Sites of Cultural Significance across the Wet Tropics Biocultural Region

The Rainforest Aboriginal Peoples’ Cultural Values Steering Committee is progressing the Rainforest Aboriginal Peoples’ Cultural Values Project (RAP CV Project) through an Australian Government funded project. The RAP CV Project has three objectives: A. To maintain, protect and conserve the 2012 National Heritage Listed Indigenous cultural values of the Wet Tropics by developing a new management plan. B. To develop innovative ways to present Indigenous spatial identities of the Wet Tropics through pilot/s. C. To implement activities that enhance the Australian public’s understanding of and engagement with the Indigenous cultural values of the Wet Tropics. The RAP CV Project activities deliver: The Wet Tropics Cultural Values Management Plan (complementing the Wet Tropics World Heritage Management Plan incorporated into the 2020-2030 Wet Tropics Strategic Plan and the Wet Tropics People and Country NRM Plan, as well as other relevant key plans in the region). Indigenous spatial identities mapping pilot/s regarding, at various landscape scales, the right persons speaking for Country, that is, the knowledge holders, apical ancestors and usufructuary rights-based peoples (the people who exercise the activities with plants and animals, minerals etc.). Support for existing and emergent cultural heritage information management system developments across the Wet Tropics. The draft 2009 intellectual property kit from ARC revisited. Cultural values capacity development, e.g., for Cultural Heritage Bodies, RNTBCs and PBCs and applicant groups, and other Aboriginal land-owning entities and other Rainforest Aboriginal organisations. Progressing a nomination for listing on the Wet Tropics for the Queensland State Heritage Register. This report contributes to all deliverables, particularly (I) the Cultural Values Management Plan and (V) cultural values capacity development. The objective of the report is to research and identify sites of cultural significance across the Wet Tropics biocultural region. This component of the RAP CV Project delivers: an overview of cultural heritage sites of significance; a weblink database; and a record of cultural heritage sites across the Wet Tropics biocultural region registered on the Queensland Government’s Cultural Heritage database.