Heritage Indigenous Doing and Wellbeing

<p><em>Heritage Indigenous Doing and Wellbeing</em> presents an Aboriginal Australian relational understanding of the world that offers a counter-narrative to the Western notion of heritage and new insights into the potential for sustaining the complex systems that support all life.</p><p>From an Indigenous Australian perspective the Western concept of heritage is intentionally exclusionary and supports social political economic and environmental injustice. Aboriginal People engage with landscape every day in entirely different ways seeing <i>Country </i>as a living ‘heritage’ but in a unique relationship form that engages the individual with place ancestors language and wellbeing. However <i>Country </i>is most often relegated by heritage proponents to ‘intangible heritage’ and this results in the concept having little legislative legal or administrative weight. Drawing on a common understanding of <i>Country </i>as sacred living and sentient rather than as objectified property or resource the contributors to this book explore a diversity of relationships with <i>Country </i>that demonstrate the richness and the practical utility of this relational understanding.</p><p>Heritage Indigenous Doing and Wellbeing foregrounds the voices of Australian Aboriginal People who are involved in ‘Caring for Country’. It will be an essential resource for those engaged in the study of <i>Country</i> heritage museums Indigenous Peoples landscape architecture environmental studies planning and archaeology. It will also be of great interest to heritage practitioners working around the globe.</p>