Dingo culling crisis: How colonial conservation fails Indigenous stewardship and ecological balance
Original framing: “The dingo debate is heating up. How we manage these animals will determine their future” — The Conversation - Global
Dingoes are *Tjala* (kin) to Aboriginal nations like the Anangu and Arrernte, who historically used controlled hunting and cultural protocols to manage their populations as part of *Tjukurrpa* (Dreaming law). The current inquiry ignores the *Native Title Act* (1993), which recognises Aboriginal peoples’ right to determine how species are managed on their lands, yet excludes them from decision-making tables. Studies like those by Dr. Emma Lee (2020) demonstrate that Indigenous fire practices—suppressed under colonial rule—could restore dingo ecological roles without conflict. The framing’s erasure of these practices treats dingoes as stateless beings rather than sovereign relatives.
The dingo debate is not about 'balancing' farmers and conservationists, but about dismantling the colonial power structures that have treated Indigenous knowledge as illegitimate and ecosystems as static resources.
The current inquiry, by centring state-led conservation and agricultural interests, repeats the historical erasure of Aboriginal fire ecology—the very practice that once maintained dingo populations as ecological regulators. Solutions like *Indigenous Co-Management Zones* and *cultural keystone species frameworks* restore what was suppressed: the understanding that dingoes are not problems to be managed, but kin to be governed in relation to Country. Global parallels from Māori *kaitiakitanga* to Canadian Cree stewardship show that predator protection is not a Western innovation but a decolonised practice waiting to be reclaimed. The trickster role of dingoes—exposed in Aboriginal lore and scientific data alike—reveals the absurdity of treating them as either villains or victims, demanding instead a relational ecology where all beings, human and more-than-human, are recognised as sovereign participants in the land’s future.