RECENT desecration of Aboriginal art in the Derwent Valley is just the latest in a string of failures in law and policy in Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural heritage protection.
These failures amount to wilful neglect to the extent that national, and ultimately international, intervention is required.
Daily we hear of hundreds of thousands of dollars dedicated to tourism, to upgraded facilities, to new and wider roads, to propping up regional businesses. But still nothing for Aboriginal heritage protection, aside perhaps from some studies funded by the Commonwealth which the state pays to itself.
Tasmania’s Aboriginal Relics Act dates from 1975, a time when the contemporary struggle for recognition of Aboriginal rights and land justice was just getting started.
The approach to Aboriginal heritage protection was firmly based in archaeological values: the protection of “relics” from a culture long gone and nothing that dates from after Trukanini’s death in 1876 is covered by the Act.
Tasmania is the only state in Australia that still has this outdated archaeological approach to Aboriginal heritage protection. Even the State Government now concedes the legislation is outdated, racist and a hangover from past prejudices.
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