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Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Supporting the survival, dignity and wellbeing of Our People

The Declaration is the foundation of Council's work

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the significant Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous PeoplesExternal Link in 2007.

However, there is still much to be done in realising this commitment and Council calls for all Victorians to join us in affirming that:

Indigenous Peoples are equal to all other peoples, while recognising the right of all peoples to be different, to consider themselves different, and to be respected as such.

We all have a part to play

We ask that each of us recognise in ourselves, our workplaces and our institutions, that Indigenous Peoples have the Right to:

  • Self-determination.
  • Self-government in matters relating to their internal affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions.
  • Not be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture.
  • Not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories.
  • Practise and revitalise their cultural traditions and customs.
  • Manifest, practise, develop and teach their spiritual and religious traditions, customs and ceremonies.
  • Maintain, protect, and have access in privacy to their religious and cultural sites.
  • The use and control of their ceremonial objects.
  • The repatriation of their human remains.
  • Revitalise, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures.
  • Designate and retain their own names for communities, places and person.
  • Participate in decision-making through representatives chosen by themselves, in accordance with their own procedures, as well as to their own decision-making institutions.
  • Maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources.
  • Maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions.
  • The manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts.
VAHC UNDRIP Poster green

Downloadable Posters

Council has produced four A4 sized posters for you to download and print. The posters reflect the shields in Council's logoExternal Link and represent the four environments that make up our Country:

  • gold and ochre represent desert sands and dry country
  • green for the forests and grasslands
  • blue for the waters, rivers and lakes
  • purple represents our Countries in the metropolitan regions as well as in the basaltic and volcanic plains

Dry Country

Forest and Grassland Country

Water Country

Metropolitan and Volcanic Country

Reviewed 04 June 2020

Aboriginal Heritage Council

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