Technologies of power and subjectivities of care in NSW Aboriginal cultural heritage management

Research to date maintains that NSW state and local government planning processes lead to regular instances of authorised harm to Aboriginal cultural heritage. This thesis examines how the NSW Aboriginal cultural heritage management (ACHM) industry is constituted by experts in the industry, including archaeologists, planning professionals, and First Peoples. Further, it examines the discourses through which participants, at various levels of decision-making, construct and experience their own roles in ACHM. Qualitative data has been gathered from 21 semi-structured interviews, yielding rich accounts of the complexity involved in ACHM decisions. The interview data is thematically analysed using Foucault's concepts of power-knowledge and subjectivity. Notably, the NSW government's 2010 statutory requirement for consultation with First Peoples has not ameliorated the dominance of archaeological practice. Nor has it improved the protection of cultural heritage deemed significant by First Nation participants. Analysis also reveals that participants primarily construct themselves through a subjectivity of caring for, and fighting for, cultural heritage. This study brings to the fore how First Peoples working in the industry experience the continual loss of their cultural heritage, the effects of the often merely performative nature of consultation, and the racialising and colonising discourses that privilege non-Aboriginal values. Nevertheless, First Peoples have established local networks with sympathetic experts to achieve better outcomes in the cultural heritage assessment and management process.