Sarah Holcombe

Indigenous rights and cultural heritage in the Australian resources sector

Project summary: Explore how Indigenous peoples rights feature in archaeology, social performance and cultural heritage management policy and practice in the resources sector, and what needs to change. Undertake in-depth research with one or more of the Training Centre’s partner organisations or other organisations.

The researcher will undertake research to explore how Indigenous rights and interests are understood and enacted. You will analyse what factors influence engagement with the discourse of rights at a local level and how this translates to the mobilisation of rights within industry standards and policies, and in practice.

Australia endorsed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2009. Up to this point, the Racial Discrimination Act (1975), the Native Title Act (1993), and state and federal cultural heritage legislation were the baseline legal frameworks driving compliance for industry in relation to Indigenous rights and interests, including those relating to cultural heritage.

The UNDRIP considerably widens the responsibility of parties that have endorsed it and Australia continues to fall short. Of serious concern throughout Australia, and central to this PhD project, is the question of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) as it relates to the decision-making rights and impacts on lands. This concept of FPIC is often conflated with the ‘social license to operate’ under the native title act (1993).

This research has the potential to enable the mining industry to improve their performance in cultural heritage protection, respect for Indigenous peoples’ rights and interests, and socially responsible mining.

The reference for this PhD is ICHDR#2 PhD

Indigenous data sovereignty and cultural heritage management in the resources sector

Explore how Indigenous peoples rights feature in archaeology, social performance and cultural heritage management policy and practice in the resources sector, and what needs to change. Undertake in-depth research with one or more of the Training Centre’s partner organisations or other organisations.

Based at the University of Queensland, this PhD research will undertake research to explore how the concept and practice of Indigenous data sovereignty applies to the extractive industries. The project may range over novel forms of IP protection, technical means of selective data protection, institutional policies in Australia and beyond, or other topics the candidate can demonstrate to be of relevance to the application of the data sovereignty concept to cultural heritage protection in the extractive industries.

Contemporary concepts of Indigenous data sovereignty emerged in the 1990s from the groundbreaking work of Canadian First Nations communities who were responding to poor data practices and exclusion. They were frustrated by non-Indigenous data users speaking with authority about the health of First Nations peoples. A global Indigenous data sovereignty movement has since emerged, that has moved beyond health with a subsequent raft of principles (including OCAP), networks and collectives which, in Australia, includes the Maiam nayri Wingara Indigenous Data Sovereignty Collective.

In the context of the extractive industries, the mechanisms for building and sharing cultural heritage knowledge have historically been deeply inequitable with the industry holding vast libraries of cultural heritage survey data, as well as material culture. Each mining company and Indigenous representative body have varying systems and capabilities in managing this data – including material culture management. This project has the potential to develop leading practice in Indigenous data management and support the establishment of mechanisms for repatriation of data and materials. Please reference: ICHDR#2 PhD