Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context? - Rainforest ...

Sandra PannellLike Marilyn Strathern, she also warns social scientists against universalising our owncultural categories, “thus rendering ourselves deaf to alternative ways of structuring theworld” (1980: 21).With the lessons of the Wet Tropics and Komodo National Park ringing in our ears, wherelocal people are either collapsed into nature or excluded from it, MacCormack’s cautionarycomments lead us to ask the question: is there a way out of, or around, the nature-cultureparadigm? Perhaps, the answer to this question can be found in statements made byAboriginal people in North Queensland.“NO DIFFERENCE, THEY BOTH TOGETHER, NATURE ANDCULTURE”If Hageners have no concept of nature and culture, then it appears that the TraditionalOwners of the Wet Tropics make no distinction between nature and culture. A commonobservation made by Aboriginal people in this region is that there is “no difference, they bothtogether, nature and culture”. Djabugay elder, Rhonda Brim, is referring here to the layer ofsymbolism and meaning absent from the current listing of the Wet Tropics for its naturalvalues. In situations like the wet tropical rainforests of north-east Queensland, the culturalpresence of hunter-gatherer people who “exploit the natural environment in a sustainableway”, have “minimal material culture” and largely “non-monumental lifestyles” (Fowler 2003:56) is not always apparent to Western ways of looking and thinking about forest landscapes.Yet, as Fowler remarks, the statement that “’there is nothing there’ is in effect aninconceivable conclusion to expect from a serious examination of any area of land” (loc. cit.).The history of protected area gazettal and management in Australia, whether national parksor World Heritage properties, certainly points to a perceptual (and obvious political) inabilityto see culture in nature (Smyth 2001), whether Indigenous or Anglo-Australian cultures. AsAnna Tsing (2003) points out, the scientific construction of nature, authorised by claims toobjectivity and neutrality, readily conceals the operation of Western cultural frameworks, aswell as those of minority groups.For Rainforest Aboriginal people, like the Anangu Traditional Owners of Uluru Kata Tjuta, theidea of ‘nature’ as an autonomous domain separated from culture is an anathema to theirbeliefs. As Rhonda Brim observes, “that’s whiteman identifying and dividing nature andculture. When we look at the World Heritage area we don’t just see trees, we see bushtucker, we don’t just see rainforest, we see our home, our traditional country.”For Djabugay people, like other Rainforest Aboriginal people, their traditional responsibility tocare for bulmba (‘country’) derives from the charter of Bulurru or the ‘Law’, established in the‘Dreamtime’ and subsequently, transmitted from generation to generation of Djabugaypeople (Duffin and Brim n.d.). In the words of two Djabugay women:All things come from Bulurru – the sun, the moon and stars, the food we eat,the creatures of the world, the plants and trees, the rain, the very land itself.We ourselves come from Bulurru. Bulurru is the good spirit that protects lifeand Law (Duffin and Brim n.d.: 5).As these comments indicate, Bulurru is acknowledged as the source of all life forms, naturalphenomena, social customs, subsistence practices, and cultural knowledge, which compriseand inform the world inhabited by Djabugay people. In this sense, Bulurru providesDjabugay people with their “plan of life”, as the anthropologist, W. E. H. Stanner, oncedescribed the role of the Dreaming in Aboriginal society (Stanner 1963: 10).For the Traditional Owners of the Wet Tropics, country is regarded as a conscious entity thatgenerates and responds to their actions. As a counterpoint to conservationist views of72