An Oceaninminds reflection inspired by Ian J. McNiven (2004), “Saltwater People: Spiritscapes, Maritime Rituals and the Archaeology of Australian Indigenous Seascapes”, published in World Archaeology.
Acknowledging the original author
Before sharing this reflection, I would like to acknowledge Ian J. McNiven, whose scholarly work provides the foundation for this discussion.
His publication offers valuable insights into the cultural, spiritual and archaeological dimensions of relationships between Australian Indigenous Saltwater Peoples and their marine environments.
I also respectfully acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, whose distinct cultural knowledge, histories, traditions and continuing relationships with Sea Country are central to the subject of this research.
This article is divided into two sections. The first introduces selected ideas and findings from McNiven’s publication. The second presents my personal reflection on what this research contributes to a broader appreciation of maritime identity in Australia.
This reflection does not seek to replace or comprehensively review the original publication, nor does it claim to represent Indigenous perspectives. Readers are warmly encouraged to engage with McNiven’s original paper to understand its full archaeological arguments, evidence and cultural context.
Part I. Understanding the Research: Saltwater Peoples and Their Seascapes
The ocean beyond its physical boundaries
When discussing maritime societies, we often begin with the visible ways people interact with the sea.
Fishing, navigation, marine resources, coastal settlements and maritime technologies are among the most familiar dimensions of these relationships.
These activities help us understand how societies use, navigate and depend upon marine environments.
Yet human relationships with the ocean are not limited to what can be physically observed.
In his 2004 article, Saltwater People: Spiritscapes, Maritime Rituals and the Archaeology of Australian Indigenous Seascapes, Ian J. McNiven introduces an important perspective on how Australian Indigenous maritime relationships can be understood through cultural, spiritual and cosmological meanings.
Drawing upon anthropological and archaeological scholarship, McNiven explains that the identities of Indigenous Saltwater Peoples cannot be fully understood through marine subsistence activities or technological practices alone.
For the communities discussed in his research, the sea is also connected with ancestral relationships, inherited responsibilities, spiritual understandings and cultural belonging.
This broadens our understanding of what a maritime environment can mean to the people whose histories and identities are intimately connected to it.
Understanding seascapes as spiritscapes
One of the central concepts developed in McNiven’s paper is the understanding of seascapes as spiritscapes.
Seascapes are often understood geographically, through coastlines, reefs, islands, channels, tidal movements and marine ecosystems.
However, McNiven explains that these environments may also hold significant spiritual meanings within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural traditions.
In the Indigenous contexts examined in the paper, particular maritime places are associated with ancestral beings, Dreaming narratives, cultural knowledge and relationships that extend across generations.
The research provides examples from communities including the Yanyuwa of the Gulf of Carpentaria and Torres Strait Islander peoples, illustrating how marine environments are understood through culturally meaningful places and ancestral connections.
These examples demonstrate that maritime environments can be experienced as more than physical spaces.
They may also be places through which cultural identity, belonging and spiritual responsibilities are understood and maintained.
Importantly, these relationships are culturally specific. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities possess distinct knowledge systems, traditions and responsibilities associated with their respective Sea Countries.
McNiven’s discussion of spiritscapes therefore invites readers to recognise the diversity and depth of these maritime relationships rather than treating Indigenous understandings of the sea as a single, uniform tradition.
Maritime identity, cultural belonging and responsibility
Another important dimension of McNiven’s research concerns the relationships between maritime identity, customary marine tenure and cultural responsibilities.
The article explains how spiritual connections to particular marine places may be associated with inherited rights, obligations and responsibilities within Indigenous communities.
These relationships involve more than accessing or using marine resources.
They can also encompass cultural authority, ancestral connections, knowledge transmission and responsibilities towards particular places.
McNiven discusses how Dreaming narratives and ancestral associations may contribute to the recognition and organisation of customary marine tenure.
In Torres Strait, for example, the paper describes customary marine tenure arrangements operating across different social scales, including households, clans and island communities.
Such relationships reveal that maritime spaces are not simply areas through which people move or from which resources are obtained.
They may also be culturally meaningful places associated with belonging, responsibility and continuity.
This offers an important contribution to understanding maritime identity.
It demonstrates that relationships with the sea can be grounded in inherited knowledge and responsibilities, rather than being understood solely through maritime occupations or economic activities.
Maritime rituals and spiritual relationships with the sea
McNiven also examines maritime rituals as an important dimension of the relationships between Saltwater Peoples and their seascapes.
His research draws attention to ritual practices associated with marine animals, tides, winds, ocean travel and spiritual responsibilities.
These practices may take place on open water, in tidal environments or on land near the coast.
McNiven uses the concept of ritual orchestration of seascapes to explain how particular rituals are understood as ways of engaging with marine environments and spiritual forces.
Within the cultural contexts examined, such practices are associated with maintaining relationships between people, ancestors, marine places and other beings.
The archaeological dimension of this discussion is especially interesting.
Some maritime ritual practices may leave physical traces, including arrangements of stones, shells and bones.
These material expressions provide opportunities for archaeologists to investigate aspects of historical relationships between maritime societies and their environments.
In central Queensland, McNiven discusses marine stone arrangements whose forms and locations are not readily explained by conventional interpretations of fishing facilities.
He proposes that some of these arrangements may have had ceremonial significance associated with tidal waters and marine forces.
This remains an interpretative hypothesis requiring further archaeological investigation.
Nevertheless, the discussion illustrates how archaeological sites may contain meanings beyond their apparent practical functions.
Understanding Australia’s maritime cultural heritage
McNiven’s research contributes to a broader appreciation of Australia’s maritime cultural heritage.
It demonstrates that Indigenous maritime relationships cannot be understood only through navigation, fishing practices, maritime technologies or marine resource use.
Cultural knowledge, ancestral relationships, spiritual traditions and responsibilities towards Sea Country are equally important dimensions of the communities examined in his paper.
These relationships also provide insights into the historical depth and continuing significance of Indigenous maritime identities.
Rather than viewing the sea primarily as a resource or geographical environment, McNiven encourages archaeological investigation into the ways maritime places have been culturally and spiritually understood.
His work offers an important reminder that Australia’s maritime heritage encompasses diverse relationships between people and marine environments.
Understanding these relationships requires attention to the cultural meanings through which maritime identities are maintained and expressed.
Part II. An Oceaninminds Reflection: What Does the Sea Mean to the People Who Belong to It?
One of the privileges of reading academic research is the opportunity to encounter ways of understanding the world that extend beyond our familiar perspectives.
Reading McNiven’s paper encouraged me to reflect on a seemingly simple question:
What does it mean for people to belong to the sea?
We may describe Australia as a maritime nation because of its geographical position, extensive coastlines, marine environments and historical connections with ocean activities.
Yet geography alone cannot explain the many meanings that maritime identity may hold within a society.
The relationship between people and the sea can be shaped by far more than physical proximity.
It may involve cultural knowledge, inherited responsibilities, social relationships, collective memories and experiences that continue across generations.
McNiven’s research invites me to appreciate how deeply these dimensions can be embedded in the lives and identities of Indigenous Saltwater Peoples.
Maritime identity is not always something we can see
As I reflected on the paper, I was particularly interested in the difference between the visible and less visible dimensions of maritime relationships.
A fishing vessel can be observed.
A coastal settlement can be located on a map.
A maritime occupation can be documented.
A marine resource can be measured.
Yet a person’s sense of belonging to a maritime place may not be immediately visible.
Neither are the cultural responsibilities, ancestral narratives and inherited knowledge that shape relationships with Sea Country.
This does not make those dimensions less significant.
Rather, it reminds me that understanding maritime identity requires attention to how people themselves understand and express their relationships with marine environments.
McNiven’s paper demonstrates why examining maritime societies exclusively through their material activities may leave important dimensions of cultural meaning unexplored.
For me, this is one of the most valuable lessons from reading his work.
The ocean may be physically shared, but the meanings attached to it are not necessarily the same.
The importance of cultural continuity
Another aspect of the paper that stayed with me was the relationship between identity and continuity.
McNiven’s discussion of ancestral narratives, customary marine tenure and maritime rituals illustrates how relationships with Sea Country are connected with cultural knowledge and responsibilities maintained across generations.
This encouraged me to think about maritime heritage beyond physical objects or historical records.
Maritime heritage may also be expressed through knowledge, practices, relationships and responsibilities that remain meaningful within communities.
Understanding these dimensions requires care because cultural continuity is not simply a concept that can be observed from outside.
It involves living relationships, cultural authority and knowledge held by particular peoples.
For Oceaninminds, this reinforces the value of approaching maritime identity through learning and respectful engagement with existing scholarship, while recognising the authority of the communities whose cultures are being discussed.
Learning to appreciate different maritime worldviews
The concept of spiritscapes was perhaps the most thought-provoking aspect of the paper for me.
It encouraged me to consider how differently the same marine environment may be understood depending on the knowledge, history and cultural relationships through which people encounter it.
A reef may be described through its ecological characteristics.
A channel may be represented through navigational information.
A coastline may be understood through administrative or geographical boundaries.
These descriptions serve important purposes.
At the same time, a particular marine place may have cultural meanings and responsibilities that are not captured by those descriptions.
McNiven’s research demonstrates this within the specific Indigenous cultural contexts examined in his paper.
Rather than considering these understandings as competing descriptions of the ocean, I find it valuable to recognise that different forms of knowledge can illuminate different dimensions of maritime relationships.
For me, this is an invitation to approach maritime identity with greater curiosity, humility and respect.
Not every relationship with the sea can be understood through the same questions.
Not every cultural meaning can be translated into a general explanation.
Sometimes, learning begins by recognising the limits of what we already know.
Maritime identity in Australia’s broader story
Australia’s maritime identity is complex and diverse.
It encompasses different histories, coastal and island communities, maritime industries, scientific activities, cultural traditions and relationships with marine environments.
Within this broader context, Indigenous maritime histories and continuing relationships with Sea Country are essential to understanding Australia’s maritime heritage.
McNiven’s paper contributes to this understanding by examining the cultural and spiritual dimensions of Indigenous seascapes.
For me, reading this work is a reminder that discussions about national maritime identity should remain attentive to the diversity of peoples and histories associated with the sea.
A national maritime identity should not be assumed to represent a single experience or understanding.
Instead, Australia’s maritime story can be appreciated through the many distinct relationships that people and communities maintain with marine environments.
The contribution of Indigenous maritime knowledge deserves recognition within that wider appreciation, while remaining grounded in its own cultural contexts.
Where Oceaninminds finds its place
Oceaninminds is a personal space for learning, reflecting and exploring the relationships between people and the ocean.
Through these reflections, I hope to engage with academic work that helps illuminate different dimensions of maritime societies.
McNiven’s publication offers a particularly meaningful contribution because it encourages readers to appreciate the cultural and spiritual dimensions of relationships with the sea.
It also reminds me that studying maritime identity involves more than documenting what people do in marine environments.
It requires curiosity about what those environments mean to people, how these meanings are sustained and how they relate to cultural belonging and responsibility.
Oceaninminds does not seek to speak for the communities whose histories and knowledge are examined in this research.
Instead, I hope it can remain a place where scholarly reading encourages thoughtful engagement, respectful learning and a broader appreciation of maritime diversity.
Beyond the shoreline
I began reading McNiven’s paper with an interest in Australian maritime identity.
I finished it with a deeper appreciation of how many dimensions of maritime relationships may remain beyond immediate observation.
The sea can be studied through geography.
Its resources can be examined through marine science.
Its activities can be documented through history and archaeology.
Its management can be understood through institutions and governance.
Yet the sea can also be deeply connected to cultural identity, inherited responsibility, ancestral knowledge and belonging.
McNiven’s research reminds me that these dimensions matter when seeking to understand Indigenous Saltwater Peoples and their seascapes.
Perhaps the most meaningful reflection I take from this paper is not a final answer, but a question worth continuing to ask:
When we speak about maritime identity, are we also taking the time to understand what the sea means to the people whose lives, histories and cultures are connected to it?
For me, that question opens another opportunity to learn about Australia’s rich and diverse maritime heritage.
The shoreline may tell us where land meets water.
But the cultural relationships that give the sea meaning extend far beyond the boundaries we can draw on a map.
A note to readers
This Oceaninminds article is an independent, non-peer-reviewed reflection inspired by Ian J. McNiven’s published research. The first section introduces selected arguments and examples from his paper, while the second presents my own reflections on their significance for appreciating Australia’s maritime identity.
This article does not present new empirical findings or claim to represent the perspectives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
I gratefully acknowledge Ian J. McNiven’s scholarly contribution and the Indigenous knowledge, histories and cultural relationships discussed in his research.
Readers interested in the original evidence, archaeological interpretations, ethnographic accounts and wider scholarly context are encouraged to consult the original publication.
Original research publication
McNiven, I. J. (2004). Saltwater People: Spiritscapes, maritime rituals and the archaeology of Australian Indigenous seascapes. World Archaeology, 35(3), 329–349.
https://doi.org/10.1080/0043824042000185757
Oceaninminds | Maritime Identity in Australia | Ocean Reflection #3
