Returning Responsibility, Returning Country: A New Future for Gariwerd

Working together, the Gariwerd Traditional Owners and Parks Victoria commissioned a cultural values project to help them co-design a vision, principles and directions statements to then shape the Greater Gariwerd (Grampians) Landscape Management Plan. This paper recounts the process and outcomes of engagement between Parks Victoria and the Traditional Owner groups with connection to Gariwerd — Barenji Gadjin Land Council, Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation and Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Corporation. It highlights how partnership as a process, when undertaken with respect and humility, can initiate opportunities towards healing and future sustainability. The legacy of this work is to privilege an Indigenous perspective to shape a new approach to the future management of this culturally significant landscape.

Gariwerd is the continuing, living and ancestral Country (territory) of Jadawadjali and Djab Wurrung language groups. Colonial occupation severely impacted the people and harmed the lands and waters of Gariwerd. The Traditional Owners continue to nurture this land to which they are deeply connected. They pass down stories about how it was created and share knowledge and teachings on how to care for Country. They sustain their spiritual connections to Gariwerd, to all its plants and animals, to the night skies and to the wider setting of the mountain ranges. And they assert their continuing cultural rights and responsibilities for Country with its interwoven tangible and intangible dimensions.

Parks Victoria is the state government agency with responsibility for management of public land reserves across the Greater Gariwerd landscape. The wisdom, heritage and cultural knowledge of the Traditional Owners is now seen as central to a management approach that seeks to be decolonising and healing. For Traditional Owners it is not just park management, but rather the ‘return of a stolen family member’.