The Importance of Rainforest Aboriginal Peoples’ Spatial Intelligence to Managing Cultural Values

This working document seeks to express the importance of Indigenous spatial planning and its relevance to Rainforest Aboriginal Peoples (RAP), encouraging their continued interest in cultural mapping, through the internal and external apical family discussions and shared ideas they have surrounding topics such as cultural values, spatial planning, rights and interests, Traditional law and custom. These aspects most affect RAP in their customary landscapes within the Wet Tropics biocultural region. It is also written with a living document in mind, one that will continue to evolve over time, but also act as a model (guide) for the 300+ apical ancestor families to use and develop their own relevant spatial aims and ideas, and the Rainforest Aboriginal Peoples Think Tank (RAPTT) in their strategic work on behalf of Rainforest Aboriginal peoples. This is a model that provides as much information, ideas and concepts to apical ancestor families or RAPTT that should be useful for their individual and discrete purposes, but notes that some information that is eventually written about, may simply not be available to others, due to the nature of Traditional law and custom and/or Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP). Some of this sits in the Indigenous innovation space as rainforest bama and the RAPTT take their ideas and concepts and begin to shape them into opportunities to address issues and/or impacts that threaten or advance their rights and interest, especially their Traditional law and custom. Much of bama’s ideas and concepts rise from the distinctive and diverse explicit and tacit knowledge systems that they have used for millennia. It is also why an Intellectual Property (IP) kit was identified as a valuable resource to have over a decade ago. With a final Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property kit having now been developed, it is in grasping distance for RAP to use. There is enormous connectivity between Indigenous peoples’ spatial intelligence and their primary substantive rights and how valuable these intersections are and, how influential they can be to cultural values management. This connectivity if recognised for proper regional and management planning processes, is vital. It is important to understand how Rainforest Aboriginal peoples might apply their cultural and intellectual knowledge and spatial intelligence to the real world matters they confront. It intersects the broader and dynamic social, economic, environmental, and cultural dimensions of rainforest landscapes and cultures, and the contemporary boundaries they interact with in the Wet Tropics biocultural region. For the purposes of clarity in this document, the use of ‘customary’ and ‘cultural’ landscapes is to firstly recognise and distinguish the deep and distinct rules and guidelines set down by creation beings (such as rainbow serpents and others in storylines) and the placement and naming of major customary landscapes. These hold sacred and sensitive meaning and embrace the ongoing living cultural web of life that continues to guide Rainforest Aboriginal peoples. From those who hold cultural authority over ancient landscapes, or the intergenerational responsibilities exercised by gender-groups (women’s and men’s business) in the primordial layers of cultural heritage, apply the creation-related. Traditional law and custom to customary codes are central to guiding governance, decision-making and cultural ethics (and the integrity) of both rainforest landscapes and cultures. Rainforest Aboriginal peoples have shown great interest in cultural mapping for many years, underpinned by several funded cultural mapping projects across the last decade or more. Principally, through their spatial intelligence across generations and is strengthened in some -barra and -warra dialect/locality groups by ancient spatial artform techniques. Accelerating an understanding of spatial planning with this natural spatial interest provides pathways for organic learning in how apical ancestor families might use traditional law and custom, to advance innovative, functional and valuable planning objectives and outcomes.