Participants to presenters: Willowra Community hosts mapping workshops

Indigenous Mapping Workshop (IMW) Australia 2019 attendees from Willowra community, have used their scholarship funds to host two intensive digital mapping workshops at the Central Lound Council (CLC) office in Alice Springs. 

The Willowra cultural mapping project team was awarded one of three $10 000 scholarships following a lightning round presentation by Keziah Ahkit Kitson, Marissa Brown and Petronella Vaarzon-Morel, who presented the Lander Warlpiri cultural mapping project. 

Read more about the successful presentation here. 

This Indigenous mapping scholarship contributed to funding Willowra community’s intensive mapping workshops aimed at the revitalisation of culture.  

Intensive digital mapping training

Julie (left) and Selina (right) discussing a map of Willowra

The first digital mapping workshop hosted by the cultural mapping project team was held in January 2020. 

Training was provided by workshop coordinator, Petronella Vaarzon-Morel, and anthropology student, Marcelis Avery, who focused on the freely available program Google Earth Pro and related platforms; My Maps; Tour Builder; and 3D Storytelling.

“It’s a really useful workshop, because we are learning to do more things on the computer using different tools. It’s interesting, dropping the pins on the locations, soakages, hills and sites.” - Julie Napaljarri Kitson, workshop participant.

For those unable to attend the first workshop, Petronella provided an information session on Google Earth and digital mapping at the Willowra Learning Centre in March 2020. 

This session highlighted the power of digital story mapping and attracted enough interest from younger members of the community to plan for a second workshop.

Follow-up workshop, one year later

After a delayed start due to the pandemic, the second intensive digital mapping workshop was held in January 2021 at the CLC office in Alice Springs. 

To re-familiarise participants with Google Earth techniques, they first created a map of Willowra community by searching for places, dropping points, using icons, and adding information such as names, features, Dreamings, photos and notes.

“This has been a really good experience learning lots of new skills. We’ve been learning about maps and places, and putting pins, icons and words, descriptions, under the place-name headings in the pop-out boxes – labelling places and telling stories... It’s for us and for the other people we are going to teach at Willowra.” -  Selina Napanangka Williams, workshop participant.

Participants then mapped their clan’s significant places to contribute to a cultural atlas booklet, combining digitally produced maps, photos of site visits, and relevant cultural information. 

Keziah and Julie discuss location of site

Janelle inspecting map

Multigenerational and intercultural mapping teams worked collaboratively on this project to ensure cultural protocols were adhered to and information was processed in an appropriate manner. 

This collaborative work strengthened Warlpiri language skills as the workshop encouraged discussions around Warlpiri terms for topographical features and the differences that exist when categorising landscape features in comparison to the English language.

“We used our own personal knowledge of country and also GPS coordinates to map locations like Dreaming sites, sacred sites and places where people lived a long time ago around the Willowra area. Sometimes we found that the GPS coordinates did not accurately match the locations of places, so we dropped the pins where we knew the sites were located.” - Keziah Ahkit Kitson, workshop participant.

The final mapping exercise focused on how maps can represent different versions of history, using the example of the Coniston Massacre.

Using the Google Earth time slider, participants also discussed changes to their built environment and the usefulness of importing historicals maps to position them as an overlay. 

Participants critiqued existing maps relating to the massacre by identifying issues with scale and place names, incorrect locations of sites, and the inappropriate use of icons.

Following this, participants cross-referenced archival and historical sources including Warlpiri oral histories and checked information with Willowra elders to map newly recorded massacre sites. 

What’s next for Willowra? 

Left to right: Marcelis Avery, Keziah Ahkit Kitson, Janelle Ross, Julie Kitson, Selina Williams and Petronella Vaarzon-Morel.

Participants from the respective workshops share a desire to continue their mapping projects in the future.

“I’ll use my digital mapping skills on country visits at Willowra and working with elders. I learnt about my grandfather’s country from my mother but working on the digital maps helps me to better understand and learn about where other families’ countries are surrounding Willowra. I would like to do more courses. I would also like to learn how to use other mapping tools, programs or software. I love this mapping work and would like to have a job doing it.” - Keziah Ahkit Kitson, workshop participant.

Workshop attendees are also looking forward to sharing their newly acquired skills and enthusiasm for digital mapping with their Willowra community.  

“It’s really good that I’m learning a lot and putting the sites and soakages around my area, my father’s country Ngarnalkurru, so in the future I can teach my kids. We write the owners of the place, the name of the country and places and the skin names of who it belongs to… It’s really important, because this is us doing it for our people.” -  Selina Napanangka Williams

Willowra community members can’t wait to attend another flagship IMW event again, and intend to regroup their cultural mapping project team to present a second lighting round presentation. 

Are you interested in learning some of the tools and technologies explored in Willowra’s digital mapping workshops? 

Our online learning platform IMW Australia - On Demand, offers an Introduction to Google Earth Pro course as well as short courses teaching skills in importing data, imagery and overlays, and 3D storytelling using freely available software Google Earth Pro. 

Enrol in these courses or apply for an IMW Australia - On Demand account to get started!