Protecting Our Places 2025

The Protecting Our Places program encourages and empowers Aboriginal communities to protect, conserve and restore landscapes and waterways important to them.

The program has 3 key objectives:

• Enabling Aboriginal communities to gain more autonomy over their projects, strengthening their ability to deliver favourable results for their cultural heritage, cultural practices and the environment.
• Promoting the sharing and safeguarding of cultural knowledge among Aboriginal groups, government agencies and the community. This enables Aboriginal people to influence the management and preservation of their cultural and environmental resources on their ancestral lands.
• Ensuring land that is culturally important to Aboriginal communities is protected, restored, improved and managed by local Aboriginal groups, land managers and other stakeholders in a way that fosters Healthy Country. This approach deepens the connection between Aboriginal people and their traditional lands and waterways.

Grants of up to $120,000 are available over 2 stages:

• Stage 1 Planning – up to $20,000 for project planning.
• Stage 2 Implementation – up to $98,000 to complete the project on-ground works, plus $2,000 quarantined for the mandatory financial audit, totalling $100,000.