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THE SCIENCE CLASSROOM AND INDIGENOUS INCLUSIVITY

A decade ago the Melbourne Declaration stated a desire to see an increased focus on improving the education outcomes for Indigenous students and especially those form low SES backgrounds (Melbourne Declaration, 2008). It also states the need to bring Indigenous cultural and experience in to the classroom as a foundation for learning and that we ensure young Australians become informed citizens who understand the value of Indigenous culture (Melbourne Declaration, 2008). Research has shown that for the past decade Indigenous students have been two and half years behind their non-Indigenous peers (Unfinished Business, 2014). This unfortunately shows that the Melbourne Declaration has not been implemented to any significant degree.

IMPLICATIONS OF INDIGENOUS INCLUSIVITY FOR THE MELBOURNE DECLARATION

If the ideas espoused in the Melbourne Declaration are to become a reality a few ideas need to be considered. Research shows that’s science teachers often adopt a world view of scientism and expect students to do the same (Aikenhead, 2006). This entails forcing an ontological perspective like realism and cartesian duality which propagate a reductionist, machine-like view of the world and a view which often celebrates dominion over nature. In stark contrast to this is the Indigenous perspective which take a holistic view of the nature of knowing seeing harmony between empirical searching and spirituality (Aikenhead, 2006). Given this knowledge, what then can be done to integrate the Indigenous student into the science classroom in an inclusive manner?

TEACHING STRATEGIES FOR INDIGENOUS INCLUSIVITY IN THE SCIENCE CLASSROOM

I believe that Indigenous students can thrive in the science classroom if appropriate strategies are put in place.

1.     Research shows that representation of Indigenous students in the curriculum can boost their self-esteem and improve the chances of success in science (Ninnes, 2000). This can be achieved through the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge into the science curriculum will aid in diffusing the idea that science is western (Ninnes, 2000).

2.     Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) has been shown to help in resources management (Prober Suzanne, O'Connor Michael, & Walsh Fiona, 2011), bringing real world examples of Indigenous contributions to society can engage Indigenous students and develop awareness in non-Indigenous students. Drawing parallels between western and native science such as the fact that Indigenous knowledge is specialised, similar to western science with one person not having all the information (Prober Suzanne et al., 2011). This will also buffer against a tokenised view in Indigenous science such as one lesson on the topic being assumed to covered all areas of indigenous science.

3.     Research shows that the implementation of an Indigenous perspective in the science classroom is marred by teachers lack of understanding of Indigenous science, lack of access to resources as well as little professional development on the subject matter (Baynes, 2016).Part of the reason there is a lack of representation of Indigenous science in the classroom is because teachers find the topic uncomfortable as they may feel they are encroaching on cultural borders (Baynes, 2016). Therefore, teacher education programs are vital for the efficacy of Indigenous science programs.

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The ALA's Indigenous Ecological Knowledge (IEK) program of work recognises the essential nature of a collaborative approach, and aims to provide tools to enable and empower greater Indigenous participation in biodiversity information management and assessment, and to support other aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people related to ecological or biodiversity knowledge. For more information contact Rebecca Pirzl (rebecca.pirzl@csiro.au) or Stephanie von Gavel (stephanie.vongavel@csiro.au).
Please note: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this website (and the links provided) may contain images, voices or names of deceased persons in photographs or printed material.
Yugul Mangi Rangers: Two-way biodiversity project

The Yugul Mangi Rangers in South-East Arnhem Land are working with Emilie Ens, an ecologist from Macquarie University, to document species and share traditional Aboriginal names and stories of plants and animals with other Australians. The project enters Western and Indigenous scientific knowledge into the ALA and provides a two-way Indigenous engagement case study to encourage more Indigenous content, and importantly feedback loops to make the ALA more relevant and useful for Indigenous people.

Olkola People: sharing knowledge and caring for country

The Olkola People of Cape York, CSIRO researchers, and the Tropical Indigenous Ethnobotany Centre (TIEC) are working together; using the ALA and its Profiles tool to explore ways to share and utilise knowledge to help care for country. The project builds on past and current efforts of the Olkola people to record and secure their cultural resources, and understand the complex social, cultural and legal (especially Indigenous cultural and intellectual property) issues and risks to ensure robust decisions can be made about sharing their knowledge on public platforms such as the ALA. The aim is for Olkola to share these learnings with other communities.

Indigenous Seasonal Calendars

ALA is working with Emma Woodward (CSIRO - seasonal calendar work) to co-develop with a number of Indigenous communities, the ALA Seasonal Calendar platform. An early prototype can be found here.

Banbai nation people at Wattleridge Indigenous Protected Area in northern New South Wales, are working with Michelle McKemey at the University of New England to develop fire and season calendars. The calendars represent annual seasonal changes as well as biocultural indicators that indicate the right, and wrong, time to burn. They are developed using results of ecological experiments, literature reviews, observations and cultural knowledge gathered through interviews. ALA is working with Michelle to see how the calendar can be incorporated into the ALA Seasonal Calendar platform. See the work of the Banbai here - Indigenous fire and seasons calendar.

The Tracks App

In 2017 the Central Land Council (CLC) obtained funding to develop a mobile app to support ranger groups in recording their tracking of bilbys and other small mammals, reptiles and pest animal species. The CLC partnered with the ALA to develop the app which was released in March 2018. Initially The Tracks App will be used by ranger groups in the Northern Territory from the Tanami Desert to the South Australian border region, but it is anticipated that it will eventually be used by approximately 26 ranger groups throughout Australia's sandy desert country.

Improving the relevance of the ALA website and software for Indigenous people

The ALA develops and improves its software and website through sprints (a concentrated software development work phase) and is undertaking work in response to feedback from Indigenous community users. Some of the work includes:

introduction of specific spatial layers into the ALA's mapping and analysis tools - such as 2o16 Indigenous Protected Areas, Indigenous Land Use Agreement areas, Representative Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Body areas.

modifications to the Species Profiles app to upload multi-media files and to improve useability

addition of a tab and other modifications on ALA Species pages to enable Indigenous stories, Indigenous language names and multimedia to be displayed.

working with communities around how best to show language names within the ALA - see ALA IEK program - Language for an overview (e.g. Warlpiri (see Tracks App) and Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay). The following spreadsheet provides one format to add language names for species consistent with Darwin Core standards.

development of a prototype Indigenous seasonal calendar platform - https://calendars.ala.org.au.

Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property

The ALA worked with Terri Janke & Company to develop some Indigenous Knowledge Protocols for the ALA. It includes the concept of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) which incorporates all aspects of knowledge (science, plant and animal knowledge, stories, designs and symbols, ritual knowledge), cultural objects (arts, crafts, weapons, tools), performances (ceremonies, dance and song) and human remains and includes the secret and sacred. As part of a broader review of the terms of use for the ALA - we are working out how best to implement the protocols, which includes guiding principles such as:

Respect

Involving Indigenous Stakeholders

Consultation

Informed Consent

Cultural Integrity

Confidentiality and Privacy

Attribution

Equitable Benefit Sharing

Recognition and Protection

Timely, Transparent and Respectful Process for Responding to Feedback.

ALA is working with Dr Jane Anderson from Local Contexts to scope out and potentially develop and implement Traditional Knowledge Labels ( TK Labels) into various digital platforms within the ALA - e.g. seasonal calendars, Profiles - to support the ethical and equitable data sharing of ecological and environmental knowledge from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities. The intention is to also assess whether we need new TK Labels that will help identify and address Indigenous needs around the sharing of non-secret and non-confidential IEK.

Promoting IEK and digital platforms

A recent seminar held at AIATSIS in Canberra titled: Indigenous Knowledge and Digital Infrastructure Futures - Introducing Local Contexts and the Traditional Knowledge Labels, provided an overview of the Local Contexts work of Dr Jane Anderson from New York University together with the True Tracks ICIP protocols framework of Terri Janke from Terri Janke & Company, Lawyers and Consultants. This was in the context of a proposed collaboration between ALA, Jane Anderson and Terri Janke to work with interested communities and funders to test and integrate the TK labels in digital platforms. The presentations:

Stephanie von Gavel presented at the Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University (CDU) - on Indigenous Knowledge and Digital Platforms. The presentation provided an overview of the work of the ALA, and posed some questions around the role of digital infrastructures or platforms in how Indigenous knowledge is digitally captured, managed, and shared in the "information supply chain". A video of the presentation is available here. (note the sound quality is not very good).

Education Resources

ALA is being used in the classroom to celebrate traditional knowledge and culture. Former teacher and CSIRO's Indigenous STEM Program Coordinator Geoff Guymer uses his experience in working in remote communities in the Northern Territory to give a classification activity a local Indigenous focus.

Celebrating Indigenous Culture

Within our Indigenous Ecological Knowledge program of work, the Atlas of Living Australia works with many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and in this blog we highlight their remarkable contributions as part of the 2018 NAIDOC week theme - Because of Her, We Can.
Cherry Daniels
Acknowledgement of Traditional Owners and Country

The Atlas of Living Australia acknowledges Australia's Traditional Owners and pays respect to the past and present Elders of the nation's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We honour and celebrate the spiritual, cultural and customary connections of Traditional Owners to country and the biodiversity that forms part of that country.

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The ALA's Indigenous Ecological Knowledge (IEK) program of work recognises the essential nature of a collaborative approach, and aims to provide tools to enable and empower greater Indigenous participation in biodiversity information management and assessment, and to support other aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people related to ecological or biodiversity knowledge.

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Understanding Traditional Ecological Knowledge 

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Understanding Traditional Ecological Knowledge 

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Our knowledge of what the denizens of the animal kingdom are up to, especially when humans aren't around, has steadily increased over the last 50 years. For example, we know now that animals use tools in their daily lives. Chimps use twigs to fish for termites; sea otters break open shellfish on rocks they selected; octopi carry coconut shell halves to later use as shelters.

The latest discovery has taken this assessment to new heights, literally. A team of researchers led by Mark Bonta and Robert Gosford in northern Australia has documented kites and falcons, colloquially termed "firehawks," intentionally carrying burning sticks to spread fire. While it has long been known that birds will take advantage of natural fires that cause insects, rodents and reptiles to flee and thus increase feeding opportunities, that they would intercede to spread fire to unburned locales is astounding.

It's thus no surprise that this study has attracted great attention as it adds intentionality and planning to the repertoire of non-human use of tools. Previous accounts of avian use of fire have been dismissed or at least viewed with some skepticism.

While new to Western science, the behaviours of the nighthawks have long been known to the Alawa, MalakMalak, Jawoyn, and other Indigenous peoples of northern Australia whose ancestors occupied their lands for tens of thousands of years. Contrary to most scientific studies, Bonta and Gosford's team foregrounded their research in traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge. They also note that local awareness of the behaviour of the firehawks is ingrained within some of their ceremonial practices, beliefs and creation accounts.

The worldwide attention given to the firehawks article provides an opportunity to explore the double standard that exists concerning the acceptance of Traditional Knowledge by practitioners of Western science.

Traditional knowledge

Our knowledge of the world comes from many sources. In my field, archaeologists have long depended upon ethnographic sources of information - detailed observations or information derived directly from communities studied - to help develop or test interpretations about past peoples' lives.

In recent years, many scholars have become aware of the large body of information known as Traditional Knowledge (TK), Indigenous Knowledge (IK), or Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), amongst other terms. These knowledge systems, developed over countless generations, are based on individual and collectively learned experiences and explanations of the world, verified by elders, and conveyed and guided experiential learning, and by oral traditions and other means of record keeping.

Traditional Knowledge has today become a highly valued source of information for archaeologists, ecologists, biologists, ethnobotanists, climatologists and others. This information ranges from medicinal properties of plants and insights into the value of biological diversity to caribou migration patterns and the effects of intentional burning of the landscape to manage particular resources. For example, some climatology studies have incorporated Qaujimajatuqangit (Inuit traditional knowledge) to explain changes in sea ice conditions observed over many generations.

Despite the wide acknowledgement of their demonstrated value, many scientists continue to have had an uneasy alliance with TK and Indigenous oral histories. On the one hand, TK and other types of local knowledge are valued when they support or supplements archaeological, or other scientific evidence.

However, when the situation is reversed - when Traditional Knowledge is seen to challenge scientific "truths" - then its utility is questioned or dismissed as myth. Science is promoted as objective, quantifiable, and the foundation for "real" knowledge creation or evaluation while TK may be seen as anecdotal, imprecise and unfamiliar in form.

Multiple ways of knowing

Are Indigenous and Western systems of knowledge categorically antithetical? Or do they offer multiple points of entry into knowledge of the world, past and present? There are many cases where science and history are catching up with what Indigenous peoples have long known.

In the past two decades, archaeologists and environmental scientists working in coastal British Columbia have come to recognize evidence of mariculture - the intentional management of marine resources - that pre-dates European settlement. Over the course of thousands of years, the ancestors of the Kwakwaka'wakw and other Indigenous groups there created and maintained what have become known as "clam gardens" - rock-walled, terrace-like constructions that provide ideal habit for butter clams and other edible shellfish.

To the Kwakwaka'wakw, these were known as loxiwey, according to Clan Chief Adam Dick (Kwaxsistalla) who has shared this term and his knowledge of the practice with researchers.

As marine ecologist Amy Groesbeck and colleagues have demonstrated, these structures increase shellfish productivity and resource security significantly. This resource management strategy reflects a sophisticated body of ecological understanding and practice that predates modern management systems by millennia.

These published research studies now prove that Indigenous communities knew about mariculture for generations but Western scientists never asked them about it before. Once tangible remains were detected, it was clear mariculture management was in use for thousands of years. There is a move underway by various Indigenous communities in the region to restore and recreate clam gardens and put them back into use.

A second example demonstrates how Indigenous oral histories correct inaccurate or incomplete historical accounts. There are significant differences between Lakota and Cheyenne accounts of what transpired at the Battle of Greasy Grass (Little Big Horn) in 1876, and the historical accounts that appeared soon after the battle by white commentators.

The Lakota and Cheyenne can be considered more objective than white accounts of the battle that are tainted by Eurocentric bias. The ledger drawings of Red Horse, a Minneconjou Sioux participant in the battle, record precise details such as trooper's uniforms, the location of wounds on horses, and the distribution of Indian and white casualties.

Red Horse (Minneconjou Lakota Sioux, 1822-1907), Graphite, colored pencil, and ink. NAA MS 2367A_08570700. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

In 1984, a fire at the battleground revealed military artifacts and human remains that prompted archaeological excavations. What this work revealed was a new, more accurate history of the battle that validated many elements of the Native American oral histories and accompanying pictographs and drawings of the events. However, without the archaeological evidence, many historians gave limited credence to the accounts obtained from the participating Native American warriors.

These examples, along with the firehawks study, demonstrate the reliability of Indigenous knowledge.

Opportunities at the intersection

As ways of knowing, Western and Indigenous Knowledge share several important and fundamental attributes. Both are constantly verified through repetition and verification, inference and prediction, empirical observations and recognition of pattern events.

While some actions leave no physical evidence (e.g. clam cultivation), and some experiments can't be replicated (e.g. cold fusion), in the case of Indigenous knowledge, the absence of "empirical evidence" can be damning in terms of wider acceptance.

Some types of Indigenous knowledge simply fall outside the realm of prior Western understanding. In contrast to Western knowledge, which tends to be text based, reductionist, hierarchical and dependent on categorization (putting things into categories), Indigenous science does not strive for a universal set of explanations but is particularistic in orientation and often contextual.

One key attribute of Western science is developing and then testing hypotheses to ensure rigor and replicability in interpreting empirical observations or making predictions. Although hypothesis testing is not a feature of TEK, rigor and replicability are not absent.

Whether or not traditional knowledge systems and scientific reasoning are mutually supportive, even contradictory lines of evidence have value. Employing TK-based observations and explanations within multiple working hypotheses ensures consideration of a variety of predictive, interpretive or explanatory possibilities not constrained by Western expectation or logic. And hypotheses incorporating traditional knowledge-based information can lead the way toward unanticipated insights.

The travels of Glooscap, a major figure in Abenaki oral history and worldview, are found throughout the Mi'kmaw homeland of the Maritime provinces of eastern Canada. As a Transformer, Glooscap created many landscape features. Anthropologist Trudy Sable (Saint Mary's University) has noted a significant degree of correlation between places named in Mi'kmaw legends and oral histories and recorded archaeological sites.

Indigenous peoples don't need Western science to validate or legitimate their knowledge system. Some do appreciate the verification, and there are partnerships developing worldwide with Indigenous knowledge holders and Western scientists working together.

This includes Traditional Ecological Knowledge informing government policies on resource management in some instances. But it is nonetheless problematic when their knowledge, which has been dismissed for so long by so many, becomes a valuable data set or used selectively by academics and others.

To return to the firehawks example, one way to look at this is that the scientists confirmed what the Indigenous peoples have long known about the birds' use of fire. Or we can say that the Western scientists finally caught up with TK after several thousand years.

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It's taken thousands of years, but Western science is finally catching up to Traditional Knowledge

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Our knowledge of what the denizens of the animal kingdom are up to, especially when humans aren't around, has steadily increased over the last 50 years. For example, we know now that animals use tools in their daily lives.

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Using Indigenous Knowledge to Enhance Science Classrooms   

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Using Indigenous Knowledge to Enhance Science Classrooms   

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Living Knowledge - Incorporating Indigenous knowledge into your teaching

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Indigenous science is the science that Indigenous people developed independent of Western science. If we understand 'indigenous' to relate to people who have a long-standing and complex relationship with a local area and 'science' to mean a systematic approach to acquiring knowledge of the natural world, then Indigenous science is the process by which Indigenous people build their empirical knowledge of their natural environment.