On the visibility of Indigenous Australian systems of marine tenure

Abstract

Between 1921 and 1977 twelve anthropologists worked in coastal communities of Arnhem Land in Australia's Northern Territory, researching and writing about land tenure, among other things, yet not one of them mentioned the existence of a system of customary marine tenure (for the resulting publications see: Tindale 1925-6; Warner 1937; Worsley 1954; Berndt 1964,1970,1976; Rose 1960; Hiatt 1965; Shapiro 1969; Turner 1974; Meehan 1982; Morphy 1991; Keen 1994;Williams 1986). Some of them such as Ronald Berndt (1976) actually mapped sites in the sea. Today there is a well developed and dynamic system of indigenous marine tenure along the Arnhem Land Coast. This lack of visibility raises a number of questions including how old these systems are and why if they have any antiquity they have not been more visible. Three possible explanations have been advanced for this lack of visibility. It might be that customary marine tenure systems are fragile (see Palmer 1988) so that they disappear quickly under the impact of colonialism. Why they might be fragile is not clear but one factor could relate to the policing of rights and the difficulties created when outsiders introduce new and radically changed maritime technologies which have not been available to Aboriginal people until recently. However, new technology can also, strengthen and extend relations with the maritime environment as the introduction of the dugout canoe seems to have done in Arnhem Land (see below). The late discovery of marine tenure might be because it is only a recent development that has come about under the impact of land rights legislation that provides for the possibility of closing-off of the seas to non-Indigenous people in the Northern Territory. This could have led to an extension of the land based arrangements out into the sea so that open access has given way to a marine tenure system. Another possibility is that longstanding practices and arrangements of a more informal nature have firmed up under the impact of the growing prevalence of legal and rights discourses in Aboriginal affairs. With a better understanding among Aboriginal people of the way in which the Australian legal system works, the uncodified and relatively informal indigenous modes of expression of these rights of control, may have been translated into the language of the encapsulating society. In this paper I want to consider this issue of visibility of the system of Indigenous marine tenure in the waters surrounding Croker Island off the coast of Arnhem Land, from an historical perspective. I will begin with an outline of the background on which this research is based. I will then look at what sparse evidence there is for the existence of an Indigenous system of marine tenure beginning with the history of the relationship with the Macassan and Buginese fisherman that came to Arnhem Land from the early 18th century onwards before considering more recent history. Show more