A Multicultural Landscape: National Parks and the Macedonian Experience

2. Challenges for NPWS

A broad very constituency While the innovative program initiated by NSW Fisheries provides inspiration and possible models that could be adapted by NPWS, the challenges we face in addressing the cultural complexity of contemporary Australia are considerably greater. As the premier conservation agency in the state, we cannot hope to fulfill our obligation to encourage environmental awareness and responsible park use by targeting a single ethnic community. It is no exaggeration to say that people from all over the world (including overseas visitors and Australian residents) visit the NPWS estates. Our off-park responsibilities in the areas of education, flora and fauna protection, and guardianship of Aboriginal sites flow through to every member of the community.

Reinvention required In this report we have seen that NPWS has traditionally been run as what some of our own staff describe as a ‘white organisation’. A survey of field officers and rangers, of people who volunteer for public programs, and of those likely to find their way into NPWS employment would almost certainly reveal a continuing culture of ‘Whiteness’. A reading of the NPWS Act indicates that this culture is unwittingly written in to the very legislature that constitutes the agency. Throughout the Act one finds references to our responsibilities in relation to ‘European heritage’. One might retort that it is perfectly obvious that this term, which distinguishes ‘European’ from Aboriginal heritage, is in fact referring to the full gamut of non-indigenous cultures. This said, however, we might speculate as to whether a Lebanese or Vietnamese reader would be convinced that their cultural heritage is accounted for by the authors of the Act and the people it appoints. Surely they would be justified in maintaining a degree of scepticism.

No doubt such prejudices and anachronisms still haunt a great deal of the legislature. In a ‘real world’ situation, we are not so literal that we bulldoze Chinese heritage because it is not protected in the Act. Legislation can remain inert while society and social attitudes change dramatically. And government agencies can also suffer inertia, replicating an entrenched historical culture, unless mechanisms that allow it to move with the times are firmly put in place.

Even in its infant stage, this research has opened insights on the significance of reserved parkland to a community whose perspective has generally been overlooked. That members of the community were prepared to share their perspective, and that we in turn have been ready to listen and give it serious attention, could be seen as a sign of a certain awakening. My many discussions with immediate colleagues and other NPWS personnel suggest that the need to understand and embrace the multicultural complexity of contemporary society is recognised as an overwhelming imperative.

The impact of migration heritage upon Australia is not confined to ‘ethnic others’. It is integral to who we are as a society. Its legacy is written across our landscapes. NPWS has not traditionally seen itself as a custodian of migrant history. Yet we have within our estates what is probably the most prominent monument in the history of NSW immigration: the Quarantine Station on the North Head of Sydney Harbour. Appropriate visitor access and educational or interpretive programs concerning this site could allow us a most prominent role in communicating the centrality of migration heritage.

Not just a White organisation Something is of course overlooked when staff complain about our being a ‘white organisation’. I refer of course to our specific responsibilities pertaining to Aboriginal heritage – responsibilities that include the listing and protection of all Aboriginal heritage sites across the state.

This charter has inevitably involved the direct input of many Aboriginal people. Aboriginal Sites Officers are employed across the state; Aboriginal people are employed to maintain the Aboriginal Sites Register; others are involved in interpretive activities such as the Discovery Ranger program. Consultation with Aboriginal communities is part of daily business for those of us working in the Cultural Heritage Division.

Bicultural or multicultural? While many might complain that Aboriginal issues still play second fiddle to flora and fauna protection responsibilities, we must still acknowledge that NPWS has opened itself to Aboriginal voices in its operation and corporate identity. In creating identified Aboriginal positions and asserting that consultation with Aboriginal people is central to decision-making processes, we have, at least to some extent, established ourselves as a bicultural rather than a purely monocultural agency.

This observation offers perhaps the greatest hope that NPWS has the potential to truly recognise and embrace ethnic diversity. While the profound differences between recent migrants and indigenous Australians must be borne in mind, this report provided moving testimony of possible synergy between the two. The older Macedonians described the many Aboriginal people they came to know as migrant workers on the factory floor. The younger generation spoke eloquently about their concern for Aboriginal welfare, informed by personal meetings and communication. With the long history of ethnic conflict in the Balkans close to their hearts, they could speak with conviction about reconciliation, not as some abstract concept but as a principle vital to the moral health of society. Acknowledgment of such connections might facilitate the ultimate recognition of difference and permit us to countenance the ultimate reality of a multicultural landscape.