IMAGINED CITIES AND URBAN SPACES Recording traditional Kaurna Cultural Values in Adelaide – the continuity of Aboriginal cultural traditions within an Australian capital city (original) (raw)
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The Historic Environment, 2015
The practice of cultural heritage management tends to emphasise tangible rather than intangible values. In Australian urban contexts, Aboriginal heritage management faces a particular problem of recognition for largely intangible cultural values and traditions amidst the overwhelming physical presence of a cityscape superimposed upon the prior Aboriginal cultural landscape. In addition, public and official perceptions often relegate authentic Aboriginal culture to a stereotypical 'outback' and exclude it from their vision of the city. Two examples from the city of Adelaide illustrate this problem. These case studies also refer to the ongoing process of seeking recognition for the continuing existence of the cultural identity and heritage of the Kaurna Aboriginal people by Government, planners and developers. It is argued that authentic Aboriginal heritage and culture has survived and continues to be an essential component of the cultural landscape and identity of Australian cities.
Space and Culture, 2013
Western cities are becoming increasingly culturally diverse through the intersection of processes such as international migration and the political resurgence of Indigenous peoples. The challenge remains, however, to shift from physical copresence to equal rights to the city. This article explores this challenge in an empirical case study of Aboriginal participation in plans for urban development on the fringe of Sydney, Australia’s largest city. The findings from this research highlight the limits of official attempts at recognition that focus on a narrow definition of culture to the detriment of economic and political equity. It provides empirical support for a reconceptualization of recognition to incorporate redistribution in order to redress historical marginalization and dispossession that currently limit participation in the urban polity for diverse groups.
Uncanny Brisbane: New ways of looking at urban indigenous place
History in Practice: SAHANZ, 2011
Revealing new types and forms of place and place networks can render a place 'uncanny' leaving the mainstream unsettled and disturbed from its previously fixed and secure colonial version of the past. These forms of place are created and used by contemporary urban Indigenous people both as part of their daily personal lives, and as part of their self-consciously constructed Indigenous identities with social and political motives. The author's current research into Indigenous places in suburban Brisbane reveals a set of places and networks which are both unsettling to the mainstream history of Brisbane's origins and continue to offer alternative ways of inhabiting, valuing and using the city. New versions of the traditional meeting and gathering places are being created, maintaining and renewing traditions in the suburban landscape. Contemporary types of places are also created which have no equivalent in the traditional past, but support traditional values of holding community and kin together, in the multi-cultural suburban context. Indigenous geographies and places are both affirming traditional Indigenous place systems, and creating new versions of Indigenous place, with unique and specific forms in the suburban context. This paper will examine initial findings from fieldwork currently being undertaken in Inala, on Brisbane's South West edge. It will reveal that far from being 'not proper blackfellas' Indigenous people in suburban Brisbane have a proud and continuing heritage of place, which is parallel to and unsettling for, the settler version of Brisbane.
2008
This paper surveys current global trends in heritage practices regarding urban indigenous heritage, with a focus on settler-society countries, namely Australia and New Zealand. Urban indigenous heritage includes heritage sites, buildings, and components of the built environment of cities that are of significance to Aboriginal and Maori peoples. The following concentrates primarily on the dynamics of largely “white” European institutions of heritage practice, and the protocols adopted for indigenous heritage. The central argument is that while considerable changes have been effected in international awareness of indigenous heritage practices and policies, these changes have had little impact in settler societies. Cities continue to be the stronghold of heritage rooted in colonial precepts and values.
Australian Geographical Studies, 1997
This paper charts one idiosyncratic and rather personalised path through the emergence of cultural geography in the Australian context. It takes as its example the transition from research which examines a category group identified as 'urban Aborigines' to more recent research of our own which looks at the theme of how Aboriginality is articulated in and through the space of the city. This transition provides a way of registering some broader changes within the sub-disciplinary field of cultural geography. The paper also reflects on recent criticism that a cultural emphasis detracts from the political edge of geographical research. The influential work of Fay Gale suggests that this claim is somewhat misplaced in the context of the development of the subdiscipline in Australia.
Being 'in-there' not 'out-there': Urban planning and Aboriginal peoples
State of Australian Cities, 2017
An Australian myth is that Aboriginals reside only in the f ar reaches of Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia. Such is f ar f rom the truth. 2016 Australian Bureau of Statistics census data evidences an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population of approximately 649,171, or 2.8% of Australia's total population, and projects that this population will increase to between 907,800 and 945,600 people by 2026 (ABS 2011). The largest population concentrations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are in New South Wales (208,500) and Queensland (189,000), and they comprise 25.5% of the total population of Northern Territory (ABS 2016). More signif icantly, 35% of this Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population live in Australia's major cities and 20% in regional cities; 50.4% of Victoria's Indigenous population live in metropolitan Melbourne. These statistics conf ound this myth, and deceptively hide 'Country' of kin associations under generic 'Aboriginal' or 'Torres Strait Islander' categories, thereby not depicting real population prof iles about Indigenous Australians. More importantly, the statistics raise questions about the sustainment, capacity and practice of Aboriginal relationships and engagement with their 'home' Country as distinct f rom their adopted or transitionary 'Country' of residence. This presentation will summarise and analyse this statistical data, historical settlement patterns, population structure and the cultural dynamics of Aboriginal populations focus ing in particular upon the urban f ootprints of Melbourne and South East Queensland (SEQ). Further examination of these two urban centres suggests the need f or a f ramework towards the development of contemporary protocols to support Traditional Owners, urban Aboriginal populations, planning prof essionals and governments.
Contemporary Aboriginal art and the cultural landscapes of urban Australia
2014
Place identity in Australia is currently in a state of flux, owing to the decentralization of cultural landscapes through urbanization. Indigenous caring for landscape has always been associated with the originary condition of Australian wilderness. This paper argues that an understanding of place identity in Australia can arrive from a reassessment of national cultural landscapes, both wild and urban, when we take seriously the imbrications of colonial and Indigenous landscape practices. It does this through an investigation of contemporary Indigenous art, focusing in particular on the work of artist Michael Jagamara Nelson. His work allowed Indigenous art to become recognized as significant in regards to place identity, referencing the alternate cultural markings within the landscape. The argument also draws on Bill Gammage's observation that Australian wilderness landscapes are not 'pristine' but have already been manipulated by Indigenous people for many millennia, h...
Encounters with Aboriginal Sites in Metropolitan Sydney: A Broadening Horizon for Cultural Tourism?
Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2003
This paper reports on a subject which has historically received little attention in tourism studies, namely, the place of Indigenous heritage in a major metropolitan centre. In Australia, a dominant discourse has promoted the perspective that 'authentic' Aboriginal culture is confined to the relativelyundeveloped, under-populated, and isolated, north of the continent. Images of 'tradition oriented' Aboriginality have played a central role in the promotion of Australia as a distinctive tourist destination. The dominance of such images has served to comprehensively marginalise the Aboriginal heritage of metropolitan areas. The paper explores some of the reasons why an ahistorical 'tradition oriented' construction of Aboriginality has retained its resilience in Australia. It discusses some of the events of the past decade, which have seen new Aboriginal perspectives beginning to be incorporated into the metropolitan landscape of Sydney and considers the implications of such developments for the visitor experience and sustainable tourism.