Writings and Reflections on
Indigenous Land & Sea Country Planning and Management
in Australia

THIS WEBSITE IS CURRENTLY BEING DEVELOPED  
Additional reports, publications and reflections will be added in the near future

Welcome to my collection of publications, consultancy reports and other documents prepared during 40 years supporting Indigenous Land and Sea Country Management, Country-based Planning and Indigenous Protected Area policy development in Australia. Links are provided only to publicly available documents or with permission of the commissioning organisation.

Some of these documents were prepared in the pre-internet era and are not available electronically elsewhere.  Much of the information provided in the older documents is now out of date, but still has relevance to understanding the emergence and evolution of policies and practices in Indigenous Land and Sea Management in Australia.  Some commentary and reflections are provided for key topics and for some of the documents in order to provide context and personal perspectives on the issues covered. Where relevant, links are provided to documents from other sources relating to the history of Indigenous Land and Sea Management.

Please note that the documents available here relate mainly to my involvement in the Caring for Country movement that emerged in parallel to the struggle for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land and sea rights from the 1970s onward.  These documents do not represent a comprehensive archive of the Indigenous land and Sea Country planning and management story to which a large number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Indigenous organisations, government agencies and other parties contributed time, effort, ideas and resources over the last four decades. I am making these documents available on line in the hope that they may contribute to a more comprehensive Caring for Country archive in the future.

Documents can be accessed via the  “Reports and Publications” tag, or via the separate page tags on the left hand side of the screen.

Dermot Smyth