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.