Engagement and Participation

The project privileged Aboriginal connections and concerns with the historical journey and the Tasmanian landscape through which it progressed in both theory and practice by:

1. foregrounding the record of Aboriginal experience and activity in the journals of George Augustus Robinson


2. employing action research-expeditions involving Aboriginal participants walking, reading, considering and surveying country, and


3. the appointment of a Project Council of Aboriginal Elders to steward the process.

Particular attention was also paid to establishing and pursuing an inclusive policy and genuinely collaborative relationship between Aboriginal participants and academics. In addition, the project encompassed an organisational and operational team of people from several states and from various institutions and disciplines, working alongside local community members, students and local landowners, with the assistance of government bodies, Aboriginal organisations and supportive individuals with relevant expertise and enormous enthusiasm.

This required a depth and scope of community engagement, cooperation and participation hitherto unusual in the Tasmanian context. It is hoped that the success provides a new benchmark for community engaged research in the future.