Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017. x, 272 pp. (Illustrations.) US$65.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-7311-0.
In 2005, the Queensland Labour government passed the Wild Rivers Act, which gave regulatory protection to rivers deemed of sufficient pristine environmental quality to preserve them for future generations. In remote Cape York, the region most affected, with 14 out of the 19 rivers regulated by the legislation, the decision to implement the Act was met with intense furor and debate. In the media, attention focused on the breakdown in relationships between the traditional “green/black” alliance, with core indigenous and conservationist groups at loggerheads over various issues, including who has the right to speak and decide for country. Green groups were accused of recolonizing indigenous lands by locking them up and preventing indigenous land owners from developing them for economic gain. While Neale’s text is ostensibly concerned with “how the Act both revealed and fundamentally altered the politics of environmentalism and indigeneity in Australia” (4), this book goes well beyond these issues to explore the difficulties faced by indigenous communities within Cape York and what these mean for the social and economic “development” of the region.
Three key questions are asked by Neale: Who is or should—ethically or legally—be recognized as rightfully interested in indigenous country? What attachments to “wild” spaces are we willing to recognize as legitimate? What futures do those living in “wild” places want and what can they expect? The “wild” is a central theme to this book. The introduction describes the Act and the ensuing controversy, and provides an ontological history of the concept “wild,” relevant in a country colonized by Europeans on the notion of terra nullius, or nobody’s land. Even the name of the Act, “Wild Rivers,” indicates the very nature of the potential tension between green and indigenous groups in Australia (and globally). For conservationists trying to protect “natural” areas, terms such as wilderness and pristine are often used, and you will find both in the Wild Rivers rhetoric, yet where does this leave indigenous groups that have actively managed the Cape York landscape for at least 40,000 years? By attempting to characterize, and ultimately sell, places as untouched by man to increase their environmental significance and protection effectively removes any human interaction or influence, thus negating any indigenous role as land managers or stewards.
Chapter 1, “The Wilding of Cape York Peninsula,” provides an overview of the European settler history, including how the “wild” of Cape York was made known through mapping by white explorers, as well as their interactions with local indigenous communities. The history is largely chronological but also has an undercurrent of “agency” as Neale explores the role and influences of material items/goods in Cape York, including roads, maps, gold, rifles, cattle, and alcohol. In discussing the difficulties faced by the earliest white explorers and settlers, Neale returns to the conception of the area as “wild,” highlighting the remoteness of the region, located at the northernmost point of Far North Queensland, inaccessible for large parts of the year due to the monsoonal wet season. In portraying the interactions with the indigenous communities, another difficulty with the use of the term wild is illustrated, as it is the “wild” blacks who come into conflict with the new settlers and ultimately face extreme retribution. Neale also discusses how indigenous communities today refer to this time of upheaval and displacement as “wild,” when normal subsistence and cultural practices were disrupted by the intrusion of new settlers.
After placing the Act within the historical context of white/black relationships in Cape York, Neale turns to the news media coverage of the Act in chapter 2, examining the biased reporting along two general themes: Green Deals and the “Lockup”—the speculation that green groups and the Labour government had arranged preference deals in return for the “Wild Rivers” legislation, with fears of a new wave of colonialism “locking up” indigenous land, and “Terrible Lies,” where misinformation about what the Act actually had the power to do was spread in the Far North, leading to protests in response to what people thought the Act did, rather than what it actually had the power to do. In this section, Neale also begins to explore the issue of who has the right to speak for country, with different indigenous groups holding conflicting views over the legislation.
Chapter 3 details the history of politics and indigenous rights in Cape York, beginning with the spectre of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and how the legacy of mistrust caused by then-governmental policies has shaped the current relationship between indigenous communities and the Queensland state government. This chapter also explores the history of alliances between conservationist and indigenous groups, before discussing the issue of contractualism and the realities of indigenous communities negotiating with mining companies.
Chapter 4 explores a key question in terms of what indigeneity looks like in Cape York today, polarizing between the traditional owner and the executive advocate as exemplified by Noel Pearson. The tensions discussed here are central to development issues in the remote Far North: How do you reconcile traditional land management strategies and stewardship with economic development, particularly when that development appears to be largely reliant on destructive extractive industries such as mining? Chapter 5 brings all of Neale’s arguments together to discuss how the controversy around the Act has provided more of a conduit for talking about these wider developmental and identity issues as a whole, rather than specifically about the legislation itself.
This book contains many levels and is an important read for anyone wishing to explore the difficulties around modern constructions of indigeneity, relationships between indigenous communities and other stakeholders including land councils, conservation groups, mining companies, and state/federal governments, and subsequent implications for development. Apart from some simplifying of written expression at times to increase this book’s accessibility to readers, my main critique is I would have liked to have seen more voices added from the indigenous communities as to how they see development occurring in the Far North; these are present but usually as a response to development programs or policies decided by external stakeholders rather than from within.
Anne Ford
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand