Cultural dissonance: heritage protests and their implications for heritage-making in settler colonial cities

Heritage-making's intrinsic dissonance has been thoroughly established in the field of critical heritage studies, and yet it is a reality that continues to be obscured in heritage practice in settler colonial cities. Authorised heritage discourse continues to project existing state-led systems of heritage-making as a self-evident 'public good' for current and future generations. In settler colonial cities, this increasingly includes attempts to incorporate Indigenous views and values into its framing. However, existing statutory processes that uphold normative approaches prove resilient to change. Continued prioritisation of tangible artefact amid private property rights impairs the heritage field's ability to acknowledge alternative possibilities and to genuinely engage in decolonising transformation. This paper examines three cases where heritage dissonance has erupted into protest and protection action outside of the authorised heritage discourse: the Old Swan Brewery in Perth, Western Australia; Ihumātao in Auckland, New Zealand; and the West Berkeley Shellmound in Berkeley, California. It analyses the contestation of values that led to protest action, what 'authorised' attempts were made to heritagise each case and to what result. In so doing, the paper demonstrates how existing processes of statutory heritage-making continue to be inadequate for Indigenous and emerging heritage aspirations.