Bunjil's Biik: Mapping the Ancestral Country of the Boonwurrung

Project description

This project aims to map the history and stories of Melbourne's First Peoples. It is part of a broader project seeking to gather the dispersed history of the Boonwurrung into one place and make it available through an interactive website; a source for schools, scholars and tourists. Collaborating with Jaeden Williams, Yalukit Willam man of the Boonwurrung, the intern will compile a database of historical events that have taken place since colonisation and map them on the ancestral country of the Boonwurrung. The internship is a pilot project, aiming to develop a workflow and trial map, that can be expanded through Jaeden Williams' ongoing research.

Project outcome

This internship project, commissioned by Jaeden Williams, a Boonwurrung man, community activist and educator, aimed to create a digital storytelling tool which mapped significant locations in the Boonwurrung history of central Melbourne. Intern Nat Cutter, a PhD candidate in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, worked with Williams to collate, organise and expand existing cultural and historical research data, investigate and pilot digital mapping and storytelling tools, establish a standardised template for crafting story presentations in digital format, and create a prototype tool using open-source platform StoryMapsJS. This tool will provide an immediate resource for Williams' use in schools and community presentations, as well as a proof-of-concept for funding applications and later expansion.