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Operationalising Co-Design Across Institutions
🎙️ Episode 2 | Operationalising Co-Design Across Institutions
Podcast Series: Reframing Reef Governance: Traditional Owner Leadership in Practice
Episode Description:
In this second episode, Bec Blurton continues her conversation with Gugu-Badhun man and Deputy Chair of the Healthy Water Traditional Owner Technical Working Group, Ben Gertz, moving from historical context to the practical realities of what genuine co-design required to function.
The Healthy Water Committee began its work in 2020 in the midst of COVID-19, meeting fortnightly on Zoom with a blank mandate and $8 million to allocate. Ben walks through what the first year actually looked like — not designing programs, but working through the institutional scepticism that decades of consultation had created. He reflects on what it took to believe the offer was real and why that process was essential rather than incidental.
The conversation also explores how Traditional Ecological Knowledge was integrated alongside Western science throughout the committee's work — not as supplementary input, but as a parallel knowledge system with its own rigour and depth. Ben shares a creation story from Gugu-Badhun Country that encodes 7,000 years of geological history and what it means for that knowledge to be in the room with genuine authority behind it.
📍 A First Nations Affairs × Ben Gertz collaboration
#CoDesign #TraditionalEcologicalKnowledge #ReefGovernance #FirstNationsGovernance #GreatBarrierReef #IndigenousKnowledge #ESG #FirstNationsAffairs
www.firstnationsaffairs.com
[email protected]
www.firstnationsaffairs.com
View all episodes
By Bec🎙️ Episode 2 | Operationalising Co-Design Across Institutions
Podcast Series: Reframing Reef Governance: Traditional Owner Leadership in Practice
Episode Description:
In this second episode, Bec Blurton continues her conversation with Gugu-Badhun man and Deputy Chair of the Healthy Water Traditional Owner Technical Working Group, Ben Gertz, moving from historical context to the practical realities of what genuine co-design required to function.
The Healthy Water Committee began its work in 2020 in the midst of COVID-19, meeting fortnightly on Zoom with a blank mandate and $8 million to allocate. Ben walks through what the first year actually looked like — not designing programs, but working through the institutional scepticism that decades of consultation had created. He reflects on what it took to believe the offer was real and why that process was essential rather than incidental.
The conversation also explores how Traditional Ecological Knowledge was integrated alongside Western science throughout the committee's work — not as supplementary input, but as a parallel knowledge system with its own rigour and depth. Ben shares a creation story from Gugu-Badhun Country that encodes 7,000 years of geological history and what it means for that knowledge to be in the room with genuine authority behind it.
📍 A First Nations Affairs × Ben Gertz collaboration
#CoDesign #TraditionalEcologicalKnowledge #ReefGovernance #FirstNationsGovernance #GreatBarrierReef #IndigenousKnowledge #ESG #FirstNationsAffairs
www.firstnationsaffairs.com
[email protected]
www.firstnationsaffairs.com