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Citing Indigenous Knowledges (correctly & respectfully) in scientific research

30 04 2026

Have you ever done any research that relied to any degree on Indigenous Knowledges? How did you cite those Knowledges, if at all?

It’s probably time we rethink how we engage with Indigenous Knowledge systems.

In a new article published in BioScience, we — a large group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars in Australia — call for a fundamental shift in how universities and scientists publish research that draws on Indigenous Knowledges (proper noun; the sum of the understandings, skills, and philosophies developed by Indigenous societies with long histories of interaction with and custodianship of their natural surroundings).

Therein we warn that current academic practices risk sidelining First Nations authority while benefiting from their expertise.

^{Infographic summarizing the main considerations for crediting and citing Indigenous Knowledges. prerequisites: traditional shield and two boomerangs to represent cultural and legal authority, and framing it with two faces to represent face-to-face conversations; heterogeneity: diversity of First Nations peoples with different patterned backgrounds; autonomy: arrow pointing upward represents First Nations peoples in decision-making position; dynamic approach: decision tree representing formal procedures (also see figure 2 ); fig tree representing staying grounded and being connected to Country; resources : hourglass represent time, also framed by faces. Commissioned original artwork by Tarquin Singleton, Yirrganydji Creative, Red Ochre Republic.}

Without question, Indigenous groups must be treated as active partners in research publications — not just contributors acknowledged in footnotes or ‘personal communications’.

Governments, funding bodies, and other institutions increasingly emphasise Indigenous engagement, yet publication practices have failed to keep pace, leaving communities without real control over how their Knowledges are used, cited, or shared.

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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, autonomy, epistemology, first nations, indigenous, recognition, systematic oversight
Categories : Australia, conservation, environmental science, science

Population of First Australians grew to millions, much more than previous estimates

30 04 2021

We know it is more than 60,000 years since the first people entered the continent of Sahul — the giant landmass that connected New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania when sea levels were lower than today.

But where the earliest people moved across the landscape, how fast they moved, and how many were involved, have been shrouded in mystery.

Our latest research, published today shows the establishment of populations in every part of this giant continent could have occurred in as little as 5,000 years. And the entire population of Sahul could have been as high as 6.4 million people.

This translates to more than 3 million people in the area that is now modern-day Australia, far more than any previous estimate.

The first people could have entered through what is now western New Guinea or from the now-submerged Sahul Shelf off the modern-day Kimberley (or both).

But whichever the route, entire communities of people arrived, adapted to and established deep cultural connections with Country over 11 million square kilometres of land, from northwestern Sahul to Tasmania.

A map showing a much larger landmass as Australia is joined to both Tasmania and New Guinea due to lower sea levels

This equals a rate of population establishment of about 1km per year (based on a maximum straight-line distance of about 5,000km from the introduction point to the farthest point).

That’s doubly impressive when you consider the harshness of the Australian landscape in which people both survived and thrived.

Previous estimates of Indigenous population

Various attempts have been made to calculate the number of people living in Australia before European invasion. Estimates vary from 300,000 to more than 1,200,000 people. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Aboriginal, anthropology, archaeology, Australia, first nations, human ecology, indigenous, Indigenous knowledge, Late Pleistocene, Pleistocene, population dynamics, Sahul, spatial ecology
Categories : Australia, climate change, coasts, connectivity, demography, drought, ecology, Flinders University, modelling, population dynamics, statistics

All (fisheries) models are wrong, but some are useful (to indigenous people)

1 08 2015

Another post from Alejandro Frid. (Note: title modified from George Box‘s most excellent quote).

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As an ecologist working for indigenous people of coastal British Columbia, western Canada, I live at the interface of two worlds. On the one hand, I know that computer models can be important management tools. On the other hand, my job constantly reminds me that whether a model actually improves fishery management depends, fundamentally, on the worldview that shapes the model’s objectives. To explore why, I will first review some general concepts about what models can and cannot do. After that, I will summarize a recent model of herring populations and then pull it all together in a way that matters to indigenous people who rely on marine resources for cultural integrity and food security.

Models do a great job of distilling the essence of how an ecosystem might respond to external forces—such as fisheries—but only under the specific conditions that the modeller assumes to be true in the ‘world’ of the model. Sometimes these assumptions are well-grounded in reality. Sometimes they are blatant but necessary simplifications. Otherwise, it would be difficult to ask questions about how major forces for which we have no historical precedent—such as the combined effects of industrial fisheries, ocean acidification and climate change—might be altering the ocean. For instance, due to our greenhouse gas emissions, the ocean is warming and contains less dissolved oxygen. These stressful conditions hamper the capacity of fish to grow, and appear to be on their way to shrinking the body sizes of entire fish communities¹. If you want even to begin to comprehend what the ocean will look like in the long term due to these effects of climate change, it makes sense to assume, in the ‘world’ of your model, that fishing does not exist, even though you know it does. Of course, you would then acknowledge that climate change probably exacerbates the effects of fisheries, which highlights that you still have to examine the combination of these effects. And that is exactly what an excellent team of modellers did ¹. Read the rest of this entry »