Displacing Indigenous Cultural Landscapes: the Naturalistic Gaze at Fraser Island World Heritage Area

Displacing Indigenous Cultural Landscapes:the Naturalistic Gaze at Fraser IslandWorld Heritage Areageor_644 398..410

JENNIFER CARTERFaculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of the Sunshine Coast, MAROOCHYDORE DC, Qld4558, Australia. Email: [email protected]

Received 23 February 2009; Revised 15 December 2009; Accepted 6 January 2010

AbstractA naturalistic gaze characterises protected area management in Australia, andreproduces the nature–culture dichotomy that is thoroughly criticised in geo-graphical discourse. This naturalistic gaze is exacerbated by the compartmental-ism of agency roles and responsibilities in protected areas. This paper maintainsthat many agencies, either unconsciously or deliberately, perpetuate the natural-istic gaze in a way that displaces Indigenous people from authentic engagement inprotected area management. This paper provides an example of such marginali-sation of Indigenous Australians in the world heritage area of Fraser Island, whichis located in one of the most rapidly urbanising parts of Australia where Indig-enous people have limited rights. The paper argues that a new process is requiredthat networks people and place using concepts of nature/culture hybridity to avoidthe current conceptual dualisms and the consequent marginalisation of Indigenouspeople. Such a dialectic and relational approach introduces contexts, meaningsand associations that are excluded by current environmental and heritage para-digms that have the potential to marginalise many local voices. It proposes thatthose responsible for world heritage and protected area planning and managementmust fully realise or renominate these areas as landscapes in which people, andperhaps especially Indigenous Australians, are always and everywhere embeddedand implicated in ‘natural’ environments. This will require changes in governanceand in the predominantly technocratically-driven processes by which these areasare currently designated and managed.

KEY WORDS nature–culture; the naturalistic gaze; cultural landscape; worldheritage; Indigenous Australia

Introduction

World Heritage areas as nature–culture silosNew geographical perspectives on people andplace introduce the notions of hybridised, net-worked, and relational forms of nature–culture.Humans, animals and machines are deemed toexist in relation to each other as hybrid forms(Whatmore, 2002) connected through actor-

networks (Latour, 1993). The often-separateddomains of nature and culture are now con-structed as processes and flows that are continu-ously re(connected) through fluid and sharedknowledges and practices (Howitt, 2001; Braun,2004). Diversity occurs in the form and contextof each nature–culture system, which is con-structed through multiple agency and webs ofconnectivity (Head and Muir, 2006).

398 Geographical Research • November 2010 • 48(4):398–410doi: 10.1111/j.1745-5871.2010.00644.x

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Despite these new geographical frameworks ofhybridities, relations, networks and connections,protected area management often perpetuates aseparationist paradigm of the nature–culturedualism, even when a single agency has respon-sibility for both (Head and Muir, 2006; Harmon,2007). Some of this disjuncture occurs in theworld heritage arena because the terminology ofseparate natural and cultural values is pervasivein planning for and in managing such sites,without a critical analysis of its implications.Significant places are predominantly assessedusing separate environmental impact and culturalheritage assessments, relying on documentedevidence within a structured inventory and amaterial-centred approach to the categorising of‘natural’ or ‘cultural’ values (Andrade, 2000;Jackson, 2006). An area, if it qualifies, is desig-nated as World Heritage (or some other level ofprotected status) on the basis of either or both ofthese categories. But ‘values’ are subjective judg-ments that are multiple and contested; they arenot an objective categorisation of landscapeattributes:

The language of ‘World Heritage values’ pro-vides a compelling example of how sharedlabels, but differing constructs and assumptiveworlds, dominate, drive and increasinglydivide discussions of management issues,stakeholder concerns, research directions,agency responsibilities and the very nature and‘attributes’ of the environment in question. . . The confusion also reflects pervasive dis-ciplinary divides with respect to discipline andpractice-specific conceptual and operationalmeanings of ‘values’ . . . (Reser and Bentrup-perbäumer, 2005, 126).

Furthermore, the nature–culture disjuncture isexacerbated by a naturalistic gaze that underpinsprotected area management in many parts ofthe world (Andrade, 2000). Despite increasednumbers of scientists taking paradigmatic leaps,based on their belief that their disciplines alonecannot solve environmental problems (Harmon,2007) there is slippage from the interdisciplinarynature of constructs such as ‘natural’ and ‘values’toward understandings framed from within a sci-entistic framework that rarely takes note of socialscientific referents.

Within such a naturalistic gaze, species, eco-systems and geodiversity are the bases on whichmany places are considered worthy of protectionand are seen as ‘natural’, while human impacts inthese ‘natural’ places are deemed to degrade,

threaten or destroy natural values (Jones, 2003).The presence and imprint of humans in theseimagined wildlands is simply not acknowledged(Andrade, 2000). Cronon (1996, 19) reminds usof the pervasive denial of historical processes ofhuman-nature interaction that create any land-scape (and of the fact that notions of the land-scape are themselves culturally embedded):

. . . everything we know about environmentalhistory suggests that people have beenmanipulating the natural world on variousscales for as long as we have a record of theirpassing. . . .

The term ‘cultural landscape’ has been a part ofthe geographical and wider social science litera-ture for decades, and became prominent in theworld heritage arena in the 1990s (Jones, 2003).The term was adopted internationally by theWorld Heritage Committee1 with the intention oflinking natural and cultural values in a protectedlandscape, which would include the setting andcontext in which monuments, sites, structuresand objects occur and the knowledges, practicesand meanings of ‘living cultures’.

Australian heritage documentation, too, recog-nises the fuzzy and layered notion of values butthe unproblematic application of language andconceptual understandings around natural valuesby many institutions has become confusing,costly and damaging to credible, interdiscipli-nary collaboration in landscape protection (Reserand Bentrupperbäumer, 2005). Although theAustralian (federal) government established theAustralian World Heritage Advisory Committee2

to cut across these nature–culture dualisms,state legislation dominates natural and culturalresource management and this can vary signifi-cantly from state to state. Intangible values, suchas cultural traditions and practices, are particu-larly difficult to articulate and this new nomen-clature has not prevented the frequently notedtendency for environmental and heritage dis-courses employed by agencies to depopulate sig-nificant places which have been designated fortheir ‘natural’ values (Andrade, 2000). The domi-nant, scientistic focus on tangible relics andproducts over the intangible occludes or erasesthese meanings and co-opts people into thedominant discourse. People’s meanings andassociations are further excluded by specificmanagement actions. For example, the designa-tion of buffer zones can fail to recognise theconnections between place as networked culturalactivity and as meaning (Porter, 2007).

J. Carter: Displacing Indigenous Cultural Landscapes 399

© 2010 The AuthorGeographical Research © 2010 Institute of Australian Geographers

The new nomenclature has not yet beenadequately applied in Australia. Continued dual-istic understandings of natural and culturalvalues curtail the opportunities that might besought from a ‘third nature’, that is, from post-European landscape transformation, and fromany subsequent agreements or arrangementsmade with regard to that landscape (Head, 2000).

Indigenous engagement in World HeritageThe dominant naturalistic gaze particularly actsto remove or ignore the Indigenous3 imprint andimpact on such landscapes (Andrade, 2000;Nigh, 2002). There is a tendency to exclude ordownplay Indigenous perspectives when theseseparationist paradigms are maintained in and bysettler societies because the complex connectionsbetween nature and culture are often ignored ormisunderstood by the dominant institutional per-spectives (Sutherland and Muir, 2001). Anyexception requires that Indigenous knowledgesand impacts enhance the resource values of anarea or offer utilitarian benefits, at which pointthey become ‘cultural’ values largely based on amaterial-centred valuation (Andrade, 2000). Thisintroduces a tension between the ‘scientific’ envi-ronmental nature of a protected area and Aborigi-nal historical spiritual/cultural sensibilities andinterests that can be seen in Australian worldheritage areas such as Kakadu National Park(Palmer, 2006; 2007).

Joint management structures are sometimesestablished to bring together scientistic and otherforms of knowledge about managing isolatedprotected areas and these mostly occur whereIndigenous people have secured land tenureunder settler legislation (Andrade, 2000; Head,2000). Yet even the notion of joint managementis problematic because it implies that mutualrespect and good governance of nature–cultureinteractions in those places can be successful.There is still an unconscious division between anIndigenous cultural domain and the environmen-tal work which scientists claim in those jointlymanaged protected areas. While there are plentyof individuals who genuinely engage with Indig-enous people, collaboration in the administra-tion, planning and decision-making about jointlymanaged protected areas is frequently absent ordisguised (see, for example, Carter and Hill,2007). Even the preconditions for collaborationmay be absent because one of the critical precon-ditions is to transcend the binaries of nature andculture that are currently structured into agencyways of working and are replicated in the selec-

tion criteria for jobs and in the ways that WorldHeritage nominations are set up, audited andreported.

This schism between scientistic natural studyand Indigenous cultural belonging is often per-petuated because only in remote parts of Austra-lia are Indigenous people seen as ‘authentic’(Carter and Hollinsworth, 2009). As Crononexplains:

. . . the only poor people who count when wil-derness is the issue are hunter-gatherers, whopresumably do not consider themselves to bepoor in the first place. The dualism at the heartof wilderness encourages its advocates to con-ceive of its protection as a crude conflictbetween the ‘human’ and the ‘nonhuman’.. . . Why in the debates about pristine naturalareas are ‘primitive’ peoples idealized, evensentimentalized, until the moment they dosomething unprimitive, modern, and unnatu-ral, and thereby fall from environmentalgrace? . . . . The wilderness dualism tends tocast any use as abuse, and thereby denies us amiddle ground . . . (Cronon, 1996, 20–21).

This notion of Aboriginality, authenticity andtraditional ways of being partly results fromAustralian settler legislation4 which creates andconfers various land use and rights regimes inremote parts of Australia. Parks and other spacesin, for example, urbanised Sydney or southeastQueensland are much more likely to see theerasure of an Aboriginal presence because Indig-enous people in these areas are dispersed andhave no land tenure. This has particular implica-tions for protected areas in less isolated andrapidly urbanising parts of Australia, and for theIndigenous people who claim traditional owner-ship of these lands. Where land tenure or nativetitle rights have not been resolved, Indigenouspeoples’ involvement in protected areas is farharder to secure.

The first determination of Native Title in themore densely settled parts of Australia ignoredthe connections to the lands expressed by theIndigenous Yorta Yorta people in preference tocontrary evidence from non-Indigenous sources(Ellemor, 2003). That judgement viewed theIndigenous ‘connection’ as having been ‘washedaway’ in the ‘tide of [non-Indigenous place-making] history’. Bauman and Williams (2004)contend that legalistic native title determinationsare incapable of interrogating people place rela-tionships in settled Australia in ways that preventdisadvantage to Indigenous people.

400 Geographical Research • November 2010 • 48(4):398–410


The nature–culture dualism is uncriticallyapplied and perpetuated by agency compartmen-talisation of ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ frameworksand of their related activities. For example,cultural heritage is ‘conserved’ by departmentsthat also conserve environmental values, whilenatural resources management, that is, the pro-ductive value of nature, belongs with anotherdepartment. There are limited and constrainedways in which people are allowed to manifestactivities that transcend each category. Forexample, ‘fishing’ may be considered an Indig-enous cultural activity – a relic of the landscapeto be ‘conserved’ along with biodiversity – butnot as a commercial activity and part of the pro-ductive use of natural resources (Carter and Hill,2007). Just as problematically, some see Indig-enous fishers as ‘recreational’, and their activitiesthus become relegated to being equivocal withthose of any fisher, at which point they are nolonger seen as performing traditional ‘authentic’roles. The very act of formalising separate agree-ments (such as Indigenous Land Use Agreementsand Cultural Heritage Agreements) under differ-ent legislative and administrative structures per-petuates the nature–culture dualism.

Phillips (1998), stressing the fluid nature of‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ values, asks whether thiscontinued separation is maintained because it iseasier for agencies to ‘protect’ areas that areimagined to be depopulated, than it is to plan andmanage for differences in meanings, understand-ings and discourses of nature–culture interaction.Indigenous understandings of landscape may besubject to a deliberate ‘active erasure of Indig-enous governance’ (Howitt, 2006, 57). At othertimes they are misrepresented, even by the mostwell-intentioned institutions involved in placemanagement, because they fail to recognise themeanings that people attach to place (Jones,2007). Peoples’ associations with particulartracts of land are diverse and complex, conferringa complexity of identities, knowledges, rules,rights, duties and responsibilities, such as certainentitlements as being spokesperson for, or receiv-ing benefits from, that place (Tehan, 1998).Although the marginalisation of local knowl-edges, practices and heritages, except where theymirror scientific concerns, is common to Indig-enous and non-Indigenous people (see, forexample, Kirkpatrick, 2001), this paper providesa critical analysis of how the prevailing natural-istic gaze in Australian protected area manage-ment serves to displace Indigenous people, witha particular emphasis on its implications in

rapidly urbanising areas. Using Fraser Island, asa case study, it examines how natural and culturalvalues are intertwined, and conversely, how theyare segregated, in this World Heritage area. Twothemes emerged, a clear intent to twin naturaland cultural values during the process of nomi-nating the area as World Heritage (even thoughthe 1992 inscription was made on the basis of thearea’s natural values only), and the reality ofoperationalising this intent since the inscriptionof the area. With the introduction of ‘culturallandscapes’ within World Heritage nomencla-ture, this paper then argues that it might be timelyto reconsider listing of this World Heritage areaas a cultural landscape. It finally proposes aplace-based approach by which the cultural land-scape might be described and performed as arelational notion.

Placing Fraser Island as World Heritage

Fraser IslandFraser Island is an instructive example of a WorldHeritage protected area that was declared inAustralia in ways that suppressed Indigenouspeoples’ views and aspirations for recognitionand participation. Fraser Island is located insoutheast Queensland, a rapidly urbanising partof coastal Australia (Figure 1). The island is partof the Great Sandy Region which also includesthe Cooloola area, Noosa North Shore and thewaters of Hervey Bay and the Great Sandy Strait(Grose, 1995). Fraser Island is part of the GreatSandy National Park which includes the adjacentCooloola sandmass on the mainland. WhileFraser Island has already been inscribed on theWorld Heritage Register, nominations for theinclusion of adjacent areas in the wider GreatSandy Region are also in preparation (EPA,2007).

Although recorded histories differ, the mainAboriginal clans of Fraser Island (or K’gariand its variants) are the Dulingbara, Batjala(Badtjala), and Ngulungbara (Tindale, 1974).Collectively they were known as the Badjala orButchulla people (Steele, 1984; Grose, 1995) andthey currently claim native title rights under thisname. In 1860 the whole of Fraser Island wasdeclared an Aboriginal Reserve, but that declara-tion was revoked in 1864 after the value of itstimber resources was realised. In 1897 a reserveto which Aboriginal people from throughoutQueensland were forcibly sent was establishedfirst at North White Cliffs, and then relocated toBogimbah Creek. By 1906 Aboriginal people



were removed from the island and forced ontoreserves elsewhere, some more than 1000 kmaway (Boer and Wiffen, 2006). A handful ofpeople, one of whom was ill, remained at thattime. Until the 1970s–1980s, Queensland Indig-enous people required government approval forthe management of their property, wages,savings, travel, estate planning, and marriage(Kidd, 1997). Proving continuous connection tothis land, as required by the Native Title Act, wastherefore almost impossible because of theremovals and, to date, there has been no determi-nation of native title over Fraser Island. Manytraditional landowners of Fraser Island nowreside in the adjacent ‘gateway community’ of

Hervey Bay or further afield in larger cities,inhibiting recognition of their rights to formallyprescribed engagement and decision-makingabout the island, although many maintain theirconnection to the island through periodic visits.

The case study described below was con-ducted between 2005–2008 and is based on par-ticipant observation at thirteen regional naturalresource management meetings, twenty-twointerviews with traditional owners of FraserIsland and with staff from the institutions respon-sible for environmental and heritage protection,and document analysis. Aboriginal peopleattending natural resource management meet-ings, through their representative body, invited

Figure 1 Locality map of Fraser Island and its surrounds. The map shows several place-names mentioned in the article.



the author to conduct research on the basis of herexperience of working with Aboriginal people innatural and cultural resource management else-where in remote Australia.

All data related to natural or cultural values,and to the context of managing the protected areafor either of these values, were identified andpooled. Two themes emerged from the analysesof these data: the intent of the nominationprocess to twin nature and culture; juxtaposedwith the difficulty of operationalising this notion,even within the most recently released plan ofmanagement. While the case study is largely pre-sented in chronological format, this formatmirrors the two emergent themes, reflecting thetime differences between planning (nominating)and operationalising (managing) the inscribedarea.

Planning for nomination: attempts to bridgethe nature–culture divideFraser Island was inscribed on the World Heri-tage list in 1992 because of its natural values. Itsunique geomorphology features the oldest andlargest number of independent coastal dunesystems in Australia, and the oldest timesequence of soils (podzols) with giant profilesmore than 25 metres thick (EPA, 2007). Otherunusual natural values include perched lakes,adjacent passage straits, and progressive andregressive vegetation succession associated withthe soil leaching that characterises coastal duneformation, vegetation change and soil develop-ment. Fraser Island is currently marketed to tour-ists as the very embodiment of nature and it isthese features that are used to attract the interna-tional tourist dollar. The Aboriginal presence isacknowledged, but in ways that ‘other’, racialiseand essentialise Aboriginal ‘culture’ as part of the‘natural’ domain (Peace, 2001; 2005; Mühl-haüsler and Peace, 2001).

Prior to its listing, the Commission of Inquiryinto the Conservation, Management and Use ofFraser Island and the Great Sandy Region (CIC-MUFIGSR, 1990a) detailed the historical andcultural connections of Aboriginal people to thearea, and submission summaries from Aboriginalpeople and organisations are contained in CIC-MUFIGSR (1990b), where the

. . . key recurring issues of Aboriginal sub-missions to government inquiries are thoseof dispossession and marginalisation, thefrustrations of powerlessness (Grose, 1995,62).

Co-management, community-based manage-ment, leaseback arrangements, return of the landto the Butchulla people, and interdisciplinarynatural and cultural projects were suggested asgovernance and engagement models for involv-ing Aboriginal people in the management of theprotected area. Aboriginal people and culturewere regarded as being part of the heritage valuesof the area, and some of these models andprojects were advocated by the state agencyresponsible for Aboriginal people at the time.

Uncertainty remained over how Aboriginalsocial and cultural issues could be reconciledwith the competing interests in the broader, non-Indigenous community (CICMUFIGSR, 1991a).The CICMUFIGSR (1991a) noted that there wasno single or clearly identifiable representative orbody of Aboriginal people with whom to com-municate, a comment possibly made in responseto the heavy criticism that it had received about aprevious report that detailed consideration ofAboriginal interests and alternative options(CICMUFIGSR, 1991b). The Inquiry concludedthat the region be nominated to the World Heri-tage Committee for its natural values (only),noting that its inscription:

. . . imposes no restrictions on Aboriginalinterests in an area . . . the permanent pre-servation of natural and cultural values inthe region is the paramount consideration. . . (CICMUFIGSR, 1991a, 35–36).

Its recommendations attempted to include someAboriginal interests, since it suggested that:

. . . the plan of management designate andotherwise provide for a substantial area ofland on Fraser Island to be managed byAboriginal people. . . . in accordance with anAboriginal management trust . . . (CICMU-FIGSR, 1991a, 95–96).

This trust was to be entitled to a Board of Man-agement position after inscription of the propertyon the Register, with an area of special signifi-cance to be selected by a government official inconsultation with the trust. A separate manage-ment plan was to be developed for such an area.Employment, facilities, knowledges, and huntingand gathering rights of Aboriginal people were tobe recognised.

In places close to the eastern seaboard,Aboriginal people are not seen as ‘authentic’(Carter and Hollinsworth, 2009), and places likeFraser Island have been designated as world heri-tage for their ‘natural’ values as if there were no



interaction between people and their environ-ment. This exclusion is explicable given thecontext of the time of the nomination, includingthere being no Indigenous organisational base atthe time of nomination and a contemporaryobsession with Indigeneity as archaeologicalmaterial culture rather than as a living presence,but the passage of thirty years has seen no sys-tematic, genuine inclusion of Aboriginal interestsin the management of the World Heritage area.The contemporary situation, including the socio-political rhetoric of community engagement andgovernance requires a more detailed scrutiny ofAboriginal engagement as detailed below.

Ongoing management: difficulties in bridgingthe nature–culture divideAfter its inscription, the Queensland Governmentannounced that the Great Sandy Region (FraserIsland and Cooloola) would be managed as anarea of the highest conservation value (Brown,2000, 83), an intention upheld since then by theEnvironmental Protection Agency/QueenslandParks and Wildlife Service (EPA/QPWS) underthe Nature Conservation Act 1992 and the Rec-reation Areas Management Act 1988, legislationpredominantly protecting natural values. Man-agement structures include the Fraser IslandWorld Heritage Area Management Committee,Fraser Island World Heritage Area ScientificAdvisory Committee, Fraser Island World Heri-tage Area Community Advisory Committee,Great Sandy Region Heritage Advisory Commit-tee, Hervey Bay Marine Park Permits AdvisoryCommittee, Maritime Infrastructure WorkingGroup and other reference and working groupsincluding a more recently established IndigenousAdvisory Committee (IAC) with a mandate overFraser Island and beyond to the gateway areas.

The IAC is resourced to visit with representa-tives of traditional landowners who no longer livein the region, and several interviewers expressedtheir opinion that no traditional owners sit on theBoard of Management. At present, there are‘three traditional owners who hold positions asrangers on Fraser Island’ (pers. comm., Aborigi-nal interviewee to author, December 2005) out ofaround 34 staff (UNEP, 2007); however, none arein managerial or decision-making roles. There isa strong need for engagement with traditionalowners on Fraser Island; for example, Hockingsand Twyford (1997) identified destruction ofAboriginal cultural heritage sites by camping.While this article acknowledges that thesesites are important elements that must be identi-

fied in any cultural heritage assessment, it arguesthat the dominant naturalistic gaze reduces theambit of the ‘cultural’ perspective to recordedevidence of material damage at mapped loca-tions. There is little acknowledgement of themarginalisation of Indigenous peoples from alived or everyday presence and from intangiblemeanings and values that are also impacted uponby the loss of these sites and the side effects oftourism:

‘although QPWS have looked after this placefor thirteen years environmental managementis put higher than the World Heritage thoughtit would be’ (pers. comm., Aboriginal inter-viewee to author, December 2005).

The contemporary discourse in the updated man-agement plan is that of recognising and respect-ing Indigenous responsibilities, interests andaspirations in the region, and encouraging theirmeaningful involvement in public land manage-ment in an effort to combine natural and culturalvalues. The plan encourages research into theeconomic and social dimensions of ‘traditional’resource use in the Great Sandy region. However,notions of ‘traditional’ resource use as invokedby native title legislation deny that resourceswere historically traded and used commercially(Carter and Hill, 2007; Ross and Pickering, 2002;Russell, 2004), thereby hindering Indigenousrights to ‘natural’ resources as a contemporaryeconomic practice (Gorman et al., 2008). Noland use agreements have been discussed to dateand the opportunities for negotiating agreementswith the tourism, fishing and other commercialsectors over natural and cultural resources are yetto arise. Aboriginal people continue to look forways to be economically involved on the islandor in its gateway towns:

. . . so young people don’t have to leave. Forexample, why can’t they be trained for jobslike a police officer at Eurong [a town on theisland]? (pers. comm., Aboriginal intervieweeto author, December 2005);

and:

‘They want people to dance and talk on theirtourist boats but why not offer employment ontourist boats?’ (pers. comm., Aboriginal inter-viewee to author, August 2006);

and:

Nearby old mines are opening up and wewould like mining inductions, jobs, qualifica-



tions, training . . . in job readiness, driving,resumés, and good health which couldoccur at negotiation tables . . . (pers. comm.,Aboriginal interviewee to author, January2006).

The intended twinning of natural and culturalvalues is constrained to the extent that Aboriginalcultural values and aspirations are limited tothose which are seen as continuations of ‘tradi-tional’ practices. This only encompasses anarrow range of economic and social pursuitsand ignores the very broad range of productiveways in which Aboriginal people could andshould be engaged in the Fraser Island region.This paper argues that any form of connection tothe cultural landscape (including employmentas a police officer!) supports both Aboriginalpeoples’ ways of belonging in place and intan-gible aspects of their cultures that should be readas dynamic, evolving and hybrid.

Intended actions under the updated planinclude the establishment of a regional advisorygroup on cultural heritage management (withEPA Indigenous liaison staff, representatives ofIndigenous groups and native titleholders orclaimants and from the Fraser Island Commu-nity Advisory Committee) as well as a culturalheritage management strategy informed by aninventory, and data on level of significance,threatening processes, sites of significance,access arrangements and inclusion in theregister. The updated plan articulates an institu-tional commitment to involving people in theconservation of their cultural heritage andin the joint management of this heritage,including a commitment to developing workprogrammes (with Indigenous people trainedas rangers, project officers and technical staff).Yet Butchulla people complain that the ‘threeindigenous members on the board (out of 18)can be outvoted by four wheel drivers, horseriders, others . . . [we] are consulted but notlistened to’ (pers. comm., Aboriginal inter-viewee to author, July 2006). This structurenegates Aboriginal peoples’ ability to managetheir cultural resources – at least majority mem-bership of relevant components of the gover-nance structure is required for this to occur. Yetthe updated plan continues to see Aboriginalpeople as one of many stakeholder groups.This may be appropriate for many aspects of‘natural’ resource management but is clearlymisguided in relation to ‘their’ cultural heritage.The naturalistic gaze subsumes all management

of the park within a singular, technocratic struc-ture and process.

The updated plan has a strong emphasis oncultural heritage: ‘Indigenous heritage sites . . .including contemporary sites of significance. . . and the heritage of descendents of Indig-enous people . . . will continue to be recogn-ised . . .’ (EPA, 2007, 29) and includes referencesto culturally significant locations such as IndianHead, Bogimbah Mission, a canoe tree, andseveral lakes and midden complexes. However,Butchulla people maintain that ‘institutions wanttheir staff monitoring cultural resources but twomiddens have already been destroyed’ (pers.comm., Aboriginal interviewee to author, July2006).

Recognition of Aboriginal cultural heritage isempty without the capacity to detect and controlthreats and damage to the physical sites that carrythat heritage, with the same resourcing and atten-tion being given to ‘cultural’ values as is given tothe natural domain. There is:

‘need to link cultural heritage legislation withthe environmental stuff . . . protecting a tree isboth natural and cultural . . . it is so difficultto determine, interpret when a layer of dirt withshells has been moved through development.Has development moved the shells into thisarea or was it a midden to begin with?’ (pers.comm., consultant to author, August 2006).

Erasure of cultural heritage is evident alongshorelines, as is the lack of economic/residentialpotential for Aboriginal people and for their livedconnection with the local natural and culturalenvironment; but symbolic connection remains.While the plan recognises that places transcendthe nature–culture divide:

‘Sites are considered of national significance,as they provide valuable insight into thehunter-gatherer lifestyle of Indigenous peoplein the area. These sites and the stories associ-ated with them are significant also in the sensethat they exist as important connections totraditional law and culture for Indigenousgroups in the area. The significance of manyknown Indigenous sites is yet to be fully iden-tified and assessed’ (EPA, 2007, 20),

But the managers are unable to implement thisgoal in reality:

‘Councils are putting environmental manage-ment and interpretation higher than worldheritage, while lawyers . . . tell [us] what to



do. We would like to revegetate using our owndesigns, ensure safety in services like firerefuges or playgrounds, put in the missinghistory, erect monuments . . .’ (pers. comm.,Aboriginal interviewee to author, December2005).

The intended governance structures, processes,actions and arrangements often circumscribecultural heritage and seem unable to span bothcultural and natural resource management. Thesubsuming of cultural values under the naturalgaze is concealed by the plan’s claim that ‘rec-ognition will be given to the value and impor-tance of Indigenous management practices andthe complementary role they have in natural andcultural resource management in the Region’(EPA, 2007, 29). There are no mechanisms thatlink the aspirations of Aboriginal people acrossthe nature–culture divide, and agency compart-mentalism continues to segregate and opposenature-and-culture dualisms.

Some government officers are aware of theoperational difficulties inherent in providing aplace for Aboriginal people in natural and cul-tural resource management stating ‘[we] want totake a whole of government approach but don’tknow the links and information channels needed’(pers. comm., government interviewee to author,August 2006). However, relevant agencies lacksufficient political will and the internal capacityto effectively engage with Aboriginal people.Lack of engagement is not primarily caused bydisunity or lack of capacity among Aboriginalpeople since staff explained to us that they hadbeen told to keep their engagement with Aborigi-nal people to a minimum (pers. comm., govern-ment interviewee to author, July 2007).

Aboriginal people do not live on Fraser Island,but in nearby gateway communities such asHervey Bay, where the erasure of their culturalheritage is evident but their lived connection con-tinues. Heritage displays of war memorials andother phenomena ritualise the meaning of placeto non-Indigenous people. Aboriginal people areacutely aware that they are absent from this rep-resentation, and have suggested the inclusion ofplantings in the shape of a turtle and appropriatesignage to show the continuation of a pre-settlement presence on the headland overlookingFraser Island (pers. comm., Aboriginal inter-viewee to author, December 2005). Historicallythese ‘gateways’ are no less significant than theWorld Heritage area itself; indeed some claimthat ‘maybe [Fraser Island has] been lost’ (pers.

comm., Aboriginal interviewee to author,December 2005).

Transcending the nature–culture divideThis paper has described the management of thecultural landscapes of Fraser Island, highlightingthe dominance of naturalistic understandings andthe limitation of cultural values to reconstruc-tions of a former, static Indigenous presence. Thepaper analyses how nature–culture dualismsand bifurcated natural and cultural ‘values’ areinvoked by management agencies, rather thanintegrating and connecting these values, therebyfurther separating and excluding Indigenouspeople during the planning and management ofthe area. The technocratic separation inherentin the planning and management processesreflects the dominant product-driven process,rather than the fluidity of multiple meanings,associations and complexities of events andintangible qualities that are inherent in places ofsignificance to certain cultural groups (Reser andBentrupperbäumer, 2005; Jackson 2006). In part,this dichotomous process simply results frominstitutional needs to fulfil separate environmen-tal and cultural obligations, but these siloed andtechnocratic processes fail to bridge the nature–culture divide. So long as world heritageplanning and management continues to be con-strained by the legal and technical implicationsof the nature–culture dichotomy and by its natu-ralistic gaze, Indigenous values which have beendeveloped outside of that dualism will be mar-ginalised and violated.

For Indigenous people, however, localsystems of meaning provide them with foun-dations for relating to the wider world. Inmaking judgements on any resource project oractivity, locally oriented Indigenous decisionmaking would measure value and balancecosts and benefits in relation to local questionsof rights and responsibilities, local visions ofsustainability and quality, and local structuresof accountability for performance. These arethe very things that the dominant exogen-ous industrial systems sacrifice and replacewith an homogenised system of value andexchange in which the priceless and invalu-able too often becomes the unpriced andvalueless (Howitt, 2001, 319).

Elsewhere researchers argue for an internationalinstitution to integrate nature and culture, andto provide a common language aroundbiocultural diversity, and ethical and inter-



disciplinary ways of working that genuinelysignify epistemological diversity (Andrade,2000; Harmon, 2007). Instead, followingJackson (2006), a relational concept of valueswithin a place-based approach is offered in thispaper to open up discourse about the planningand management of world heritage areas in waysthat do not bifurcate natural and cultural or tan-gible and intangible values. Kato (2006) alsoasserts that any commitment to conservationrequires the articulation of the intangible valuesthat are significant at each place, in the fashion-ing of the collective sense of connection that alocal community has with its natural world. Herplace-based approach firstly identifies those dis-tinct features of place that people interact with inan everyday sense. Similarly, Allen (2004) sug-gests that cultural heritage arrangements shouldcommence with less orthodox processes, byfirstly discussing the significance of place, land-scape and living culture which in turn inform thedesign of appropriate actions. Carter et al. (2004)developed a web-based geographic informationsystem for natural resource management thatmapped sites and places using photography andstories about practices. These approaches all startwith the notion of ‘place’ as the central tenet bywhich values and meanings are mapped.

Using Whatmore’s (2002) concept of startingin the middle and tracing networks outward, therelational values that articulate nature–culture(natural and cultural values) such as meanings,activities, associations and connections need tobe recorded, then traced along networks of placesof significance, mapping people and place ratherthan ‘sites and signposts’ (Byrne and Nugent,2004). These social cartographies are linked withsimilar places by their ‘values’ which forefrontnature–culture hybridities and new and diverseforms and ways of thinking about world heritageand its planning and management. Braun (2005)argues that Whatmore’s (2002) point of depar-ture in such a social cartography is arbitrarilyselected, as are the particular threads followingon from that point of departure. However, allpoints of departure lead to each other in a genu-inely networked approach to the mapping ofnature–culture. This alternative approach to land-scape identification and protection shows:

how things are increasingly mixed together inour highly technologised societies, such thatthe boundaries between such things as natureand society begin to ‘blur’ . . . (Braun, 2005,836).

In support of those scholars advocating relationalthinking, managers of world heritage areas mightadopt such social cartographic processes. Thisnew process requires mapping place-basedvalues as networks rather than simply reproduc-ing mixed forms of the dualism (Braun, 2005).As suggested above, this process requiresmapping values associated with place, ratherthan with nature or with culture; and mappinghow these place-based values themselves con-struct networks. Such place-based values enablethe consideration of a more holistic view of land-scape and world heritage, overcoming the dis-juncture between the intent to bridge nature andculture and the difficulty of operationalising thisintent.

Additionally, the approach creates a moreinclusive way of understanding and valuingworld heritage. Such a social cartography alignswith the views of Howitt (2001) who argues forthe envisioning of change that is constructive,blending socio-cultural and politico-economicadvocacy to challenge institutionally racist anddiscriminatory thinking. Given the emergentquality of network mapping, it is not possible tospecify how and where Indigenous people willassert their values and aspirations; however, it isclear that such values will range across manydiverse nature–culture hybridities (includingjobs, school programs, the meaning of a particu-lar place or journey, coastal protection, waterquality planning, the history of a place, recogni-tion by local government authorities and otheragencies, governance and resourcing of Indig-enous structures that will best manage that place,the ongoing native title claim process and itsimpacts on people’s attachments to that place).What is clear is that many Aboriginal peoplerefuse to be bound to and by reductionist viewsderived from a naturalistic take on world heritageand expect that their preferred ways and meansof pursuing their agendas will be respected andincorporated in the full range of managementstructures and processes. For example, the IACmight be formally charged with undertaking thisproposed social mapping process that relatesplace-based values across the region.

The implication of engaging Indigenouspeople in the world heritage arena is that such arelational approach anticipates and can incorpo-rate shifts in participation, tenure resolutions,and evaluative criteria rather than seeing thesechanges as excuses for not engaging with Indig-enous people given the difficulties and complexi-ties of current tenure resolution processes. In



settled Australia in particular, natural and cul-tural planning processes rely on native title claimresolutions, representative structures and consul-tative processes that are seen as divisive, con-tested and unworkable. This situation persists,despite Rambaldi et al. (2006)’s assertion thatIndigenous claim boundaries are always andnecessarily fuzzy, fluid, seasonal, overlapping ormoving and cannot match the static, fixed andcontested representations of native title asviewed from a legalistic settler standpoint. Thereis a further disjuncture between the formal pro-cesses of evaluation, endorsement and submis-sion of world heritage nomination and ongoingmanagement and the lived reality of multiple,contested and volatile relationships to place thatformal structures often fail to capture (Carter andHill, 2007). This proposed social cartography oflocal value and meaning, networked with otherlocalised values and meanings, bridges theformal, legalistic requirements of world heritagewith the informal, everyday lived worlds ofAboriginal people.

At Fraser Island in particular, as part of settledAustralia, visits by Butchulla people maintaintheir connection and their inside(r)ness to place,as those previously displaced reinhabit place inthe region. Where tenure-based rights have littlesignificance, Indigenous people will lose anypotential benefits that might be negotiated unlessalternative processes can be devised that recogn-ise diverse Indigenous place-based attachmentsin the world heritage arena and transcend insti-tutional divides of nature–culture. This socialcartography proposed here offers an alternativeway of inclusion that does not require the dem-onstration of tenure to receive benefits.

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park was amongstthe first areas to be re-nominated as a culturallandscape (Kato, 2006). Perhaps such a renomi-nation is required at Fraser Island and in otherplaces, particularly in urbanising areas whereIndigenous people seek to maintain their insid-e(r)ness and achieve reinhabitation. This mightallow Indigenous people to more fully receivethe benefits they desire through tourism, parkmanagement, fishing, education, planning, andthe provision of roads and local services, and soforth. Whether or not renomination occurs,world heritage inscription needs to be realisedas people’s connection with place. People’sconnectivities and interactions with place ulti-mately have the potential to protect the land-scape, including the natural values ascribedto it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThe author wishes to thank members of the Butchulla peoplefor volunteering their time to talk about issues raised in thispaper. Thanks to Adjunct Professor David Hollinsworth whocommented on the drafts of this paper, and to two anonymousreferees who offered constructive comments.

NOTES1. The World Heritage List is administered by the World

Heritage Committee under the 1972 Convention Con-cerning the Protection of the World Cultural and NaturalHeritage (Boer and Wiffen, 2006). The list has over 800properties, most of which are inscribed for their culturalvalues and some for natural values, while only a handfulpossess a mix of cultural and natural values. Australiahas more world heritage areas nominated for natural thanfor cultural values (Kato, 2006). The shifting politicalcontext of the 1990s mobilised in-principle support forIndigenous peoples and their rights, resources andculture in protected areas from agencies such as theWorld Heritage Committee, the World ConservationUnion, the World Commission of Protected Areas, theWorld Wildlife Fund and the World Conservation Con-gress (Poirier and Ostergren, 2002). A report to the WorldHeritage Committee in 2000 recommended the establish-ment of a World Heritage Indigenous Peoples Council ofExperts to advise on knowledges, traditions and culturalvalues of Indigenous people, to support the WHC and toimplement the Convention in properties nominated ascultural landscapes or with ‘cultural’ or ‘mixed’ values(UNESCO, 2001). Few properties are listed as havingindivisible combinations of Indigenous cultural andnatural values, although others may qualify should theybe renominated, including several of those currentlynominated for natural values alone (UNESCO, 2001).Despite the international acceptance of Indigenous par-ticipation in World Heritage place management, appro-priate governance structures and processes are yet to beestablished and the actuality of Indigenous participationis variable internationally and in Australia. CurrentWorld Heritage determinations in Australia often fail toincorporate Indigenous place-based values, and the exist-ence (or not) of Indigenous land tenure and the resultingcapacity of Indigenous people to assert their interests andknowledge in land management and cultural heritage.

2. In 2008 the Australian government instituted the Austra-lian World Heritage Advisory Committee whose brief isto cut across all issues that affect Australian World Heri-tage sites. The Committee met for the first time in April2009 and its representation from all Australian WorldHeritage properties and the Indigenous sector willprovide direction to some of the findings of this paperraised prior to this period.

3. The term ‘Indigenous’ is used in this paper to refer toIndigenous peoples anywhere in the world, includingAboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders who are thetwo Indigenous groups in Australia. The term ‘Aborigi-nal’ is used when referring specifically to Aboriginalpeople only, mostly in relation to the Fraser Island casestudy.

4. The Commonwealth Native Title Act 1993 (NTA) and itsamendments and counterpart state and territory legisla-tion confer alternative rights to use, manage and controlland and water on the basis of people’s ‘traditional’ lawsand customs. A limited interpretation of native title leg-islation reflects an inability to conceive of Indigenous



culture and practice as evolving, or of Indigenous rightsto be involved in and resourced for land and culturalheritage management (Sutherland and Muir, 2001).

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Displacing Indigenous Cultural Landscapes: the Naturalistic Gaze at Fraser Island World Heritage Area