Aboriginal Australian heritage in the postcolonial city: sites of anti-colonial resistance and continuing presence
Aboriginal Australian heritage forms a significant and celebrated part of Australian heritage. Set within the institutional frameworks of a predominantly 'white' European Australian heritage practice, Aboriginal heritage has been promoted as the heritage of a people who belonged to the distant, pre-colonial past and who were an integral and sustainable part of the natural environment. These controlled and carefully packaged meanings of Aboriginal heritage have underwritten aspects of urban Aboriginal presence and history that prevail in the (previously) colonial city. In the midst of the city which seeks to cling to selected images of its colonial past urban Aboriginal heritage emerges as a significant challenge to a largely 'white', (post)colonial Australian heritage practice. The distinctively Aboriginal sense of anti-colonialism that underlines claims to urban sites of Aboriginal significance unsettles the colonial stereotypes that are associated with Aboriginal heritage and disrupts the 'purity' of the city by penetrating the stronghold of colonial heritage. However, despite the challenge to the colonising imperatives of heritage practice, the fact that urban Aboriginal heritage continues to be a deeply contested reality indicates that heritage practice has failed to move beyond its predominantly colonial legacy. It knowingly or unwittingly maintains the stronghold of colonial heritage in the city by selectively and often with reluctance, recognising a few sites of contested Aboriginal heritage such as the Old Swan Brewery and Bennett House in Perth. Furthermore, the listing of these sites according to very narrow and largely Eurocentric perceptions of Aboriginal heritage makes it quite difficult for other sites which fall outside these considerations to be included as part of the urban built environment. Importantly this thesis demonstrates that it is most often in the case of Aboriginal sites of political resistance such as The Block in Redfern, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra and Australian Hall ...