The history of the Anaiwan people continues to enrich and shape the landscape on which UNE is built. And our Cultural Heritage Advisor Steve Ahoy couldn’t be prouder of his role in protecting it.
A powerful connection to his ancestral lands informs Steve’s daily work – and no more so than the winter’s day in 2019 when he visited the site of what would become UNE’s solar farm.
Steve was a consultant then and conducting cultural monitoring before work began, when he discovered three stone axes.
“Made from basalt, these axes correspond with oral history passed down through generations of my family,” he says.
“When I was about nine, my pop (great-grandfather) Lenny Desilva brought me out here and showed me a spot. He told me it was the place where my great-great-grandfather Frank Archibald was taught to make axes when he was becoming a man.
I cried with emotion ... we went to that spot and those axes were there.
“One day he was sitting with men yarning and working the stone into the right shape when a monster came over the hill. The men dropped their axes and ran down to the creek and took three days, deliberately, to walk back to their campsite, which was where Armidale lookout is now.
“When they reached camp, the monster was there; it was a white man on a horse. That was their first encounter with a European.”
Some 100 years later, the story came flooding back when Steve found the axes.
“I cried with emotion,” he says. “In my mind, these axes were made by my direct [ancestors], because my Pop pointed to a specific location in the paddock and we went to that spot and those axes were there.”
Education as a safeguard
Today, Steve works with Anaiwan cultural knowledge holders, the New England community and UNE’s archaeology department to conduct surveys and document Indigenous sites or artefacts. He’s also responsible for ensuring that Aboriginal cultural practices and knowledge are integrated into UNE education and research.
So far, the UNE campus has laid bare almost 1700 items associated with Steve’s ancestors, including scar trees, stone tools, spear tips, blades and hammer stones. Records of any artefacts are added to the NSW Heritage Office database, the university’s heritage list and the Aboriginal Heritage Information Management System (AHIMS) to ensure the objects are appropriately managed.
Education is the main way to safeguard our cultural objects.
“Then we can protect them forever or use them for education,” Steve says. “Education is the main way to safeguard our cultural objects and, as a community, we want to encourage greater awareness.
“Growing up, I was never taught Aboriginal studies or history at school. We were taught that we didn’t exist and our oral history was questioned. But finding tangible evidence that supported our oral history – in those three axes – meant that I could physically prove the story my great-grandfather had told me was real.”
