Cultural resources refer to our Story Places, Tracks and Landscapes, significant sites (e.g. birth, burial, totemic) and ceremonial grounds, as well as related knowledge, knowledge systems and the laws governing the way we relate to the land and to people. Cultural resources are intimately linked with natural resources, as by managing our cultural sites and landscapes we are also maintaining biodiversity, ensuring the protection of habitats, the maintenance of ecological processes and ultimately the sustainability of the land and the Kaanju people. Kaanju homelands also contain many important historical and heritage sites that are embedded in our history of forced removals from homelands and our centralisation into missions, government settlements and towns.
Our objectives as regards cultural resource and heritage management are:
- To conserve and protect Kaanju cultural resources and heritage for the benefit of current and future generations of Kaanju people.
- To encourage the transfer of Kaanju cultural heritage knowledge to the younger generation.
- To educate and inform the public about Kaanju cultural heritage.
The investigation of the establishment of an Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) over our homelands is one method we plan to use to address this issue of cultural resource and heritage management with the potential for declaration of our lands and associated resources under a system that recognises the importance of indigenous knowledge and knowledge systems and methods of land and resource management to conservation. Importantly, in our view the declaration of an IPA over our homelands will recognise the primacy of Kaanju management and facilitate the resourcing of Kaanju management on homelands.
Our project Protection of Historical, Social, Cultural and Spiritually Significant Sites is addressing the issue of the complex interrelationships of Kaanju people with homelands. The project involves establishing signage and a web site as a means for informing the public about Kaanju cultural heritage. We have also developed Protocols with the aim to educate people that there are traditional owners of the land they are visiting and the resources they may think of exploiting, and there are rules governing the way they should conduct themselves on our homelands.
Other strategies for addressing Kaanju cultural resource and heritage issues include:Cultural Heritage Management Plan (incorporating zoning plan for cultural site protection and rehabilitation).
Establish a registration and permit system for public access to specially protected areas of our homelands.
Approach the Australian Heritage Commission and Natural Heritage Trust about the declaration of Kaanju cultural sites and landscapes as Special Protection Areas.
Develop an education programme to help facilitate the transfer of Kaanju cultural knowledge to the younger generation, and to educate the wider public about Kaanju interrelationships with homelands.
