Plenary Sessions

The Karrawirraparri (River of the Redgum Forest) flows through the heartland of traditional Kaurna country with ceremonial, meeting, residential and burial places. From 1836, this also became the centre of the city of Adelaide, South Australia’s capital. For the last 190 years, Kaurna people have struggled to survive and to retain their culture and heritage, while a capital city spreads spreads across their traditional Country, infilling and covering its own former rural hinterland. Today the rate of impacts on Kaurna cultural heritage places and Traditional burial places is higher than ever, without any consistent development or works planning mechanisms for cultural heritage assessment at State or Local Government levels, and an Aboriginal Heritage Act that has no prescribed due-diligence processes for development assessment and rubbery penalty provisions that are never used.

In this Kaurna Plenary Session, Traditional Owners introduce the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of Kaurna Country and discuss the main issues they face and initiatives they are using to have Kaurna cultural heritage recognised, respected and preserved in the Adelaide region. They describe the enduring cultural significance of these special places and their vision for creating a future Adelaide that celebrates Kaurna culture not just in name, but in real life.

Two heritage practitioners who have worked with Kaurna Traditional Owners for many years contribute short summaries of major Kaurna cultural heritage mitigation projects and research results where the archaeological records of traditional Kaurna Villages, ceremonial gathering places and cemeteries all combine with Kaurna cultural knowledge and ethnographic and historical records to enrich the stories of the past and strengthen cultural continuity and scientific knowledge for the future.

Most conversations about heritage protection and industry still talk past each other. The language used to describe how the two are reconciled (partnership, engagement, consultation) assumes a process in which Traditional Owners are informed, invited, or asked for input, but someone else makes the decisions. The archaeologist decides what's significant, the company decides the timeline, the government decides what counts as adequate process. When that happens, agreements look solid on paper and fail the moment they're tested: sites are lost, trust breaks, and Traditional Owners spend their energy managing a process that was not built to give them real power in the first place.

In this presentation, representatives of the PKKP Aboriginal Corporation set out a model of co-management that resets the balance between Traditional Owners, industry, and heritage practitioners. Developed through six years of negotiations, and shaped by a history of real loss, broken promises and hard negotiation, the model is grounded in free, prior and informed consent, a principle that has existed in policy language for decades but has largely been treated as an aspiration rather than an operational reality. PKKP offers a working example of what that principle looks like in practice, within a Pilbara context where the pressure for land access and development routinely outweighs cultural priorities and authority.

The model rests on three principles. First, cultural authority underpins the direction and desired outcomes before any technical or commercial process begins; PKKP's own governance and knowledge shape decisions from the outset, rather than being brought in to endorse decisions already made elsewhere.

Second, cultural authority is not exercised by refusing to engage. PKKP has departed from an assumption common in the sector, that resisting industry is the surest way to protect Country. Resistance can hold a line, but it rarely moves one. Once industry knows it will be met with opposition regardless of what it does, it has no reason to change. PKKP's approach is to sit at the table and use that position to set the terms, including what gets protected, how decisions are made, and who holds the power to say no. The result is neither accommodation nor a fatalistic acceptance that Traditional Owners cannot “win” against industry; it is industry restructuring itself around Traditional Owner authority.

Third, and most difficult to navigate, co-management means sharing power rather than simply reversing existing balances of power. Technical expertise remains essential; the discipline lies in knowing when cultural authority should lead, when specialist expertise should lead, and when each should step back. This is a skill PKKP has developed intentionally, and one that industry has often found difficult, because ceding authority can feel uncomfortable or commercially risky. That judgement shifts with circumstance, whether leadership rests with Traditional Owners, archaeologists, lawyers, engineers or industry representatives. The challenge is not deciding who holds power once and for all, but determining who should lead at a particular moment and why.