Charting new Countries: empowering Built Environment students with Indigenous protocols and knowledge

Increasingly, Built Environment (BE) professionals, including architect, landscape architect and planning practitioners, are becoming involved in the design and planning of projects for, and in direct consultation with Indigenous communities and their proponents. Critically, BE professionals must be able to plan and design with regard to Indigenous community’s cultural protocols, issues and values. Yet many students graduate with little or no comprehension of Indigenous knowledge systems or the protocols for engagement with the communities in which they are required to work. The paper will report on a recently completed Office of Learning & Teaching (OLT) funded project that has sought to improve opportunities to improve the knowledge and skills of tertiary students in the BE professions by enhancing their comprehension, appreciation and respect for Indigenous protocols and processes that also implicates American Institute of Architects (AIA), Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) and Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) professional accreditation systems. It has proposed strategies and processes to expose students in the BE professions to this knowledge and systems including protocols for engagement with Indigenous rights, interests, needs and aspirations. Included is the provision of a tool that enables and offers guidance to BE tertiary students and academics how to enhance comprehension, exposure to, and knowledge and cultural systems of, Indigenous Australians.