Commissioned by the Natural Resource Management Board (NT). government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Coolgare Community Development Employment Programme, Torres Strait CRC and Torres Strait Regional Authority. Successful techniques of sponge culture developed under this project have been adopted by several indigenous communities that are working to develop sponge farms. These farms provide new economic and educational ventures owned and operated by indigenous communities in remote and regional Australia. 344
8.4 Charles Darwin University Environmental and scientific staff use Indigenous knowledge in their disciplines but arguably need to give greater recognition to the value of Indigenous Knowledge in terms of payments and attribution. CDU has an Indigenous Peoples Policy which provides a framework for managing CDU activities that impact upon the Indigenous community. While the Policy’s implementation is based on sound principles such as respect, consultation, understanding and sensitivity, there is little in the policy providing for benefits to flow back to Indigenous communities and individuals who are the subject of research projects. CDU’s Intellectual Property Policy states that it will be implemented in a way that ensures “there are processes in place to handle cases where the Intellectual Property rights of the University impinge or potentially impinge on the cultural, spiritual or other aspects of Indigenous peoples…”, although how is this is to be achieved is unclear. Grants for research should take into account payments for Indigenous consultants and research institutions with which they are associated as consultants. A wider perspective on payments needs to be considered in applying for the grants. For instance, an individual may give over knowledge as an ‘informant’ but there is ‘social ownership of knowledge’. There needs to be a mechanism for the payment and attribution of the knowledge custodian(s) and not just an individual handing over traditional knowledge. Protocols are a different system of identifying which people have the right to speak on different pieces of knowledge. Researchers tend to single out individuals, a family or a group, and they tend to receive the majority of benefits. Limited discretionary monies for to participation from national competitive grants schemes tend to compound if not produce this conundrum. The impact of the intervention had meant that people need to link up their fees with Centrelink payments. They have to declare if they get money for consultancy (research) work, and even if this is one off, it affects their take home money. Ms Ford is working with one community, who have organized a system –whereby they use short term contracts. 344
Australian Institute of Marine Science, Annual Report 2004‐’05, viewed 30 March 2009. http://www.aims.gov.au/pages/about/ar20042005/pdf/ar20042005s‐033048.pdf
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