Sharing experinces with Dhimurru Aboriginal Corporation’s on managing sacred sites:
Participation in the Delos initiative and presenting the Dhimurru case study has been an enriching experience. An experience which has contributed to a series of other activities for Dhimurru Aboriginal Corporation as well as an increased awareness of matters related to sacred sites.
Dhimurru has shared their experiences with the management of sacred sites through the IUCN UNESCO Best Practice Guidelines and the Delos initiative. In addition, other national and international developments have simultaneously created an environment for expanding work on the integration of sacred sites, in policy and conservation strategies.
To begin with, Dhimurru has adopted the 6 management principles of the SNS Guidelines into its new Cultural Heritage Management Plan. This plan complements the Indigenous Protected Area Plan of Management and contributes to identifying and setting management priorities for both cultural and natural values in the IPA.
The separate institutions and funding agencies for both programmes, require different reporting requirements and performance indicators. This has been a challenge to Dhimurru and other indigenous groups around Australia. These groups operate from a cultural worldview in where nature and culture are intertwined and inseparable. So here lays an obvious challenge for policy makers and conservation planners.
Other developments offer opportunities for expanding work on sacred sites, for example as nodes of living culture and opportunities for biodiversity management:
1. During Dhimurru’s partaking in the Delos Initiative Aboriginal people in Australia’s Northern Territory where granted rights over the intertidal zone (to the mean lowest watermark), the water and all the animals in it. This important court case was won on basis of anthropological evidence demonstrating cultural affiliation based on sacredness of land. Indigenous people can now negotiate access and use of this zone (for example with (recreational)fisheries) and be part of the planning process of any development affecting this area. Obviously this also poses challenges to conservation planning where the sacred has become more prominent then before.
2. As Dhimurru performed and opened the launch of the SNS guidelines at the WCC they presented the IUCN Director General with a Yidaki (also known as didjeridoo) painted with sacred symbols. Djawa Yunupingu, Dhimurru’s managing Director delivered a speech about the importance of sacred land and sea and called for the need of integrating these important places in the way conservation is practiced today (see also www.culturalvalues.org, 2st agenda item in the main page). Let's hope the DG will think about this every time she looks at the Yidaki and remembers this when sh gets a chance to influence international policy.
3. Sharing of these experiences also includes a forwards looking theme which is not new but nonetheless very important. As the awareness of climate change grows the Australian government has recently presented a progressive but worrisome report (http://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/sj_report/sjreport08/community_guide.html) highlighting the potential effects of climate change to culture and also sacred sites;
"Climate change will further marginalize Australia’s Aboriginal communities, forcing them out of their traditional lands, destroying their culture and significantly affecting their access to water resources. Dispossession and a loss of access to traditional lands, waters, and natural resources may be described as cultural genocide; a loss of ancestral, spiritual, totemic and language connections to lands and associated areas" Full article (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46774).
Although the challenges ahead are enormous the work to date has been very important in bringing out resilience and adaptive capacity of biocultural values and approaches to conservation management and policy. Scared sites can assist in showing such approaches really work.
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