Developing a digital keeping place

We spent the week with the Arafura Swamp rangers and Yolngu and Bi Traditional Owners starting to build their digital keeping place (database) to help manage, protect and utilise the wealth of knowledge people have for Country.

Arafura Swamp Indigenous Rangers are telling about their work with video they capture on smartphones and tablets. After adding descriptive subtitles, voiceovers and music, they can finish their reports in an hour or two. The ease and speed of production and the degree of artistic control over the content would have been impossible only a few years ago.

Djïḻpin is the Goyder River, which flows to feed the Arafura Swamp and then the saltwater. If you bring your eyes and see what it looks like, you will feel the country with your mind and soul.

Imagine a room of 20 people, speaking many different languages, talking about Country. There's laughter and movement. Stories are told and connections made. Key ideas are written on sticky notes and arranged on floors and walls. New, collective stories emerge.

How do you handle an aggressive snake? How do you dig a pitfall trap in ground baked solid by the Northern Territory dry season? And how do you make the perfect cup of camp tea? These were just some of the challenges encountered in an exciting week spent surveying biodiversity around Malnyangarnak outstation with the Arafura Swamp Women Rangers.

Bush Heritage and Traditional Owners are proudly working together to return the Arafura Swamp region to good health. Stretching across 70,000 hectares of Arnhem Land is one of northern Australia’s largest freshwater ecosystems, the Arafura Swamp or Gurruwiling.

A busy week was had last week with the rangers from the Arafura Swamp as part of the Bush Heritage partnership with Arafura Swamp Rangers Aboriginal Corporation​ (ASRAC). In particular the Wanga Djakamirr Rangers, who are the sea rangers for much of the coastline around the swamp, undertook their first patrol for many years checking turtles and marine debris on the beaches of Howard and Banyan Island.

We're supporting the Arafura Swamp Rangers Aboriginal Corporation as it develops governance and administrative capacity. We've worked extensively on helping to develop a Healthy Country Plan for the region.