Ms Ros Kelly Minister for the Environment Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Dear Ms Kelly,
Threatened Species Legislation.
I read in the April-May edition of 'the Web', the bulletin of the
National threatened species network, that you are to immediately
develop and submit a Cabinet paper on Commonwealth threatened
species legislation. The Web states that you are aiming to
introduce the legislation in the budget session.
Thinking within the constraints of the Western tradition,
environmentalists often fail to appreciate the importance of the
role of 'culture' in the workings of the ecosystem.
The system of Dreaming law of Australia's First People, and
associated practices, lies at the core of the regulation of life
on this continent. This aspect of the culture of the First People
is little understood at present.
Any serious attempt to reverse the disastrous effect of the
imposition of European practices on Australian life cannot be
separated from the issue of the recognition of the original
Australian system of law. With your government talking about
reconciliation, it seems more than appropriate for you to address
this matter.
Could you advise me:
1. what attention, and funded research, has gone into this
fundamentally important component of threatened species
legislation, and
2. how this matter will be incorporated into the proposed
legislation?
Yours truly,
Bruce Reyburn
Enc. 1989 comments on draft national strategy. AUSTRALIAN
NATIONAL STRATEGY FOR THE CONSERVATION OF
SPECIES AND THEIR HABITATS THREATENED WITH EXTINCTION.
Comments on the draft.
Bruce Reyburn December 1989
1. The draft strategy is completely blind to the importance of
indigenous human life in the Australian ecosystem. The strategy
fails to acknowledge both the threat to Aboriginal life and the
importance of Aboriginal culture in regulating the balance between
species. The Bilby is of more importance to some
'environmentalists' than human life, when that human life is
Aboriginal. What is not widely appreciated is that the well-being
of creatures such as the Bilby is tied to that of their human
relatives - the First People of Australia. The finalised strategy
must be free of these defects if it is to be effective.
2. Aboriginal human life is part of the Australian ecosystem. Not
only are Aboriginal people significant components of the
environment in 'biological' terms, but - more importantly -their
cultural practices (both ceremonial and technological) play a
fundamental role in maintaining ecological balance. Fire-stick
farming is a familiar technological instance. Less well known are
the ceremonial practices by which messages of different kinds are
inserted into the ecosystem as part of the 'governmental' process.
Culture (practice) must be recognised as a component of ecological
order.
3. The relationship between Aboriginal practice and the land has
been denied for political purposes for two hundred years in
keeping with the doctrine of terra nullius upon which Britain
expropriated sovereignty over Australia. This denial has resulted
in a false dichotomy between land and people in Anglo-Australian
thought. This false thinking has underwritten policy in which
Aboriginal people (human species) are separated from their living
countries (habitat). The land is expropriated for commercial use
(such as cattle stations) and the people are consigned to
reservations or urban centres. Both people and land undergo trauma
when this happens.
4. While there has been an appreciation of the error of separating
Aboriginal children from their parents, there has yet to be a
similar appreciation of the error of separating Aboriginal people
from their living countries. We can think of Aboriginal culture as
a text (a collection of messages) related to the environmental
context in the same way that we can regard a species as a
collection of genetic and behavioural messages related to the
constraints of habitat. Both are interdependent. The Australian
ecosystem is inscribed in the lives of those Aboriginal people who
carry Aboriginal law. The complete ecological unit in Australia is
that arrived at by the complementary relationship formed between
Aboriginal culture/law and the non-human ecosystem. Analysis which
does not factor-in the order of the Dreaming is not well formed.
5. Having measured the importance of Aboriginal culture in
inappropriate technological, rather than ecological, terms Anglo-
Australia has wrongly concluded that Aboriginal life is obsolete
in the contemporary world. We similarly fail to acknowledge the
mismanagement of life which resulted from the imposition of
European norms on indigenious life. The dieback, loss of top soil,
species invasions, silting up of water-courses, accumulation of
litter and hot fires (to mention a few of the effects) are
messages from the environment to us stating the inapproriateness
of European practices in the Australian ecosystem.
6. The Dreaming law of the Aboriginal people represents the
highest point of articulation of the Australian ecosystem. It is
coded in a language as difficult to decode as that of D.N.A.. The
narrow focus of modern science has prevented even the recognition
of the existence of this level of reality, let alone committed
resources towards developing a working understanding of it.
7. When the practices associated with Dreaming law are prevented
from operating, the system must drop to a lower level in search of
a new equilibrium. There is no guarantee that there is a lower
level. There may only be continued instability as the ecosystem
unravels.
8. Part of the remedy to the the maladaptive way of life imposed
on Australia from Europe is to restore Aboriginal law to its
proper place at the core of the mainstream decision-making process
of life and land management. This requires adapting
Anglo-Australian practices in a way which encourages Aboriginal
lawmen to carry out the 'business' for their relevant
Dreaming/species. This encouragement must be paid for, in real
terms, in recognition of the vital services our contemporary
Paleolithic land/life priests perform. We must come to see these
men as being at the centre of the Australian life design, not at
the periphery. At the moment they are regarded as obstacles to
progress rather than governors of ecological balance. The
challenge of our times is to see them in relation to the living
earth rather than highrise corporate dreams.
9. These points are merely a quick sketch intended to place the
matter of the relationship between the suppression of Aboriginal
law and the extinction of species on the agenda. Lack of resources
prevent a fuller and detailed submission from being made. Any
strategy intended to address the real problems underlying
species/habitat extinction which does not fully examine this
relationship is just more government whitewash, recycled paper
nonwithstanding.