Paper short abstract:

TBD

Paper long abstract:

Aboriginal sacred site protection in Australia’s Northern Territory (‘NT’) has been based around the objective stated in the preamble to the Northern Territory Aboriginal Sacred Sites Act (‘NTASSA’) of achieving a practical balance between sacred site protection and economic development. For thirty years the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority (‘AAPA’) has administered the NTASSA, broadly considered to be the best practice site protection legislation in Australia. In more recent years and the NTASSA was used as a benchmark in the consideration of national standards for indigenous heritage laws in Australia. Given the current climate of actual, potential and threatened changes to such laws, most notably in Western Australia, we present two complimentary papers which reflect on aspects of the NT experience of protecting scared sites.

Firstly Dr Ben Scambary considers sacred site protection in the NT in light of the recent White Paper on Developing Northern Australia and the strategic manner in which the AAPA has and can address development issues with Aboriginal people.

Secondly Gareth Lewis reflects on the impacts of past and recent cases of damage to scared sites on Aboriginal people in the NT to reinforce why protection remains vital both to the cultural survival of Aboriginal people and to the goal of socially and culturally sustainable development in and beyond the NT.

We consider that NT experience demonstrates AAPA’s unrivalled success in fields of applied anthropology and, often contested, social policy. The insights gained over thirty years represent an invaluable resource that should inform the positive shaping of indigenous sacred site and heritage protection laws in other jurisdictions and warn against the long term socioeconomic, cultural, and moral costs posed by the absence or denigration of such laws.