Traditional Owner Engagement
The traditional custodians will be adding value to the Healthy Country project. The South East Queensland Traditional Owners Alliance Ltd (SEQTOA) is resourced under the SEQ Healthy Waterways Strategy to develop stronger traditional owner engagement in natural resource management (NRM). It applies these resources within this project to showcase comprehensive engagement in the three focal areas.
Vanessa Hounsell, an Ugarapul (Ipswich) Traditional Owner, is SEQTOA's Partnerships Coordinator and will liaise with the local stakeholders.
SEQTOA is a new regional alliance of all South East Queensland Traditional Owners. It aims to contribute strongly to the Healthy Country project, particularly in terms of improved understanding of the traditional condition of the three focal areas and their social and environmental history. It believes that a stronger local community with a stronger connection to the land and best management practice will grow from the deeper sense of place that the traditional custodians can add.
It will also participate in project planning and facilitate the formation and training of Indigenous work teams aiming for long-term employment in works of this kind throughout the Region.
The archaeological project (which SEQTOA will fund from other sources) will add knowledge of the vegetative cover, waterways and wetlands in traditional times; to this will be added a predictive model of traditional occupation sites (including camp sites, bora rings, resource extraction sites and pathways).
Historical research for each focal area (also funded from other sources), from early settlement times to the present and from both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal perspectives, will trace changes in occupation, land use, resource conditions, weather patterns and socio-economic variables. A better understanding of the history of land use and changing resource conditions will provide a stronger base for science.
Traditional Aboriginal knowledge of the land will also be made available to the community where possible.
The traditional custodians feel a strong obligation to care for their traditional areas and for important cultural heritage sites. Their belief is that their own well-being depends on the health of their traditional “country”.
Healthy Country provides an excellent opportunity to develop good relationships between the traditional custodians and the current landholders.
See the Traditional Owner Engagement resources 
Contact:
Vanessa Hounsell
T.(07) 3366 1116
vanessa@seqtoa.com.au