaucratic field into which they are drawn. Thus, in spite of their participation as informants in indigenous knowledge research projects, and yearsof 'community consultation', little has changed formany indigenous people interms of participation in the control and regulation of their country.

Most prominently, indigenous knowledge is co-opted by natural resourcemanagers and development projects to inform scientists of local conditions,providing ethno-botanical and ethno-biological knowledge that supplementsscientific knowledge. In Australia, the focus has been largely on the use ofindigenous (especially traditional owner) knowledge for 'co-management' inprotected areas and national parks or other areas of land that have been designated ecologically significant (see, e.g., Langton 1998). Indigenous knowledgeis also important in identifying the cultural values of places and species inrelation to management plans (e.g., Coombs et al. 1989; Williams 1998). Muchof this work focuses on the differences between indigenous knowledge as a'holistic system of knowledge' and scientific knowledge as 'categorized andcompartmentalized' (see also Jackson 2006; Ross and Pickering 2002: 190).This distinction has been explored explicitly by Verran (2002), who analyzes theinteractions that occurred around a workshop undertaken 'on country' betweenindigenous peoples, scientists, and rangers in Kakadu National Park, northernAustralia. The workshop centered on 'burning off' or 'firing' countrya well-recognized system of control over the environment (see, e.g., Langton 1998)andexchanging knowledge between participants about different approaches to thepractice. Verran found that the workshop might be understood in Australia as a



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postcolonial moment, where in the engagement between bureaucratic agents/managers and indigenous managers, it is a sameness of purpose that is gainedand yet differenceis collectively enacted (Verran 2002: 730). The difference sheunderlines is that between scientific and indigenous knowledge. She points to aredistribution of authority in such moments toward the indigenous. However,whether such distributions of power are at all lasting and how they might effectchanges in resource management practices remain unclear.

A key issue is that indigenous knowledge practices are not confined to themanagement of resources but include the management of people in relation toresources (see also Pannell 1996). For the purposes of our project, we have understood indigenous knowledge as constituting and being constituted by everydayrelationships with the sea and marine landscape (especially fishing), as wellas knowledge practices concerning the management, not merely of resources,but of differentgroups of people within the community (traditional owners andother residents, young people and elders, and so on) and their varied interestsin the land and seascape. Such divergent and at times competing interests alsoinclude indigenous people's engagements with powerful government environmental bureaucracies and research and legislative bodies, such as GBRMPA.

On one level, indigenous knowledge in management contexts must be treatedlocally and related to specific social relations and the management of resources.At another level, indigenous knowledge operates in a larger, regional context,whereby indigenous people of the Cape York Peninsula, for example, share certain realms of knowledge about northern Queensland and the waters around it.In addition, the potential of indigenous people to control access to and the useof their lands and waters can be understood as being contingent on the nationalcontext of recognition of traditional ownership. In this sense, we see the use ofa concept such as 'indigenous knowledge' as representing a number of things.It is powerful rhetoric that is bound with the enabling state discourse ofrecognition of the knowledge that inheres in indigenous ownership of the country. InAboriginal processes of self-representation and identity, indigenous knowledgehas efficacyas a political tool used by indigenous people in their control of consultants, researchers, and state policy makers. This we see as a genuine appealfor recognition of difference and agency, for acknowledgment of diverse ways ofliving with and regulating land and people on terms that are familiar and locallyeffective. Therefore, we see indigenous knowledge as both practice and discourse and as always-becoming in the context of ongoing negotiations amongdifferentgroups in Aboriginal communities (such as Yarrabah). Moreover, theway in which indigenous knowledge is a factor in the overall legal, political, andeconomic efficacyin 'managing' the land and seas depends on shiftingrelationsbetween all of or some of these groups and the state.

Traditional Ownership and Yarrabah Aboriginal CommunityYarrabah Aboriginal Community is a discrete settlement, approximately 50 kilometers by road fromCairns, in northeastern coastal Queensland. Beginning as



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an Anglican mission in 1892, control of the community was transferred to theQueensland State Government's Department of Native Affairs in 1960. TheCommunity is recognized as perhaps one of the most politically active of northern Queensland communities. Historian Rosalind Kidd (2000: 209) describesYarrabah as a hotbed of dissent during the 1950s and demonstrates that residents' considerable activism about award wages in the 1960s and 1970s wasinstrumental in bringing about changes to Queensland government policy (ibid.:317ff.). Also renowned in terms of Christian spirituality,Yarrabah is home to thefirstAboriginal Anglican bishop and many other church leaders (Loos 2007).Yarrabah remained under the control of the Department of Native Affairs until1986, when an Aboriginal Council took possession of the lands under a Deed ofGrant in Trust (DOGIT). A new Community Council structure was then created,with indigenous residents forming a local council that had increased autonomyin managing and running community affairs. The Community is currentlyundergoing furtherchanges to its structure and becoming a Shire Council.

Traditional owners of the country around Yarrabah are identified as theGunggandji people. Two different groups, based on moiety affiliation, arerecognized: Gurabana Gunggandji and Gurugulu Gunggandji. These groupssometimes act separatelyfor example, they run different corporations,2 andvarious members have been represented on separate native title claimsandat these times can be at odds with each other. This situation reflects familial,personal, cultural, and historical differences that are not directly the subject ofthis article. Nonetheless, while there are differences among Gunggandji, duringour research many individuals also emphasized a shared and coherent identity.A person's identification with Gurugulu Gunggandji, Gurabana Gunggandji, orjust Gunggandji appears subject to contextual reckonings of descent and personal/political alliances that are relevant to the social milieu.The population of Yarrabah is around 2,500 (Australian Bureau Statistics2001; Karvelas 2006: 6; Taylor and Bell 2003: 14). Among this population, Gunggandji represent a small minority. Other groups are Yindinji (their direct neighbors in terms of country), Djabugay, and others. Members of these traditionalowner groups have lived at Yarrabah since it was established as a mission, andmany of these people look on the Community as their home. They considerthemselves knowledgeable locals and are recognized as such by others (seeHume 1990: 47; Kidd 2000: 247). Indeed, the fact that some of the older peoplewe interviewed were not Gunggandji and were introduced to us by our Gunggandji research assistants demonstrates the local recognition of these peoples'knowledge of history, local affairs,and social practice.Nonetheless, identifications as a traditional owner, as a local, and so on, arein practice contested, negotiated, and contextual. As we discuss below, a 'relational' perspective views such identifications as fluid, not because they have'broken down' under pressure from modernity, but because such perspectivesare a rejection of the notion of culture or group (or indeed their knowledge) asfixed (see also Sullivan 2005; Weiner 2006). Furthermore, differentiations n relation to named groups/clans are intrinsic to indigenous knowledge practices asmanagement of social-ecological systems and the differingresponsibilities that



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come with recognition as owners of certain tracts of country. However, the apparent fluidity of 'membership' in some cases and strong divisions between this andthat group are also significant for the practical understanding of bureaucraticengagement. In other words, our focus on management within the larger projectat Yarrabah was directed toward understanding the social and structural forcesthat shape the engagement of people and groups in management processes.

This outlining of the processes of management is central to the researchproject. We asked a number of questions of our data, both in the field andin the preliminary analyses. These included the following: How do peopleorganize themselves to represent their knowledge? How do people organizeresearchers in order to limit and to manage the knowledge that researchers'get'? How do people practice and structure their membership in corporategroups or their associations with other kinds of social or economic groups?These questions, rather than seeking descriptions of the content of indigenousknowledge or social structure, are aimed at an examination of the mannerby which such 'things' are constructed. Thus, it is our intention to describepractices of bureaucratic engagement as we have documented them and, inthe process, document some local resource management practices that mayfacilitate Gunggandji engagements with GBRMPA and others.

Management SpeakConsultations and negotiations with indigenous groups, especially with traditional owners, in natural resource management contexts are framed by thelegal recognition of native title rights and interests. Traditional owners must beconsulted about land, sea, and resource management issues as a result of claimsmade under the Native Title Act 1993 (Commonwealth) and associated processes, as well as under the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (Queensland).Recognition as indigenous, and as a traditional owner, is what enables engagement in the management process. It is as traditional ownersnot as locals orresidentsthat indigenous peoples are recognized, consulted, and sometimesincluded in the co-management of land, seas, and resources. As such, being recognized as a viable partner in the process of management is based 011 the recognition of cultural difference. That this recognition enables indigenous people'srole in the ownership, management, negotiation, and so on, of land only withinthe limits of a certain kind of difference that emphasizes 'tradition' has beenthe subject of a number of analyses (see, e.g., Merlan 2006; Povinelli 2002). Weargue here that these limitations may be seen on the level of engagement andnegotiations preliminary to larger-scale agreements and that they have implications for the implementation of larger-scale agreement making.The strength and veracity of traditional owner statements of cultural difference underlie our observation that indigenous peoples are adept at managingencounters with bureaucratic structures and agents (see Babidge 2004; Greer1996; Sullivan 1996). In particular, those who regularly act as spokespeoplefor their families, communities, or other groups use the language of cultural



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difference to great effect. It also seems to us that these same people and othersmanage the language of consultation, research, recognition, and negotiationin ways that appear to extend beyond the dominant representation of theirdifference. Traditional owners engage with bureaucrats, consultants, and other'outsiders' in ways that demonstrate an adroit awareness of bureaucratic language and process and, at the same time, a recognition of the particular waysthat such processes play themselves out and need to be managed locally, thatis, socially. Our shorthand way of thinking about this is 'management speak'.Management speak is a way of interpreting the language and modes of interaction that indigenous people employ in discussions, negotiation processes,and meetings with government bureaucrats, consultants, and researchers, aswell as in some inter-traditional owner discussions or negotiations over socialresources. Our observations of such contexts need to be supported by longerterm ethnographic and socio-linguistic study. Nevertheless, what we explorehere are a few examples observed at Yarrabah during the current research ofpractices that point to what we are calling management speak.

These concerns mark our research on engagements between the Aboriginaldomain and white Australia in terms that might be identified as 'intercultural'(see Merlan 1998, 2005). The conceptual term 'intercultural' is problematicin that it seemingly masks the fluidity of social practice in these situationsby accepting into its analytical frame the marking of boundaries 'betweencultures' (Sullivan 2005).3 Such boundaries are intrinsic in the speech andactions of bureaucratic engagements, since often what characterizes them isthe emphasis on cultural difference between indigenous peoples and others.The examples we explore below demonstrate that the emphasis on difference isinherent to these engagements, and yet this emphasis belies a myriad of similarities and points of convergence in language and the practice of bureaucraticengagements that makes management speak possible. People put considerableeffort into the work of making their statements and intentions interpretable toothers across known differences in these contexts. In spite of this effort, thereis much miscommunication going on. In the practices and in the position ofeach actor in these engagements, it thus emerges that cultural boundaries aresignificantly blurred at the same time as being momentous in actors' assertionsof the difference in indigenous cultural practice (Sullivan 2005, 2006).

Our use of the phrase 'management speak' seeks to analyze bureaucraticengagements as a process (management) and a dialogue, rather than a 'space'.Traditional owners and others we spoke to at Yarrabah seemed to have a distinct mode of dealing with consultants and researchers. Management speak iscontrol of outsiders' (in this case, researchers') access to knowledge particularto the Community, traditional owners, and particular individuals (traditionalowners and others). This was evident from early in the process of negotiatingpermission to undertake research through to the present process of providingcopies of written materials to key people before these works are made public.Clearly, the explicit process of permission to access knowledge is tied up withconcerns about intellectual property and also has foundations in responsibilities and ethical principles in terms of responsibility for looking after country'.



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As such, the concerns of traditional owners center on the management of placeand knowledge, the management of researchers' access to knowledge, and themanagement of how such knowledge is represented (Greer 1996; Greer andFuary forthcoming).

At the outset of field research, researchers agreed with key initial spokespeople, who stipulated that we employ local people as research assistants, thatthey should be traditional owners, and that they would be paid. The researchassistants were to introduce us to potential participants and 'show us around',that is, guide us and introduce us interpersonally and geographically aroundthe Community. At this early stage of the research, a number of these keyspokespeople for Gurabana Gunggandji noted that it was important that weshould be taken 'on country' by knowledgeable people, and one place in particular, King Beach, was repeatedly mentioned. Key spokespeople's repeatedinsistence on having someone with us the whole time, as well as taking us toparticular places and introducing us to particular people, draws on traditionalowners' duties to look after country (see especially Myers 1991). As researchers, we were outsiders who did not know the Community, the country, or thepotential dangers of both. Likewise, as people who do not have this knowledge,we were a potential danger to others and to 'country'. Thus, while 'on country'and in the Community, we were both the guests and the responsibility of thosewho know and look after the country.

Being accompanied by traditional owner assistants meant that the researchwas facilitated by the familiarity of each of the research assistants with thepeople we spoke to. More importantly, it was evident that these interpersonal and spatial interactions were mediated by the research assistants.Research assistants sat with us as we explained to each potential informantthe purpose and subject of the research. In most cases, our explanation of theproject and following questions were 'translated' by the research assistantsthrough repetition (sometimes exact repetition) or simplification of termsand, in some cases, 'translation' into 'Aboriginal English' (McGregor 2005:xvi). This is not a linguistic point but one about mediation between researchers and elders. In particular, research assistants explained and repeated whatwe said and sometimes suggested to interviewees what or how the interviewee might answer our questions. In some instances, this is a techniquefor 'buying time' for those being interviewed, so that they may think aboutwhat is being asked of them. However, such physical and linguistic mediation by research assistants, on the insistence of key traditional owner representatives, also helps to monitor relationships between indigenous peopleand white researchers, and thus to mediate the information that researchersgather and assure participants that traditional owners are involved in themanagement of this knowledge.

Research assistants sought out older traditional owners, or elders, and certain elders firston the basis of age hierarchy, but also seemingly on the basisof status, gender, and respect for particular kinds of knowledge. This includedlanguage knowledge and other material aspects of Gunggandji culture, as wellas knowledge of place names and how to act appropriately when in certain



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places, memory of certain dances and songs, 'proper' hunting practice, and soon. Many of the older research participants described their knowledge in waysthat referred to the past and spoke of 'tradition' in the sense of the past, aswell as giving voice to a negative critique of current practice. For example, anumber of interviewees lamented that young people do not share the fish theycatch (and other resources) like they used to. One told us: In the old days,hunters who used to go out would share even a little piece. They'd make sureeveryone had a bit, but not today. It's sad in our little community. 4 The attribute of 'caring and sharing' in indigenous socialitywhat some have calledthe 'moral economy' (see Peterson and Taylor 2003)is intertwined with socialresponsibility to kin and knowledge of appropriate responsibilities to thosearound you. The lament of older people comments on much broader socialchanges (Macdonald 2000: 87; Trigger 2005). It is also nostalgia that impliesthe distinctiveness of the knowledge they hold, their expertise, and thus theirrightto be consulted in relative (compared to those around them) and absolute(as against all others) terms.

This apparent nostalgia seems linked to a further observation. Many of thequestions in a survey of fishing practices that we undertook were phrased, forexample, as Do you get...? or How do you decide ...? Most people we spoketo did not consider that these questions were being directed toward them asindividuals. Rather, they understood us to be asking them about people's fishing practices at Yarrabah more generally. In response to a question phrased Doyou catch turtle and dugong? we were told by a woman, Yes, we get turtleand dugong. They go and get it from the reef (emphasis added). That is, we(the researchers) were perceived to be asking about what Yarrabah people do,as culture or perhaps as locals or perhaps as indigenous people. To some extent,we were perceived to be asking, What are your cultural practices? This isperhaps where the categories 'local' and 'indigenous' might become blurred.People were not necessarily claiming that indigenous people everywhere, oreven neighboring people, do things their same way. However, there is a reason tounderstand this as indigenous knowledge and not local knowledge. In the waysthat older people, who are more experienced in being asked for nformation fromresearchers, answered our questions, and in the negative example of youngerpeople, who refused to be interviewed, claiming, I don't know nothing aboutthat, there is a relational treatment of the knowledge being imparted (or notimparted). Older people's claims to knowledge and representation are powerfuldiscursive tools wielded by those who speak on behalf of their communities,and they do so in ways that are framed by the context of being asked as older,indigenous people. In self-consciously representing their practices as being 'cultural' practices that are differentfrom those of non-locals and non-indigenous,the research participants become agents in the reproduction of a particularknowledge. This is indigenous knowledge, which is to some extent constitutedas a category and bureaucratically defined by the state but is also represented inregenerated terms during each engagement or dialogue among the actors.Our interest is in knowledge as a social process. Thus, we are also interested in knowledge as negotiated between individuals as well as owned by



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Management Speak \ 157

particular individuals or groups. When researchers introduced the idea of theproject, the firstthing that senior traditional owners did was to call a meeting,or to suggest calling a meeting, of key traditional owners, that is, those recognized in the Community as having particular knowledge. Holding meetings isa well-accepted bureaucratic practice that is necessary for the running of, forexample, Aboriginal corporations. It is also a social practice that has a longhistory in Australian indigenous communities (see, e.g., Cowlishaw 1999;Howard 1982; Macdonald 1988; Sullivan 1996; Tonkinson 1985), and northern Queensland communities are no exception (e.g., Anderson 1984: 411 ff.;Babidge 2004; Greer and Fuary forthcoming; Trigger 1997; 99-100). Meetings are social processes where people come together to discuss 'culture',knowledge of country, proper ways of behaving, intra-community issues, andso on. The very act of participating in such meetings (whether intra-community or community-outside body) and engaging in dialogue is central to themanagement of knowledge. The ways that people speak at meetings and thecoherence with which many voices speak about the same issue might be seenas reflecting the fact that knowledge is shared. However, this 'sharedness' isdynamic and constantly shifting. It is coherent at the point of bureaucratic(or researcher) engagement rather than in some idea of consistency amongindigenous actors.

The traditional owner research assistant as mediator between researcherand interviewee might be one way that some level of consistency is achieved.Such processes involve two or more traditional owners in the room at the sametime, thinking and talking about similar issues and explaining them to an outsider. A furtherexample might be useful here. One of the primary aspirationsfor marine country management conveyed to us is the need for traditionalowner Gunggandji rangers working in the marine areas around Yarrabah. Thisbroad agreement among differentGunggandji people at Yarrabah on the mainresource management issues they are facing is clearly a result of long-term(some 20 years) engagement with researchers on the very same issue, ratherthan any sort of easy consensus.

Thus, indigenous knowledge, as the social process of negotiating representations of culture in this kind of forum, is management. Through bureaucraticengagement in the meeting context, certain kinds of knowledge practices (anddiscourses) are developed. Merlan (1989) has described such forums as fostering a growing language among indigenous actors in terms of objectifying culture. In coming to the negotiating table over the management of resources, andof country more generally, indigenous people might, on the one hand, objectifyculture. On the other hand, their points of negotiation contribute to the constitution of a category of indigenous knowledge for the purposes of engagementwith state agencies and the recognition of certain rights.In our discussions with groups and individuals at Yarrabah, traditional owners spoke about country in ways that indicated that country could be used by thecommunity as capital. In one sense, country is social and intellectual capital, inthat to speak of one's knowledge of country is to be able to speak for and teachabout country and therefore be respected in a general sense as a knowledgeable



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158 Sally Babidge, Shelley Greer, Rosita Henry, and Christine Pam

person. The elder traditional owners sought firstby our research assistants areexamples of this. The elders are people who are consulted by their own peoplefor advice (on indigenous knowledge of country and about managing country)in situations such as the present project.

'Country' as a complex of person, land, resources, and spirit is not considered alienable or able to be sold. People's attitude toward selling marineresources that they caught themselves was overall quite negative. Most peoplewe spoke to indicated that they fished for subsistence purposes only; only afew told us that they put oysters in a jar of water to sell to others in the community or occasionally sold a crab or two to people who asked for them.5 Morecommonly among the people we spoke to, there was a general ethic of sharingand at times quite strong language against those who did not share (puttingthe catch in their freezer instead). For example, when asked a question aboutwhat people might do with the fish they catch, a respondent told us that therewas some shame involved with not sharing. She said, People keep an eyeon everyone and complain when you keep too much [in the freezer]. If yougo out and get too many prawn, they might say, 'Try to save some for us nexttime.' The tensions that Peterson and Taylor (2003) identifybetween the ethicof sharing and the increasing pressure, especially on the younger generations,from wider society to accumulate are evident here.6 However, the point thatpeople continually made to us (whether they said they sold resources or not)is that sharing, with neighbors and with family, is important to the communitybecause it shows that you care about others. There is thus a strong sentimentthat sharing (and not selling) marine resources might be about re-creating andperforming relationships.

However, there remains a strong conviction among some senior traditionalowners that the land, sea, and resources must be used in ways that benefitthe community economically, as well as in terms of social relationships andspiritual connection. In other words, some people at Yarrabah spoke aboutcountry in a way that implied that country could be treated as a resource andas financial capital. Alongside the common rejection of the notion of sellingmarine resources that one gathers, hunts, or fishes, there is considerableinterest among some in using country for business ventures, such as giantclam and trochus farming or tourism. While generally economic in aspiration, such ventures were described to us in terms of being ecologically sustainable, and in terms of 'looking after' (mostly regenerating) the resourcesthemselves. For those interested in such ventures, this is not incompatiblewith the ethic of sharing the resources that individual fishers catch or withthe general ethic of sharing. Instead, these ideas appear to exist in a way thatis enmeshed. Thus, indigenous knowledge as management draws on a powerful mixture of what people themselves see as appropriate personal, social,and economic approaches.Therefore, while resource management may be thought of in terms of conservation or sustainable ecological management, traditional owners clearlyhave an approach that includes local community subsistence, resource sustainability, and also economic sustainability. While the new Traditional Uses of



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Marine Resource Agreements (TUMRAs) that GBRMPA is seeking to implementin the area emphasize 'traditional use', many traditional owners themselvesemphasize a need to use and regulate the marine environment that is consistent with their changing society. The issue is how the discourse of recognitionof traditional indigenous culture (embodied in GBRMPA's TUMRAs) can bereconciled with local aspirations that use the same discourse of recognitionof tradition in representations of themselves, while also aspiring to use thesepowerful enabling mechanisms to support economic and social change.

ConclusionIndigenous knowledge provides a management process for engaging with stateagencies, a process of identification and differentiation through which peopleassert their voice. While this is empowering in an immediate sense of gettingone's voice heard, there is considerable dissatisfaction that has arisen despiteyears of such engagements. It is the state that ultimately holds the regulating power for managing lands and seas. Nonetheless, indigenous people usethe legislative recognition of indigenous knowledge and indigenous rights asstructural power when dealing with researchers and state bureaucrats. Thepolitical strategies of the state and indigenous people and forms of relationalsocialities are enabled by power in these contexts, rather than being simply andnegatively dominated by them (Foucault 1979; Wolf 1999). Our research participants controlled information about themselves and resisted the collection ofknowledge, frustrating state attempts to co-opt indigenous knowledge and, tosome extent, also incorporating state discourses of management.

Fundamentally, indigenous knowledge research involves political practicethat, as Agrawal (2005) has argued, should reveal the workings of power in theconstructions of this knowledge. The kind of management practices (in relationto research management or the management of researchers) we have outlinedabove are familiar to other researchers who have worked in Australia and elsewhere. We are not arguing that knowledge becomes blurred in the discourse ofmanagement and engagement with bureaucracies and that it all becomes justmanagement speak, in the sense of a generic bureaucratic language. Rather, itis in these engagements that practices of management are created and re-created. What our research has demonstrated is that indigenous people's resourceuse and management of country at Yarrabah involves three closely interrelatedpractices. Firstly, the use and regulation of marine resources and country arecarried out according to indigenous beliefs and practices, that is, those culturalfactors usually referred to as indigenous knowledge. Secondly, we have shownthat 'managing' country involves the regulation of people and their access toand use of country, or the management of local social conditions and relations. Finally, managing country includes the management of bureaucraticengagements, such as the control of researchers' access to certain informationand thus the internal controls on the state's access to a domain understood asbelonging to indigenous people. These practices have developed over many



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years of bureaucratic engagement, and recognition of indigenous knowledgemust include recognition of such skills.While the comparative perspective may be a little stretched, Strathern (2006)has recently argued that where there is an inherent recognition of difference in

management contexts, such recognition allows only an appreciation of difference of opinionrather than agreementto be the result. This is differentfromwhat arises when there are disagreements between those on similar terms; adebate or point of discussion moves beyond that which was before. What wesee here is that there is some incommensurability between indigenous and nonindigenous actors in these contexts exactly because of the assumption (as wellas the actualities) of discrete cultural understandings of the indigenous andnon-indigenous in Australia. In many ways, particular subjectivities are drawnforth .. by the exigencies of an already relational life-world (Weiner 2006: 18)in the engagements we have described. Perhaps then, the act of recognition ofdifference is exactly what stands in the way of better interpretations of what issaid, what is done, and what is meant. A closer study of the socio-linguistics ofthese bureaucratic interactions and longer-term studies more generally of thesecontexts are needed in order to move toward understanding such socialitiesand the agency of Aboriginal people emerging from these encounters. A betterunderstanding of these engagements, especially management speak, may drawattention to similarities of purpose, while not burying the differences that mustnecessarily be brought forward fornegotiation.

AcknowledgmentsThis research was undertaken with funding from the Cooperative Research Centre(CRC) Reef, Task Al.3.1, Cultural Heritage Values of the Great Barrier Reef, ledby Shelley Greer and David Roe of James Cook University. We would like to thankour three research assistants at Yarrabah, Edgar (Point) Harris, Romaine Yeatman,and Anthea Reid (Stafford), as well as Danny O'Shane, field officer at the NorthQueensland Land Council (Representative Body), for initial introductions to traditional owners at Yarrabah.

Sally Babidge has a PhD in Anthropology from James Cook University and currentlylectures in Australian Indigenous studies, kinship and social relatedness, and ethnographic methods in anthropology at the University of Queensland. Her research projectsinvolve ethnography and historical ethnography of the state and changing practices offamily among rural-living Australian Indigenous people. Ongoing comparative researchfocuses on the politics and sociality of indigeneityand indigenous identity, speciallyin the context of recognition of indigenous rights and identities by states.Shelley Greer is a Senior Lecturer in Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology,Archaeology and Sociology, School of Arts and Social Sciences, James Cook University. She has conducted long-term research in northern Cape York Peninsula and is



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currently part of a team that is focusing on trade and exchange in the Cape York-TorresStrait-Papuan region. She was the task leader on a broad project that investigated thecultural heritage values of the Great Barrier Reef to inform cultural heritage management of this important icon. She is also on a research team that is examining issues ofculturalheritageand climate change in Micronesia.Rosita Henry is currently Head of the Department of Anthropology, Archaeology andSociology at James Cook University. Her main area of research concerns indigneityand the politics of public performance. She has conducted long-term ethnographicresearch with Indigenous Australians in North Queensland. Her most recent publication is a book, co-edited with Barbara Glowczewski, entitled Le defi indigene: Entrespectacle el politique (2007).Christine Pam finished her Honours in Anthropology at James Cook University in2007. Her topic was on the integration of indigenous and scientific knowledge inGeographic Information System technologies. She has been awarded a scholarship toundertake doctoral research.

Notes1. The traditional owners of the lands and seas around Yarrabah identify themselves as

Gurabana Gunggandji and Gurugulu Gunggandji peoples. We thank those Gunggandjipeople and others who participated in the research and accommodated us at Yarrabah.2. One corporation was established solely for the purpose of dealing with traditional ownerbusiness, specifically, cultural heritage consultancies and native title issues. The other isa long-running cooperative that runs employment programs for the whole Yarrabah community, including the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) program,with specific interests in providing opportunities for traditional owners.3. Note that Merlan (2005: 181) does not intend for the term 'intercultural' to have theseimplications: An 'intercultural' account should plausibly deal with socio-cultural difference, similarity, boundedness and transformation. However, for us, the term re-createsexactly the difference that we are seeking to examine as a whole.4. We asked all interviewees about whether people share what they catch when fishing. Inall of the responses, people noted that they eat their catch with family, and just underhalf of the people we spoke to said that they would share with 'neighbors' (who may ormay not be family, but with whom there is sometimes a history of residence proximitythat extends for several generations).5. While the former was seen most generally as an accepted practice (something olderwomen might do), the latter seemed to be less acceptable. Whether this is to do with thesize, availability, or some other nature of the resource is unclear to us.6. And the younger generations constitute a considerable proportion of the community.In 2001, approximately 50 percent of the population was under 20 years of age, and 80percent was under 40 years of age. The median age was 20 years old (Australian Bureauof Statistics 2001).



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Sally Babidge, Shelley Greer, Rosita Henry, and Christine Pam

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Burocracy and Indigenous Knowledge