Aboriginal people have a cultural responsibility to protect cultural heritage, inherited from their Ancestors. In Victoria we have statewide laws to protect Victoria’s Aboriginal cultural heritage. This means we all have a role to play in protecting and preserving Aboriginal cultural heritage.
The laws recognise Traditional Owners as the primary guardians, keepers and knowledge holders of cultural heritage. If tangible cultural heritage is destroyed, it is lost forever. That’s why it’s important we conserve and protect it.
Victoria’s laws also protect intangible heritage. The stories, cultural customs and practices that are recorded by First Peoples in Victoria and passed on from generation to generation.
The Aboriginal Heritage Act 2006 includes a range of enforcement provisions including penalties for harming Aboriginal cultural heritage.
We protect Aboriginal cultural heritage for all Victorians just as we protect other forms of heritage, such as significant buildings, historic sites and precincts.
Aboriginal cultural heritage
Ancestral remains
The remains of an Aboriginal person from the past. Victoria’s laws recognise that First Peoples are best placed to care for Ancestral Remains and have the right to lay their Ancestors to rest on Country.
Tangible cultural heritage
Aboriginal places and objects such as rock art, fish traps, scarred trees and stone tools. Physical things that can be seen and touched, and important places where cultural heritage is found.
Intangible cultural heritage
Traditional Aboriginal knowledge including oral traditions, arts, stories, rituals, festivals, social practices, craft, and environmental and ecological knowledge.
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