Stone and Bones is run by Dave Harrington, an academic, educator, maker, bushcraft practitioner and scientist with 20 years’ experience working with Aboriginal communities.

 

Dave has worked closely within Aboriginal communities in the Kimberley and Northern NSW, collaborating on projects recording cultural information, investigating bush medicines and foods and developing cooperative education and cultural programs with local high schools.

Dave has also provided expert advice on Intellectual Property, culturally responsive teaching practice and the incorporation of Aboriginal knowledge into school syllabus and lesson plans for UTS, the Catholic Education Office and high schools.

 

As part of a team at Macquarie University, Dave has been a finalist in, and the recipient of, numerous national awards for science education, including the Eureka Science Award, a Maquarie University Partnerships award and a National Australian Learning and Teaching Council Award. Dave's professional background is in university based ecological and ethnobotanical research and he has also acted as a consultant to the environmental engineering sector on water conservation and irrigation.

 

Dave has lectured at UNSW, in a course called The Science of Indigenous Knowledge. This fascinating course profiled the deep scientific knowledge held in trust by Indigenous peoples and provided an alternative way of thinking to the mainstream, Western scientific paradigm.

 

Dave has also lectured at Yalbalinga, the Australian Catholic University's Indigenous Unit. He taught science for school teachers and still provides tutorial assistance and mentoring to Aboriginal students.