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Cultural heritage

Cultural heritage. Connections between managing cultural heritage and managing the environment in general. Precautionary principle/least interference rule The need for good baseline information (SOE reporting/cultural mapping) Need for grass roots community participation

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Cultural heritage

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  1. Cultural heritage

  2. Connections between managing cultural heritage and managing the environment in general • Precautionary principle/least interference rule • The need for good baseline information (SOE reporting/cultural mapping) • Need for grass roots community participation • Need for community education (environmental education/heritage interpretation) • Need for flexible approaches, “different horses for different courses” • Need to monitor/evaluate as you go along and change your approach if necessary

  3. Two important issues that I hope you consider in your tutorials on heritage • how do we identify what aspects of our heritage are important to us as a community? • how should we protect what is important to us as a community?

  4. Impossible to separate out culture and nature as they are so interlinked • enhanced greenhouse effect mean that even the most remote areas of the world are being changed by human action. • and in Australia landscapes such as Kakadu that some see as a “untouched wilderness” are actually cultural landscapes

  5. Cultural heritage is often personal defined and therefore deeply contested • My favourite café in Gundagai – Niagara Café frowned upon by one EPP class on field trip wanted to go to Macdonalds instead!

  6. Who owns heritage? •  we all do, but particularly individuals and groups have a greater interest in particularly aspects of our heritage • Two egs • The “Elgin Marbles” • conflict between Archaeologists and Indigenous Australians

  7. Melina Mercouri, Greek Minister for Culture, 1983 on the “Marbles” • For every Greek they represent our identity, our soul, our blood . . . the Parthenon is a unique symbolic monument . . . we are talking about the unity of a unique monument of the culture and democracy of Greece . . . the Marbles are part of a monument to Greek identity, part of the deepest consciousness of the Greek people: our roots our continuity, our soul. The Parthenon is like our flag

  8. Ros Langford at the 1983 AAA conference in Hobart • The issue is control. You seek to say that as scientists you have a right to obtain and study information of our culture. You seek to say that because you are Australians you have the right to study and explore our heritage because it is a heritage to be shared by all Australian, white and black.

  9. Ros continued • From our point of view we say - you have come as invaders, you have tried to destroy our culture, you have build your fortunes upon the lands and bodies of our people and now, having said sorry, want a share in picking out the bones of what you regard as a dead past. We say that it is our past, our culture and heritage and forms part of our present life. As such it is ours to control and it is ours to share on our terms.

  10. Some key issues about cultural heritage to think about in your tuts What is it? Why keep it? Who owns it? How do we decide what to keep and what not to? How should we keep it?

  11. What is heritage • "what is or may be inherited" • things we value and that give meaning to our lives, • "our" being a crucial point, it is a very personal thing, the things that I value are going to be different from what you value and this has important implications when we start trying to decide what should be preserved for the future

  12. Why keep heritage • it gives meaning to our lives

  13. How do we decide what to keep and what not to • can't keep everything, more and more heritage around us as more and more pasts • can experts do it or can the general public somehow be involved? • how do you avoid the powerful and the influential valuing and protecting their heritage at the expense of the less powerful groups?

  14. The past is always changing • Read David Lowenthal’s wonderful book on this “The past is a foreign country” • exaggerating aspects we find successful, celebrating what we can take pride in, playing down the shameful • Created pasts

  15. Desire to freeze the past - attempts to stop it changing • Hiroshima shadow on bridge that was all that was left when person burnt by bomb fading but recently retouched to “preserve” it • Lakes district - lakes changing - Lee article in your reading • Mt St Helens in Washington State in the USA - trees are growing back after the volcanic eruption so park authorities have put in some fibreglass trees to give impression are not regenerating as this is what tourists are coming to see

  16. How should we keep heritage Two overarching rules are • 1) respect for existing fabric and 2) rule of least interference • summarised the Burra Charter

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