Indigenous Stewardship of Decolonised Rock Art Conservation Processes in Australia

Applicable to nations around the world with large corpuses of rock art and disenfranchised or disempowered First Nations peoples, efforts are being implemented at locations across Northern Australia to change this power imbalance. As the Traditional Owners of Country and the custodians of an ongoing living culture, interconnected across time and space, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia continue to fight for control of the management and interpretation of their own heritage. With many well-meaning non-Indigenous efforts in the past forty years focused on the preservation and protection of what remains within the fabric of a site in a museum-like context, changes are now occurring in a number of locations whereby Indigenous peoples have regained control of their cultural places and are working collaboratively with archaeologists and conservation specialists to care for these valuable places. Utilising both traditional methods and modern techniques to look after both tangible and intangible values, these efforts are owned, initiated and implemented by Indigenous communities with ongoing support from specialists. Conservation programmes such as these are presented, exemplifying efforts which showcase unforeseen improvements, particularly in response to previous interventions that were imposed, unmanaged and unevaluated. This decolonising process, as defined through recent doctoral research, is forging a revitalised and shared path for all involved to follow.