Indigenous Knowledge Systems And Yurlendj Nganjin

In a global context, understanding and engaging with Indigenous Peoples and understanding their contemporary values is becoming increasingly relevant. This book offers a major insight into Australian Indigenous Peoples’ perspectives on the built environment. Enriched with thoughtful Indigenous voices from across Australia, echoed with several pre-eminent non-Indigenous practitioner voices, the book discusses the value of Indigenous Knowledge Systems in the Australian built environment and landscapes. It provides their perspective of wanting to share, of wanting to be heard, and of wishing to journey into our future landscapes and environments sympathetically and sustainably; of wanting to mutually share this journey respectfully to the betterment of humanity and these landscapes. A major resource for all academics, students and practitioners in the built environment sector, internationally, and not just in Australia, the book embodies issues confronting Indigenous Peoples and their communities, and their concerns about the future of their custodial landscapes. The book’s national significance has already been identified by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) through its inclusion in their ‘Connection to Country: Case Studies’.

This book explores the role of the social and natural sciences in supporting the development of indigenous knowledge systems. It looks at how indigenous knowledge systems can impact on the transformation of knowledge generating institutions such as scientific and higher education institutions on the one hand, and the policy domain on the other.

Bringing together researchers from geographically, culturally, and linguistically diverse regions, Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Research Methodologies offers practical guidance and lessons learned from research projects in and with Indigenous communities around the world. With an aim to examine issues of power, representation, participation, and accountability in studies involving Indigenous populations, the contributors reflect on their own experiences conducting collaborative research in distinct yet related fields. The book is anchored by specific themes: exploring decolonizing methodological paradigms, honoring Indigenous knowledge systems, and growing interdisciplinary collaboration toward Indigenous self-determination. This volume makes a significant contribution to Indigenous community as well as institutional scholarly and practical discussions by emphasizing guidance and questions from Indigenous scholars who are designing studies and conducting research that is moving the field of Indigenous research methodologies forward. Discussing challenges and ideas regarding research ethics, data co-ownership, data sovereignty, and dissemination strategies, this text is a vital resource for all students interested in the application of what can be gained from Indigenous research methods.

Planning for Urban Country addresses a major gap in knowledge about the translation of Aboriginal values and Country Plans into Australia’s built environment contexts. How do you ‘heal’ Country if it has been devastated by concrete and bitumen, excavations and bulldozing, weeds and introduced plants and animals, and surface, aerial and underground contaminants? How then do Aboriginal values and Country Plan aspirations address urban environments? In this book, David Jones explores the major First Nations-informed design and planning transformations in Djilang / Greater Geelong since 2020. Included are short-interlinked essays about the political and cultural context, profiles of key exemplar architectural, landscape and corridor projects, a deep explanation of the legislative, policy and statutory precedents, opportunities and environment that has enabled these opportunities, and the how Wadawurrung past-present-future values have been scaffolded into these changes.

For many millennia, Indigenous Australians have been engineering the landscape using sophisticated technological and philosophical knowledge systems in a deliberate response to changing social and environmental circumstances. These knowledge systems integrate profound understanding of country and bring together knowledge of the topography and geology of the landscape, its natural cycles and ecological systems, its hydrological systems and natural resources including fauna and flora. This enables people to manage resources sustainably and reliably, and testifies to a developed, contextualised knowledge system and to a society with agency and the capability to maintain and refine accumulated knowledge and material processes. This book is a recognition and acknowledgement of the ingenuity of Indigenous engineering which is grounded in philosophical principles, values and practices that emphasise sustainability, reciprocity, respect, and diversity, and often presents a much-needed challenge to a Western engineering worldview. Each chapter is written by a team of authors combining Indigenous knowledge skills and academic expertise, providing examples of collaboration at the intersection of Western and Indigenous engineering principles, sharing old and new knowledges and skills. These varied approaches demonstrate ways to integrate Indigenous knowledges into the curricula for Australian engineering degrees, in line with the Australian Council of Engineering Deans’ Position Statement on Embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives into the engineering curriculum first published in 2017.

Heritage, Indigenous Doing and Wellbeing presents an Australian Aboriginal relational understanding of the world that offers a counter-narrative to the Western notion of heritage towards new insights into the potential for sustaining the complex systems that support all life. From an Indigenous Australian perspective, the Western concept of heritage is intentionally exclusionary and supports social, political, economic and environmental injustice. Aboriginal people engage with Australia’s lands, waters, and skies every day in entirely different ways, seeing their Country as a living ‘heritage’, but in a unique relationship that engages the individual with Place, Ancestors, Language, and wellbeing analogous to a familial relationship. However, Country is most often relegated by heritage proponents to ‘intangible heritage’ resulting in the concept having little legislative, legal or administrative weight. Drawing on a common understanding of Country as sacred, living and sentient, rather than as objectified property or resource, the contributors to this book explore a diversity of relationships with Country that demonstrate the richness and the practical utility of this relational understanding. Heritage, Indigenous Doing and Wellbeing foregrounds the voices of Australian Aboriginal Peoples who are involved in ‘Caring for Country’. The book offers an essential resource for those engaged in the study of Country, heritage, museums, Indigenous Peoples, First Nations Peoples, landscape architecture, environmental studies, planning, anthropology and archaeology. It will also be of great interest to heritage practitioners working around the globe.

Indigenous knowledges are the commonsense ideas and cultural knowledges of local peoples concerning the everyday realities of living. This collection of essays discusses indigenous knowledges and their implication for academic decolonization.

This handbook focuses on the practices, initiatives, and innovations of urban planning in response to the rapid urbanisation in Indonesian cities. The book provides rigorous evidence of planning Indonesian cities of different sizes. Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, is increasingly urbanising. Through the lens of the Sustainable Development Goals, chapters examine specific policies and projects and analyse 19 cities, ranging from a megacity of over ten million residents to metropolitan cities, large cities, medium cities, and small cities in Indonesia. The handbook provides a diverse view of urban conditions in the country. Discussing current trends and challenges in urban planning and development in Indonesia, it covers a wide range of topics organised into five main themes: Indonesian planning context; informality, insurgency, and social inclusion; design, spatial, and economic practices; creative and innovative practices; and urban sustainability and resilience. Written by 64 established and emerging scholars from Indonesia and overseas, this handbook is an invaluable resource to academics working on Urban Studies, Development Studies, Asian and Southeast Studies as well as to policy-makers in Indonesia and in other cities of the Global South.