First Nations Perspectives on Empowering Community Engagement

About the Research Project

This Project is a collaborative partnership that is being developed between CQU researchers and three First Nations communities. We will apply a strategy to increase First Nations’ peoples capacity for business governance – doing business on Country. Working with three Traditional Owner communities in Central Queensland, the project will develop an engagement framework of strategies, actions and considerations ‘an Engagement Toolkit’ for designing an Indigenous community-led guide to cultural engagement that considers community contexts and requirements. The toolkit will provide Indigenous communities with presentations, questions, real world case studies, and examples from other Indigenous communities, their principles and models of engagement, with historical and contextual realities to support communities to build (rebuild) their own nation’s guidelines for engagement to do business appropriately on Country.

Impact

Increased Community Control and Self-Determination for First Nations communities as they are supported to define and document their engagement protocols for sustainable external engagement.  

Development of transferable knowledge from the community-led engagement toolkit, including templates, questions, and protocol examples.

Improved cultural safety for external engagements resulting from clear guidelines developed for government, researchers, and industry stakeholders to follow.

Potential digital access to engagement protocols and contacts for participating First Nations communitie,s with the development of a prototype of an interactive website or digital platform containing:

• Community contact points
• Relevant local cultural engagement steps
• Region-specific maps
• Content controlled and owned by the community assuring data sovereignty
• Capacity building and governance strengthening

Partners

• Yuwi Aboriginal Corporation (RNTBC)
• The Yuwi People
• The Ghungalu/Gaangalu People