Walk around Inverloch with Aunty Sonia Weston and you see her ancestral links to Country are lived every day. Photos: Laura Brearley By Sally McNiece
THE Cally, about 2006. I’m working as a barmaid. The pub is full of smoke, beer mats need changing and there’s a few precariously perched on their bar stools. A weathered face looks at me conspiratorially, hard rough hands holding the near empty beer. “There’s a few sites, Sall. But farmers don’t want no Aboriginal people on their land. I know there’s a stone circle on a farm in the back hills, but most sites are gone; we’ve moved the rocks to harrow the paddocks.”
This is the story of our district. At high school I was taught this applied to the Bunurong/ Boon Wurrung people too; moved off, destroyed, gone. But while many sites have been destroyed, the Bunurong/ Boon Wurrung are still here and some sites remain and provide a tangible cultural connection to the intangible spiritual and cultural connection to Country.
THE Cally, about 2006. I’m working as a barmaid. The pub is full of smoke, beer mats need changing and there’s a few precariously perched on their bar stools. A weathered face looks at me conspiratorially, hard rough hands holding the near empty beer. “There’s a few sites, Sall. But farmers don’t want no Aboriginal people on their land. I know there’s a stone circle on a farm in the back hills, but most sites are gone; we’ve moved the rocks to harrow the paddocks.”
This is the story of our district. At high school I was taught this applied to the Bunurong/ Boon Wurrung people too; moved off, destroyed, gone. But while many sites have been destroyed, the Bunurong/ Boon Wurrung are still here and some sites remain and provide a tangible cultural connection to the intangible spiritual and cultural connection to Country.
Aunty Sonia Weston has lived in Inverloch most of her life; her ancestral links to Country are lived every day. She lives and breathes culture whether she is at work or at home; she stands strong in her culture. These cultural sites are fundamentally important to her. “Cultural heritage is more important to me than anything. That is my story. We thought that it was lost. Having connection to Country, any part of Country, you feel it. It is my birthright to care for and to protect this Country. And I think we should all think like this.” This is a very generous invitation.
When you walk from one end of Inverloch to the other, below your feet the shifting sands have covered the stories of Sonia’s ancestors. Among the sites you unwittingly pass are middens (a trove from the discards of feasts, some of the biggest in Victoria), artefacts such as tools and evidence of their creation (such as stone flakes), sand ovens, stone hearths and compressions from where stone or wooden houses once sat. There are individual sites that contain multiple hearths, showing that a large family (or clan group) once lived here for long periods of time, just like they continue to live here today - although the archaeological footprint will look very different. And where there are deep sands, there is always the chance that you are walking upon a burial ground, particularly in large dune systems in our surrounding areas.
Recently, the Bear Gully campsite has been closed. It appears that due to continued human activity in the area, a very sensitive cultural area has been disturbed and exposed. Due to its location it is a significant site to both the Bunurong/ Boon Wurrung and the Gunaikurnai, and so in stabilising the area, both custodians and First People-State Relations (a government appointed organisation that consults on a range of topics, including management of cultural heritage) need to be consulted on how best to protect the site. These are the specialist groups that are required to complete the works under the Aboriginal Heritage Protection Act to ensure traditional owners can return to the sites to fulfil cultural requirements. This practice has been hard won.
When you walk from one end of Inverloch to the other, below your feet the shifting sands have covered the stories of Sonia’s ancestors. Among the sites you unwittingly pass are middens (a trove from the discards of feasts, some of the biggest in Victoria), artefacts such as tools and evidence of their creation (such as stone flakes), sand ovens, stone hearths and compressions from where stone or wooden houses once sat. There are individual sites that contain multiple hearths, showing that a large family (or clan group) once lived here for long periods of time, just like they continue to live here today - although the archaeological footprint will look very different. And where there are deep sands, there is always the chance that you are walking upon a burial ground, particularly in large dune systems in our surrounding areas.
Recently, the Bear Gully campsite has been closed. It appears that due to continued human activity in the area, a very sensitive cultural area has been disturbed and exposed. Due to its location it is a significant site to both the Bunurong/ Boon Wurrung and the Gunaikurnai, and so in stabilising the area, both custodians and First People-State Relations (a government appointed organisation that consults on a range of topics, including management of cultural heritage) need to be consulted on how best to protect the site. These are the specialist groups that are required to complete the works under the Aboriginal Heritage Protection Act to ensure traditional owners can return to the sites to fulfil cultural requirements. This practice has been hard won.
Sonia Weston: "It's not about taking anything away,it's about looking after it."
The custodianship of cultural sites is inextricably linked to the question about who owns the past. Whoever has the right to manage these sites has the right to manage, excavate, remove and thus interpret the narrative of the past the objects holds. Historically in Australia, this power has resided with archaeologists, which has created a tenuous relationship between archaeologists and Aboriginal people; ground that remains rocky today (pun intended!!). This is because archaeologists’ motivations for identifying and managing cultural sites do not necessarily aligned with Aboriginal needs; in Wonthaggi, there is a rumour of human remains removed by the truckload by a pseudo archaeologist desecrating this most sacred site.
In Victoria the Archaeological and Aboriginal Relics Act 1972 perceived Aboriginal cultural sites as relics of the past to be protected for analysis and interpretation by archaeologists. The act established an advisory committee but only one member was Indigenous and decision-making power was heavily influenced by museums appointed by government. The value of a site was determined by what could be learnt from it, not by its current cultural significance. While we can be grateful for archaeologists that their work preserved many sites (or at least I am) this was not an Aboriginal space. It was an extension of colonialism: the perception that Aboriginal culture was extinct, there were no more ‘real’ Aboriginals to use these sites. Sites were curiosities for the western thinker; the value of a site was determined by what could be learnt from it, not by its current cultural significance.
“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell
The treatment of human remains highlights the difference of thought: an archaeologist may want to exhume them and test them; a descendant would not want this to happen to their kin, but rather have knowledge of the place and have it preserved intact. In some ways this reinforced the notion of “real” Aboriginals as “traditional” Aboriginals, relegating their culture to the past. This racist ideology continues to perpetuate itself today.
| By the 1980s the emergence of more Indigenous rights groups created a shift in the balance of power. In Victoria today, Aboriginal cultural sites are primarily Aboriginal spaces. The Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Act 2006 (VAHA) is the benchmark of heritage protection legislation in Australia and had two primary aims: to resolve existing Native Title claims and to return the control of cultural heritage to traditional owners. To do this it created Registered Aboriginal Parties (RAPs) that represent local traditional owners. The VAHA also created the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Register and the requirement for all cultural sites to have a Cultural Heritage Management Plan. RAPs must be consulted on the plans for all activities in areas of high cultural sensitivity or in areas where the activity is a high range activity. However, a RAP cannot refuse the activity just because it may harm: “…development takes precedence over the protection of place-based heritage.”* | The 'r' word I am going to slightly digress here, because I have said the ‘r’ word and I want you to stick with me. Culturally racism has been ingrained into us: the white Australia policy did not officially end until 1973. Culture is an inherited trait. When a government had a persistent policy, ideas, philosophies and practices they do not simply end overnight, they also become part of our everyday rhetoric, whether we want them to be there or believe them to be racist. Just like a child inherits the rest of their heritage, they will inherit some of these. I have inherited them. But I can challenge and change these if I am willing to listen to feedback. This is how culture grows and evolves, but we can only improve with a willingness to learn and change. |
The Broadbeach site in Inverloch, for example, has some of the most extensive middens in Victoria. To “minimise harm” the buildings were built over the top of some of the middens, but today other middens on the site have tyre tracks running through them. The VAHA has also been criticised for not taking into consideration the significance of a landscape. For example as long as the artefact (such as a tree) is preserved, the road’s path is approved, despite its impact on the cultural landscape. The final say on site protection lies with the minister.
Which brings us back to Bear Gully. An article in our local paper was well written and researched but a headline claiming the community had been “outraged” by the park’s closure sparked a torrent of ugly, sometimes racist, expressions of cultural disregard on Facebook.
Aunty Sonia laments, “It sometimes feels like people fear that they are going to lose something. But me, as a custodian, I don't want to take anything away, I want it to be ours, it is our history ... It is not about taking anything away, it is about looking after it. You always have to fight for your culture, I shouldn’t have to fight to simply be an Aboriginal person.”
Which brings us back to Bear Gully. An article in our local paper was well written and researched but a headline claiming the community had been “outraged” by the park’s closure sparked a torrent of ugly, sometimes racist, expressions of cultural disregard on Facebook.
Aunty Sonia laments, “It sometimes feels like people fear that they are going to lose something. But me, as a custodian, I don't want to take anything away, I want it to be ours, it is our history ... It is not about taking anything away, it is about looking after it. You always have to fight for your culture, I shouldn’t have to fight to simply be an Aboriginal person.”
As we sit on the banks of Screw Creek, Sonia reflects that we are on the lands of her old people, and that protecting tangible heritage such as a midden or a hearth is an act of connecting her to her stories, giving life to ceremony, the collecting, the farming and hunting, the caring for country, the collective of extended family, each fulfilling their role in community and so much more.
We live in communities built upon sand and it is in these sandy places that her old people are buried, and there they must remain.
We live in communities built upon sand and it is in these sandy places that her old people are buried, and there they must remain.
NOTES
Discovery of human remains
If suspected human remains are discovered, you must contact the Victoria Police and the Coroner's Court of Victoria immediately. If there are reasonable grounds to believe that the remains are Aboriginal, the Coronial Admissions and Enquiries hotline must be contacted on 1300 888 544.
Secret and sacred objects
Legal ownership of secret or sacred objects is held by the Traditional Owners. Anyone who has a secret or sacred object should report it to the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council.
Reference
* McGrath, Pamela Faye, (ed) The Right to Protect Sites: Indigenous Heritage Management in the Era of Native Title, AIATSIS Research Publications, 2016, P121
Discovery of human remains
If suspected human remains are discovered, you must contact the Victoria Police and the Coroner's Court of Victoria immediately. If there are reasonable grounds to believe that the remains are Aboriginal, the Coronial Admissions and Enquiries hotline must be contacted on 1300 888 544.
Secret and sacred objects
Legal ownership of secret or sacred objects is held by the Traditional Owners. Anyone who has a secret or sacred object should report it to the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council.
Reference
* McGrath, Pamela Faye, (ed) The Right to Protect Sites: Indigenous Heritage Management in the Era of Native Title, AIATSIS Research Publications, 2016, P121