Alien relations: Ecological and Ontological Dilemmas Posed for Indigenous Australians in the Management of “Feral” Camels on their Lands

Abstract

The colonization of indigenous people and their lands typically involved the introduction of domesticated species integral to the development of settler economies. These animals were bound up with European social and ontological understandings that were profoundly different to those of the peoples being colonized—in particular, notions of the human–animal divide. In central Australia, Indigenous people have responded to introduced animals variously with fear, resistance, openness, creativity and resilience. In doing so, they have had to negotiate incommensurable differences and disjunctions, involving the nature of the animals themselves and the “pastoral” relations Europeans have with these animals compared to Indigenous people’s totemically based relations with native animals.1 Now, irrevocably entangled, they have to re-negotiate their relations with domesticated animals such as camels, which have become free-ranging and are increasing in number on their land. The management of these animals creates tensions and dilemmas for people who want to maintain proper relationships with their country and the other-than- human constituents who inhabit it. This chapter addresses the situation in regard to camels in central Australia, focusing on Aboriginal people who adopted camels for use as transport. It considers the conflicts and challenges people face in reconciling their responsibilities toward beings to whom they are ancestrally related with their responsibilities toward camels, with whom they have a shared history and whose cosmological significance has shifted with the adoption of Christianity. I argue that the choices people make have implications not only for other entities in their environment, but also for the people themselves and for their relational ontologies.