A Reconciliation journey: The history of First Nations park rangers in South Australia

The Depart­ment for Envi­ron­ment and Water (DEW) works togeth­er with Tra­di­tion­al Own­ers to man­age Coun­try across the state, in a num­ber ways, including:

Co-man­age­ment of parks and reserves
Co-man­age­ment is a for­mal arrange­ment between DEW and First Nations organ­i­sa­tions. It com­bines tra­di­tion­al knowl­edge of Coun­try with con­tem­po­rary sci­ence and meth­ods, for the ben­e­fit of all park users. You can find out more about co-man­age­ment here: Under­stand­ing co-man­age­ment of South Aus­trali­a’s Nation­al Parks.

First Nations park rangers

A his­toric pro­gram in the 1980s led to rec­on­cil­i­a­tion progress that’s still at work today.

Australia’s first Abo­rig­i­nal Ranger train­ing pro­gram hap­pened in South Aus­tralia, more than 40 years ago.

The pro­gram ran in the Vulkathun­ha-Gam­mon Ranges Nation­al Park, on the tra­di­tion­al lands of the Adnya­math­anha peo­ple, back in 1983.

Peter Tay­lor, who worked for the fed­er­al agency Aus­tralian Nation­al Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice (ANPWS), was the cre­ator of that first pro­gram. He explained how it came about.

“Vulkathun­ha-Gam­mon Ranges had just had a large amount of land added to the nation­al park at the time,” said Peter, ​“and there was a fair bit of resis­tance from the Adnya­math­anha peo­ple, because there had been lim­it­ed engage­ment with them.”

Did you know? 13.8 mil­lion hectares of land is co-man­aged in South Australia.

Thanks to the Adnya­math­anha people’s advo­ca­cy for their cul­tur­al her­itage, the ANPWS fund­ed an Aus­tralian-first pro­gram to train Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple as park rangers.

Peter was already work­ing in the region at the time and engag­ing with the Adnya­math­anha peo­ple, and took on the chal­lenge of cre­at­ing the 12-month program.

“The four trainees and I were novices togeth­er regard­ing South Aus­tralian park man­age­ment prac­tice, so we trooped all over the place and engaged parks staff in teach­ing the guys ranger skills – every­thing from fer­al ani­mal con­trol to search and res­cue, to wildlife man­age­ment and botany and archae­ol­o­gy and more,” said Peter.

Accord­ing to the atti­tudes of the time, the inten­tion was real­ly a one-way process of edu­ca­tion about west­ern land man­age­ment tech­niques. But the pro­gram sparked inter­est in Tra­di­tion­al Own­er knowl­edge and cul­ture in parks, dri­ving ear­ly steps in DEW’s Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion jour­ney in land management.

“We were teach­ing young fel­lows to be rangers,” said Peter. ​“But it was pret­ty evi­dent as we got going that actu­al­ly there was a lot of cul­tur­al knowl­edge about the coun­try that had nev­er been doc­u­ment­ed. And dur­ing the pro­gram we set things up so the rangers could rep­re­sent their elders in edu­cat­ing tourists and oth­er park staff about the sig­nif­i­cance of the land from an Abo­rig­i­nal perspective.”

Under­stand­ing and action grew

The ranger train­ing pro­gram in 1983 laid the foun­da­tions of new ways for Abo­rig­i­nal and non-Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple to work togeth­er towards a shared goal of car­ing for the land. Sub­se­quent actions included:

• Help­ing restore the Adnya­math­anha lan­guage, with anthro­pol­o­gists and lin­guists from Aus­tralian Nation­al University.
• A sec­ond Abo­rig­i­nal ranger train­ing pro­gram began with the Ngar­rind­jeri peo­ple in the Coorong Nation­al Park in 1985.
• The evo­lu­tion of the Nation­al Indige­nous Pro­tect­ed Area (IPA) Pro­gram, with Nantawar­ri­na IPA adja­cent to Vulkathun­ha-Gam­mon Ranges Nation­al Park the first to be cre­at­ed in 1998 – anoth­er Aus­tralian first hap­pen­ing in SA.
• Pro­gres­sive work and under­stand­ing led to the for­mal estab­lish­ment of First Nations co-man­age­ment with DEW in 2004.

Now: the First Nations Ranger Devel­op­ment Program

In 2022 the South Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment com­mit­ted $4.8 mil­lion over 4 years to employ 15 new Abo­rig­i­nal rangers across our parks. When this goal was achieved, the remain­ing fund­ing was direct­ed to a pro­gram to encour­age reten­tion and career growth.

The Abo­rig­i­nal Ranger Devel­op­ment Pro­gram (ARDP), co-devel­oped with TAFE, helps upskill our Abo­rig­i­nal rangers with their Cer­tifi­cate III in Con­ser­va­tion and Ecosys­tem Management. 

It’s deliv­ered in the form of inten­sive, hands-on edu­ca­tion ses­sions in dif­fer­ent regions and parks around the state each month. 

Rangers gain new skills and knowl­edge in dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments, and each takes a turn to ​‘host’ at their own park and pass on local and tra­di­tion­al expertise.

The rangers have said:

“Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, the pro­gram has helped me grow in many ways. I’ve built strong friend­ships … I’ve gained valu­able knowl­edge from oth­er rangers along with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the land, plants and more.” – Raphillia

“I’ve been exposed to many dif­fer­ent regions, con­ser­va­tion prac­tices, peo­ple and equip­ment … I’ve imple­ment­ed week­ly weed­ing ini­tia­tives in my own parks, gone to help out of region and had oth­er rangers help out in my region.” – Jacob

“I always go back to work after a train­ing ses­sion feel­ing I can do my job bet­ter than before.” – Tim

“Lis­ten­ing to the expe­ri­ences and per­spec­tives of oth­er stu­dents has helped me learn in ways that go beyond the class­room. It has built stronger con­nec­tions between us and cre­at­ed a sup­port net­work that we can con­tin­ue to rely on in our work­places and com­mu­ni­ties.” — Tanya

Ben­e­fits for rangers, nature and park visitors

Career oppor­tu­ni­ties on Coun­try cre­ate val­ue for South Australia’s First Nations com­mu­ni­ties and help main­tain deep con­nec­tions to culture. 

The gen­er­a­tional land man­age­ment exper­tise of First Nations peo­ple con­tributes to bet­ter pro­tec­tion and restora­tion of land­scapes and biodiversity.

For park vis­i­tors, encoun­ter­ing First Nations rangers is a chance to learn more about the ancient land­scapes and cul­ture, as well as oth­er per­spec­tives on shared history.

Learn more about Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and First Nations involve­ment in the parks of South Australia:

Strong Peo­ple, Strong Coun­try — Co-man­ag­ing parks in South Aus­tralia (2018) PDF

5 nation­al parks in South Aus­tralia that are rich in Aboriginal…

Arti­cle head­er image: ranger Matt Hart­man at Dutch­man’s Stern Con­ser­va­tion Park. Pho­to: Jacob Turner

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