Rethinking Culture and Heritage: Cultural and Natural Heritage in NSW and Southern India

With theoretical developments in the humanities over the last 40 years slowly filtering through to heritage conservation practice and the increasing recognition over the same period of Indigenous rights through international and national laws, there is an increased requirement for established heritage conservation agencies and advocates to engage with indigenous and local communities in the protection and management of lands. One of the challenges facing conservationists working in this field is to engage with this new dynamic in ways that bring the recognition of contemporary culture back into the equation as a basis for collaboration and co-management. By looking firstly at the terms culture and heritage, re-thinking what they can mean in light of recent debates, and considering the implications of this rethinking with reference to two case study areas, north-west NSW and Southern India, this paper will explore some new ways of approaching heritage management that focus on the acknowledgement and protection of contemporary cultural processes as a part of best practice. Following from this, the second half of this paper will consider ways that these insights can be transferred into the field through practical collaborations with Indigenous communities, exploring emerging techniques of mapping cultural landscapes and geo-biographies as a tool for heritage assessment and protection.