Indigenous peoples and local communities’ bio-cultural knowledges at the interface of marine research
By
tebrakunna country and Emma Lee11Aboriginal and Torres Strait Research Fellow, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia; corresponding author email: ejlee@swin.edu.au., Cass Hunter22Indigenous social ecological Researcher, CSIRO, Oceans and Atmosphere, Cairns, Australia., Kelly Ratana33Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa (tribes), National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, Hamilton, New Zealand., Aoi Sugimoto44Research Fellow, Japan Fisheries Research & Education Agency, Kanagawa, Japan.
Keywords: Indigenous peoples, fisheries, bio-cultural knowledges
Globally, the governance and management of land and sea resources by Indigenous peoples and local communities has existed for tens of thousands of years and continues to exert influence over a quarter of the worlds’ surface today (Garnett et al 2018). Yet the primacy of Western science still overshadows the bio-cultural knowledges of Indigenous peoples and local communities. To move beyond exclusions and disenfranchised worldviews, science theory and practice must begin to embrace, engage, respect and support Indigenous peoples and local communities’ bio-cultural knowledges. We draw on the marine research sector, specifically fisheries, to demonstrate where knowledges are providing useful expertise and call for multidisciplinary approaches to co-productions of science.
The traditional view of Western science as objective, impartial and observer-orientated is often conflicted with bio-cultural knowledges, which are place-based, generational, collectivised, culturally-driven, inter-connected and articulated as a lived experience of wisdom and Eldership (Nursey-Bray et al 2014; Khusniati & Sudarmin 2017; Ogawa 1995). Yet the goals of marine science and Indigenous stewardship are similar: to conserve, learn from and respect the seas as givers of life and livelihoods. We suggest that the barriers that marginalize Indigenous peoples through arguments as to what constitutes ‘science’ needs less attention than the focus on how we make mutual gains from multiple forms of marine knowledge.
For many coastal Indigenous and local communities, sustainable management practices are central to custodianship of marine resources. Culturally significant keystone species create identities and shape the responsibility, for example, to maintain the connection to food security for peoples and communities (Noble et al 2016). Yet Western sciences often value a rational approach that idealizes the human-nature separation. However, without Indigenous and local input, sustainability science will face wider pockets of uncertainty, as bio-cultural knowledges create a broader spectrum of learning from the lived intergenerational experience of continuous resilience to a changing environment. Wiser management is based on the sense-making and intelligence gain from living through an experience, which often does not occur within Western science frameworks.