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Complex intersecting social, economic and environmental dilemmas in Australia's Cape York Peninsula present a number of challenges for planners seeking to develop and implement land use and natural resource management (NRM) plans. There have been five different attempts at land use and NRM planning in Cape York Peninsula over the last 20 years. These processes have (to greater or lesser extents) failed to deliver community-owned and government-supported plans to guide development and/or the management of the region's natural resources. The region is remote, sparsely populated, and home to a significant Indigenous population. Much of the contestation within the region surrounds the access, use and ownership of the region's internationally valuable natural resources. This paper reviews, from the literature, the relevancy and applicability of criteria for best practice planning and governance. A range of identified best practice governance and planning principles are applied to assess the governance arrangements for planning in the Peninsula. The paper finds that decision-making arrangements for land use and NRM planning in the Peninsula are still in their infancy and are inadequate to support effective outcomes. The paper concludes that broader attention to best practice principles in governance for planning is needed to improve planning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Free prior informed consent is a critical concept in enacting the rights of Indigenous People according to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This paper outlines a case for the inclusion of free prior informed consent in World Heritage nomination processes and examines issues that are problematic when enacting free prior informed consent. Case research was used to analyse current issues in the potential nomination of certain areas of Cape York Peninsula, Australia. The authors’ reflexive engagement within this case offers insights into the praxis of developing a World Heritage nomination consent process. The outcomes of this research were: preconditions need to be addressed to avoid self-exclusion by indigenous representative organisations; the nature of consent needs to account for issues of representation and Indigenous ways of decision making; the power of veto needs to have formal recognition in the nomination process; and prioritising self-determination within free prior informed consent ensures the intent of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The paper contributes to the human rights agenda of Indigenous People and conservation management processes by helping address the issues that will be raised during a World Heritage nomination process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The issue of personal and family connections to traditional homelands has been the subject of considerable attention—and dispute—in Australia's ‘native title era’. This paper examines contemporary Indigenous connections to country in Central Cape York Peninsula and, in particular, the affective aspects of local and diaspora ties to place. Drawing on recent theorisations of place and locality, I outline some of the ways in which Indigenous attachments to specific localities are becoming both more complex and increasingly inflected by the location of Indigenous people within late modern liberal society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historically unequal grazing industry in Cape York Peninsula, far northeast Queensland, gave rise to intercultural relationships between Aboriginal stock workers and settler-descended graziers. However, in recent decades, Aboriginal employment on cattle stations has fallen. Nowadays, many younger Aboriginal people work in government-funded jobs which settler-descended graziers frame as 'hand-out style' work. Settler-descended graziers have come to value an ethic of hard work related to both the Protestant work ethic and aspects of pioneer mythology which are entwined with graziers' senses of belonging. Contemporary Aboriginal people are positioned by settler-descended graziers as having a 'different' relationship to work and lacking the valuation of hard work that graziers deem a moral good. In their discussions of Aboriginal people as lacking a valuation for 'hard work', graziers seek to critique what they perceive as government overreach in the form of land rights and government-funded jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marrying into the community whose culture you are studying opens up philosophical and practical quandaries for the researcher and facilitates opportunities that are not otherwise available. Marriage brings with it many subtle shifts in relationships within the community. George Orwell (1937) speaks of class difference but could equally have been talking of cultural difference when he said ‘it is not so much a stone wall as a plate glass pane of an aquarium; it is so easy to pretend that it isn't there, and so impossible to get through it’. Does marriage enable you to cross that barrier? What difference, if any, is there in the nature of the resulting research and its benefits or otherwise to the community? This paper provides a glimpse into the author's journey as a researcher in Northern Cape York Peninsula, Australia and reflects on the way interpersonal relationships influenced her approach to research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The year 2006 marks the quatercentenary of the first known European charting of any part of the Australian coastline, when the Dutch mariner Willem Janszoon explored 300 kms of the north-west coast of Cape York Peninsula. He bestowed seven placenames, two of which, Moent and Dubbelde Ree have ambiguous meanings or referents. This paper attempts to resolve the enigmas behind these names by considering geographic, linguistic and historical evidence. Moent is particularly challenging, with several possible linguistic sources, some more plausible than others. The most compelling evidence points to it either referring to the western entrance to Endeavour Strait, or a Dutch rendition of an Indigenous Australian word. Dubbelde Ree is less problematic. The issue surrounding this name is whether its second element is meant to be Ree, an abbreviation of Reede (‘Roadstead’), or Rev, an abbreviation of Revier (‘River’). The search for the meaning of these placenames has provided credible evidence demonstrating that Janszoon explored the coastline in greater detail than has hitherto been thought, and that, in all likelihood, made contact with the local inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bowerbirds are well known for their unique courtship behaviour during which, in an attempt to attract a mate, a male builds a ‘bower’ or small enclosed structure of woven sticks and pebbles and decorates it with bright shiny objects. The bower provides shade and a place for the male’s elaborate courtship dance. This article was prompted by the discovery of an elaborate bower constructed by an Australian Great Bowerbird,Chlamydera nuchalis.The bower was located while undertaking an archaeological survey of the Wenlock Goldfields on the boundary of the Northern Kaanju Indigenous Protected Area in Cape York, Queensland. This bower was constructed using a large number of colonial era artefacts, supporting previous research that indicates a link between the very particular mating behaviour ofC. nuchalisand systematic site disturbance. We draw parallels between systematic site disturbance caused by bowerbirds in both pre-colonial and colonial era sites. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Weipa Mission (1898-1932) on Cape York Peninsula (north-eastern Australia) was one of seven Australian missions designed and staffed by the Moravian Church during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We present findings of archaeological and historical research that illustrate key aspects of the settlement's development and operations. Moravian missionaries at Weipa aimed to create a built landscape that reshaped Aboriginal social, cultural and economic relations, with particular emphasis on children through the use of a dormitory system. However, their efforts were mediated by the open spatial and social boundaries of the settlement, which enabled Aboriginal people to make choices about the nature and extent to which they engaged with the mission. Adopting a political economy approach, we show that this openness emerged through complex social relationships between missionaries and Aboriginal people. While missionaries required access to children and adults, they lacked the ability (or will) to maintain a resident population through force, with limited financial resources also hampering their activities. Instead, Aboriginal people came and went from the settlement, with some establishing and maintaining social relationships with missionaries to access economic and social benefits. We argue that these social relationships led to the development of the settlement as a more open domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The terpenoid composition of fossil resin from the Cape York Peninsula, Australia has been analysed by pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS) to determine its origin. The pyrolysis products were dominated by cadalene-based C15bicyclic sesquiterpenoids including some C30–C31bicadinanes and bicadinenes typical of Class II resin derived from angiosperm plants of Dipterocarpaceae. This observation contrasts with the Araucariaceae (Agathissp.) source previously suggested for the resin based on Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analyses. Dipterocarpaceae are not known in Australian vegetation but grow abundantly in Southeast Asia including New Guinea, indicating that the geological origin of the amber is not the Australian mainland but could be traced to Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Entrenched contests about the future of Cape York Peninsula's lands, waters and people have for long received national prominence. In the federal arena, this has climaxed with the campaign to overturn the State's declarations on wild rivers. Initially pursued as a means of influencing decisions on the determination of the government in a finely balanced federal parliament, it has been retained as an early test of the survivability of the minority Labor government. The peninsula's prominence is founded on its iconic conservation status and the continuity of Aboriginal occupance of their country, reinforced by the formidable capabilities of Indigenous and conservationist leaders. Contests are characterised by their complexity, durability and intractability. Contests are bedevilled by shifting alliances and schisms within Indigenous and conservationist constituencies. Increasingly potent is the schism between modernist/reformist/regionalist visions of Indigenous futures, forcefully presented by Noel Pearson against more traditionalist/localist visions held by many community leaderships. Other participants, notably conservationists, State politicians and bureaucracies have needed to align their policies around these contested visions. Over the last two decades, policies of State Labor governments have maintained some continuity, being pro-active on conservation goals, selectively supportive of Aboriginal advancement, necessarily passive in the determination of land claims, reactive in the resolution of land tenures and property rights, and inconsistent and ineffectual in conflict resolution and in providing leadership in shaping sustainable, multifunctional futures, attuned to the peninsula's unique challenges and potentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]