Consultation at work PDF Print E-mail

A university research team came to work with our community on traditional land management techniques in the local area. The research team followed all the right protocols. They contacted the community through a community person, introduced themselves and their project plans. They asked if they could attend one of our Language meetings in order to meet community members. They went back to the university and then arranged for a community person to be their main point of contact with the community. The community person was employed by the research team to distribute information and talk to community members about various aspects of the project in advance of each visit by the research team. In this way people in the community knew what was going on ahead of each visit by the researchers. At the end of the project, when the researchers were ready to publish, they asked people what they wanted to happen with the information that had been collected and gave the community many possible options for what to do with the material and which forms to publish it in. One choice even included not making it available outside the community to the general public. In the end, it was published and community members all received copies.