The University of Tasmania’s Strategic Plan for Aboriginal Engagement 2017-2020 enacts the University’s commitment to revitalise and embed its relationship with Aboriginal people, communities, culture and knowledge. The plan spans all areas of operation of the University and will be implemented in partnership with Tasmanian Aboriginal students, scholars and community. Stronger Aboriginal engagement contributes significantly to the breadth of the University’s social, intellectual and cultural diversity.

Key Findings:

• Community engagement from the direction of Aboriginal peoples’ engagement with the University of Tasmania provides a unique, ‘only found here’ source of knowledge, culture and intellectual traditions.
• A survey of University Aboriginal staff members reveals nearly all regularly provide a cultural contribution to the University that is outside their job description. Most provide these cultural services, almost always free of charge, to schools, faculties and divisions to enhance teaching and research events.
• The need for an Indigenous friendly and culturally sensitive post-graduate environment is an essential aspect of maximising Indigenous HDR retention and completion
• Building the University of Tasmania’s contemporary Indigenous research excellence requires the University taking intellectual leadership in initiating scholarly conversations of local, national and global Indigenous significance. It is critical to open the wider academy and the wider community, Indigenous and non-Indigenous of the breadth and depth of contemporary Indigenous scholarship and to inspire our students on what an Indigenous intellectual life can be and can achieve.

No area should be viewed in isolation. A systemic, co-ordinated approach is required to energise the drivers and processes requisite to achieving the Plan’s aims and objectives. The full implementation of strategies in this document will exceed the 2017-2020 time period. A refreshed Plan will be developed in 2020 building on the successes of the 2017-2020 Plan