Indigenous Science

Indigenous Science is an area of emerging interest for cultural and scientific understanding, and a mechanism for empowering Australia’s diverse first nations peoples.  Want to learn more about working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities? Here is a great overview from CSIRO.

After centuries with little positive attention, the recognition and interest are very welcome for most. However, great care needs to be taken to ensure educational resources are made and shared in consultation with experts in a culturally respectful manner. Central to this is that perspectives and pedagogies of Australia’s first peoples should be respected. All non-Indigenous educators working in this space should actively seek out robust cultural competency training, read and watch material generated by experts with cultural relevance, and work at building relationships with local groups. Almost all universities have an Indigenous Engagement office and it is important to seek out the relevant representatives so they can also guide your work. It is also important to keep in mind the following quote. By adding content alone we risk adding nothing if the content is abstracted from the Indigenous perspective and the complex, interdisciplinary nature of Indigenous knowledges. 

Aboriginal perspectives are not found in Aboriginal content, but in Aboriginal processes. Tyson Yunkaporta

This ACDS website was led by Angela Ziebell (Monash University) and researched by Krystal De Napoli (Monash University), aims to give tertiary science educators a starting resource in their quest to incorporate Indigenous knowledges, pedagogies, and perspectives in their teaching. Initially, this website is a collection of a wide range of resources found publically. For those of you who are already working in the area, we invite you to recommend resources that you find useful or that you have developed yourselves.

We acknowledge and pay respects to the Traditional Owners, and Elders past and present, of all the lands on which all the members of the Australian Council of the Deans of Science work and live. The oldest continuous culture, and the world’s oldest scientific knowledges and perspectives. 

On the following pages, you will find resources for tertiary educators to inform yourself about how Indigenous knowledge and knowledge systems deepen the value and relevance of science in Australia, view exemplar teaching materials, and find resources for use in your teaching.

You can also hear from Corey Tutt (NSW Young Australian of the year for 2020) as Dr Angela Ziebell talks to him about what Science and Indigenous Science means to him. Corey is the founder of Deadly Science which sends books and science learning materials to remote schools so that children in remote communities have better learning resources to help them engage and succeed at learning. 

Australia’s Indigenous Knowledge and knowledge systems are by their very nature complex and interdisciplinary and cannot be viewed as mere subsets of Australia’s Western knowledge systems. To provide an easy to navigate, central resource that brings together information about Indigenous knowledge and knowledge systems, as well as indigenous studies these pages, have been structured into four areas: