Livelihood values in Indigenous cultural fishing: Report of a meeting with Indigenous cultural fishers on the south coast of NSW

Abstract

This report is based on discussions from the Aboriginal Fishing Rights Gathering (the gathering) held in Bingie on the New South Wales (NSW) south coast from 5 to 6 September 2015. It provides a summary of the presentations given by community members, academics and legal experts with regard to cultural fishing and the values associated with cultural fishing activities. The report also details the aspirations and future directions of local Aboriginal community members who hold common values and interests as cultural fishers in the region. This report has been produced by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) for the benefit of the NSW Aboriginal Fishing Rights Group (AFRG) as part of a research project entitled Livelihood Values in Indigenous Customary Fishing. The project has been funded for two years by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC). The NSW south coast has been identified as a potential case study site, and this report explores future research collaborations with Aboriginal community members who hold ties to this area. It is important to note from the outset that the idea of ‘mapping’ values was identified by community members as being problematic due to previous misuse of cultural information by external stakeholders. Accordingly, ‘mapping’ has been removed from the title, and the research project is referred to throughout this community report as Livelihood Values in Indigenous Customary Fishing.1 Also note that both ‘cultural’ and ‘customary’ fishing are used in this report; while ‘customary’ is used in the official project title, the traditional owners we talked to prefer ‘cultural’. As such, specific references to the NSW south coast use ‘cultural’.