Part Four: Consent and limitations
In natural resource management, engagement with Aboriginal communities often involves seeking access to Country, cultural knowledge, or participation in planning and management processes. These encounters are shaped by long histories of dispossession and ongoing colonial entitlement. Even well-intentioned approaches can place emotional strain on Aboriginal people and Country, especially when consent is assumed or expected to be unconditional. The questions below invite reflection on how to approach this work with greater humility, care, and respect.
1. How might I engage with the possibility that Aboriginal community members may not want to support a project, plan, or request for access to Country?
(How do I respond if they say no, request changes, or challenge the basis of the work?)
2. When seeking cultural knowledge or guidance, am I respecting the time, boundaries, and responsibilities of those sharing?
(Am I prepared to slow down or step back if the response is, “this is not for you”?)
3. In co-management or planning conversations, whose priorities are guiding the process?
(Are Aboriginal perspectives genuinely shaping decisions, or are those perspectives being asked to endorse outcomes already decided?)
4. Do I treat access to Country as a privilege based on relationship and invitation- or as a resource to be negotiated for project delivery?
(Am I reinforcing extractive practices, or honouring Country as sovereign and relational?)
5. What are your responsibilities when harm is caused - even unintentionally - in cross-cultural work?
(Do we acknowledge it, make changes, and stay engaged- or retreat behind good intentions?)