Aboriginal owned and jointly managed national parks

In Australia, Indigenous people contest the idea that any place, land, sea or sky, can be undisturbed wilderness; everywhere has a story and a cultural context. Aboriginal land management is conceptualised as ‘Caring for Country’, where Country is home; cared for in the proper way, it is ‘quiet’. By contrast, land, sea or sky that is uncared for, where forms of traditional custodianship have been disrupted and denied access, is ‘wild’, without songs and ceremonies (Rose 1996, 19). ‘Country’, as an IUCN cultural value, underpins a great diversity of management regimes in Australia, from state-owned national parks to Indigenous lands, owned under freehold or native title. Indigenous Protected Areas comprise 44.6 per cent of the National Reserve System not including Aboriginal owned and jointly managed national parks and other co-management arrangements. This chapter examines Indigenous participation in the Australian conservation estate with a focus on Aboriginal owned and jointly managed national parks in New South Wales, and the caring of land for cultural imperatives as well as biodiversity conservation outcomes. A first-hand account of Aboriginal land management from the Chairperson of the Board of Mutawintji National Park, Warlpa Kutijika Thompson, explores the relationship of Aboriginal Owners to the conservation estate, reinforced through the relational values of Aboriginal land management and through the power of storytelling