Coastal conflicts and reciprocal relations: Encounters between Yolngu people and commercial fishermen in Blue Mud Bay, north‐east Arnhem Land

Abstract

For centuries, the residents of Blue Mud Bay, the residents of Blue Mud Bay, the Djalkiripuyngu,1 have encountered seafarers landing on their shores, and contacts with these visitors have varied in their regularity, intensity and amity. Currently, the most frequent non‐indigenous seafarers are the professional crab and barramundi fishermen who extract resources from the local estuaries. The crab fishermen are recent migrants from Southeast Asia and some sign royalty contracts for access to Aboriginal land to transport their crabs, whilst the wealthy and politically powerful Anglo‐Australian barramundi fishermen operate from large boats, do not need land access, and reject formal agreements. Djalkiripuyngu engagements with these respective visitors are shaped by Australian laws and by the different histories, ethnicities, access to power and depths of attachment to places between the various parties. The Djalkiripuyngu have consistently asserted ownership over the coastal seas adjacent to their lands and, in an important recent decision, have had one aspect of that ownership legally endorsed.2 Yet struggles for control over local seas demonstrate more than principles of indigenous and wider Australian law. They also reflect the wider history of Northern Australia, the pitfalls and possibilities of encounters between indigenous Australians and recent migrants, and an array of contemporary Australian identities.