@article {bnh-8356, title = {Empowering Indigenous natural hazards management in northern Australia}, journal = {Ambio}, year = {2022}, month = {06/2022}, abstract = {

Northern Australia is prone to recurring severe natural hazards, especially frequent cyclones, flooding, and extensive wildfires. The region is sparsely populated (<< 0.5 persons km-2), with Indigenous (Aboriginal) residents comprising 14\% of the population, and typically the majority in remote regions. Despite national policy committed to addressing emergency management (EM) in vulnerable Indigenous communities, implementation remains unfunded. We synthesise participatory intercultural research conducted over seven years exploring core challenges, opportunities and potential solutions towards developing effective EM partnerships. Similar EM engagement and empowerment issues face First Nations and local communities in many international settings. In search of solutions, we explore developing effective partnership arrangements between EM agencies and culturally diverse Indigenous communities. Observing that government already provides substantial investment in cultural and natural resource management programmes conducted by over 150 Indigenous Ranger Groups (IRGs) nationally, we demonstrate that expansion of IRG roles to incorporate EM community engagement and service delivery can provide multiple cost-effective community and business development benefits for many remote communities.

}, keywords = {Climate change, indigenous people, Natural disasters, participatory action research, risk management, vulnerable communities}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01743-x}, url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-022-01743-x}, author = {Jeremy Russell-Smith and Glenn James and Alan M. Dhamarrandji and Ted Gondarra and Danny Burton and Bevlyne Sithole and Otto Bulmaniya Campion and Hmalan Hunter-Xenie and Ricky Archer and Kamaljit Sangha and Andrew C. Edwards} } @article {bnh-8015, title = {Developing effective emergency management partnerships in remote north Australian communities - final project report}, number = {670}, year = {2021}, month = {05/2021}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {MELBOURNE}, abstract = {

Natural hazards in the remote Northern Territory such as cyclones have arguably been managed as best as possible given the typically insubstantial relationships emergency management agencies have with traditional Aboriginal landowners and their wider communities. Preparation and response to the two cyclones, Lam (Feb. 19-20) and Nathan (March 22), that struck east and central Arnhem Land in 2015 are a case in point, prompting practical research into how we can strengthen existing governance arrangements in remote areas to promote and enrich such relationships. This project extends a suite of projects hosted by Charles Darwin University under the Northern Hub of the Bushfires and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre, collectively addressing {\textquoteleft}building capacity in north Australian remote communities.

Under the collective theme of developing effective emergency management partnerships, the project focused on two of the several communities in Arnhem Land struck by cyclones Lam and Nathan {\textendash} Galiwin{\textquoteright}ku and Ramingining.\  Indigenous leadership in these communities were again struck by underlying issues effecting cultural authority, including poor consideration of community members as core players holding significant knowledge and other assets valuable to hazard preparation, response and community reconstruction. Whilst Galiwin{\textquoteright}ku residents, for example, greatly appreciated the effective response delivered by EM agencies, the events and their aftermath also brought to the surface issues of lost cultural authority, disempowerment, and disengagement within the community. They keenly sought support for practical local efforts to better understand and address the trend of marginalization and dependence on external agency management. Similarly, in Ramingining, the elders felt a sense of powerlessness and shame to be onlookers for response efforts that they wished to be active participants of.

NAILSMA (Indigenous research and service provider, co-partner in the Northern Hub of the CRC and project manager) was in a position to offer administrative, logistical, mentoring and other support to Galiwin{\textquoteright}ku{\textquoteright}s leadership. Yalu Maringithinyaraw is a local Yolngu organisation with research interests and capability that was the local host for the work.

ARPNet, an Indigenous research network of community based Aboriginal Research practitioners is hosted by RIEL at CDU. ARPNet researchers have worked together and developed an approach that emphasises putting the community first and have also adapted a set of PAR tools (the ARPNet Dilly bag) that they use. The Network trains, mentors and provides administrative support to a growing network of community-based Indigenous researchers, dedicated to relocating local research effort in local hands and improving the operation and outcomes of research for local communities and those that service them.\ \ \ \  \ 

It{\textquoteright}s well recognised that strong similarities exist amongst communities across the NT and indeed the North, but that each place is unique. In this context, the projects at Galiwin{\textquoteright}ku and Ramingining developed relatively independently but highlighted in their collective outcomes important messages for EM agency and others about navigating continuity and difference across Indigenous geographies in their policy making and operations.

It was broadly concluded that government and other agencies need to change the way they do business with Yolngu/Bininj by helping empower traditional owners and clan leaders and improve community engagement to produce more effective service delivery.

Concomitantly, NAILSMA, ARPNet and CDU sought to engage EM leadership across the North and in the BNHCRC community with the research developments as they unfolded in Galiwin{\textquoteright}ku and Ramingining, and to inform the local researchers of the perspectives and logic driving EM organization in relevant jurisdictions. This parallel effort strengthened the strategic need to come together {\textquoteleft}at the table{\textquoteright} to work through practical, fundamental change in the way agencies and communities do business {\textendash} a process anticipated as ongoing.

Recognising the resource-intensive nature of the work, connections were made with related projects to provide mutual support for project activities and partnerships.\  The overall objective of the project was to inform effective EM agency community partnership arrangements in remote communities based on enhanced understanding and empowerment of underlying community governance structures. Lessons learnt from the undertaking of this project were used to develop a {\textquoteleft}protocols framework{\textquoteright} to help inform the development of effective agency-community EM partnerships in remote community locations across northern Australia.

This research has identified a common set of core governance issues (see Findings below) and priorities needing to be acknowledged and addressed to improve implementation of emergency risk management arrangements in remote communities. This work has helped these remote communities, and hopefully others, find voice to more effectively engage in the emergency management conversation, and in partnership building at local and national levels. It has also shown that most agencies involved are open to, if not keenly interested in greater equity with communities in engagement but are uncertain and/or systemically blind to how they may initiate and progress real and effective change in remote EM. There is strong interest from the participating communities to continue their work and engage with other end-users in for example, enhanced local and regional-scale planning; the dissemination of quality, relevant and timely information; building partnership support for community level risk mitigation, disaster management and response. These projects provide a conceptual model and approach for scaling up the project of partnership building to other communities in the NT, WA and Qld, and a basis for understanding the costs and benefits involved in broadscale implementation. Project partners are seeking to progress current projects and offer their experience, skills, tools and relationships developed in these two community endeavors to other community groups seeking to improve the way they, EM and other agencies work together. Project partners believe this to be a good foundation for a regional and national framework approach for EM agency/community engagement and relationship building.

}, keywords = {communities, effective, Emergency management, north australia, partnerships, remote}, issn = {670}, author = {Sithole, B and Otto Bulmaniya Campion and Glenn James and Danny Burton and Maratja Dhamarrandji and Hmalan Hunter-Xenie} } @article {bnh-8116, title = {Indigenous fire and land management - impact and sustainability}, number = {680}, year = {2021}, month = {07/2021}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

Context

Significant work has been done over the life of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre around the issues, opportunities and challenges facing remote Indigenous communities in the face of natural hazards. In the north of Australia, the predominant natural threats are cyclones, wildfire and flood, though the level of threat and impact of any of these differs considerably from region to region. There are other hazards that deeply concern remote community leaders, again, not equally across regions: heat stress and exposure, natural water resource salination and pollution, food security, toxicity and asthma issues from crude community waste burning, infrastructure issues (including road access); and related challenges; local capability to act, governance, resilience, inclusion etc.

The emergency management sector research has focused on technologies, capability, recruitment, and other aspects of EM agency preparation, response and recovery. This project responds to an identified gap in addressing the overall environment of Emergency management in remote areas. . . working together!

It is broadly recognised within Indigenous communities that EM is carried out FOR them, not WITH them. (See detailed discussion of this in the Arnhem Land context in Maypalama et. al.: 2016 and Sithole et. al.: 2021). This has generated increased interest, not only in the future engagement of communities in EM, but in the roles, if any, of EM and other agencies in the resilience of communities who, given structural and resource limitations in EM, are keen (and encouraged) to increase {\textquoteleft}self-reliance{\textquoteright} and take on more responsibilities in this space.

There is now a growing conversation nationally around government agencies and Indigenous communities collaborating more effectively. Much of this conversation has been around the perceived positive impact of traditional knowledge (particularly use of fire) on landscape health, and vulnerability to wildfire, how this may be integrated into rural fire service practice and what the real impact of this might be.

Indigenous leaders and rangers have consistently said and shown that use of fire is not separate from other (holistic) elements of caring for traditional country and that the social and cultural dimensions to land and fire management need to be acknowledged and respected to deliver the desired benefits to country and people (Sithole et. al. 2021: Maypalama et.al. 2019: James et. al. 2019: Burgess et. al. 2009). There are many aspects to this conversation and many perceived potential benefits of working together. They underpin this project{\textquoteright}s focus on partnerships to be able to explore this work together. Thus, the research brief is to:

Method

This research was conducted as a series of community-based discussions and workshops in the Northern Territory and north Queensland. NAILSMA provided resources, logistics, backgrounding and other support to local Indigenous researchers and facilitators who ran the meetings on country. This was a Participatory Action Research (PAR) method, consistent with preceding research on community resilience and partnerships by ARPNet and NAILSMA under the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC project Developing effective partnerships in remote north Australian communities: Indigenous research and leadership in Ramingining and Galiwin{\textquoteright}ku. Inherent in this approach are direct benefits to Indigenous researchers and their communities from the process and from longer term outcomes influenced by their research and advocacy with EM agency leaders.

\ Where possible, meeting notes from the NT and Qld discussions were drafted and circulated to respondents and all invitees to the final combined workshop. This was to share what had already been discussed and to help provide focus.

An Agency Reference Group (ARG) (made up predominantly of representatives from QFES, NTES and DFES, but including CDU, Red Cross, NAILSMA and BFNT people) was invited to review and respond to early workshop outcomes, and attend the final workshop. This step was to inform the ARG and Indigenous community invitees to the final workshop with a general view of both Indigenous and agency perspectives on EM priorities and partnership prospects. They were able to kick-off their face-to-face discussions with a degree of prior understanding and focus.

This final, combined workshop was hosted by Djabugay people on their land, facilitated by Barry Hunter, a Djabugay leader and consultant and supported by NAILSMA.

Findings

To inform a Future Research Strategy the research team has organised ideas from the workshop and broader project into:

The work found that gaps are evident within communities, within EM agencies and between them. Summary of the findings includes:

Research Priorities mirror the above gaps and challenges, leading to achieving practical steps in long-term relationship pathways:

Integrating Indigenous fire and land management knowledge with EM operations and systems is not about taking the knowledge, it{\textquoteright}s about building respectful and trusting relationships with Indigenous people to deliver more effective EM together.

Utilisation

This research method (Participatory Action Research) assumes that the Indigenous researchers and their communities are a focal end-user. Participating EM agencies are another key end-user, not only by benefiting from the research in the long run but through face-to-face interactions with community researchers through which opportunities and challenges in developing direct relationships with participating communities can be discussed and solutions progressed firsthand.

In this sense the research is being used as it develops, to benefit communities, relationship building and short-term achievable change. It is also aimed at the national agenda for partnerships with Indigenous land managers, seeking to inform the new Natural Hazards Research Australia[1] about future research priorities and to encourage more discussion, more experience sharing and broader engagement of Indigenous leaders and influential EM agency staff in collaborative workshops hosted by Communities in different jurisdictions on country. This latter aim reflects the success of this project{\textquoteright}s collaborations and use of this model as an ongoing forum to benefit the sector. See for example the Aims and Expectations of the final project workshop below.

\ The summary of next steps:

  1. Relevant EM agencies and community leaders to start or continue working on their relationship and achievable change now.
  2. This report, supported by participating agencies, is presented to the new Natural Hazards Research Australia as a foundation to attract a future fully funded program of collaborative PAR with community researchers and of partnered EM activity.
  3. For the next and future collaborative workshops to be planned and funding secured so they may become annual, focused, Indigenous led pillars of EM sector partnerships.
  4. Conversations continue at 3 levels: community level, transregional and across the multi-agency national conversation. This should include Qld, NT and WA EM agencies connecting more effectively with each other and supporting each other to progress partnership building at North Australia scale.
  5. Indigenous communities and land management groups, their representative organisations and supporters take whatever steps they are able to, to build resilience and capability in EM.
}, keywords = {challenges, Emergency management, fire management, Impact, indigenous, land management, opportunities, partnerships, research strategy, sustainability}, issn = {680}, author = {Glenn James and Danny Burton and Otto Bulmaniya Campion and Barry Hunter and Jimmy Morrison and Ted Gondarra and James Bayung} }