Protecting Indigenous heritage objects, places, and values: challenges, responses, and responsibilities

This paper examines ongoing challenges facing Indigenous peoples and their heritage, the consequences of inadequate heritage protection, and new initiatives that counter this. Indigenous scholars, tribal leaders, and others have done much to educate outsiders as to their heritage values and ways of life. My goal is to identify areas where governments, industry, the public, and even academic researchers have failed to understand this. I first examine seven significant challenges: 1) heritage site destruction and disturbance; 2) repatriation of ancestral remains; 3) unauthorised study of ancestral remains; 4) restrictions on access to or protection of sacred places; 5) dismissal of oral histories and traditional knowledge; 6) cultural appropriation and commodification; and 7) limited consultation or participation in heritage management. I then review six areas where informed and innovative actions are providing effective, respectful, and responsible heritage protection therein: 1) Indigenous participation, decision making and benefits flow; 2) Indigenous intellectual property; 3) research ethics; 4) new applications of archaeological methods; 5) policy development and implementation; and 6) corporate responsibility, public outreach and education.