Abstract

In recent decades, there has been a shift both globally and within Australia towards community engagement in protected area management. In Australia, this has manifested in Aboriginal participation and decision-making in a range of protected areas. One form this takes is the joint management of already-existing national parks that have been transferred to Aboriginal ownership. In this article, I investigate ethnographically the tensions that emerge in the day-to-day running of a national park in northern Australia which, relatively speaking, is still in the early stages of joint management. Different cultural conceptions of space, boundaries and how work ought to be organized come to the forefront in ways that are underwritten by the material conditions of the park. These conceptions are significant because, for Aboriginal traditional owners, having "the right people" working on "the right country" is a key aspiration related to environmental management, cultural protocol, and economic sovereignty. Funding arrangements and the organization of the work program ensure that the Queensland State government continues to be the more powerful co-managing institution, with the result that some Aboriginal aspirations and concerns are treated as less urgent and less legitimate than others.

Keywords: joint management, National Parks, protected areas, intercultural, Indigenous-settler relations

How to Cite:

Reardon-Smith, M., (2025) “"It's about getting the right people back on the right country!": Cultural difference and structural inequality in a northern Australian joint managed National Park”, Journal of Political Ecology 32(1): 5999. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5999