Hi Graham and Ben, Thanks for bringing up the topic and expect some interesting debates.
*Naming places and natural elements* There is a thought by some that people arriving post 1769 have stolen everything from the First Nations, and the only thing left they have is their language. Now we want to use and distribute this without any consideration. This is actually covered by heritage legislation to some extent from what I have been told. Others see using and understanding some of the words in these languages as assisting in the further understanding of 80,000 years of culture, caring and understanding for the environment. I see several layers of availability. Where a town, or natural element uses a local language and it is in common usage, then we should be using the name and local name e.g. name:ntj or the generic name:aus along with the standard name. You can see what has been mapped in most original languages at http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/UAl so far. Where a name is not in common use then we could consider talking to the local Registered Aboriginal Party (RAP) which are the authority of the area. Some states may have a different name for a RAP and some areas may not have a nominated RAP. Much like the waiver we need for other databases, perhaps we need to have written approval in a standard pro-forma. This leads us to areas *Areas* A great place to start seeing what is already available is at https://www.spatialsource.com.au/gis-data/4-maps-uncovering-aboriginal-history-culture Unfortunately we don't have a clear definition of the boundaries and some are in significant dispute. Some of these are areas are based on the excellent work of Norman Tindale and his map of 1940 <https://archives.samuseum.sa.gov.au/tribalmap/> although this is open to contention. Tindale did most of his recording at outstations and so is not an exact match for territory. There are also some issues about his languages and if they were just minor dialects rather than an entire different family culture. However what Tindale did is give us an extremely good basis that we can map to. Massacres, small pox/other diseases and displacement are never going to give us the full picture sadly. Between OSM admin_level 3 (States/Territories) and admin_level 5 (LGA's) is the currently unused level 4 and this would be wonderful to set this as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Nations admin level. Under Nations, we have clans which are a bit more difficult to map but we could also juggle the unused admin_level 2 I don't see that mapping Nations is an option, I see it as almost criminal that we don't already. Ewen
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