A Multicultural Landscape: National Parks and the Macedonian Experience

2. Methodology

New directions This research constitutes a departure from previous inquiries into ethnicity and parks usage. Bibliographic searches revealed an overall paucity of literature on the subject. One strand of research, emanating from the USA, is being pursued by scholars in leisure studies and environmental management. It is primarily concerned with demographics, investigating questions that I briefly raised in Part 1 about whether ‘people of colour’ are using remote parks and wilderness areas less frequently than other Americans.

Beyond statistical considerations As previously stated, it was beyond the scope and interest of this inquiry to seek statistical data of this nature. Developed in a research environment that is actively seeking methodologies that can access qualitative data about the social significance of cultural landscapes, this project was developed on the axiom that statistical and demographic analysis can provide only limited insights on the lived connections between people and the places they occupy or visit.

Ethnicity a concern among environment-based agencies A survey of government agencies in NSW and elsewhere revealed that ethnicity is emerging as a research subject among those concerned with environmental management. For instance, the Environmental Protection Agency and Sydney Water collaborated to produce a report titled The Environment and NSW Ethnic Communities (1997),^[52] a survey of community attitudes to issues such as waste management, recycling, use of resources. More recently, Parks Victoria commissioned a Report on Ethnicity and Parks Usage Project (1999),^[53] which sought data on attitudes to park visits among various non-English speaking linguistic groups in the Melbourne metropolitan area. The survey was based on focus group discussions and did raise issues concerning attitudes to nature and the particular park activities favoured by discussants. However, the lines of questioning and reporting were again primarily statistical and made little allowance for the diversity or subtlety of migration heritage.

Perception of place a growing research field This dearth of qualitative research on ethnicity and social attachment to national parks can be compared to the burgeoning literature concerning memory and the culture of place that has emerged in recent years. Some catching up is required if our understandings of parks as social and cultural spaces are to be contemporary. This seems especially pressing in Australia where events like the Mabo and Wik judgements have forced re-thinking about the very concept of land ownership, challenging the notion that proprietorial rights are exclusive to a single lease or title holder. Instead, a mode of occupancy can be envisaged in which various individuals or groups have interests, rights, and cultural-historical claims to a common piece of ground.

Inevitably, such a shift – signalling a move from a monocultural to a multicultural notion of ownership – forces a dramatic broadening of the types of knowledge we recognise and honour when evaluating a landscape and its traditions. The NPWS, predominantly a science-driven organisation, has privileged scientific (and sometimes pseudo-scientific) ways of knowing. This has influenced even those legislative responsibilities that fall clearly within the domain of the humanities or ‘social sciences’ such as heritage interpretation and management. Hence a culture, now disputed, where archaeological data concerning Aboriginal occupation was privileged over the ‘softer’ disciplines of history, ethnography, and – most disturbingly – over the opinions and experiences of Aboriginal people themselves.^[54]

The interface between people and landscapes This study, emerging from, and contributing to, a research culture that aims to question this paradigm, consequently draws from those ‘softer’ forms of knowledge. In that respect it endeavours to connect with and develop methodologies suggested by such impressive studies as Delores Hayden’s The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (1997). Contemplating the diverse ways in which ‘social history is embedded in urban landscapes’, Hayden remarks at the propensity of places to

make memories cohere in complex ways. People’s experiences of the urban landscape intertwine the sense of place and the politics of space. If people’s attachments to places are material, social, and imaginative, then these are necessary dimensions of new projects to extend public history in the urban landscape.^[55]

Hayden would no doubt agree that the need for such knowledge in rural and park landscapes is equally important. We need some concept of the communal experiences that contribute to the ‘sense of place’ if the landscapes we care for are to be managed in a manner that is sensitive to these attachments. Yet how does a government agency acquire such knowledge?

Migration Heritage Centre provides a precedent The approach developed in this report – obviously nascent and experimental – was informed in the first instance by pioneering work initiated by the NSW Migration Heritage Centre and project-managed by the NSW Heritage Office. The research and methodology is detailed in Rich Rewards: Cultural Diversity and Heritage Practice: Report on Stage 1 by Kate Rea, the consulting historian who conducted the project. Its aim was ‘to develop a heritage identification model for use with ethnic communities.’^[56]

The Rich Rewards project acknowledged that the typical processes for identifying and classifying sites and structures of ‘heritage significance’ – the things usually included in a list like the State Heritage Register – make little allowance for the cultural diversity of contemporary Australia. The great bulk of heritage sites listed for protection connect with familiar narratives from White Australian history. The consequent absences are considerable. As Rea describes the present challenge, we need culturally diverse heritage practices which

recognise that all communities have places, items and sites of value. Adopting inclusive heritage practices that reflect the cultural diversity of the State will ensure the contributions and experiences of migrant communities are recognised and celebrated as part of its collective history. For migrants, heritage, whether it is a place, building or object, articulates a sense of association with place and belonging in the community. It marks a set of experiences and tells the story of Australian citizenship. Inclusive approaches to heritage identification add to our understanding of place and community, creating layers of meaning and association that truly reflect the complexity of our society.^[57]

Working with communities in Albury-Wodonga, Broken Hill and Orange, Rea developed a workshop model that allowed the identification of heritage items which had previously been officially unrecognised. In addition, the project sometimes added further layers of significance to previously recognised locations. An example of this was the Albury Railway Station (already listed as a site of state significance for its architectural merits) which symbolised arrival and the opening of a new life for many recent migrants in the area.^[58]

Photos trigger memories Rea adapted her approach from a method of community consultation developed by Meredith Walker in the early 1990s. Briefly summarised, the method involves identifying what ethnic communities are represented in a town and inviting representatives to a one day workshop where the participants are divided into pairs and supplied with film or disposable cameras. During the morning they go about the area and photograph sites significant to their community’s heritage. The films are processed during a lunch break and the afternoon sessions are structured around the discussion of photographs.

Methodological adaptations While Rea’s model provided a template for this project, providing a workshop model in which photographs provided stimulus for discussion, certain adaptations were necessary. Where the Migration Heritage Centre research was directed at the identification of significant sites, this was not in question in the case of Macedonian use of Audley. Rather, the established attachment to the site, its on-going significance on the community calendar, suggested the adaptation of social mapping techniques developed by Denis Byrne in collaboration with the Aboriginal communities at Foster and Purfleet on the NSW North Coast.^[59] This project involves mapping the attachments that individual community members have to places in the landscape, based on their own experience and on knowledge handed down from time immemorial. It is specifically concerned with documenting the aggregation of experiences that contribute to the social memory of a particular landscape.

The data yielded by the North Coast social mapping project owes much of its quality to the practice, where possible, of recording oral testimony at the locations that form the subject of the inquiry. Being in the place is a mnemonic trigger, and something of its mood is reflected in the informants’ recollections. I also used this technique with some success last year in interviews with Roy Barker for the Trail of Jimmie Barker Research Project.^[60] While I considered organising a Macedonian focus group discussion on site at Audley, this proved impractical for various reasons. As the following account will make clear, flexibility is essential in negotiating this kind of community-based research.

Ethno-specific workshops Our focus groups differed from Rea’s in another significant way. Where the Migration Heritage Centre research involved participants from various communities in a single workshop, ours were ethno-specific. This decision, also, emerged from community consultations. It was established that the English skills of the older Macedonians were poor and that a translator would be essential. Given this situation, it seemed more fruitful to work within one community and attempt to probe attitudes at quite a deep level.

^[52] Environment Protection Agency, The Environment and NSW Ethnic Communities (Chatswood: EPA, 1997).

^[53] Centre for Culture, Ethnicity and Health, Report on Ethnicity and Parks Usage Project (Melbourne: Parks Victoria, 1999).

^[54] See Denis Byrne’s Social Significance Assessment Research Project, in progress.

^[55] Delores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997), p. 43.

^[56] Kate Rea, Rich Rewards: Cultural Diversity and Heritage Practice: Report on Stage 1 (Sydney: NSW Heritage Office and Migration Heritage Centre, 1999), p. 4.

^[57] Ibid., p. 6.

^[58] Ibid., p. 13.

^[59] Purfleet-Taree and Forster Cultural Mapping Research Project, Research Unit, Cultural Heritage Division, NSW NPWS, in process.

^[60] See Martin Thomas (writer/producer), This is Jimmie Barker, (Radio documentary broadcast on ABC Radio National, 25 March, 2000).