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Cultural landscapes

Aboriginal people have a strong cultural association with and knowledge of their traditional lands, and a long tradition of living in and managing those lands. In recognising this, land and natural resource planners and managers stand to gain a significant benefit from maintaining and enhancing the involvement of Aboriginal peoples and communities in the natural resource planning and management decision making processes.

Government policy and the new land use planning and natural resource management frameworks provide a unique opportunity to reassess the way that Aboriginal communities can have effective involvement in land and natural resource use and management.

Rather than Aboriginal input into land use and resource management occurring only in an advisory capacity, Aboriginal participation needs to be facilitated in a proactive way. Through active partnerships between DNR, CMAs and Aboriginal communities, the Department has developed an approach to cultural landscapes as a means to embrace Aboriginal community and cultural values within its broader natural resource management planning functions.

The concept of cultural landscapes is a relatively new one in the land and natural resource management fields. A cultural landscapes approach offers a significant way of looking at an area with the focus being on the relationship between human activity and the natural environment, and not solely on places and objects.

An Aboriginal cultural landscape "is a place or area valued by an Aboriginal group (or groups) because of their long and complex relationship with that land. It expresses their unity with the natural and spiritual environment. It embodies their traditional knowledge of spirits, places, land uses, and ecology. Material remains of the association may be prominent, but will often be minimal or absent". (US/ICOMOS, 1996).

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