Educating for designing in and planning for Country: Introducing built environment students to indigenous protocols and knowledge

easingly, built environment professionals, including architect, landscape architect and planner practitioners, are becoming involved in planning and design of projects for, and in direct consultation with Indigenous communities and their proponents. Critically, built environment professionals must be able to plan and design, and demonstrate respect to Indigenous community cultural protocols, issues and values. Yet many students graduate with little or no comprehension of Indigenous knowledge systems or the protocols for engagement with Australian or international Indigenous communities in which they are required to work. This paper reports on a recently completed Office of Learning & Teaching (OLT) funded project that has sought to improve the knowledge and skills of tertiary students in the built environment professions, and has proposed strategies and processes to expose students in the built environment professions to Australian Indigenous knowledge and cultural systems and the protocols for engaging with Indigenous Australians about their rights, interests, needs and aspirations.