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Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Reform in Australia and the Dilemmas of Power

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2020

Lauren Butterly  and
Lucas Lixinski
Lauren Butterly*
Affiliation:
PhD Candidate, Faculty of Law, UNSW Sydney, Australia; Email: l.butterly@student.unsw.edu.au
Lucas Lixinski*
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, UNSW Sydney, Australia; Email: l.lixinski@unsw.edu.au
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Abstract

The last decade or so has seen a fundamental shift in Aboriginal cultural heritage law in Australia. A number of subnational jurisdictions in Australia have undergone major reforms to their Aboriginal heritage legislation. Other subnational jurisdictions are currently in the reform process or have promised reform in coming years. We use the latest (and, at the time of writing, ongoing) process to reform Aboriginal heritage legislation in the state of New South Wales (NSW) to explore some of the legal issues and themes emanating from the Australian experience. The NSW example is a useful case study for thinking about how minority heritage regulation can not only serve broader social movements but also undercut some of its own possibilities. We argue that even law that is ostensibly in place to promote the control of communities over their own heritage can cause difficult balancing acts that may default to a dependency path and effectively detract from its own projected goals.

Keywords

IndigenousAustralialaw reforminternational law influence on domestic law reformpower dynamicsself-determination
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , February 2020 , pp. 125 - 149
Copyright
The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International Cultural Property Society

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