A group that aims to enhance the uptake of Indigenous biocultural knowledge in contemporary land management, environmental policy and ecological science, has taken out the Indigenous Leadership for Sustainability category of the coveted Banksia Awards.

“Winning this award is very encouraging for our group, who came from all over Australia and worked over 2 years to develop some innovative tools to promote inclusion of Indigenous knowledge, people and Country in national ecological debates,” said Dr Emilie Ens. “This award confirms a broader interest in these issues and we will continue to work to create uniquely Australian cross-cultural ways of understanding, managing and monitoring Country that will benefit all of society.”

The Australian Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (ACEAS)Indigenous Biocultural Knowledge Working Group was instigated by Dr Ens, an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher in the Department of Environment and Human Geography. It involves expert Indigenous knowledge holders, non-Indigenous experts (ecologists, biologists and social scientists) with close association with Indigenous ecology and land management, and other stakeholders from NGO’s, government departments and Indigenous Land Councils.

The project has delivered a website containing over 1500 documents, capturing documentation of Indigenous People’s use and manipulation of the land over millennia, including a world-first map, which illustrates the locations of place-based publicly available and documented Australian Indigenous Biocultural Knowledge. The map shows hotspots of documentation and opportunities for further documentation of Australia’s rich biocultural knowledge against Indigenous and government land management spatial layers.

The Banksia Awards, now in their 26^th year, showcase the best in Australian invention, innovation and ingenuity when it comes to sustainability.

Find out more.