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(Dr. Fiona Walsh) Across Australia there are many,
many different Aboriginal groups of people,
some who are defined by their language,
and we know that there's four to 600 or more languages that
were once in Australia. There's quite a number of them
that are still actively spoken as a first language.
Where I speak from is mostly influenced by the areas
of country where I work, so I haven't had experience
in coastal environments where Aboriginal groups
are using their country, or in the Torres Strait,
but I think it's really important to acknowledge and
recognise that their practices there are unique to them.
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From an archaeological perspective Aboriginal
people have occupied Australia for at least 50,000 years,
so that's 50,000 years of burning, of manipulating
water sources, of hunting, and affecting the landscape
through other tools and ways, the landscape
and the species within it. And then from Aboriginal
perspectives the care is manifested through
peoples relationship through Jukurrpa, and that...
or dreaming, or the laws of the country.
There's no direct translation of care, but there
is within a number of certainly desert cultures a
term that for the western desert side is called
Kanyirninpa, which means to hold, but also to be held by.
So there's this sense of a reciprocal relation between people and place.
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The word biodiversity is an unfamiliar one to many people.
Within Aboriginal languages to what I'm familiar
with, there's no direct translations of the word
biodiversity, but there are translations of words
which have a sort of conceptual similarity.
There's a term Anpernirrentye, which talks about
the relatedness between all things.
And so it's a term that brings together people,
and species, and Jukurrpa, and country, and is focused
on the interconnections between those.
And there's similar terms we know from other Aboriginal languages.
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Well those things that make up biodiversity,
you know from what I hear, are important to very
many Aboriginal people, a surprising number,
including people who live in urban city context.
Where that comes from is people's entire economy
and lives was directly reliant on eating the
plants and the animals, and finding the waters,
and using the resource of the landscape
for their food, for their medicine.
So it was the bush supermarket, the bush pharmacy,
the hardware shop, all those different resources
had to be gathered, and so it was part
of people's health, their economy.
It is also a focus of people's personal identity.
Here's the really good example of where
biodiversity is important to people.
So I'm sitting here next to a forkleaf corkwood.
Now this one tree has within it at least five
different values where it's useful to local people.
There's a flower which is a source of nectar for people.
So that flower was sucked or dipped into water to make a fermented drink.
There's the follicles of the tree which were used as
play items by kids. They've got very dense black charcoal
on the bark, and that's used as a medicine for skin conditions.
Shade's a really critical resource,
and it provides really dense shade.
It's a habitat for a number of animals that are hunted by people.
So it's got these sort of multiple uses within
the one plant that then connect it to people,
and connect it to other species.
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How people monitor biodiversity and changes over time is through
accumulated long term observations, lifelong observations.
The state or condition of plants or animals
is a really common topic of discussion day to day.
You know, as we might sit around the
breakfast table and talk about the weather for the day,
Arrernte people might sit round and look at
what the ants are doing, and what that
tells them about the weather for that day.
So there's daily observations which are part of everyday
conversation, and then there's remembered observations
that sort of track back over time.
And then there's knowledge which is accumulated from people,
from their grandparents and parents, which accumulates
across generations. And then people travel
a lot, and so there accumulating observations
over space as well, and seeing land in different
states and conditions. So in this country we've
had a rapid proliferation of the weed buffel grass
in the last 20 years, and many people would grow
up to seeing buffel as a normal part of the landscape.
Unless they go out with older people, from whom they hear
the stories of how it was otherwise, how there was a much
wider diversity of plants, than just this new plant,
this stranger plant that's come.
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So there's a range of impacts upon Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people from biodiversity decline that's caused by
invasive species and other threatening processes.
And worldwide Indigenous people are some of the first people
to be impacted and affected by declines in species,
because it's very often those people who
are subsisting on those local resources.
And as they decline they're experiencing food
shortages, can't find the particular medicines
they want, there's a shortage of the timber
artefacts they need to make tools.
So for Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people the scarcities are felt first and foremost.
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I think it's recognised that Aboriginal people,
through their long residency, through their multiple
connections to a particular place, and through
their commitments to supporting younger children,
want to play a part in natural resource management,
species management, biodiversity management.
In my experience lots of Aboriginal people are
really keen to learn about well presented,
clear accessible science ways.
And I think increasingly more scientists are curious
about the knowledge of local people, including Indigenous people.
And so, you know, a significant benefit is a
better understanding of each other,
and hopefully with that a better respect.
And there's this movement to actually look at an integration,
or I prefer the term complementarity, looking out for
where the complementarities, the similarities and
the differences are between the two.
With the idea that if we have a rich array of sources,
we've got a rich array of solutions for the future.
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