Reorganising the law to understand and protect all forms of cultural heritage

Abstract

ABSTRACT Professor Irene Watson explains that decolonisation requires us to dissolve and think beyond the white colonial ‘right way of knowing’ intrinsic in Western law, and its methodologies and philosophies (1998, 28, 30). This ‘right way’ operates within a hierarchy of being that divides body from mind and spirit, and divides humans from non-human beings and from the physical and spiritual environment (Graham, 1999, 113–115). This ethos of separation is infused in Australian law and common law thinking, including those laws directed to the protection of cultural heritage. Using the cultural heritage protections laws as a prism, this paper interrogates the contemporary injustices caused by law. Contrasting the quality of protections afforded to Aboriginal cultural heritage to that afforded to ‘white’ forms of cultural heritage, we argue that cultural heritage laws operate as a racialised system of violence that is causing irreparable harm to the lands and waterways. It is urgent that we reorganise laws’ relationship to land by reinstating Indigenous sovereignty and holistic and relational management of country, the waterways, non-human beings and other entities.