WfHC - cover page (not to be used with pre-printed report ... - CSIRO

Mystical/spiritual Scientific
Personal/specific Impersonal/generic
Collective/relational Individuated/independent
Vague Precise
Small scale Large scale
Strang argues that despite the clear and necessary overlaps, „these particular characteristics
are genuinely more apparent, emphasised, and valued in the behaviour of each cultural
group‟ (Strang 1997: 285). She attributes this to differing levels of fragmentation, scale, and
continuity – that Indigenous Australians relations to landscapes tend to be smaller scale,
emphasise stability and continuity, and do not involve the same level of economic
exploitation and commoditisation of land. Strang notes that such values are significant to how
people related to their surroundings as „according to their prior knowledge and acculturation,
individuals identify, classify, interpret and evaluate each component of their surroundings,
constructing and responding to a particular vision of the environment‟ (Strang 1997:199). As
well as their implications for individual and group relations to their surroundings, Strang also
suggests some implications of her analysis for environmental sustainability more generally,
identifying factors which encourage or discourage sustainable relations with land and noting
that „while Western culture is faltering and beginning to question many of the values it has
prioritised, Aboriginal culture is quietly re-establishing a solid and sustaining environmental
relationship‟ (Strang 1997: 290).
Strang‟s 1997 account (and others produced later) of her work in the Mitchell catchment
provides important context for this project in a range of ways. The values summary above
suggests that Indigenous people and non-Indigenous pastoralists possess quite different
understandings of their surroundings, and this is borne out by other explicit statements in the
text about key differences:
As the two major groups in the watershed, the pastoralists and the Aboriginal people have
between them a range of issues concerning the land: the primary one is obviously that of
ownership and control, but there are other issues about access, about caring for the land
and its resources, and management of the activities in the watershed as a whole. Though
there is some common ground, their ideas about all these issues rarely overlap...
(Strang 1997: 10)
Strang‟s ethnographically grounded account justifies this position in a range of ways; the
opening vignette underscores how differently the two groups know about and interpret Emu
Lagoon (formerly a part of Koolatah Station, now part of the National Park); chapter 4 about
Indigenous people „living on the land‟ contrasts with chapter 5 about pastoralists „living off the
land‟); and after reviewing differing modes of spatial organisation, readings of the country,
and mapping processes, Strang analyses underlying cosmologies as „Antipodean worlds‟.
Yet she also notes ongoing processes of exchange and convergence:
despite the difficult relationship between Aboriginal and white Australians, it appears that
their cosmological constructs are, gradually, beginning to converge. Beliefs and values are
being exchanged as Aboriginal groups learn the language of science and the white
Australians search for a more holistic interaction with their environment.
(Strang 1997: 274)
Strang notes the increasingly strong emphasis on protecting „Nature‟ and on conservation
and heritage issues in Australian law and government processes as evidence for this
convergence, but then reiterates her position:
There remain, however, some intractable differences: the issue of alienation – land as
„home‟ versus land as commodity; living within the land as opposed to living off it; the idea
Working Knowledge at Oriners Station, Cape York
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