I’ve had a bit of pushback on my last post and a few DMs so I’ll try to address them all here.
I’ve worked with plenty of traditional owners in my time in mining and I can tell you first hand they know their country intimately. That knowledge is real, valuable and often lifesaving on their own lands. What I am skeptical of is how easily people assume that knowledge is directly transferable to a completely different property or scenario.
If my child went missing, I am taking the people who have the systems and the repeatable methods. I am taking the crews with drones, infrared and a coordinated search plan that leaves a paper trail and can be audited. Those systems exist because they have been refined through hard lessons and repeatable results. They are not glamorous but they work.
A tracker might get lucky once in a blue moon. That luck becomes a problem when it is used as evidence that instinct should replace process. When someone gets one anecdotal hit and starts grandstanding about being the answer, it sidelines the people doing the grunt work. Those are the volunteers and crews who go out into the dust every day and follow a method built to catch what single hunches miss.
I am not dismissing Indigenous skill or experience. I value it and have seen it help on country more than once. I am pushing back against the romanticism that elevates a lone hero story above systematic, tested practice. If you want consistent results you follow the system that finds people again and again, not the one that relies on luck and theatre.