https://doi.org/10.1177/1757975919832241 Global Health Promotion 1757-9759; Vol 26 Supp. 3: 26–34; 832241 Copyright © The Author(s) 2019, Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI:10.1177/1757975919832241 journals.sagepub.com/home/ghp Introduction Many Indigenous peoples hold a complex, unique and highly localised understanding of their ancestral lands, seas, and freshwater places. ‘Country’ is a term Indigenous Australians use to describe their lands and seas with which they have a traditional attachment or relationship: People talk about country in the same way that they would talk about a person: they speak to country, sing to country, visit country, worry about country, feel sorry for country, and long for country. People say that country knows, hears, smells, takes notice, takes care, is sorry or happy (1, p.7). 832241PED 0 0 10.1177/1757975919832241Scholarly PaperE. Woodward and P. Marrfurra McTaggart research-article 2019 1. Research Scientist, CSIRO – Land and Water, Wembley, Australia. 2. Ngan’gi Elder, Nauiyu Nambiyu, Daly River, Northern Territory, Australia. Correspondence to: Emma Woodward. CSIRO – Land and Water. Private Bag 5, Wembley, Western Australia 6913, Australia. Tel: +61 8 9333 6255. Email: Emma.Woodward@csiro.au (This manuscript was submitted on 29 September 2018. Following blind peer review, it was accepted for publication on 21 January 2019) Co-developing Indigenous seasonal calendars to support ‘healthy Country, healthy people’ outcomes Emma Woodward 1 and Patricia Marrfurra McTaggart 2 Abstract: In caring for Country, Indigenous Australians draw on laws, knowledge and customs that have been inherited from ancestors and ancestral beings, to ensure the continued health of lands and seas with which they have a traditional attachment or relationship. This is a reciprocal relationship, whereby land is understood to become wild/sick if not managed by its people, and in turn individuals and communities suffer without a maintained connection to Country. It is well understood by Indigenous people that if you ‘look after country, country will look after you’. Indigenous knowledge systems that underpin the local care (including use and management) of Country are both unique and complex. These knowledge systems have been built through strong observational, practice-based methods that continue to be enacted and tested, and have sustained consecutive generations by adapting continually, if incrementally, to the local context over time. This paper describes a research partnership that involved the sharing and teaching of Ngan’gi Aboriginal ecological knowledge in order to reveal and promote the complex attachment of Ngan’gi language speakers of the Daly River, Australia, to water places. This engagement further led to the incremental co-development of an Indigenous seasonal calendar of aquatic resource use. The seasonal calendar emerged as an effective tool for supporting healthy Country, healthy people outcomes. It did this by facilitating the communication of resource management knowledge and connection with water-dependent ecosystems both inter-generationally within the Ngan’gi language group, as well as externally to non-Indigenous government water resource managers. The Indigenous seasonal calendar form has subsequently emerged as a tool Indigenous language groups are independently engaging with to document and communicate their own knowledge and understanding of Country, to build recognition and respect for their knowledge, and to make it accessible to future generations. (Global Health Promotion, 2019; 26(Supp. 3): 26–34) Keywords: co-production, boundary objects, community-based research, Indigenous ecological knowledge, IEK, healthy Country Supplement Article