Burocracy and Indigenous Knowledge PDF

Berghahn Books
Management Speak: Indigenous Knowledge and Bureaucratic Engagement

Author(s): Sally Babidge, Shelley Greer, Rosita Henry and Christine Pam
Source: Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, Vol. 51, No.
3 (WINTER 2007), pp. 148-164
Published by: Berghahn Books
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Management Speak
Indigenous Knowledge and Bureaucratic Engagement
Sally Babidge, Shelley Greer, Rosita Henry, and Christine Pam
Abstract: In this article we examine the concept of 'indigenous knowledge'

as it is currently used in resource management discourse. In the process of
engaging with government agents and researchers in the bureaucracy of

resource management, indigenous knowledge is a powerful concept in
the legitimization of local indigenous practice as well as the recognition
of resource and socio-environmental management aspirations. Our use
of the phrase 'management speak' frames our analysis of these bureau
cratic engagements as process (management) and dialogue, rather than
a 'space'. We do so in order to gain insights into the politics and practice
of these engagements that might go beyond recognition of indigenous
interests and toward more practical approaches. Our discussion draws
on research conducted at Yarrabah Aboriginal Community in northern
Queensland in relation to marine resource management in the Great Bar

rier Reef World Heritage Area.
Keywords: Aboriginal community, Australia, indigenous knowledge,

management speak, resource management, traditional owners
In this article we consider research agendas in relation to the concept of 'indige

nous knowledge' with reference to a case study involving the Australian Aborig
inal community of Yarrabah in northern Queensland. Over the past decade,
there has been heightened interest in indigenous knowledge research within
the international development arena, which is linked to the rise of environmen
tal science and protected area management. At the same time, there has been
a growing popular interest in indigeneity that has spawned heated scholarly

debates about its definition and about the concept of autochthony. Such debates
largely miss the point. The issue here is not about who is or who is not to be
counted as indigenous, and what does or does not constitute indigenous knowl
edge; rather, the issue concerns the political and economic relationships that
Social Analysis, Volume 51, Issue 3, Winter 2007, 148-164

Berghahn Journals
doi: 10.3167/sa.2007.510307
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Management Speak | 149
the practice of such a category implies (see Henry 2007). The research agendas
of government and industry bodies provide a stage for marginalized peoples
to communicate strategically and assert political rights. However, after years
of research into indigenous people's knowledge and use of the seas around
their community, little has changed in terms of how 'traditional owners' and
others at Yarrabah perceive their involvement in managing the lands and seas
around them. Attention needs to be paid to the political economy of research
agendas and how the concept of indigenous knowledge, entangled with notions
of discrete and bounded culture, has been taken up and employed by the state,
researchers, and research participants as a strategy of power.
Consultation between agents of the Australian state, researchers, and indig

enous people is a significant part of resource and land management, especially
in a liberal Australia that recognizes indigenous rights and interests in land.
The domain of research and consultation we discuss here is organized in
terms of structural power (Wolf 1999). As with Foucault's (1979) concept of
governance, this notion of structural power must be understood as both a cre
ative and limiting force. Yet as Agrawal (2005) has identified, much research
on indigenous knowledge grants little attention to relationships of power.

Agrawal notes that studies of indigenous knowledge attempt what she calls
a "dual redemption." The goal is to demonstrate that indigenous knowledge
is valid, or as valid as science, and to prevent the loss of indigenous knowl
edge, that is, to salvage what may be lost to social change (ibid.: 73-74).
While such ethnographies of indigenous knowledge are important in terms of
demonstrating how people engage in various development processes on terms

that are favorable to them, or in ways that gain respect for their knowledge,
they are caught in a paradox. As Agrawal (ibid.: 75) notes: "[T]he spread of
what threatens indigenous knowledge is also precisely what many advocates
of indigenous knowledge seek to advance by identifying, documenting, col
lecting, and systematising indigenous knowledge." Agrawal suggests that this
paradox may be understood and perhaps resolved through better understand
ings of the nature of power.
In this article we discuss some ways that indigenous knowledge is 'shaped

by the workings of power', based on a short project we undertook at Yarrabah
Aboriginal Community during the summer of 2005-2006. Our objective was to
identify possibilities for cooperative negotiations for the use and management
of the marine environments in the vicinity of Yarrabah between, among oth
ers, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) and traditional
owners.1 Our approach to the knowledge of coastal and marine ecosystems of
Yarrabah people was not simply to document the content of this knowledge
as part of some fixed and coherent system of ideas and values. Instead, we
examined aspirations regarding local use and management practices and their
associated bureaucratic engagements, and articulated how the process of indig
enous knowledge is a form of 'management'. Indigenous knowledge in these
terms reflects socially relevant, strategic, and local practices of looking after
and regulating people and places, while also reflecting powerful discourses
regarding what it means to 'have' indigenous knowledge.

150 | Sally Babidge, Shelley Greer, Rosita Henry, and Christine Pam
Indigenous Knowledge
Indigenous knowledge, sometimes referred to as 'traditional ecological knowl

edge' (TEK), is a concept that has become the target of research across many
disciplines (Agrawal 2005; Berkes, Colding, and Folke 2000; Bicker, Sillitoe,
and Pottier 2002; Brush 1993; Sillitoe 2002; Sillitoe, Dixon, and Barr 2005).
Much has been written about what indigenous knowledge might be, what
distinguishes it from 'local knowledge', and how the concept is applied in the
field by researchers. Critiques of the folk science-taxonomy approach, in which
indigenous knowledge is treated as a mere list of resources (their names and
properties, according to indigenous people), abound. The discussion can be
linked to impassioned debates regarding the notion of indigeneity (see Barnard
2006; Dove 2006; Kenrick and Lewis 2004; Kuper 2003). These recall earlier
post-World War II essentialism-anti-essentialism and primordialism-construc
tivism debates in the social sciences. Thus, in an attempt to distance them
selves from essentialism, some researchers today reject the category 'indigenous
knowledge', in favor of 'local knowledge'. However, if we accept Schor's (1994:
xiv) proposal that essence be rethought "as a force for change and movement,
as synonymous with empowering and dynamic identification rather than static
and divisive identity," then indigeneity can be conceptualized as an active
system of identification, and indigenous knowledge a dynamic contemporary
process of management of people and place. At the same time, expressions of
agency are constrained by the particular hierarchies of power that form part of
the bureaucratic field into which they are drawn. Thus, in spite of their par
ticipation as informants in indigenous knowledge research projects, and years
of 'community consultation', little has changed for many indigenous people in
terms of participation in the control and regulation of their country.
Most prominently, indigenous knowledge is co-opted by natural resource
managers and development projects to inform scientists of local conditions,
providing ethno-botanical and ethno-biological knowledge that supplements

scientific knowledge. In Australia, the focus has been largely on the use of
indigenous (especially traditional owner) knowledge for 'co-management' in
protected areas and national parks or other areas of land that have been desig
nated ecologically significant (see, e.g., Langton 1998). Indigenous knowledge
is also important in identifying the cultural values of places and species in
relation to management plans (e.g., Coombs et al. 1989; Williams 1998). Much
of this work focuses on the differences between indigenous knowledge as a
'holistic system of knowledge' and scientific knowledge as 'categorized and
compartmentalized' (see also Jackson 2006; Ross and Pickering 2002: 190).
This distinction has been explored explicitly by Verran (2002), who analyzes the
interactions that occurred around a workshop undertaken 'on country' between
indigenous peoples, scientists, and rangers in Kakadu National Park, northern

Australia. The workshop centered on 'burning off' or 'firing' countrya well-rec
ognized system of control over the environment (see, e.g., Langton 1998)and
exchanging knowledge between participants about different approaches to the
practice. Verran found that the workshop might be understood in Australia as a

"postcolonial moment," where in the engagement between bureaucratic agents/
managers and indigenous managers, it is a sameness of purpose that is gained
and yet "difference is collectively enacted" (Verran 2002: 730). The difference she
underlines is that between scientific and indigenous knowledge. She points to a
redistribution of authority in such "moments" toward the indigenous. However,

whether such distributions of power are at all lasting and how they might effect
changes in resource management practices remain unclear.
A key issue is that indigenous knowledge practices are not confined to the
management of resources but include the management of people in relation to
resources (see also Pannell 1996). For the purposes of our project, we have under
stood indigenous knowledge as constituting and being constituted by everyday
relationships with the sea and marine landscape (especially fishing), as well
as knowledge practices concerning the management, not merely of resources,
but of differentgroups of people within the community (traditional owners and

other residents, young people and elders, and so on) and their varied interests
in the land and seascape. Such divergent and at times competing interests also
include indigenous people's engagements with powerful government environ
mental bureaucracies and research and legislative bodies, such as GBRMPA.
On one level, indigenous knowledge in management contexts must be treated
locally and related to specific social relations and the management of resources.
At another level, indigenous knowledge operates in a larger, regional context,
whereby indigenous people of the Cape York Peninsula, for example, share cer
tain realms of knowledge about northern Queensland and the waters around it.
In addition, the potential of indigenous people to control access to and the use
of their lands and waters can be understood as being contingent on the national
context of recognition of traditional ownership. In this sense, we see the use of
a concept such as 'indigenous knowledge' as representing a number of things.
It is powerful rhetoric that is bound with the enabling state discourse of recogni
tion of the knowledge that inheres in indigenous ownership of the country. In
Aboriginal processes of self-representation and identity, indigenous knowledge

has efficacy as a political tool used by indigenous people in their control of con
sultants, researchers, and state policy makers. This we see as a genuine appeal
for recognition of difference and agency, for acknowledgment of diverse ways of
living with and regulating land and people on terms that are familiar and locally
effective. Therefore, we see indigenous knowledge as both practice and dis
course and as always-becoming in the context of ongoing negotiations among
different groups in Aboriginal communities (such as Yarrabah). Moreover, the
way in which indigenous knowledge is a factor in the overall legal, political, and
economic efficacy in 'managing' the land and seas depends on shifting relations
between all of or some of these groups and the state.
Traditional Ownership and Yarrabah Aboriginal Community
Yarrabah Aboriginal Community is a discrete settlement, approximately 50 kilo

meters by road from Cairns, in northeastern coastal Queensland. Beginning as

an Anglican mission in 1892, control of the community was transferred to the
Queensland State Government's Department of Native Affairs in 1960. The
Community is recognized as perhaps one of the most politically active of north

ern Queensland communities. Historian Rosalind Kidd (2000: 209) describes
Yarrabah as a "hotbed of dissent" during the 1950s and demonstrates that resi
dents' considerable activism about award wages in the 1960s and 1970s was
instrumental in bringing about changes to Queensland government policy (ibid.:
317ff.). Also renowned in terms of Christian spirituality, Yarrabah is home to the
first Aboriginal Anglican bishop and many other church leaders (Loos 2007).
Yarrabah remained under the control of the Department of Native Affairs until
1986, when an Aboriginal Council took possession of the lands under a Deed of
Grant in Trust (DOGIT). A new Community Council structure was then created,
with indigenous residents forming a local council that had increased autonomy
in managing and running community affairs. The Community is currently under
going furtherchanges to its structure and becoming a Shire Council.
Traditional owners of the country around Yarrabah are identified as the
Gunggandji people. Two different groups, based on moiety affiliation, are

recognized: Gurabana Gunggandji and Gurugulu Gunggandji. These groups
sometimes act separatelyfor example, they run different corporations,2 and
various members have been represented on separate native title claimsand
at these times can be at odds with each other. This situation reflects familial,
personal, cultural, and historical differences that are not directly the subject of
this article. Nonetheless, while there are differences among Gunggandji, during
our research many individuals also emphasized a shared and coherent identity.
A person's identification with Gurugulu Gunggandji, Gurabana Gunggandji, or
just Gunggandji appears subject to contextual reckonings of descent and per
sonal/political alliances that are relevant to the social milieu.
The population of Yarrabah is around 2,500 (Australian Bureau Statistics
2001; Karvelas 2006: 6; Taylor and Bell 2003: 14). Among this population, Gung
gandji represent a small minority. Other groups are Yindinji (their direct neigh
bors in terms of country), Djabugay, and others. Members of these traditional
owner groups have lived at Yarrabah since it was established as a mission, and
many of these people look on the Community as their home. They consider
themselves knowledgeable locals and are recognized as such by others (see
Hume 1990: 47; Kidd 2000: 247). Indeed, the fact that some of the older people
we interviewed were not Gunggandji and were introduced to us by our Gung
gandji research assistants demonstrates the local recognition of these peoples'
knowledge of history, local affairs, and social practice.
Nonetheless, identifications as a traditional owner, as a local, and so on, are
in practice contested, negotiated, and contextual. As we discuss below, a 'rela
tional' perspective views such identifications as fluid, not because they have
'broken down' under pressure from modernity, but because such perspectives
are a rejection of the notion of culture or group (or indeed their knowledge) as
fixed (see also Sullivan 2005; Weiner 2006). Furthermore, differentiations in rela
tion to named groups/clans are intrinsic to indigenous knowledge practices as
management of social-ecological systems and the differing responsibilities that

come with recognition as owners of certain tracts of country. However, the appar
ent fluidity of 'membership' in some cases and strong divisions between this and
that group are also significant for the practical understanding of bureaucratic
engagement. In other words, our focus on management within the larger project
at Yarrabah was directed toward understanding the social and structural forces
that shape the engagement of people and groups in management processes.
This outlining of the processes of management is central to the research
project. We asked a number of questions of our data, both in the field and
in the preliminary analyses. These included the following: How do people
organize themselves to represent their knowledge? How do people organize
researchers in order to limit and to manage the knowledge that researchers
'get'? How do people practice and structure their membership in corporate
groups or their associations with other kinds of social or economic groups?

These questions, rather than seeking descriptions of the content of indigenous
knowledge or social structure, are aimed at an examination of the manner
by which such 'things' are constructed. Thus, it is our intention to describe
practices of bureaucratic engagement as we have documented them and, in
the process, document some local resource management practices that may
facilitate Gunggandji engagements with GBRMPA and others.
Management Speak
Consultations and negotiations with indigenous groups, especially with tra

ditional owners, in natural resource management contexts are framed by the
legal recognition of native title rights and interests. Traditional owners must be
consulted about land, sea, and resource management issues as a result of claims
made under the Native Title Act 1993 (Commonwealth) and associated pro
cesses, as well as under the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (Queensland).
Recognition as indigenous, and as a traditional owner, is what enables engage

ment in the management process. It is as traditional ownersnot as locals or
residentsthat indigenous peoples are recognized, consulted, and sometimes

included in the co-management of land, seas, and resources. As such, being rec
ognized as a viable partner in the process of management is based 011 the recog
nition of cultural difference. That this recognition enables indigenous people's
role in the ownership, management, negotiation, and so on, of land only within
the limits of a certain kind of difference that emphasizes 'tradition' has been
the subject of a number of analyses (see, e.g., Merlan 2006; Povinelli 2002). We
argue here that these limitations may be seen on the level of engagement and
negotiations preliminary to larger-scale agreements and that they have implica

tions for the implementation of larger-scale agreement making.
The strength and veracity of traditional owner statements of cultural differ
ence underlie our observation that indigenous peoples are adept at managing
encounters with bureaucratic structures and agents (see Babidge 2004; Greer
1996; Sullivan 1996). In particular, those who regularly act as spokespeople
for their families, communities, or other groups use the language of cultural

difference to great effect. It also seems to us that these same people and others
manage the language of consultation, research, recognition, and negotiation

in ways that appear to extend beyond the dominant representation of their
difference. Traditional owners engage with bureaucrats, consultants, and other
'outsiders' in ways that demonstrate an adroit awareness of bureaucratic lan
guage and process and, at the same time, a recognition of the particular ways
that such processes play themselves out and need to be managed locally, that
is, socially. Our shorthand way of thinking about this is 'management speak'.
Management speak is a way of interpreting the language and modes of inter
action that indigenous people employ in discussions, negotiation processes,
and meetings with government bureaucrats, consultants, and researchers, as
well as in some inter-traditional owner discussions or negotiations over social
resources. Our observations of such contexts need to be supported by longer

term ethnographic and socio-linguistic study. Nevertheless, what we explore
here are a few examples observed at Yarrabah during the current research of
practices that point to what we are calling management speak.

These concerns mark our research on engagements between the Aboriginal
domain and white Australia in terms that might be identified as 'intercultural'
(see Merlan 1998, 2005). The conceptual term 'intercultural' is problematic
in that it seemingly masks the fluidity of social practice in these situations
by accepting into its analytical frame the marking of boundaries 'between
cultures' (Sullivan 2005).3 Such boundaries are intrinsic in the speech and
actions of bureaucratic engagements, since often what characterizes them is
the emphasis on cultural difference between indigenous peoples and others.

The examples we explore below demonstrate that the emphasis on difference is
inherent to these engagements, and yet this emphasis belies a myriad of simi
larities and points of convergence in language and the practice of bureaucratic
engagements that makes management speak possible. People put considerable
effort into the work of making their statements and intentions interpretable to
others across known differences in these contexts. In spite of this effort, there
is much miscommunication going on. In the practices and in the position of
each actor in these engagements, it thus emerges that cultural boundaries are
significantly blurred at the same time as being momentous in actors' assertions
of the difference in indigenous cultural practice (Sullivan 2005, 2006).

Our use of the phrase 'management speak' seeks to analyze bureaucratic
engagements as a process (management) and a dialogue, rather than a 'space'.
Traditional owners and others we spoke to at Yarrabah seemed to have a dis

tinct mode of dealing with consultants and researchers. Management speak is
control of outsiders' (in this case, researchers') access to knowledge particular
to the Community, traditional owners, and particular individuals (traditional
owners and others). This was evident from early in the process of negotiating
permission to undertake research through to the present process of providing
copies of written materials to key people before these works are made public.
Clearly, the explicit process of permission to access knowledge is tied up with

concerns about intellectual property and also has foundations in responsibili
ties and ethical principles in terms of responsibility for 'looking after country'.

As such, the concerns of traditional owners center on the management of place
and knowledge, the management of researchers' access to knowledge, and the
management of how such knowledge is represented (Greer 1996; Greer and
Fuary forthcoming).
At the outset of field research, researchers agreed with key initial spokes
people, who stipulated that we employ local people as research assistants, that
they should be traditional owners, and that they would be paid. The research
assistants were to introduce us to potential participants and 'show us around',

that is, guide us and introduce us interpersonally and geographically around
the Community. At this early stage of the research, a number of these key
spokespeople for Gurabana Gunggandji noted that it was important that we
should be taken 'on country' by knowledgeable people, and one place in par
ticular, King Beach, was repeatedly mentioned. Key spokespeople's repeated

insistence on having someone with us the whole time, as well as taking us to
particular places and introducing us to particular people, draws on traditional
owners' duties to look after country (see especially Myers 1991). As research
ers, we were outsiders who did not know the Community, the country, or the
potential dangers of both. Likewise, as people who do not have this knowledge,
we were a potential danger to others and to 'country'. Thus, while 'on country'
and in the Community, we were both the guests and the responsibility of those
who know and look after the country.
Being accompanied by traditional owner assistants meant that the research
was facilitated by the familiarity of each of the research assistants with the
people we spoke to. More importantly, it was evident that these interper
sonal and spatial interactions were mediated by the research assistants.
Research assistants sat with us as we explained to each potential informant

the purpose and subject of the research. In most cases, our explanation of the
project and following questions were 'translated' by the research assistants
through repetition (sometimes exact repetition) or simplification of terms
and, in some cases, 'translation' into 'Aboriginal English' (McGregor 2005:
xvi). This is not a linguistic point but one about mediation between research
ers and elders. In particular, research assistants explained and repeated what
we said and sometimes suggested to interviewees what or how the inter
viewee might answer our questions. In some instances, this is a technique
for 'buying time' for those being interviewed, so that they may think about
what is being asked of them. However, such physical and linguistic media
tion by research assistants, on the insistence of key traditional owner rep
resentatives, also helps to monitor relationships between indigenous people
and white researchers, and thus to mediate the information that researchers
gather and assure participants that traditional owners are involved in the
management of this knowledge.

Research assistants sought out older traditional owners, or elders, and cer
tain elders firston the basis of age hierarchy, but also seemingly on the basis
of status, gender, and respect for particular kinds of knowledge. This included
language knowledge and other material aspects of Gunggandji culture, as well

as knowledge of place names and how to act appropriately when in certain

places, memory of certain dances and songs, 'proper' hunting practice, and so
on. Many of the older research participants described their knowledge in ways
that referred to the past and spoke of 'tradition' in the sense of the past, as
well as giving voice to a negative critique of current practice. For example, a
number of interviewees lamented that young people do not share the fish they
catch (and other resources) "like they used to." One told us: "In the old days,
hunters who used to go out would share even a little piece. They'd make sure
everyone had a bit, but not today. It's sad in our little community."4 The attri
bute of 'caring and sharing' in indigenous socialitywhat some have called
the 'moral economy' (see Peterson and Taylor 2003)is intertwined with social
responsibility to kin and knowledge of appropriate responsibilities to those
around you. The lament of older people comments on much broader social
changes (Macdonald 2000: 87; Trigger 2005). It is also nostalgia that implies
the distinctiveness of the knowledge they hold, their expertise, and thus their
right to be consulted in relative (compared to those around them) and absolute
(as against all others) terms.
This apparent nostalgia seems linked to a further observation. Many of the
questions in a survey of fishing practices that we undertook were phrased, for
example, as "Do you get...?" or "How do you decide ...?" Most people we spoke
to did not consider that these questions were being directed toward them as
individuals. Rather, they understood us to be asking them about people's fish
ing practices at Yarrabah more generally. In response to a question phrased "Do
you catch turtle and dugong?" we were told by a woman, "Yes, we get turtle
and dugong. They go and get it from the reef" (emphasis added). That is, we
(the researchers) were perceived to be asking about what Yarrabah people do,
as culture or perhaps as locals or perhaps as indigenous people. To some extent,
we were perceived to be asking, "What are your cultural practices?" This is
perhaps where the categories 'local' and 'indigenous' might become blurred.
People were not necessarily claiming that indigenous people everywhere, or

even neighboring people, do things their same way. However, there is a reason to
understand this as indigenous knowledge and not local knowledge. In the ways
that older people, who are more experienced in being asked for information from
researchers, answered our questions, and in the negative example of younger
people, who refused to be interviewed, claiming, "I don't know nothing about
that," there is a relational treatment of the knowledge being imparted (or not
imparted). Older people's claims to knowledge and representation are powerful
discursive tools wielded by those who speak on behalf of their communities,
and they do so in ways that are framed by the context of being asked as older,
indigenous people. In self-consciously representing their practices as being 'cul

tural' practices that are differentfrom those of non-locals and non-indigenous,
the research participants become agents in the reproduction of a particular
knowledge. This is indigenous knowledge, which is to some extent constituted
as a category and bureaucratically defined by the state but is also represented in
regenerated terms during each engagement or dialogue among the actors.
Our interest is in knowledge as a social process. Thus, we are also inter
ested in knowledge as negotiated between individuals as well as owned by

Management Speak \ 157
particular individuals or groups. When researchers introduced the idea of the
project, the firstthing that senior traditional owners did was to call a meeting,
or to suggest calling a meeting, of key traditional owners, that is, those recog
nized in the Community as having particular knowledge. Holding meetings is
a well-accepted bureaucratic practice that is necessary for the running of, for
example, Aboriginal corporations. It is also a social practice that has a long
history in Australian indigenous communities (see, e.g., Cowlishaw 1999;
Howard 1982; Macdonald 1988; Sullivan 1996; Tonkinson 1985), and north
ern Queensland communities are no exception (e.g., Anderson 1984: 411 ff.;
Babidge 2004; Greer and Fuary forthcoming; Trigger 1997; 99-100). Meet
ings are social processes where people come together to discuss 'culture',
knowledge of country, proper ways of behaving, intra-community issues, and
so on. The very act of participating in such meetings (whether intra-commu
nity or community-outside body) and engaging in dialogue is central to the
management of knowledge. The ways that people speak at meetings and the
coherence with which many voices speak about the same issue might be seen
as reflecting the fact that knowledge is shared. However, this 'sharedness' is
dynamic and constantly shifting. It is coherent at the point of bureaucratic
(or researcher) engagement rather than in some idea of consistency among
indigenous actors.
The traditional owner research assistant as mediator between researcher
and interviewee might be one way that some level of consistency is achieved.
Such processes involve two or more traditional owners in the room at the same
time, thinking and talking about similar issues and explaining them to an out
sider. A further example might be useful here. One of the primary aspirations
for marine country management conveyed to us is the need for traditional
owner Gunggandji rangers working in the marine areas around Yarrabah. This
broad agreement among different Gunggandji people at Yarrabah on the main
resource management issues they are facing is clearly a result of long-term
(some 20 years) engagement with researchers on the very same issue, rather
than any sort of easy consensus.
Thus, indigenous knowledge, as the social process of negotiating representa

tions of culture in this kind of forum, is management. Through bureaucratic
engagement in the meeting context, certain kinds of knowledge practices (and
discourses) are developed. Merlan (1989) has described such forums as foster
ing a growing language among indigenous actors in terms of objectifying cul
ture. In coming to the negotiating table over the management of resources, and
of country more generally, indigenous people might, on the one hand, objectify
culture. On the other hand, their points of negotiation contribute to the consti
tution of a category of indigenous knowledge for the purposes of engagement
with state agencies and the recognition of certain rights.

In our discussions with groups and individuals at Yarrabah, traditional own
ers spoke about country in ways that indicated that country could be used by the
community as capital. In one sense, country is social and intellectual capital, in
that to speak of one's knowledge of country is to be able to speak for and teach
about country and therefore be respected in a general sense as a knowledgeable

158 Sally Babidge, Shelley Greer, Rosita Henry, and Christine Pam
person. The elder traditional owners sought firstby our research assistants are
examples of this. The elders are people who are consulted by their own people
for advice (on indigenous knowledge of country and about managing country)
in situations such as the present project.
'Country' as a complex of person, land, resources, and spirit is not con

sidered alienable or able to be sold. People's attitude toward selling marine
resources that they caught themselves was overall quite negative. Most people
we spoke to indicated that they fished for subsistence purposes only; only a
few told us that they put oysters in a jar of water to sell to others in the com
munity or occasionally sold a crab or two to people who asked for them.5 More
commonly among the people we spoke to, there was a general ethic of sharing
and at times quite strong language against those who did not share (putting
the catch in their freezer instead). For example, when asked a question about
what people might do with the fish they catch, a respondent told us that there
was some shame involved with not sharing. She said, "People keep an eye
on everyone and complain when you keep too much [in the freezer]. If you
go out and get too many prawn, they might say, 'Try to save some for us next
time.'" The tensions that Peterson and Taylor (2003) identify between the ethic
of sharing and the increasing pressure, especially on the younger generations,
from wider society to accumulate are evident here.6 However, the point that
people continually made to us (whether they said they sold resources or not)
is that sharing, with neighbors and with family, is important to the community
because it shows that you care about others. There is thus a strong sentiment
that sharing (and not selling) marine resources might be about re-creating and
performing relationships.
However, there remains a strong conviction among some senior traditional
owners that the land, sea, and resources must be used in ways that benefit
the community economically, as well as in terms of social relationships and
spiritual connection. In other words, some people at Yarrabah spoke about
country in a way that implied that country could be treated as a resource and
as financial capital. Alongside the common rejection of the notion of selling
marine resources that one gathers, hunts, or fishes, there is considerable
interest among some in using country for business ventures, such as giant
clam and trochus farming or tourism. While generally economic in aspira
tion, such ventures were described to us in terms of being ecologically sus
tainable, and in terms of 'looking after' (mostly regenerating) the resources

themselves. For those interested in such ventures, this is not incompatible
with the ethic of sharing the resources that individual fishers catch or with
the general ethic of sharing. Instead, these ideas appear to exist in a way that
is enmeshed. Thus, indigenous knowledge as management draws on a pow
erful mixture of what people themselves see as appropriate personal, social,

and economic approaches.
Therefore, while resource management may be thought of in terms of con
servation or sustainable ecological management, traditional owners clearly
have an approach that includes local community subsistence, resource sustain
ability, and also economic sustainability. While the new Traditional Uses of

Marine Resource Agreements (TUMRAs) that GBRMPA is seeking to implement

in the area emphasize 'traditional use', many traditional owners themselves
emphasize a need to use and regulate the marine environment that is consis
tent with their changing society. The issue is how the discourse of recognition
of traditional indigenous culture (embodied in GBRMPA's TUMRAs) can be

reconciled with local aspirations that use the same discourse of recognition
of tradition in representations of themselves, while also aspiring to use these
powerful enabling mechanisms to support economic and social change.
Conclusion
Indigenous knowledge provides a management process for engaging with state
agencies, a process of identification and differentiation through which people

assert their voice. While this is empowering in an immediate sense of getting
one's voice heard, there is considerable dissatisfaction that has arisen despite
years of such engagements. It is the state that ultimately holds the regulat
ing power for managing lands and seas. Nonetheless, indigenous people use
the legislative recognition of indigenous knowledge and indigenous rights as
structural power when dealing with researchers and state bureaucrats. The
political strategies of the state and indigenous people and forms of relational
socialities are enabled by power in these contexts, rather than being simply and
negatively dominated by them (Foucault 1979; Wolf 1999). Our research par
ticipants controlled information about themselves and resisted the collection of
knowledge, frustrating state attempts to co-opt indigenous knowledge and, to
some extent, also incorporating state discourses of management.
Fundamentally, indigenous knowledge research involves political practice

that, as Agrawal (2005) has argued, should reveal the workings of power in the
constructions of this knowledge. The kind of management practices (in relation
to research management or the management of researchers) we have outlined
above are familiar to other researchers who have worked in Australia and else
where. We are not arguing that knowledge becomes blurred in the discourse of
management and engagement with bureaucracies and that it all becomes just
management speak, in the sense of a generic bureaucratic language. Rather, it
is in these engagements that practices of management are created and re-cre
ated. What our research has demonstrated is that indigenous people's resource
use and management of country at Yarrabah involves three closely interrelated
practices. Firstly, the use and regulation of marine resources and country are
carried out according to indigenous beliefs and practices, that is, those cultural
factors usually referred to as indigenous knowledge. Secondly, we have shown
that 'managing' country involves the regulation of people and their access to
and use of country, or the management of local social conditions and rela
tions. Finally, managing country includes the management of bureaucratic

engagements, such as the control of researchers' access to certain information
and thus the internal controls on the state's access to a domain understood as
belonging to indigenous people. These practices have developed over many

years of bureaucratic engagement, and recognition of indigenous knowledge

must include recognition of such skills.
While the comparative perspective may be a little stretched, Strathern (2006)
has recently argued that where there is an inherent recognition of difference in
management contexts, such recognition allows only an appreciation of differ

ence of opinionrather than agreementto be the result. This is differentfrom
what arises when there are disagreements between those on similar terms; a
debate or point of discussion moves beyond that which was before. What we
see here is that there is some incommensurability between indigenous and non
indigenous actors in these contexts exactly because of the assumption (as well
as the actualities) of discrete cultural understandings of the indigenous and
non-indigenous in Australia. In many ways, particular subjectivities are "drawn
forth ... by the exigencies of an already relational life-world" (Weiner 2006: 18)
in the engagements we have described. Perhaps then, the act of recognition of
difference is exactly what stands in the way of better interpretations of what is
said, what is done, and what is meant. A closer study of the socio-linguistics of
these bureaucratic interactions and longer-term studies more generally of these
contexts are needed in order to move toward understanding such socialities
and the agency of Aboriginal people emerging from these encounters. A better
understanding of these engagements, especially management speak, may draw

attention to similarities of purpose, while not burying the differences that must
necessarily be brought forward for negotiation.
Acknowledgments
This research was undertaken with funding from the Cooperative Research Centre
(CRC) Reef, Task Al.3.1, "Cultural Heritage Values of the Great Barrier Reef," led
by Shelley Greer and David Roe of James Cook University. We would like to thank
our three research assistants at Yarrabah, Edgar (Point) Harris, Romaine Yeatman,
and Anthea Reid (Stafford), as well as Danny O'Shane, field officer at the North
Queensland Land Council (Representative Body), for initial introductions to tradi
tional owners at Yarrabah.
Sally Babidge has a PhD in Anthropology from James Cook University and currently
lectures in Australian Indigenous studies, kinship and social relatedness, and ethno
graphic methods in anthropology at the University of Queensland. Her research projects

involve ethnography and historical ethnography of the state and changing practices of
family among rural-living Australian Indigenous people. Ongoing comparative research

focuses on the politics and sociality of indigeneity and indigenous identity,especially
in the context of recognition of indigenous rights and identities by states.
Shelley Greer is a Senior Lecturer in Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology,
Archaeology and Sociology, School of Arts and Social Sciences, James Cook Univer
sity. She has conducted long-term research in northern Cape York Peninsula and is

currently part of a team that is focusing on trade and exchange in the Cape York-Torres
Strait-Papuan region. She was the task leader on a broad project that investigated the
cultural heritage values of the Great Barrier Reef to inform cultural heritage manage
ment of this important icon. She is also on a research team that is examining issues of
cultural heritage and climate change in Micronesia.
Rosita Henry is currently Head of the Department of Anthropology, Archaeology and
Sociology at James Cook University. Her main area of research concerns indigneity
and the politics of public performance. She has conducted long-term ethnographic
research with Indigenous Australians in North Queensland. Her most recent publica
tion is a book, co-edited with Barbara Glowczewski, entitled Le defi indigene: Entre
spectacle el politique (2007).
Christine Pam finished her Honours in Anthropology at James Cook University in

2007. Her topic was on the integration of indigenous and scientific knowledge in
Geographic Information System technologies. She has been awarded a scholarship to

undertake doctoral research.
Notes
1. The traditional
owners of the lands and seas around Yarrabah identify themselves as
GurabanaGunggandji and Gurugulu Gunggandji peoples. We thank those Gunggandji
people and others who participated in the research and accommodated us at Yarrabah.
2. One corporation was established solely for the purpose of dealing with traditional owner
business, specifically, cultural heritage consultancies and native title issues. The other is
a long-running cooperative that runs employment programs for the whole Yarrabah com
munity, including the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) program,
with specific interests in providing opportunities for traditional owners.
3. Note that Merlan (2005: 181) does not intend for the term 'intercultural' to have these
implications: "An 'intercultural' account should plausibly deal with socio-cultural differ
ence, similarity, boundedness and transformation." However, for us, the term re-creates
exactly the difference that we are seeking to examine as a whole.
4. We asked all interviewees about whether people share what they catch when fishing. In
all of the responses, people noted that they eat their catch with family, and just under
half of the people we spoke to said that they would share with 'neighbors' (who may or
may not be family, but with whom there is sometimes a history of residence proximity
that extends for several generations).
5. While the former was seen most generally as an accepted practice (something older
women might do), the latter seemed to be less acceptable. Whether this is to do with the
size, availability, or some other nature of the resource is unclear to us.
6. And the younger generations constitute a considerable proportion of the community.
In 2001, approximately 50 percent of the population was under 20 years of age, and 80
percent was under 40 years of age. The median age was 20 years old (Australian Bureau
of Statistics 2001).

Sally Babidge, Shelley Greer, Rosita Henry, and Christine Pam
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Berghahn Books

Management Speak: Indigenous Knowledge and Bureaucratic Engagement

This content downloaded from 200.123.187.130 on Thu, 27 Feb 2014 11:55:44 AM

Sally Babidge, Shelley Greer, Rosita Henry, and Christine Pam

Abstract: In this article we examine the concept of 'indigenous knowledge'

engaging with government agents and researchers in the bureaucracy of

Queensland in relation to marine resource management in the Great Bar

Keywords: Aboriginal community, Australia, indigenous knowledge,

In this article we consider research agendas in relation to the concept of 'indige

a growing popular interest in indigeneity that has spawned heated scholarly

Social Analysis, Volume 51, Issue 3, Winter 2007, 148-164

This content downloaded from 200.123.187.130 on Thu, 27 Feb 2014 11:55:44 AM

Consultation between agents of the Australian state, researchers, and indig

on indigenous knowledge grants little attention to relationships of power.

demonstrating how people engage in various development processes on terms

paradox may be understood and perhaps resolved through better understand

ings of the nature of power.

In this article we discuss some ways that indigenous knowledge is 'shaped

Aboriginal Community during the summer of 2005-2006. Our objective was to

enous knowledge is a form of 'management'. Indigenous knowledge in these

This content downloaded from 200.123.187.130 on Thu, 27 Feb 2014 11:55:44 AM

Indigenous knowledge, sometimes referred to as 'traditional ecological knowl

managers and development projects to inform scientists of local conditions,

providing ethno-botanical and ethno-biological knowledge that supplements

indigenous peoples, scientists, and rangers in Kakadu National Park, northern

exchanging knowledge between participants about different approaches to the

practice. Verran found that the workshop might be understood in Australia as a

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"postcolonial moment," where in the engagement between bureaucratic agents/

managers and indigenous managers, it is a sameness of purpose that is gained

redistribution of authority in such "moments" toward the indigenous. However,

management of resources but include the management of people in relation to

stood indigenous knowledge as constituting and being constituted by everyday

but of differentgroups of people within the community (traditional owners and

mental bureaucracies and research and legislative bodies, such as GBRMPA.

On one level, indigenous knowledge in management contexts must be treated

At another level, indigenous knowledge operates in a larger, regional context,

Aboriginal processes of self-representation and identity, indigenous knowledge

Traditional Ownership and Yarrabah Aboriginal Community

Yarrabah Aboriginal Community is a discrete settlement, approximately 50 kilo

This content downloaded from 200.123.187.130 on Thu, 27 Feb 2014 11:55:44 AM

an Anglican mission in 1892, control of the community was transferred to the

Queensland State Government's Department of Native Affairs in 1960. The

Community is recognized as perhaps one of the most politically active of north

Gunggandji people. Two different groups, based on moiety affiliation, are

This content downloaded from 200.123.187.130 on Thu, 27 Feb 2014 11:55:44 AM

'get'? How do people practice and structure their membership in corporate

groups or their associations with other kinds of social or economic groups?

by which such 'things' are constructed. Thus, it is our intention to describe

practices of bureaucratic engagement as we have documented them and, in

Consultations and negotiations with indigenous groups, especially with tra

Recognition as indigenous, and as a traditional owner, is what enables engage

residentsthat indigenous peoples are recognized, consulted, and sometimes

negotiations preliminary to larger-scale agreements and that they have implica

This content downloaded from 200.123.187.130 on Thu, 27 Feb 2014 11:55:44 AM

manage the language of consultation, research, recognition, and negotiation

'outsiders' in ways that demonstrate an adroit awareness of bureaucratic lan

well as in some inter-traditional owner discussions or negotiations over social

resources. Our observations of such contexts need to be supported by longer

practices that point to what we are calling management speak.

the emphasis on cultural difference between indigenous peoples and others.

engagements that makes management speak possible. People put considerable

is much miscommunication going on. In the practices and in the position of