Cultural Heritage and Social Values Assessment Vol ... - Parks Victoria

VOLUME 4: VALUED PLACES3 COMMUNITY CULTURAL MAPPING3.1 What is community cultural mappingCultural mapping is a technique designed to record or map the spatial distribution of specifictypes of ‘resources’ – in this project, the resources are cultural heritage places valued by peoplefrom communities across the study area. It is a method increasingly being used in Australia todocument community knowledge about their cultural heritage, and add to what is known frommore formal research processes.Community cultural mapping can be done at a variety of scales – local to regional - and withone community or many contributing. Mapping is a good way to identify specific places andbroader landscapes, and allows stories, images and documents to be linked to these places orlandscapes, especially when a GIS-enabled database is being used. The material gathered maybe shared publicly or may be restricted by establishing confidentiality protocols.In this project, the mapping was done by small groups or individuals annotating hardcopymaps (1:50,000 map series), with notes about each place either hand-written by the personwho suggested the place, or recorded by the facilitator or interviewer. The processes used aredescribed in more detail below.3.2 Gunditjmara community cultural mappingIntroductionAn important part of the overall project involved building a new and more comprehensiveunderstanding of Gunditjmara connections to country in a way that can contribute tolandscape-scale planning. The project has used cultural mapping to identify, map anddocument the multiple connections of Gunditjmara to their country.Cultural mapping is a technique designed to enable people to document the places that areimportant to them. These places are likely to range from large landscapes through to specificsites. Some will demonstrate spiritual connections -- places where creation ancestors wererevealed such as in the Budj Bim landscape -- while other landscapes will be where significantevents occurred. Cultural mapping enables the relationships and links between places to beunderstood.Understanding Gunditjmara community valuesAsk First the national guidelines on respecting Indigenous heritage places and values emphasisesthe ‘importance of allowing Indigenous people to determine the significance of places inaccordance with their culture determining how places and heritage values should be managed’(Australian Heritage Commission, 2002:3). It complements the approaches in the BurraCharter and the Australian Natural Heritage Charter.Ask First defines Indigenous heritage values as including ‘spirituality, law, knowledge, practices,traditional resources or other beliefs and attachments’ (Australian Heritage Commission,2002:4).These values may be represented in many ways in a landscape: through physical evidence, such as ‘sites’ of activity (e.g. a hearth marking a camp site; stonetools and materials marking a tool working location): locating such places and evidence isthe focus of archaeological investigations. through known and named landscape features and places7