What do we mean when we talk about First Nations cultural heritage, and what implications do our definitions have on the ways that cultural heritage is understood, respected and protected?
First Nations cultural heritage is living, so the definition is always evolving. Wuthathi-Meriam woman and prominent legal authority Terri Janke describes cultural heritage as:
Cultural practices, resources and knowledge systems developed, nurtured and refined by Indigenous people and passed on by them as part of expressing their cultural identity.
Sixty-five thousand years of uninterrupted heritage, demonstrated by archaeological evidence, makes our continent unique in the world… Australia’s landscape, waters, and seas, collectively referred to as ‘country’, are alive with a profusion of heritage places. Imbued with the essence of ancestral beings that created them, it is through these places that family descent and kinship connections flow.
Dhawura Ngilan: A Vision for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage in Australia
Intangible heritage can be understood to encompass “ceremony, Creation Stories, skills involved in the creation of cultural items, knowledge and skills associated with medicinal plant use, language, dance, song, a great variety of other cultural expressions and cultural knowledge systems… communicated from generation to generation”.
Historically, Western understandings of cultural heritage in Australia – which have directly informed cultural heritage policy and legislation – have largely ignored intangible heritage and been instead heavily influenced by archaeological privileging, marked by a focus on physical artefacts and the materiality of landscape. This bias, particularly in legislation, can be understood as a partial attempt to deny the contemporary existence of First Nations culture, and in turn broader First Nations aspirations, including land rights.
Importantly, First Nations peoples do not separate their cultural heritage into a tangible/intangible binary, as these conceptualisations are indivisibly interwoven. The concept of caring for Country is a First Nations practice embedded in this interwoven relationship and grounded in reciprocity, where healing, knowledge and mutual respect travel in both directions.
First Nations people are intrinsically entwined and connected to Country. We are inherently a part of our natural ecosystems where bloodlines run deep into our land and oceans. We must protect Country so that Country can protect us.
Kulkalaig woman Tishiko King
Similarly, Japanese historian Minoru Hokari explains how Gurindji historical knowledge represents a “place-oriented history” where landscape and spatial features are used as physical markers to pass down ancient oral histories, and history is ‘something your body can sense, remember and practice’. This emphasis on ‘place’ and the spatial dimension within Gurindji ontology and historical practice challenges the strictly temporal Western understanding of history and cultural heritage itself.
Saltwater and freshwater peoples have lived alongside and sustainably managed their underwater heritage for millennia, from where the rainforest meets the Great Barrier Reef in Northern Queensland, to the Mudangkala creation story of the Tiwi Islands, and the strong fishing culture of the NSW South Coast.
Under Indigenous Protected Areas (IPA) legislation, Sea Country includes “the sea and coastal environment, as well as seagrass beds, dunes, estuaries and bays, and coastal wetlands.” But for First Nations people, land and sea are both inseparable parts of sacred Country.
Djawa Yunupingu, former director of Dhimurru Aboriginal Corporation, describes his Sea Country as:
An estate of sea as well as land, containing sacred sites; created, named and inhabited by Ancestral beings; existing in both the physical and spiritual world…From these ancestral journeys and the network of important sites created across the land and sea, we gain our names, our identity and our way of life.
The Marturwarra River, stretching for 700 kilometres through the West Kimberley region in Western Australia, is a powerful example of more than 50,000 years of significant First Nations freshwater cultural connection. For ten First Nations and five language groups including Bunuba, Gooniyandi, Nyikina, Wangkatjunka and Walmajarri peoples, Martuwarra is a living ancestral being intertwined with “birth, family connections, totemic affiliation, kinship systems, ray/rai (spirit children), inter-marriage, residence, history, and displacement”.
Historically, non-Indigenous recognition of underwater cultural heritage has been severely lacking, and progress toward legislation that more accurately reflects First Nations conceptions of underwater cultural heritage has been slow. Still, there are some signs of promise. The 2023 Protecting the Spirit of Sea Country Bill, tabled by Yamatji Noongar woman Senator Dorinda Cox, aims to include a definition of intangible cultural heritage, strengthen underwater legislative protections, and embed consultative minimum standards regarding future offshore energy projects, driven by the principle of free, prior and informed consent.
The movement towards decolonising museums and re-examining historical and archival practice has also catalysed important conversations over how colonial institutions should engage with often extensive First Nations heritage collections. First Nations archivist Nathan mudyi Sentance emphasises the need to move historical archives away from the supposedly ‘neutral’ perpetuation of colonial narratives and toward active truth-telling about the present as well as the past.
Museums and archives should not just work to document bad history, but work to prevent bad history from happening… Memory institutions have power… towards repairing the damage done by and preventing future harm caused by white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, ableism, and capitalism.
Nathan mudyi Sentance
An example of this emerging decolonial archival practice is Mukurtu (a Warumungu word meaning ‘dilly bag’ or a safe keeping place for sacred materials), a grassroots initiative that provides a free open source and co-designed platform where First Nations communities can curate their own independent archive of cultural knowledge on their own terms, whilst determining the level of public accessibility. Mukurtu began as the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive, a safe keeping place where Warumungu people could share stories, knowledge, and cultural materials properly using their own protocols.
