| A Multicultural Landscape: National Parks and the Macedonian Experience |
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1. A cross-cultural approach
The cross-cultural mirror To see oneself from the perspective of someone else can be liberating or terrifying. Sometimes it is both. I hope that some sense of seeing ourselves from the perspective of others informs this report which describes an enquiry into ethnicity and landscape. While the connection between cultural background and landscape experience is the theme that unites this project, the consultative methodology that produced it broke down the demarcation between researcher and research subject that is often so rigid.
It proved impossible to dissociate people’s experiences in national parks from their insights on the Service itself. In this respect the Multiculturalism and National Parks Research Project provides a mirror – an invaluable opportunity to consider how effectively we are meeting the needs of a very large minority of our population: the 23 per cent in NSW who were born overseas.
Questions emerging from ethnic diversity The NPWS has a statutory requirement to serve the population of NSW in all its diversity. Yet how effectively do we do this? Is the ideal of multiculturalism manifest in the way we do our daily business or do we merely pay it lip service? If this issue is confronted squarely, a series of questions will inevitably flow.
Do we actively seek to reflect the heterogeneity of Australia in our workforce or is ours an organisational culture that is largely homogenous? Is our organisation open to the vast range of ideas and values, influenced by so many cultures, that shape attitudes to landscape management in NSW? Or do we prioritise particular forms of knowledge at the expense of others? Are we an agency that values and takes notice of community input or is ours an administrative order that seals itself off against such participation?
The answers to such questions are neither black nor white. In many respects the NPWS reflects the complexities and contradictions of our constituency. NPWS has recently acknowledged that the physical evidence of Aboriginal occupation ‘requires the stories and traditions of the people to give it context in the natural landscape.’[1] The need to understand stories and traditions concerning our migrant heritage is also important – and is additionally complicated by the fact that often there is no material evidence of the rituals, traditions, festivities that migrant people have brought to our outdoor spaces. Certainly, we need innovative approaches if the connection between ethnicity and landscape is to be understood wholistically. Are there signs that the Service is ready for this challenge?
In publicly committing ourselves to ‘telling the stories’ of the NSW landscapes, NPWS has expressed a receptivity to the diverse range of experiences that shape attitudes to the environment and do, inevitably, influence the ways in which people behave within it. To that extent there are hopeful signs.
The Visions document (a mission statement developed through public consultation), which recommends that we tell the stories of the landscape, marks a move towards community-based liaison and regionally-based land management. National parks are being regarded in their geographic and social contexts, allowing space for community partnership. The strategy here is to emphasise the principle of biodiversity – the connectedness between geographic areas, between ecosystems, between reserved and unreserved land. We now acknowledge that this mode of thinking is essential if conservation strategies are to assume the global dimension necessary for long-term survival.
[1] National Parks and Wildlife Service, Visions for the New Millennium: Report of the Steering Committee to the Minister for the Environment, (Sydney: Steering Committee to the Minister for the Environment, 1998), p. 7.