Geographies of Land, Home and Place
Geographies of Land, Home and Place brings together our expertise in understanding the places and land systems on which we live, how we are housed and the social geographies of inclusion and belonging.
This project examined the experience of First Peoples who have had private conservation land returned to them in Victoria. The aim is to improve actionable pathways that foreground First Peoples' sovereignty and self-determination over returned land.
Project dates: 2024 - 2025
In Australia, all conservation and land management activities occur on Country where the sovereignty of First Peoples has never been ceded. Since colonisation, non-Indigenous individuals, institutions and organisations have dispossessed, disenfranchised, and excluded First Peoples from their Country, and from practicing their culture. This includes organisations tasked with nature conservation.
Today, the Australian conservation community owns and manages large quantities of private, freehold land across the continent. The ecosystems and places that conservation actors care for and that are crucial to national conservation agendas hold significant ecological and cultural value. They remain unceded Country. Country is not healthy or complete without thriving Traditional Owners and custodians who are empowered to access, influence and own these lands. Land that is protected or reserved for environmental conservation purposes – whether in private, public or community owned land tenure – is key to the self-determined ambitions of First Peoples.
The Australian conservation community of environmental non-government organisations (ENGOs), land trusts, philanthropists and individuals are powerfully placed to contribute to healing Country in a way that meaningfully confronts the enduring injustices and inequities that have extended from colonial dispossession. As well as histories of violence and ecological harm, they include the colonial architectures that continue to underpin land ownership, legislation and governance. Meaningfully addressing enduring inequities associated with land governance means recognising diverse aspirations for how sovereignty and self-determination are achieved through land.
This research engages with a growing interest amongst the conservation community in Victoria, Australia to hand back private land to First Peoples. It examines what the process of land negotiations reveals for First Peoples in Victoria, in the pursuit of accessing, managing and taking on formal ownership of conservation lands.
There are a growing number of examples where the conservation community is negotiating models for access and ownership to support the ambitions of First Peoples on Country. Some of these are through partnerships that have been long and enduring, other relationships are very new. Such models are becoming increasingly important in the context of current Treaty negotiations in Victoria, amidst calls to reform and renegotiate the institutional arrangements that govern and manage First Peoples’ lands and waters.
Holding Country through the return of conservation lands is more than a land transfer or opportunity for publicity. It requires conservation actors and non-Indigenous organisations to reckon with their own power, and with institutional arrangements that have entrenched disadvantage. It is also critical that “land” and “Country” are not equated directly. Country is more than land, as conceived by Western property relations; it is the tangible (soil, plants, water) and intangible dimensions (spirts, Ancestors) that constitute place, and their reciprocal relations. To hold Country is not to simply own it on Western terms, but to uphold a cultural responsibility to care. To support the holding of Country, relearning and recentring First Peoples’ ambitions must be central to the story
A key aim of this work is to better understand how – through land hand back or access arrangements – the conservation community can best respond to the diverse and varying ambitions of First Peoples for holding their Country. Our focus is on the process and outcomes of land negotiations involving First Peoples and conservation actors. This work employs social research with individual Traditional Owners, Traditional Owner Corporations, allied First Peoples’ organisations, and Aboriginal knowledge holders in Victoria. Our jurisdictional focus is Victoria, but we also draw on complementary insights from other jurisdictions. The generosity of key project partner DJAARA in sharing their experiences with the research team has been central to the insights developed.
Project report
CUR researchers
- Ben Cooke - Associate Professor, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies
- Ani Landau-Ward – Lecturer, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies
Partnering researchers
- Lilian Pearce (Deakin University); Louise Buckley (Deakin University); Amos Atkinson.
Partnering organisation
DJAARA (Dja Dja Wurung Clans Aboriginal Corporation)
Funding body
The Greater Melbourne Foundation
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