Heritage, Indigenous Doing, and Wellbeing: Voices of Country

Heritage, Indigenous Doing and Wellbeing presents an Aboriginal Australian relational understanding of the world that offers a counter-narrative to the Western notion of heritage and new insights into the potential for sustaining the complex systems that support all life. From an Indigenous Australian perspective, the Western concept of heritage is intentionally exclusionary and supports social, political, economic, and environmental injustice. Aboriginal People engage with landscape every day in entirely, different ways, seeing Country as a living ‘heritage’, but in a unique relationship form that engages the individual with place, ancestors, language, and wellbeing. However, Country is most often relegated by heritage proponents to ‘intangible heritage’, and this results in the concept having little legislative, legal, or administrative weight. Drawing on a common understanding of Country as sacred, living, and sentient, rather than as objectified property or resource, the contributors to this book explore a diversity of relationships with Country that demonstrate the richness and the practical utility of this relational understanding. Heritage, Indigenous Doing, and Wellbeing foregrounds the voices of Australian Aboriginal People who are involved in ‘Caring for Country’. It will be an essential resource for those engaged in the study of Country, heritage, museums, Indigenous Peoples, landscape architecture, environmental studies, planning, and archaeology. It will also be of great interest to heritage practitioners working around the globe.

Table of Contents:
Foreword; Introduction: Heritage, Indigenous Doing, and Wellbeing – Voices of Country; Part I: Voices of Country – Chapter 1 Indigenous Ontology; Chapter 2 Country; Chapter 3 Thoughts; Part 2: Surveying the Lands and Waters – Chapter 4 Indigenous Knowledge in Urban Indigenous Communities; Chapter 5 Cultures of Design: Nurturing design communities on common ground; Chapter 6 Gongan Business Model – Working across the Cultural Interface of Business; Chapter 7 Expression of a Gumbaynggirr Research Methodology: An Ontological Framework for Inquiry on Gumbaynggirr Country; Part 3: Narrating of Lands and Waters – Chapter 8 Recasting Roles as Sovereign Peoples; Chapter 9 Navigating Narrating: applied practice and conversations; Part 4: Listening to Lands and Waters – Chapter 10 Give before you ask: Falling in love with Country; Chapter 11 I’m a wandering Auntie; Chapter 12 Wisdom; Chapter 13 Winanga-y (understanding) burrbiyaan (the self) through the Processes of Learning and Teaching as Gamilaraay; Chapter 14 Learning from Country and Engaging with Community; Chapter 15 Visual Pattern Thinking Through Indigenous Respectful Design Systems and Ants.

About the Author :
Professor Norm Sheehan is currently the Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland (UQ), Co-Chair of the Vice Chancellor’s UQ Reconciliation Action Plan Oversight Committee, a member of the UQ School of Education Advisory Council, and an expert advisor of Indigenous research to the UQ Human Research Ethics Committee. Dr David S. Jones is Professor (Research) at Monash University, Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra, Adjunct Professor at Griffith University, and Fellow of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects. Josh Creighton has worked in Indigenous pedagogical design for over a decade and received the Southern Cross University Medal in 2020 after graduating with First Class Honours in Indigenous Knowledge from Gnibi College of Indigenous Australian Peoples. Sheldon (SJ) Harrington is a young local Widjabul artist from the Bundjalung Nation on the Far North Coast of New South Wales.