Heritage + environment

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Although the Land Rights Act had engaged – at least partially – with the long Aboriginal campaigns for land, the question of tangible and intangible cultural heritage was not well addressed at all. This has remained an issue of concern that has never been adequately addressed. Successive State governments had argued that the National Parks and Wildlife Service – which has had increasing proportions of senior and junior Indigenous staff – was adequate to protect heritage in all forms, but the government focus has been on pre-invasion cultural heritage. Post-invasion historic Aboriginal heritage has been poorly recognised and intangible heritage has been ignored.

Getting Mutawintji Back

Mutawintji has always been an important place for Paakantji and Malyangapa people, with many significant cultural sites among its rocky outcrops and waterholes, including a rich heritage of hand stencils documenting the important social gatherings which had taken place on this land for thousands of years.

Located 150 km northeast of Broken Hill, it was used as a pastoral property for many years because of its reliable water, then taken over by NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service to be Mootwingee National Park without any consultation with the Paakantji and Malyangapa owners. So in 1983, the Aboriginal people of Broken Hill, Wilcannia and White Cliffs blockaded the park, putting up signs that said: Mootwingee Closed By The Owners. They turned away a number of tourist buses, with Indigenous elders carefully explaining to the tourists why the area was significant for them and why they were taking the land back into their control.

The Paakantji and Malyangapa people refused to open their lands up to tourists again until they had control over how it was managed, which sites were allowed to be shown and how the stories of the country were told. Finally, in 1998, the NSW Government agreed to hand the land back to its owners, the Mutawintji Local Aboriginal Land Council, made up of traditional owners. The land is leased back to the NSW Government to be conserved now as the Mutawintji National Park but one which is under majority Indigenous management. This Joint Management approach has since then been expanded to commit the State Government to collaborate hand back to Indigenous owners and jointly manage with them all National Parks in NSW. Mutawintji National Park is managed by Indigenous people appointed by the Park Board, which has a guaranteed majority Indigenous ownership from the traditional owners. Today, in 2021, Mutawintji is not only cared for and interpreted to the public by Traditional Owners but, under the Joint Management plan of protection of traditional rights to hunt and gather, its abundant resources are being harvested to nourish the community of Wilcannia as they battle Covid-19.

In many other places, Local Land Councils have conserved and interpreted their historic and traditional heritage in appropriate ways to ensure it has been recognised by local and Statewide non-Indigenous populations. In just some examples, Local Aboriginal Land Councils (LALCs) have reintroduced cultural burning on their lands, support ranger groups to care for their lands and operate environmental services. Site survey work continues as a leading activity for many LALCs employing members to survey land slated for development to ensure culture and heritage sites are not damaged. On the mid-North Coast, one Land Council has dedicated part of their collectively-held land as a National Park and work to regenerate this land. Another recognition of Aboriginal owners has been in jointly-managed National Parks, where the State or National environmental agencies share power over the Park with LALCs. This has enabled the the Land Council network to work towards a number of goals at the same time – to ensure they maintain a revenue stream, to create employment and to manage important cultural and environmental landscapes. Many of these joint management arrangements fail to meet all Land Council goals, but they nevertheless allow recognition of Aboriginal people as owners and custodians.

As Heidi Norman has written about Baradine in central western NSW:

The structures created by the ALRA, and of course the tenacious efforts of LALC members, have connected the social and material history to enliven Aboriginal identity and culture in the present. In the case of the Baradine LALC, they have forged a new era of tourism with Aboriginal history and culture at the fore.

- In What Do We Want? (2015, Aboriginal Studies Press)

In many parts of the State, Indigenous people have continued to try to protect their land and their communities. Indigenous owners, for example, have organised together - and at times with non-Indigenous campaigns - to stop coal mining right up the long Hunter River Valley. Much of this valley is the land of Gamilaraay country – also spelt Gomeroi – and there have been ongoing protests at many sites about the many ways that coal mining companies are trying to damage the environment. Paul Spearim, a Gamilaraay man from Moree, has said:

Gamilaraay country is under threat

Gamilaraay people have strength and resilience through ancient cultural knowledge - Song, Dance, Language, Stories, and Lore. Yet Gamilaraay culture is embedded in country, and country is under threat from coal and coal seam gas mining.

Gamilaraay country of North West NSW is the new frontier for coal and CSG in NSW. It is the site of the Shenhua mega coal mine at Biridja (Breeza) of Little Big Light/country ( Liverpool Plains) and the biggest CSG proposal in the state - the Santos Narrabri Gas Project, in the Biliga (Pilliga forest). It is also the site of the Leard state forest and the blockade aimed to stop the Whitehaven Maules Creek coal mine there. Gamilaraay people have been deeply involved in this battle to protect important cultural sites.’

“Binangal Gayaa Wanangi” (“throwing the words from the Almighty Creator BUWADJARR”) – we understand our physical existence by fully understanding our spirituality through learning our traditional cultural knowledge."

- Paul Spearim here

Alliances with the Lock The Gate network have profiled Gamilaraay/Gomeroi opposition to a number of these mines impacting on the Pilliga State Forest near Narabri. Gomeroi people have protested against the plans to put the Whitehaven coal mine on their land in the Pilliga. And they have continued to use media and legal means to maintain the pressure to protect their land, as they do in this article in the National Indigenous Times from October 2020: Gomeroi await Commonwealth decision on Santos Narrabri Gas Project.

LINKS

→ Heidi Norman, 2016: ‘Coal Mining and Coal Seam Gas on Gomeroi country: Sacred lands, economic futures and shifting alliances’, in Energy Policy, 2016, vol 99, pp 242-251

→ Heather Goodall 2008 Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972, 1770–1972 [PDF 1.9MB]

→ Heather Goodall ‘Land in our own country', published in Aboriginal History, vol 14, 1990

→ Peter Tobin, 1972: Aboriginal land rights in N.S.W.: demands, law and policy [PDF 12.6MB]