Victoria has amended their ‘Aboriginal Heritage Act‘, which now means that if you try to use Aboriginal stories, songs or dances for commercial purposes, you’re gonna get fined a bucketload of cash.
Up to $1.5 million AUD, to be exact. That’s the maximum penalty for corporations who exploit Aboriginal knowledge or culture without consent and for profit. Or, if a individual commits the offence, that’s a max fine of $280,000 AUD.
The amendments to the act means that traditional owners or native title holders can apply to have a piece of intangible heritage, defined as ‘any knowledge of or expression of Aboriginal tradition, other than Aboriginal cultural heritage’, included on the Aboriginal heritage register.
According to The Guardian, this could include ‘oral traditions, performing arts, stories, rituals, festivals, social practices, craft, visual arts and environmental and ecological knowledge’.
Natalie Hutchins, VIC‘s Aboriginal Affairs Minister, said the adapted laws protect Indigenous culture that isn’t really protected under existing intellectual property and copyright laws.
“The influence of Aboriginal culture on Victorian society has not been properly acknowledged in our past, and it is important we recognise its value in the future.Aboriginal people in Victoria will now be able to shape the nature of cultural heritage and control how their cultural knowledge is used by others.”
The Guardian also spoke to Mick Harding, a Taungurung man and the chairman of the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council, who said the amendments would resolve the gaps in intellectual property laws, but it would also encourage the preservation of Aboriginal culture and knowledge.
“The things that have always been able to be protected had this sense that they were there: you could see them, you could touch them, and I suppose that they had an archeological element to them.This intangible stuff is the space between what is tangible. It is the stories that mothers share with their children, that elders share with groups, the special skills, the cultural stories, the dreamings.It’s something that comes from a line of 2,000 generations of people and something that also exists for the children of the future.”
The new Aboriginal heritage laws come into force in Victoria on 1 August.
Source: The Guardian.
Photo: Bangarra Dance Theatre 25th Anniversary, Scott Barbour / Getty.
