Spatial Industry Recognition for Winyama and IMW Australia
It was a successful night for the Winyama team as they took away the 2019 People and Community Award at the Western Australia Spatial Excellence Awards (APSEA) for their work on the Indigenous Mapping Workshop Australia.
The awards, which recognise excellence and achievements of people and businesses working in the geospatial industry, took place in Perth at Optus Stadium on 4th September 2019.
Winners of the APSEA awards categories in each Australian state automatically go into the running to win in their selected category at the National APSEA awards, set to take place in March 2020 in Brisbane.
The People and Community Award recognises projects that make a difference to issues that affect communities via 'grassroots' initiatives or programs or tools that permit the widespread adoption and access to spatially enabled products or services.
“This award is a huge honour for our team, we all worked extremely hard and wanted to have as large of an impact as possible in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
“It means a lot to have the spatial science industry recognise our work, we can’t wait to go to Brisbane for the national awards” said Andrew Dowding, Managing Director of Winyama.
The awards took place on the back of the SSSI Location Intelligence Forum and Exhibition 2019 (LIFE2019) conference which ran for the full day ahead of the awards. Attendees at the conference listened to Andrew Dowding’s Winyama and Indigenous Mapping Workshop story during the morning plenary session.
In his presentation, Andrew took LIFE2019 participants on a virtual journey to Ngarluma country in North West Australia, where he and his family are from.
The Google Earth 3D Tour Builder journey took the attendees to sites of sacred significance on Ngarluma country, including the waterhole Morrumburri Yinda, the most spiritual place in Andrew’s family.
Andrew’s message was that maps are a powerful communication tool for Indigenous people, particularly when it comes to documenting their history, capturing elder knowledge and managing their lands and waters effectively. Moreover, he reiterated the importance of training Aboriginal people to use geospatial tools and create more pathways for them to join the industry.
Do you work in or with the Indigenous community and require geospatial assistance with a project? Winyama offers training, land management, IT consulting, heritage and cultural mapping services. Get in touch with our team to set up a meeting.
To find out more about the Indigenous Mapping Workshop, click here to visit our IMW Australia Events page.