Australian Researchers Stunned To Discover First Nations Knowledge Of Country Has Been Operating At Capacity For 65000 Years Without A Single Stakeholder Survey

CANBERRA – A landmark national research project has formally delivered a framework recommending that species and ecosystems of deep cultural importance to Indigenous Australians be recognised in environmental policy. The finding has been described as “groundbreaking” by the same sector that has spent 200 years not asking.

A senior environmental policy researcher said the project’s most controversial recommendation was a “shift in how governments engage with Indigenous Australians from viewing them as stakeholders to recognising them as rights-holders with cultural authority and responsibilities for Country.”

“It turns out the people who have managed these landscapes for 65,000 years know things about the landscapes” the researcher said, fanning herself with a printout of the executive summary. “Nobody saw this coming.”

Until now the policy framework had treated Traditional Owners as a category somewhere between “interested community member” and “stakeholder requiring complimentary morning tea.” The new framework proposes the radical idea that the people whose totem the species is should be consulted before someone with a clipboard decides whether the species exists.

In a related development scientists also recently “formally described” the Kungaka or Hidden One – a lizard well known to Wiimpatja Aboriginal Owners since approximately the dawn of memory but only recently issued a Latin name and a Zootaxa entry to make it real.

“It’s quite incredible” a museum spokesperson said. “Wiimpatja have been monitoring this lizard for 25 years. We monitored it for 18 months and felt confident giving it a new name.”

Asked whether Indigenous knowledge holders would now receive royalties for every species the museum “discovers” using their guidance, the spokesperson laughed for slightly too long then changed the subject to grant funding.