Aboriginal peoples and oceans policy in Australia: An indigenous perspective

In a recent publication on aboriginal customary marine tenure, it was noted that even in the field of anthropology, Aboriginal peoples’ relationships to the sea have been misunderstood and neglected in a manner that “has resulted in the indigenous relationship to the sea being seen only in terms of resource usage and in the many and complex indigenous systems of nearshore marine tenure worldwide becoming invisible.”1 One of the reasons proffered for this “blind spot”2 was the manner in which Western relationships to the sea, including views that the seas were open to all, blinkered the way in which indigenous cultures were understood.