Cotter, Maria, Iain Davidson, Stephen Porter, Jason Wilson and Bernadette Duncan (School of Human and Environmental Studies, University of New England)

Documenting Aboriginal Ecological Knowledge in Northern New South Wales: Time to Change the Cultural Heritage Management Paradigm?

The Gamilaraay Resource Use Project is a three-year collaborative research project focussed on the documentation of modern and historical Aboriginal knowledge of resources, resource-use and resource management in the Namoi, Gwydir and Border River catchments of northern New South Wales. The project has been designed and coordinated by members of the Gamilaraay community of northern NSW in full partnership with academic researchers and the government instrumentality (Department of Infrastructure Planning and Natural Resources) responsible for land use decisions in Gamilaraay country. In this region of rural New South Wales traditional Aboriginal life-ways are generally publicly perceived as being lost. Yet it is readily identifiable that Aboriginal traditional ecological knowledge of natural resources within Gamilaraay country is substantial and ongoing and of continuing social and cultural importance to the Gamilaraay community. It is also readily identifiable that this knowledge has been maintained despite an ever-increasing decline in access to such culturally important resources. We present some of our research findings in the context of the prior recognition of 'landscape as heritage' and maintain that the cultural heritage management paradigm, having expanded from site to landscapes, should now also work to accommodate Aboriginal traditional ecological knowledge as heritage.

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