Indigenous people appeal to World Heritage Committee

Dear Madame Chair and member states of the World Heritage Committee,

My name is Rocky Sainty; I am pakana man from Tasmania, Australia. I have travelled from my Country with my sister Ruth, to respectfully ask, the World Heritage Committee and member countries, to reject the proposal by the Australian government to delist 74,000 hectares of our beautiful world heritage area.

If this proposal is not rejected, we will lose cultural sites thousands of years old which include some of the oldest rock art in the world as well as our magnificent forests which have co-existed together for thousands of years.

Within these great forests is Nanwoon Cave, a burial place of our ancestors, which is over 12,000 years old. We are mindful that it was only last year that our people celebrated the boundary extension endorsed by the Australian Government and we were deeply grateful to the World Heritage Committee for protecting this immensely significant ancestral resting place. The protection of this cultural landscape ensures our people’s connection to our ancestors and strengthens our identity and dignity as Traditional owners.

We depend on our continual connection to our ancestors to inform and form who we are as a people. The protection of these forests is linked to the cultural survival of our people.

Madame Chair, we implore the Committee …

Please do not ask myself and my sister Ruth to travel home to our Country to tell our community and in particular, our Elders, the world does not care.

Please accept the draft decision and recommendation of ICCOMOS.

Thank you for your consideration,

Download:
WHC_to_Vote.pdf

• WATCH: Forest cuts, The government wants to remove 74,000ha of Tasmanian forest from its World Heritage listing. Tasmanian Senator Eric Abetz and Wilderness Society National Director Lyndon Schneiders join us to discuss the issue.

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