Geospatial capacity building for Indigenous Australians.
The Indigenous Mapping Workshop and its strategic partners are dedicated to the development and advancement of culturally appropriate and inclusive geospatial technologies for Indigenous leadership, agencies, and communities to support Indigenous rights and interests.
Access free training with the Indigenous Mapping Workshop.
There is more than one way you can start learning with the Indigenous Mapping Workshop Australia, either in person or online!
How you wish to take part is up to you, choose a link below to start your training journey with our community.
Digital skills to safeguard ancestral knowledge.
The way Aboriginal people manage their lands and waters is intrinsically spatial and has been performed in culture and ritual of over 60,000 years. Communities across Australia used and continue to use songlines and traditional storytelling to map Australia’s entire landmass, water resources and sea country.
Traditional information and knowledge is now being managed in a modern context within Aboriginal ranger programs, language and cultural projects, natural resource management programs and native title organisations. These organisations all operate to protect and safeguard Aboriginal peoples rights and interests and their connection to country.
The Indigenous Mapping Workshop teaches Indigenous-led organisations to use digital and geospatial tools to collect, host, visualise, share and publish maps to support their various community objectives. We offer hands on training on a range of technologies that can be used by communities and organisations to demonstrate their connection to land and waters and manage the associated digital information.
Who should apply to attend the Indigenous Mapping Workshop?
The Indigenous Mapping Workshop is for members of, or people working directly with, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities or organisations in Australia. Preference will be given to:
Decision-makers and mapping or technology specialists
Applicants who demonstrate interest and ability to implement and make effective use of mapping technology within their community
Applicants who are currently working on mapping projects, or are planning mapping projects in their communities
In order to ensure space for a diverse group of participants, there is a maximum of two participants per community or organisation for our face-to-face workshops.
“We got ideas from other Indigenous people from Australia and overseas about how we could do things at Willowra. How we can map dreamings, places, burial sites and birthplaces of Willowra people.”
— Keziah Ahkit Kitson, Willowra Community
IMW 2019 attendee.
What will you learn at the Indigenous Mapping Workshop?
At our face-to-face workshops, participants will hear success stories, learn & share best practices, and receive training on tools such as Google Earth, QGIS, Mapbox, Fulcrum, Drone mapping tools, which participants can use to collect, host, visualise, share and publish map data, supporting communities to make informed decisions about their lands and water. Sessions feature guidance from the Indigenous Mapping Workshops in Canada and New Zealand, including traditional land use and occupancy studies, environmental monitoring, and inter-generational knowledge transfer. Training modules will teach participants about:
Building quick and easy online maps that are collaborative and interactive
Creating maps from spreadsheets of data
Using Google Earth to guide a discussion about the landscape and record sites of significance
Bringing GIS and GPS data into Google Earth for visualisation
Setting up a mobile data collection project that allows you to create survey forms for Android phones and collect data (including GPS) offline to be visualised on a map
Telling a map-based narrative story that guides your audience across the land and water
Can’t wait for the next face-to-face event and want to learn online now? Apply for the IMW Australia - On Demand!
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