Statistical Variation Versus Nation Cohesion—Contesting Truth Tests in Competing Socio-Ecological Realities

Abstract

The Aboriginal Sociocultural Survey into the value of environmental water to Aboriginal populations living in Australia’s Murray–Darling Basin is an example of a research tool that both accurately analyses cultural values while also communicating the same values to decision-makers whose cultures—including research cultures—are very different from those whose values are being communicated. Using a participatory post-positivist methodology the survey produced results that demonstrated a direct link between environmental water and Aboriginal socioeconomic well-being in Aboriginal terms. It created results that strengthen Aboriginal voices in natural resource management and Aboriginal socioeconomic development. Some mainstream observers queried its validity on the grounds of bias as the results lacked statistical variation. The paper looks into the validity of the challenge. It raises the ethical risk of non-Aboriginal interventions un-self-critically creating community fragmentation and approaches to sampling that weaken the authority of Traditional Owners. Non-Aboriginal researchers at the Murray–Darling Basin Authority agreed that if asked about the value of water, other interest groups would be likely to produce a similarly unified result. In so doing and in the context of an emerging social contract regarding relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations in Australia, the collective Aboriginal understanding that “water is life” has been positioned in the Northern Basin Review’s decision-making framework to reach a sustainable balance of water uses for the health and well-being of all life in the Basin.