Cultural Heritage is our lifeblood. As Traditional Owners, our Heritage is our relationship to Country – land and waters, the rocks, soil, plants, animals and all the things on it. Our Heritage connects us with each other. We look after Country, and it looks after us – body, heart and spirit. We want to make sure that the Culture is living, vital and continuing for many generations to come. We have that responsibility. It is our inherited and fundamental right, as custodians of the oldest living Culture on earth, to practice Culture and to set a vision for a strong future for our Cultural Heritage.
Culture is important for Aboriginal Peoples. Traditional Owners are the custodians of their heritage, the land, the waterways and the People. Cultural Heritage is intrinsically intertwined with Aboriginal Peoples’ knowledge, practices, community, objects and places which provide many with a sense of identity and culture. Aboriginal Cultural Heritage is passed through performance, written and verbal forms from generation to generation, and remains a fundamental part of the lived Aboriginal experience.
The passing of this knowledge has been impacted and disrupted through colonisation and government control over lands, waters and Cultural Heritage. Aboriginal Victorians seek to strengthen and reassert rights to connect, manage and control their Cultural Heritage.
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