Indigenous marine tenure and resource use at Blue Mud Bay: ethnographic and archaeological perspectives

This project will document the contemporary system of coastal and marine tenure among the Yolngu Aboriginal people of Blue Mud Bay in eastern Arnham Land and relate it to resource usage, resource management and the historical development of the regional subsistence system over the last 6000 years. Today Aboriginal people own over 80% of the foreshore of the Northern Territory yet little is known about their usage and tenure of the sea. The project will address theoretical issues relating to the relationship between practice and structure, use and ownership, trade and processes of social transformation and co-management of the sea.