Comparing Roles and Rights of Indigenous Groups in Local Governance of Trepang Fisheries in Northern Australia and Eastern Indonesia

The trepang1 trade has historically sustained livelihoods in the Arafura Timor Seas (ATS) region and continues today (Adhuri, 2013b; Fox, 2000). The early trade was centred on the port of Makassar and undertaken predominantly by Makassarese, Bugis, Butonese and Bajau fishers based in southern Sulawesi (Clark & May, 2013a). Now generally referred to as ‘Macassans’, these traders negotiated with the Indigenous landowners in Indonesia and Northern Australia for rights to access trepang stocks and sell the dried product to the Chinese market for hundreds of years (MacKnight, 1976). Such arrangements were typically organised around customary governance regimes on land and sea territory that recognised Indigenous ownership. Throughout the twentieth century, much of the region came under the jurisdiction of some form of central nationstate government, while international trade increasingly became subject