A seat at the table? Planning, meetings and the ‘stable relation’ of a joint managed National Park in northern Australia

Abstract

Over the last fifteen years, most national parks in Cape York Peninsula, far north-east Australia, have been transferred to Aboriginal ownership and are now jointly managed by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and the relevant Aboriginal traditional owner groups. The park in which this research was conducted has been jointly managed for just over a decade, but the transition to joint management is entwined with challenges related to the bringing together of different knowledge and management systems. The main forum for discussing and implementing change is in the mutual space of formal joint management meetings. However, this mutual space is not co-produced on equal terms. Joint management meetings and the production of management plans function as a way for Queensland Parks to fulfil their obligations to Aboriginal traditional owners while simultaneously reaffirming their status as the more powerful co-managing institution. Rather than fostering a space of indeterminacy, in which management partners could co-create new forms of managing and caring for land, meetings and management plans function to construct a ‘stable relation’ between Aboriginal traditional owners and Queensland Parks.