IMW Scholarship: Kullilli Bulloo River Aboriginal Corporation RNTBC

The Kullilli Bulloo River Aboriginal Corporation RNTBC was one of three organisations to receive a scholarship at the Indigenous Mapping Workshop (IMW), held in Perth in August 2019. The financial assistance provided by the IMW enables the Kullilli Bulloo River Aboriginal Corporation RNTBC to bolster their internal mapping knowledge which will be used to help their community connect to Country and culture.

We caught up with Cassandra Stevens, IMW 2019 attendee and the Prescribed Body Corporate Coordinator at Kullilli Bulloo River Aboriginal Corporation, to talk about what she learned at the IMW and what her team have been able to achieve with the grant funding so far.

Welcome, Cassandra, can you tell us a bit about your project that you presented at the Indigenous Mapping Workshop and why this project is so important to your community?

At the moment, a lot of Kullilli people don’t live on Country, which is a big desire for many of us. By combining being on Country with managing Country, the Kullili people will benefit - especially our young people and old people. 

Our project uses mapping to enable Kullilli people to go on and connect with Country and get a deeper understanding of our cultural heritage. We already know where some of our significant sites are, but we want to be able to document them in our own record management system so that we can manage and check those areas, in addition to documenting any new areas that we might come across.

The project is in its baby stage - but we know what we want to do. We need more resources to completely fulfill our aims in terms of mapping, but this grant is like the booster that will get it going. 

How has a lack of funding impacted your previous work? 

Without assistance from IMW, we wouldn’t be able to buy things like drones for mapping and other GPS technologies. Purchasing two-way radios was important because we found that when we have people on the ground, they separate from each other to look at different areas.  Without radio’s, it is a lot harder to communicate and share information if they find something.

How do maps help you tell your story?

Maps a big difference because they take you to a place. You don’t have to try to picture it in your head. You can actually see the places we are trying to communicate. 

With maps, we can show the differences and evolution of a particular site or place. The visual aspect is really important because you can talk about it in words or point to something on a map - but if you use more advanced mapping technology to supplement what you’re saying with a picture and video, that information becomes a huge benefit in terms of being able to tell the story of those places. 

From a Kullilli community perspective, maps are a way for our young people to engage with their heritage. We can talk about places on Country until we go blue in the face, but we want our young people to share in our culture because some of us are old now, we’re not going to live forever and we need to be able to tell our stories. We find digital maps are a good way of communicating and connecting together. 

How do maps help you with stakeholder engagement? 

We want to conduct our own fit-for-purpose management activities and mapping is central to those activities. They are a good communication tool for stakeholders and a way for us to be able to enforce our cultural preservation aims. 

For example, we can use maps as a way to communicate about our sacred sites. We have places out on Country where there is a road, and beneath the road is an ochre pit that is of cultural importance to us. We currently rely on the government to give us that information. But we don’t want to rely on them to give us this. We want to investigate information ourselves, document it ourselves and then to be able to go back and say ‘these areas that you’ve identified to us and we’ve been managing those areas ourselves’. 

What mapping technologies did you use prior to the workshop?

In terms of mapping software, I felt I had a basic but manageable understanding prior to attending the IMW. Most of my mapping skills were self-taught through looking at Google Maps, Google Earth and then through our work looking at the Queensland Government site, Queensland Globe and some of the national native title sites where show various determination areas. 

How would you describe your mapping skill level after attending the IMW?

After the workshop, I would say my skill level went from intermediate to more advanced -  especially my knowledge Esri software and learning what to do with shapefiles and how to manipulate that information so that I can target it to our specific area. 

Before coming to the workshop, I didn’t know how to isolate our information and display it on a map. Because of the workshop, I know how to use these files, where to find them and how to present our valuable information so that it is more fit-for-purpose to meet our needs.

What would you say to someone who is considering attending the IMW?

I’d say do it whether you are a beginner or advanced. It’s an initiative that is really good for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to develop their knowledge and their skills in that mapping realm, especially for native title purposes and managing cultural heritage sites. 

IMW was a great experience and by embracing technology and what it can offer us is an important thing for Aboriginal people to be able to get into. 

Maps can be so powerful in telling our stories and enforcing our rights and interests. It incentivises more people to get out and map their Country and store their knowledge to pass onto future generations. We’ve got to capture it. We live in the 21st century, it’s all part of adapting to how things are done and mapping is such a great tool to be able to communicate this and do it as a community. 

Thank you to Cassandra and the Kullilli Bulloo River Aboriginal Corporation RNTBC.

Click here to find out more about Kullilli Bulloo River Aboriginal Corporation RNTBC.

The Indigenous Mapping Workshop would not have been possible without its organising committee, sponsors and partners.