Whale are our kin, our memory and our responsibility

Jack Harwood Pascoe; Teagan Goolmeer; Anthony McKnight; Vicki Couzens

doi:10.1071/WR23157

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Whale are our kin, our memory and our responsibility

Jack Harwood Pascoe

^A ^* , Teagan Goolmeer

^A ^B , Anthony McKnight ^C and Vicki Couzens ^D

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic, Australia.

^B School of Molecular and Life Sciences, Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia.

^C University of Wollongong, Indigenous Strategy Unit, Wollongong, NSW, Australia.

^D RMIT, School of Media and Communication, Melbourne, Vic, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: jack.pascoe@unimelb.edu.au

Handling Editor: Emilie Ens

Wildlife Research 51, WR23157 https://doi.org/10.1071/WR23157

Submitted: 22 December 2023 Accepted: 22 June 2024 Published: 22 July 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

There is a global move to advocate for the incorporation of Indigenous Knowledges into conservation and land management programs. In Australia this is being reflected in some programs and also regularly in strategy documents. However, we argue that this rarely reflects self-determination for Traditional Custodians. In this article we use two Culturally Significant Entities (CSEs), the humpback and southern right whales, to demonstrate how the regulatory framework that is in place to support species conservation does not adequately allow for Traditional Custodians to extend culturally appropriate levels of care for Country or preserve the knowledge held or associated with a species. Our aim is that the Australian Government and people will work with us to find a way to support the care of CSEs.

Position statement

We, the authors, are Indigenous Australians. We have familial connections to whale Lore Holders and/or hold traditional whale Lore/Law as part of our cultural obligations. It is from this position that we advocate for greater care of the whales with which we have Ancestral kinship and reciprocal responsibility.

Keywords: culturally significant entities, ethnozoology, humpback whale, indigenous knowledge, songline, southern-right whale, traditional ecological knowledge.

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