L-R: Mitchell Scott, Kelvin Rogers, Nehemiah Farrell, Lester Gumbula and Emilie Ens

Together with the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), the CBA is supporting a two-way Indigenous engagement case study.

Based in SE Arnhem Land, the project aims to demonstrate the value of the ALA to Indigenous Australians, the value of Indigenous knowledge to non-Indigenous Australians and promote cross-cultural ways of knowing and managing Country.

The Aboriginal Yugul Mangi Rangers are working together with Emilie-Jane Ens and Mitchell Scott, ecologists from Macquarie University.

Using local Indigenous knowledge, biodiversity data from SE Arnhem Land is being entered into the ALA using both Western scientific names and information, and indigenous names, uses and significance.

Lead researcher Emilie-Jane Ens will be joined by Kelvin Ironstone (Yugul Mangi Ranger), Mitchell Scott (RA), and Lester Gumbala and Nehemiah Farrell (Ngukurr School students) to give an update on their project.

After their seminar, Kelvin and the students had the opportunity to visit both the museum and wet labs (in the Gould Building at ANU) to see where some of the animals they had collected were sent and the types of research they were being used for.

Kelvin Rogers talking to UNSW students (left); Kelvin Rogers handing over the animals tissue samples to Craig Moritz (right)

Left: Gaye Bourke, Lester Gumbula and Nehemiah Farrell at the museum lab at ANU. Right: Looking at Leichhardt’s Grasshoppers at Australian National Insect Collection, CSIRO