We Do Hope the Changes We Have Made Are Now Sufficient to Permit Publication

Dear Editor

Thank you for the opportunity to make changes to our paper and resubmit. The first reviewer obviously appreciates what we are trying to achieve and has responded positively. The second reviewer seems mainly concerned that a qualitative not a quantitative approach should have been taken to investigate the issue. While we agree that a qualitative approach has substantial merit, in this case we felt we had the necessary understanding of the communities we were working in, and had in place the appropriate ethical protections against culturally inappropriate behaviour with potentially vulnerable people, that a quantitative approach could be undertaken. Indeed we we felt it essential that these issues should be investigated quantitatively to ensure we explored the fully diversity of opinion among a broad selection of the population rather than the small proportion who might have been consulted through using qualitative methods. Indeed, in this case, we felt that earlier qualitative research had led to much speculation but little empirical evidence of the type we sought.

We do hope the changes we have made are now sufficient to permit publication.

Yours sincerely

Kerstin Zander

1 Response to reviewers

Reviewer 1.

The reviewer suggests that the hypothetical questions would have been difficult to answer without greater context. We have now explained that the study sites were chosen partly because people in those communities would have had the opportunity to see what is involved with the different types of work involved so that they would understand the options being presented.

The map has been redrawn as requested.

Reviewer 2

The reviewer is of the view that what we have revealed about the range of views held by Indigenous people about involvement in wildlife-based enterprise is relatively straight forward. We beg to disagree. As both reviewers agree, we have been able to provide a useful new perspective on Indigenous attitudes to these businesses that shows how much more complex Indigenous involvement is than it is for non-Indigenous people, and that complexity is driven by the relationship between Indigenous people and their traditional environment. It is for this reason that we believe this paper is suitable for Human Ecology. However, to clarify this, we have provided greater emphasis on this in the introduction and discussion.

We have the following responses to the points made

1) The reviewer politely invites us to repeat our research using completely different methods. We agree entirely that qualitative research is the most appropriate research mode when dealing with areas about which there is little knowledge and where the people involved have an oral tradition. For this reason all surveys were conducted by Indigenous people experienced in quantitative research and speaking the language of those interviewed. The communities were also those whose people had had extensive experience with other research projects, including our own qualitative research on other issues. For this reason we felt entirely comfortable with undertaking this research in a quantitative manner, and had the appropriate ethical clearances to do so.

2) We are not exactly sure what the reviewer is suggesting we change in response to this comment. However we disagree that the traditional relationship of Australian Aboriginal people to the environment can be characterised by the terms ‘guardians and protectors’. We would contend that it has traditionally been far more complex and closer than that with different elements in the environment being seen as sentient. Thus it is the environment that is often considered to ‘guard and protect’ the people. The relationship with the environment, however, also means that it has necessarily been culturally appropriate to exploit it. We have added some sections to make this complexity clear, which also responds to some of the issues raised by the reviewer in the opening paragraph – wildlife-based industries in the context of Indigenous people in Australia are very much about the ecology of humans in the landscape not just about commercial considerations or ecological sustainability. 2 3) A sentence has been added on the importance of the research. We do not agree that the answers provided to our questions about people’ willingness to be involved in wildlife-based enterprise is not a reflection of the interest in their involvement. While the reviewer favours qualitative research, we assert that quantitative research does still provide valid results.

4) The reasons for selecting the communities has been spelt out and the differences between the communities moved from the Discussion (p.11) to the description of the study area.

5) The ineligibility of some respondents for cultural reasons is explained in more detail, explaining how the inability to ask questions of some people for cultural reasons is unlikely to have biased the results greatly.

6) A copy of the questions is provided as supplementary material

7) The reviewer suggests that the research be done again to ask additional questions but agrees that the results themselves are adequately presented. This seems to be a criticism that can be levelled at much research – all research raises other questions that might be answered. These additional questions that could have been asked arise from the research, but the answers must wait for further research to be undertaken.

8) The work exploring the reasons for Indigenous over non-Indigenous involvement in the NT workforce was the subject of a PhD and publications by McRae-Williams and Gerritsen, and is referred to. As noted above, the greater willingness among Indigenous people to work in wildlife-based industries than other parts of the workforce would be the subject of further research – this project aimed to discover simply the extent of involvement desired. We have added references to justify the statement that the NRM sector works well because it can meet many Indigenous aspirations. The statement that it has little impact has also been justified and moved to discussion to improve the flow of the argument.

Lines 34-35 have been clarified to read: “The global Indigenous estate is generally characterised by human poverty (United Nations 2010) but often has a wealth of natural resources, particularly biodiversity (Schmidt and Peterson 2009).”

On Lines 64-72 it is very difficult to pick out any key references since all describe different case studies. We would therefore prefer to keep all the references since this is the first time that they have been listed in one place, making this paper a more valuable resource for subsequent researchers.

The paper has been proof-read again as requested.