Native voices join together at conference

Native voices join together at conference
May 27, 2013

What insights might the deer-herding women of Lapland offer Australia's desert Aborigines? What might the Inuit, worried about food security in the Arctic, learn from the Kalahari bushmen? And what could Arnhem Landers teach Canada's First Nations chiefs about fire management and saving the biggest forest on the planet?

Launched on Sunday, it is a rainbow connection of about 1200 of the world's indigenous rangers and land and sea managers. It will hear the mangrove people of Bangladesh on the challenge of climate change.

The forest people of Madagascar and the Republic of Benin will talk about ecotourism. It will hear from the Bedouin of Egypt, the Maori and indigenous delegates from Brazil, Mexico, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Mongolia, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and more countries.

Arnhem Land traditional owners used the event's launch to celebrate the creation of Australia's first government-recognised indigenous protected area over the sea. The new Dhimurru IPA will extend 40 kilometres out to sea from the Gove Peninsula and cover 450,000 hectares of water around the north-western tip of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

[link to www.smh.com.au]