1st Edition
Heritage, Indigenous Doing, and Wellbeing Voices of Country
Heritage, Indigenous Doing and Wellbeing presents an Aboriginal Australian relational understanding of the world that offers a counter-narrative to the Western notion of heritage and new insights into the potential for sustaining the complex systems that support all life.
From an Indigenous Australian perspective, the Western concept of heritage is intentionally exclusionary and supports social, political, economic, and environmental injustice. Aboriginal People engage with landscape every day in entirely, different ways, seeing Country as a living ‘heritage’, but in a unique relationship form that engages the individual with place, ancestors, language, and wellbeing. However, Country is most often relegated by heritage proponents to ‘intangible heritage’, and this results in the concept having little legislative, legal, or administrative weight. Drawing on a common understanding of Country as sacred, living, and sentient, rather than as objectified property or resource, the contributors to this book explore a diversity of relationships with Country that demonstrate the richness and the practical utility of this relational understanding.
Heritage, Indigenous Doing, and Wellbeing foregrounds the voices of Australian Aboriginal People who are involved in ‘Caring for Country’. It will be an essential resource for those engaged in the study of Country, heritage, museums, Indigenous Peoples, landscape architecture, environmental studies, planning, and archaeology. It will also be of great interest to heritage practitioners working around the globe.
Foreword
Megan Davis
Introduction: Heritage, Indigenous Doing, and Wellbeing – Voices of Country
Norm Sheehan, David S. Jones, Josh Creighton, and Sheldon Harrington
Part I: Voices of Country
Chapter 1
Indigenous Ontology
Norm Sheehan
Chapter 2
Country
David S. Jones
Chapter 3
Thoughts
Norm Sheehan
Part 2: Surveying the Lands and Waters
Chapter 4
Indigenous Knowledge in Urban Indigenous Communities
Davis
Chapter 5
Cultures of Design: Nurturing design communities on common ground
Sheldon Harrington & Josh Creighton
Chapter 6
Gongan Business Model – Working across the Cultural Interface of Business
Rod Williams
Chapter 7
Expression of a Gumbaynggirr Research Methodology: An Ontological Framework for Inquiry on Gumbaynggirr Country.
Dylan Berger
Part 3: Narrating of Lands and Waters
Chapter 8
Recasting Roles as Sovereign Peoples
Stephen Corporal & Emma McConochie
Chapter 9
Navigating Narrating: applied practice and conversations
David S Jones
Part 4: Listening to Lands and Waters
Chapter 10
Give before you ask: Falling in love with Country
Danièle Hromek
Chapter 11
I’m a wandering Auntie
Kat Synnott (Rodwell)
Chapter 12
Wisdom
Aunty Bea Ballangarry
Chapter 13
Winanga-y (understanding) burrbiyaan (the self) through the Processes of Learning and Teaching as Gamilaraay
Uncle Paul Spearim and Clinton Schultz
Chapter 14
Learning from Country and Engaging with Community
Nick Freeburn
Chapter 15
Visual Pattern Thinking Through Indigenous Respectful Design Systems and Ants
Tristan Schultz and Norm Sheehan
Index
Biography
Professor Norm Sheehan is currently the Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland (UQ), Co-Chair of the Vice Chancellor’s UQ Reconciliation Action Plan Oversight Committee, a member of the UQ School of Education Advisory Council, and an expert advisor of Indigenous research to the UQ Human Research Ethics Committee.
Dr David S. Jones is Professor (Research) at Monash University, Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra, Adjunct Professor at Griffith University, and Fellow of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects.
Josh Creighton has worked in Indigenous pedagogical design for over a decade and received the Southern Cross University Medal in 2020 after graduating with First Class Honours in Indigenous Knowledge from Gnibi College of Indigenous Australian Peoples.
Sheldon (SJ) Harrington is a young local Widjabul artist from the Bundjalung Nation on the Far North Coast of New South Wales.
