Antinuclear

Western Australia’s dramatic drop in indigenous sites receiving heritage listing

Slump in recommended indigenous sites receiving heritage listing VICTORIA LAURIE, THE AUSTRALIAN JANUARY 10, 2015 A STEEP drop in Aboriginal sites being added to Western Australia’s heritage register is leading to “a vast sea of ignorance” that will thwart heritage protection, according to Carmen Lawrence, the chair of the Australian Heritage Council.

The dramatic drop in Aboriginal sites being registered — from 80 per cent of sites recommended to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs to only 6 per cent — has occurred over three years, from 2011 to May last year.

At least 27 sites registered under the Aboriginal Heritage Act have also had their status cancelled in the past year.

Ms Lawrence said the failure to register sites would make it even harder to identify the state’s heritage, lore and culture, which needed protection. “I’m concerned that we’re going back in time to a place we’d abandoned, the respect and protection levels of the 1950s,” she said.

“In the case of Burrup rock art in the Pilbara, it was unprotected for many years because nobody knew anything about it and Aboriginal voices weren’t heard.”………

Ms Lawrence said amendments to the Aboriginal Heritage Act, now before parliament, removed the requirement for a specialist anthropologist to ­assess sites. She was also concerned a “sacred” site applied only to those places where ­religious activity was ­conducted.

“I’m deeply concerned that song cycles and dreaming lines are explicitly excluded from consideration in this state due to a narrowing of definition,” she said. “Leaving that out is a major part of indigenous heritage. James Price Point is a good ­example: there are middens and burial sites along the Lurujarri Heritage Trail near Broome, but a lot of the significance relates to songs and dreaming tracks.”

She said a 2011 State of the Environment report found indigenous heritage was neither well protected nor well recorded……..http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/indigenous/slump-in-recommended-indigenous-sites-receiving-heritage-listing/story-fn9hm1pm-1227180010783?sv=dc1f2218356b75c3fbcaafe8c6f6e071

January 10, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | aboriginal issues, Western Australia