CULTURES
 

Three living cultures provide the context for exploring the respective regenerative land practices in the case study places.

 

In AUSTRALIAwe are guests within the rich Indigenous culture with its 65,000 + year history and the longest surviving living culture of the traditional owners of these lands. The case study focuses on the Aboriginal nation of Yuin Country on the South Coast of New South Wales. Within Yuin Country there are at least 13 different clan groups who have specific place-based traditions, beliefs and practices with at least four related but distinctive languages. The Black Duck Songline links the Yuin peoples and tells the dreaming story of the creation of the land [1 & 2] that stretches over 300kms from Mallacoota in Victoria all the way up the coast to Sydney. "...The as-yet-unresolved matter of the invasion and subsequent colonisation" [3] of Aboriginal peoples homelands  from 1788 displaced Aboriginal people and disrupted cultural practices and their Caring-for-Country relationship to the land forever. While we are not able to cover the vast variety of cultural diversity within Yuin Country in detail, we focus on Yuin Country as a bio-cultural region that matches many of the government agencies descriptions of the South Coast region of NSW.

 

The mutli-cultural settler population of Australia, and Yuin Country, makes up the vast majority (approx. 96%) of the entire population. Settler culture, worldviews and governance dominate life and land governance in Australia. Therefore, the Yuin Country case study takes an intercultural approach including Indigenous and non-Indigenous stakeholders in the interviews and workshop. Therefore intercultural challenges, colonisation and their impacts on land governance and land rights are a key part of this case study.

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In BHUTANwe are guests within the Bhutanese culture steeped in the Buddhist tradition which was brought to Bhutan in the mid-8th century CE from Tibet [4]. The pre-Buddhist belief system and practices in Bhutan were influenced by animistic, paganistic and shamanistic beliefs related to the Tibetan Bon religion. They imbued nature and landscapes with spiritual meaning. Those beliefs and rituals co-existed alongside Buddhism and are still alive today in Bhutan's festivals and daily rituals. Bhutan became a unified country in the early-17th  century and emerged from centuries of seclusion in the 1960s through major modernisation reforms introduced by the 3rd King of Bhutan. The country's culture has undergone a rapid transition ever since then, yet the oral tradition of storytelling through song, dance and music is still alive and vibrant today. English was introduced as the language of instruction in schools in 1962 and is today the language of administration, education, media and business, alongside the national language of Dzongkha [5]. The arrival of television in 1999 and the change from a hereditary monarchy to a parliamentary democracy in 2008 all have opened Bhutan to the world and brought new cultural and economic influences. This transition has also had major implications for the treatment of land and the current land governance systems.

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In WALESwe work within the distinctive Welsh culture that is Celtic by origin and nature. The Celts arrived in Wales between 1,000-600 BCE and brought with them their language and culture. The Welsh language is one of the oldest in Europe and being an oral tradition, cultural knowledge was passed down through storytelling, poetry and music. To this day poetry, music and the Welsh language are important markers of Welsh cultural identity and sense of place. Nowadays, Wales is a mutli-cultural society and both Welsh and English are official languages.  A uniquely Welsh sense of place and people's relationship to land is reflected in the concept of  'cynefin'. The term is often translated as habitat but it is much more than a physical geographical place that includes the historical, cultural and social dimensions shaping communities and peoples' sense of place and belonging [6, 7]. Cynefin is now a concept included in the school curriculum in Wales and encourages learners to develop an authentic sense of cynefin [7]. Although the nation of Wales is part of the United Kingdom it is governed as a devolved nation under Welsh Government policies and legislation. Although some UK legislation also applies to Wales, both influence how land is governed and managed in Wales.