Aboriginal Fishing and Gathering Rights on Inland Waterways

Do Aboriginal communities in inland Australia have rights over fishing and gathering in and along inland rivers similar to those rights enjoyed by coastal Aboriginal communities? The question arises from time spent last week at a forum organised by the Upper Murrumbidgee Catchment Coordinating Committee looking at the state of the catchment and what work is being done on preservation and rehabilitation of the catchment.

The forum and the associated field trip (held on the riverbank at Tharwa) were addressed by Adrian Brown, newly appointed  Aboriginal Liaison Officer with ACT Parks and Conversation. Adrian outlined in brief some of the past indigenous land management practices of the Ngunnawal people of the area, of which Adrian is a member. He talked about significance of the river not only as a food and recreation source (recalling fishing trips with is father), but also it's place in ceremonies of his people. Ngunnawal boys' initiation took place over the course of a walk upriver into the [Snowy] mountains, with ceremonies at sacred sites along the river at each of which more of the law was taught to them, growing them into adulthood as they walked till the final ceremonies in the mountains at which they were fully received as adults into the community.

Adrian told us of how at adulthood members of the community would choose to accept management of a resource on behalf of the community and the way in which those with different responsibilities would work jointly where these overlapped to ensure the sustainability and availability of the resource. For example, he posed the question of what would be the overlap for those who had charge of kangaroo management and those who had charge of management of  parrots. The answer, which we foodies, landcarers, waterwatchers and others didn't identify, was grass seed. When kangaroo populations would grow overlarge they would overgraze the grasslands reducing the seed availability for the parrots, so the parrot managers and the kangaroo managers would get together to strategise, which would perhaps lead to an agreement to cull the roos.

He described how when he and his father went fishing, they would have to burn a pathway through the thick growths of blackberries and other introduced species along the banks. What began as something natural to do became illegal over the years with the local bushfire brigades haring to the sites to douse the fires and putting Adrian and his father at risk of heavy fines. He recalled sitting on rocks above with his dad and having a good laugh at the bushies dousing the blaze.

It was at that point I asked whether indigenous people to his knowledge had rights over fishing and gathering on inland rivers in the same way as coastal people do over fishing in the sea within their traditional lands. The question was sparked not only by his talk but also by a letter I had seen in the Sydney Morning Herald that morning which was the first to raise the question of what Aboriginal community input there had been into drafting the plan of management for the Murray Darling Basin, the subject of vociferous opposition from whitefella landholders along the catchment. Until I read that letter, I like I would guess most of us who have been following the discussion on the Basin plan, hadn't even thought about the use that Aboriginal communities made in the past and were probably continuing to make now of the river, the riparian corridors, and the grasslands and forests dependant on and impacting on the flow, turbidity, fecundity etc of the river system. I know of the work at preserving the Aboriginal fish traps at Brewarrina, and like many others have made lame attempts at rapping along with the Wilcannia Mob on 'Down River', there infectious evocation of hot summer days jumping off bridges, catching bream and playing the didge. But I had never wondered about where Aboriginal communities' traditional usage practices of these rivers came into conflict with private landownership or indeed conservation management.

The Ngunnawal people, Adrian said, don't have any formal rights over the use of the Bidgee, and he wasn't aware of anywhere else where Aboriginal communities do have these rights. He said that he knew of some who still went fishing (and I guess hunting if not gathering) including in national parks or conservation areas where rangers were apt to turn a blind eye. But this meant that there exists no legislated right for the Ngunnawal communities to be consulted when questions of the management of the catchment come up. It does happen in practice of course, with statutory authorities and community groups engaged in management and rehabilitation projects certainly consulting with the communities, but that's not the same thing.

As it happens, the first speaker of the Forum, Peter Hairsine, Deputy Chief CSIRO Land and Water, raised this issues of Aboriginal land management practices and how little even such an august body knew about them and the gap this left in both coming to understand the impact of these on the quality of the Bidgee catchment prior to white settlement of the area. Peter handed each of us a small plastic pill tube in which he had collected some sediment from the river and pointed out that of what we were looking at about 1% was sediment that could be dated and hence attributed to pre-white settlement time, with the overwhelming majority of it having been deposited as a result of clearing and pasturing practices within the first 50 years of settlement, a frightening picture of how quickly degradation can occur. Peter talked about the minimal impact that Aboriginal fire stick cultivation practices pastoralists. But while this much is known, there is much, Peter said, that is not known, or has not been asked, of indigenous land management practices that should be considered in strategising remedial and conservation activity.

[The impact of the pastoral practices has also been seen in the rapid change in the composition of the fish population in the Bidgee with something like a reduction to just 4% of native fish species in a representative catch, the other 96% being mostly introduced European carp who are comfortable in a more generalised environment than the native species who relied on the chain-of-ponds style of watercourse with its mix of deep pools and dry weather interruptions and low turbidity. The chain-of-ponds no longer exist by and large, erosion into continuous gullies having developed.]

Happily one of the outcomes of the Forum is a commitment to engage Aboriginal communities more in planning the on-going management of the catchment. But it would be great to hear also that their rights to traditional uses of the river are formally reinstated.