[talk-au] admin_level, suburbs and rendering; should the order be updated?

Tue Nov 30 08:25:14 UTC 2021

 From my (admittedly limited) understanding, there are several different 
forms of recognition and ownership of land by Australia's First Peoples, 
and it varies from state to state. I don't believe the specific 
boundary=administrative tag is appropriate for any of the use cases, but 
I want to make clear that I don't believe using a different tag should 
in any way detract from the legitimacy, ownership or importance of these 
areas. Because the legal framework is complicated, unfortunately I think 
the tags will inevitably be complicated as well

Traditional Owners

Most (all?) states recognise particular Indigenous Corporations as the 
"Traditional Owners" of areas of land. As Traditional Owners, these 
corporations are given certain rights (often a requirement to be 
consulted on land changes) but don't necessarily have any specific legal 
power or self-governance over land in the same way as an LGA might. For 
this reason, I don't believe Traditional Ownership boundaries are suited 
to "administrative" boundaries, for the same reason that planning 
overlays wouldn't be appropriate as "administrative" boundaries. The 
boundary=aboriginal_lands tag seems to be more targeted towards 
"reservations", which doesn't seem to suited to Traditional Owner 
Recognition. My suggestion would be either:

boundary=protected_area
heritage=3 _(as is state recognition)_
protection_title=Registered Traditional Ownership
heritage:operator=_Traditional Owners Corporation_
protect_class=24
name=Traditional Owners
name:aus=_Traditional Owners_

_or, to coin a tag_

boundary=aboriginal_lands
aboriginal_lands=traditional_ownership

Native Title

Native Title is separate to Traditional Ownership as defined by the 
states, but tends to afford more rights over the land (and compensation, 
if I recall correctly). Again though, I don't believe it is equivalent 
to an administration area.

boundary=protected_area
heritage=2 _(as is federal recognition, not state)_
protection_title=Native Title
heritage:operator=_Traditional Owners Corporation_
protect_class=24
name=Traditional Owners
name:aus=_Traditional Owners_

_or, _

boundary=aboriginal_lands
aboriginal_lands=native title

Indigenous Protected Areas

This is another volunteary arrangement between Indigenous Organisations 
and Australian Government, but is also focussed on conservation. To be 
an Indigenous Protected Area, the land must be owned by First Peoples. 
(it's not clear whether ownership is akin to sovereignty or land 
ownership.)

These appear to already be mapped as Nature Reserves 
(https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/8317126#map=8/-28.507/134.436)

Aboriginal LGAs

There are also Indigenous Land Councils that operate and administer land 
as the LGA. They will already be captured as an administrative boundary 
(See APY lands https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6792088)

They could perhaps be enriched with an additional tag indicating their 
unique status, but should probably stay the same as other LGAs?

Aboriginal Land Permits

Separate to that legal mechanism, there are areas where a perit is 
required to enter private land owned by Indigenous Organisations. These 
are probably the closest equivalent to the standard 
boundary=aboriginal_land tags, but I'm really not sure of the legal 
distinction between state to state.

If the data can be sourced appropriately and respectfully with First 
Peoples I would wholeheartedly support their inclusion.

Dian

On 2021-11-30 17:51, stevea wrote:

On 2021-11-30 18:21, Graeme Fitzpatrick wrote:

> On Tue, 30 Nov 2021 at 16:55, stevea <steveaOSM at softworkers.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Nov 29, 2021, at 10:39 PM, Ewen Hill <ewen.hill at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Indigenous nations/country
>>> I have a strong belief that we should allocate an entry around level 
>>> three to six for indigenous country. There will be discussion on 
>>> fuzziness of boundaries and ownership, a number of these have been 
>>> resolved already by the Registered Aboriginal Parties (RAP) for an 
>>> area however I don't see that being a huge issue. My key issue is 
>>> appropriation of the country and area polygons for the ability for 
>>> others to commercialise this or reduce the purchasing of indigenous 
>>> materials.
>>> 
>>> I don't see that all RAPs and others would update the map, however I 
>>> see having the ability to add this data and be able to index it, is 
>>> important to OSM in Australia.
> 
> Ewen
> 
> Yep, great idea!
> 
> We did discuss this briefly a little while ago, when Aus Post started 
> pushing for / allowing "Country" names to be included in mailing 
> addresses.
> 
> https://auspost.com.au/about-us/supporting-communities/rachael-mcphail-making-traditional-place-names-part-of-mailing-addresses
> 
> I agree that it may not be something that is very usable "now", but 
> it's something that will only gain in popularity over time, so let's 
> get in early with OSM!
> 
>> "Um," (he begins timidly)...
> 
> It's alright Steve, we don't bite! (that hard anyway :-))
> 
> To sum it up simply - it's complicated!
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_land_rights_in_Australia
> 
> So some areas could be aboriginal lands, but most aren't.
> 
> What I was talking about (& possibly Ewen) was to include the original 
> "nations" lands eg
> https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/map-indigenous-australia
> 
> Unfortunately, I'd think the chances of being allowed to use that map 
> are pretty well non-existent :-(
> https://aiatsis.gov.au/form/permission/map
> 
>> the challenges to OSM's admin_level scheme are great, and so far, not 
>> completely "solved." ... Really, this can be a challenging problem to 
>> solve (where there are "overlapping" or "shared" political areas and 
>> it isn't "neat, clean and easy" to delineate one from the other).
> 
> Yep! :-(
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Graeme
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