Case Study
The benefits of digital heritage mapping to protect Country
The benefits of digital heritage mapping to protect Country
Yamatji Marlpa Aboriginal Corporation (YMAC) are the Native Title Representative body for the Yamatji and Pilbara regions of Western Australia. YMAC are responsible for providing a range of professional services to groups of Traditional Owners of the Pilbara, Midwest and Gascoyne, one of those services is heritage mapping. With the need for heritage mapping rapidly increasing in Western Australia, YMAC contracted Winayma to help in meeting the needs of the Aboriginal communities they represent.
In the twelve months from March 2020 to 2021, mining exploration in Australia increased $139 million according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Without due diligence, mining exploration has potential to disturb and destroy culturally significant sites belonging to Aboriginal people. The task of the YMAC team is to ensure such an event is avoided at all costs by assisting Traditional Owner groups.
How Winyama helped to simplify the heritage process
Sally McGann, the Heritage Manager of YMAC leads a team who work to provide heritage services to Aboriginal corporations. When a company is looking to operate in the vicinity of heritage sites, YMAC will put heritage surveys together to gain an understanding of what areas of land need to be protected with physical boundaries. The initial stages of this process requires the collaboration of a number of stakeholders including the Traditional Owners, their representative body corporate, a heritage consultant and YMAC staff.
The stakeholders take guidance from the Traditional Owners to determine what parts of the land need to be protected, then a border can be defined and an exclusion zone is set. With a number of stakeholders involved in each consultation, and the demand for heritage surveys increasing—Sally recognised that there was a need to make the consultation process more streamlined, so YMAC looked for a geospatial consultant with heritage skill sets.
“Bringing Winyama in was really important because there’s an amazing amount of exploration going on in Western Australia. We needed a company that could not only do the spatial work but had knowledge of heritage sites too. It was great that we had Merindah because she had the knowledge of heritage sites and how they are protected.”
— Sally McGann, Heritage Manager
Winyama’s unique capability with heritage mapping
The way we do things is unique. We are a team with first-hand knowledge of heritage and how the digital process helps to engage Traditional Owners in a way that hasn't been done before. We choose to take this approach because when it comes to heritage, you can’t compromise on accuracy, nor can you leave people behind.
Google Earth allows for a level of accuracy which helps everyone in the heritage process understand the implication of proposed exploration. People are able to gain context that was never possible with a paper map because Country is displayed in 3D as a digital twin of the landscape representing what it actually looks like. Utilising digital means to communicate ensures that the process is as engaged and accurate as possible, resulting in the best outcomes possible for Traditional Owners.
What is unique about this way of completing the Heritage survey, is the digitalisation and accuracy that ensures the Winyama team can take all the information and distil it down to a single or series of boundaries that the company can observe and follow. Not too far in the past, the heritage process was undertaken with only 2D paper maps and people would gather round and mark points with a pen.
Now, access to digital tools has allowed for the introduction of a system much more accurate and suitable for sharing information with all stakeholders and lessens the chance of miscommunications. The heritage team at YMAC are grateful for the knowledge that Winyama—owned and operated by Traditional Owners—brings to the table.
“We went straight to Winyama because I was confident that Merindah and Andrew understood heritage and how it needs to be protected. How complex it is and you have a complex understanding to make things simple for companies. I was confident they would know what to do and had a background in defending sites.”
— Sally McGann, Heritage Manager
