Visitors, Settler Colonialism and Aboriginal Cultural Heritage: Australian Protected Areas as Transformative Landscapes

by Vanessa Whittington

Overview

This book analyses visitor responses to the interpretation of Aboriginal cultural heritage in Australian protected areas, focusing on Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in the Northern Territory and the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area in New South Wales.

It provides insights into the discursive features that structure various forms of interpretation of Aboriginal cultural heritage at these locales, ranging from on-site interpretative signage to audio tours available on mobile phone applications. It draws on visitors’ firsthand accounts of the experience of participating in Traditional Custodian led cultural tours and camps, and the visitor learnings that resulted from these. Based on extensive interviews with visitors, the author argues that visitor responses to these experiences both perpetuate and challenge settler-colonial assumptions about Aboriginal peoples and their cultures in both more urban and remote locations. The book provides insight into the forms of interpretation that foster visitor transformations, thereby advancing a politics of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and the types of interpretation that may hinder such transformations, by reinforcing settler-colonial discourses and affective states.

The book is aimed at students and academics attempting to develop a more critical practice in relation to heritage interpretation, tourism, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural heritage and settler-colonialism. It will also appeal to heritage professionals, cultural tour operators and agencies responsible for the provision of protected area interpretation, including both government sector and Indigenous organisations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032654959
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/27/2025
Series:	Critical Studies in Heritage, Emotion and Affect
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Vanessa Whittington holds a Doctorate from the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University (WSU) and currently works as a Sessional Academic with the School of Social Sciences, WSU. Her Doctoral research was in the field of critical heritage and tourism studies. She has a Master’s Degree in Museum and Heritage Studies, a Master of Arts (Hons) in Women’s Studies/ Interdisciplinary Studies and a Bachelor of Arts with majors in History and Political Science. She has previously worked in senior policy and research roles for government and non-government agencies with a human services, social justice and social policy focus. She has published in the areas of Indigenous-visitor relations in protected area landscapes; heritage and contested memory in a settler-colonial context; the marginalisation of working class urban heritage and world heritage discourse and gender.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction, 2. Visitors being, doing and knowing: The relevance of theory in a settler-colonial context, 3. Sanctioned interpretations of culture and place: Discourses of protected area interpretation, 4.Interruptions/ Revivals/ Reinscriptions: Traditional Custodian led cultural tours, 5. Authenticities, deficits, ‘Aboriginalisms’: Visitor constructions of Aboriginality in protected areas, 6. Affectivities: "Settler structures of feeling" in colonised landscapes, 7. "Transformations": Visitor "awakenings" or journeys in "becoming Aboriginal"?, 8. Conclusion: Heritage, tourism and incommensurable Aboriginal sovereignties

Editorial Reviews

In this carefully researched book, Whittington invites the reader to explore how Indigenous cultural tourism may – or may not – change visitors’ thinking, attitudes and behaviour. The author urges us to consider how our engagement with Indigenous culture and Country might become transformational rather than romantic, insisting we consider the complex entanglements of settler colonialism and the tourist experience. This is an important work that deserves to be read.

Professor Sarah Maddison BA PhD, MAIATSIS, Director, The (so-called) Australian Centre, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Australia.

 

Whittington’s sensitive and detailed empirical analysis of visitor responses to Indigenous cultural heritage at two World Heritage Sites shows us how the visitor experience at such places can both challenge and perpetuate colonial narratives. It provides a template for heritage policymakers, managers and tour operators on the forms of interpretation and experience which may be most efficacious in transforming visitor attitudes and promoting reconciliation in settler-colonial contexts, and for heritage researchers in its methods and approaches to the study of the affective experience of heritage landscapes for visitors. 

Professor Rodney Harrison, Professor of Heritage Studies, University College London, United Kingdom.

 

Travel beyond the familiarity of one’s environs has long been regarded as one of the best educators. In linking the interpretation of Indigenous tourism to the transformation of the visitor, Whittington tackles the sticky challenge of how this might aid reconciliation between Indigenous hosts and non-Indigenous guests in a settler-colonial milieu. In broadly querying interpretation and the modes of interpretation that are optimal, this book draws from theoretical and socio-historical framing that elucidates the ripple effects of cross-cultural touristic encounters. Whether they lead to fertile exchanges or reinforce hackneyed tropes and power disparities is a central contention.

Professor Joseph M Cheer, Professor of Sustainable Tourism and Heritage, Western Sydney University, Australia.

From the Publisher