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Transcript

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0:01Who are the characters behind science? This is Science Behind the Glass, Illuminating the Human Side. In this podcast, we unveil the human side of laboratories and science. Scientists share personal experiences and will discuss their meanings from different perspectives and fields of research.

0:51Welcome to Science Behind the Glass, Illuminating the Human Side. where we explore the stories behind the science and how they connect to our everyday lives. Today, we have the honor of introducing Professor Sean Ulm, whose work brilliantly captures the fusion of ancient wisdom and cutting -edge research. Professor Ulm is not just an expert in archaeology. He’s a visionary in how we understand the deep relationship between people, land, environmental histories, and futures. Our guest’s work is dedicated to integrating… Indigenous Knowledge with Modern Science. His research dives into the long -term interactions between humans and the environment, revealing lessons from the past that are crucial to addressing the environmental challenges of today. With over 25 years of experience, his leadership in interdisciplinary research is shaping new approaches to manage our ecosystems, grounded in both history and forward -thinking strategies.

1:50His contributions have redefined the way we look at land management, bringing indigenous perspectives to the forefront. Welcome, Professor Ong, and it’s a privilege to have you here today. The privilege is all mine. Very happy to be with you. To start, what you can tell us about your background and why did you decide to study archaeology? Are you interested in archaeology and the interaction with indigenous knowledge and environmental sciences?

2:19Well, that’s a big question. I think my upbringing really informed what I do today. I grew up in a family, a rural area in the middle of Queensland in northeastern Australia, a very rural town based on a sugar industry and farming with a very large Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population and Pacific Islander population as well. I was very cognizant growing up of Indigenous issues at the time, but no one in my family had gone to university. So I was the first in family to go to university, and it was a big move to move from a regional area down to the city. But when I went to university, I was really interested in history, and I thought I would become a historian and probably a high school teacher. And in my first year, I took some history subjects and some English subjects, but I also took some anthropology subjects. And it turned out by the end of my first year, I was totally hooked around anthropology.

3:33And the way anthropology was taught at the University of Queensland, where I went to school, was a four -field approach, that there was social anthropology, linguistics, physical anthropology, and archaeology. And I was really drawn to the way archaeology meshed my interests in Indigenous self -determination and also with history. And in my first year, I had the opportunity to go out onto Indigenous country with research teams. And I think from that moment, I was hooked and I knew that that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

4:11And here I am now, 35 years later, still doing that. That’s amazing. How is this connection that you have with Indigenous communities? How do you start this connection with them? Because we always talk in like a bigger picture, like with Indigenous communities, but how is this approach with them? I think that’s a really important question. I feel very fortunate in my academic career to have those opportunities. I guess I had kind of a unique pathway that for the first 20 years of my academic career, I actually worked in an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander support unit in a university. So my major job was working alongside Indigenous students to help them succeed at university. So that gave me a lot of opportunities to meet different people and learn about. where they come from and their communities and their histories and their particular journeys through the academy. And while I was doing that job, I did my PhD part -time working on Indigenous country with an Indigenous supervisor. So those two experiences allowed me to learn a lot about diversity. And I think it’s really important when we’re working with Indigenous communities not to homogenise their aspirations or their

5:44histories of invasion and colonization, that every community has had a very different experience. So the way that Indigenous and non -Indigenous researchers engage with different communities needs to be contextually specific as well to acknowledge and respect that different history. But Linda, I didn’t answer your question there specifically, but… I think it’s really important in establishing relationships with Indigenous communities that we bring our whole selves to those relationships. Otherwise, it can be simply transactional that I’ve got a research project and you might take it to a community and ask them to approve it. For many decades, I’ve been working towards an authentic co -design research process and I’m very invested these days in working in partnership with communities to create research programs that support their aspirations. And I think wherever I look, particularly across Australia, but across the globe, there are more and more research projects being done in these authentic kind of co -design ways. Now, they’re foundationally based on authentic, rich relationships between Indigenous communities and research members.

7:04they grow into a relationship that supports a very healthy research structure. And I think I see a lot of research heading that direction. And I think it’s a very positive thing. That’s fantastic. It’s a different approach, actually, and a different perspective. I’m excited. And would you mind to explain a little bit to us why it’s important to… to take into account these bridges that history and anthropology create between the ancestral knowledge of these indigenous communities and the present? Look, this is a really important philosophical space to explore as researchers in any discipline. I think we’ve created a false dichotomy between elevating Western approaches to knowledge creation and indigenous knowledges and sciences. And I think… We’ve often elevated Western ways of knowing above Indigenous ways of knowing. And I think we have to recognise, harking back to my earlier comment about acknowledging diversity and respecting that diversity, that all cultures have developed ontologically different ways of being in the world and understanding the world and reproducing the world. None of them are better or worse than any others. They coexist in time and space. So I think when we enter into an authentic co -design

8:35research process, we are inherently acknowledging the value of bringing together all those valid but different ways of understanding the world. And I think the reality is that our understanding of the world is not only richer for bringing those knowledge systems together in a respectful way, But we’re honouring and respecting the owners of those knowledges. So I think it’s a really, you know, even though I often reflect and think the pace of change has been very slow, when I take a moment to reflect on the last couple of decades, I see that things have moved a lot.

9:17But, you know, quite understandably, many Indigenous communities are impatient that things haven’t changed enough. And we have a long way left to go on that journey for particularly non -Indigenous researchers to really support the self -determination aspirations of Indigenous community partners. And you point out a super important point of view, Annie, is that we have recently Dr. Leanda Mason, that she came up with this new idea of ecology and how we research ecology. Because we have the traditional point of view that is from the Western point of view, but then we leave aside all the traditional knowledge when it has been for thousands of years and we are just recently incorporated. Or, for example, the Mayans are working hard with different researchers, but then it’s not only imposing, it’s not imposing, it’s about imposing the research, but it’s about working with the communities and trying to tackle the… problems that they have in the ecosystem and a different perspective, but not like a diminishing or putting them down like, oh, yeah, they don’t know. We have the science, but it’s just like giving them a voice and talking about, hey, they have this knowledge. Why don’t you bring together, we bring together something that is innovative and can have a better approach? Absolutely. And look, I think there’s a big challenge there.

10:43You know, ecology is grappling with it like many other disciplines that, you know, unfortunately, often ecological management, ecologically informed management plans and conservation strategies, even though they engage Indigenous partners, often Indigenous partners are not engaged on an equal power footing. So that often Indigenous partners are employed to… do on the ground programs that are guided by Western ways of knowing.

11:17And in my mind, that’s putting a gloss over the process that’s actually not elevating Indigenous knowledges and, you know, indeed privileging Indigenous knowledges in this space. And I’d like to think that power relationship can be remediated to be a lot more equal. You know, I’d personally like to see a lot more Indigenous -led programs in this space. But, you know, I genuinely think many disciplines are grappling with a long colonial history of scholarship and intellectual development that has excluded Indigenous knowledges. So there’s a lot of decolonization that needs to be done across our different disciplines.

12:01Genuinely, too, I think… We need to step outside our disciplinary silos. If we’re really committed to harnessing the transformative power of all these different knowledge systems and ontological frameworks, we need to enter into a genuinely transdisciplinary space. And that means coming from a place of strength, knowing our own knowledge framework, but being able to surrender some of that power to enter into a genuinely you know, productive dialogue with other knowledge holders.

12:35And it’s kind of easy when you say it like that. But in my experience, it’s been quite challenging for many people to see some of their disciplinary power and their disciplinary expertise to authentically enter those types of processes. Yeah, that’s a really good point. And actually, We just recently learned, Dani already knew about it. We have a guest that is Arit, Dr. Arit, and she’s working in an intercultural university that actually they work with the indigenous and the researchers go to work into the indigenous communities projects that they have. It’s not that they came up with this idea and they try to develop with the communities.

13:20No, they are the ones that have to listen. What is the issue that a community has? and trying to join forces. So I learned about the Mayan Milpa. It was so cool because actually they were trying to provide different approaches and tools to the knowledge that they have. So that for me was like a wow. I think, Linda, that’s a really good point. And I think funding agencies in Western countries often work against developing those types of approaches that, you know, whether it’s the Australian Research Council system in Australia or the National Science Foundation in the United States, you need to create an application that says what you’re going to do before you have the money. And often these community -led approaches require years of discussions and relationship building to define those. co -designed outcomes that support the aspirations of communities.

14:24And it’s very difficult for researchers of any career stage, but particularly for early career researchers and PhD students. How do you resource spending several years living in a community and developing those relationships before you even apply for a grant? So I think the current funding system works against those outcomes and we really need to think of different approaches to funding work that respects the way those relationships need to unfold to be authentic and that those funding applications are requesting funds for work that actually match the aspirations of the community and working through what the community want to do with those data and how Indigenous cultural and intellectual property will be protected and managed under those sorts of research arrangements.

15:17Yeah. And with that remark, I’m curious, and maybe some of our listeners too, how is the research process in terms of the methodology to gather the information and everything? Can you share a little bit how is this process of gathering the data from the indigenous communities? Do you go to the field and talk to representatives of the community? Or how is that process? Daniel, that’s a really good question. And I mean, the short answer is it’s really diverse. You know, the way that different communities want to partner with researchers is very different. Increasingly, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia have researchers in their own communities who do have PhDs and understand how Western research frameworks work. So there’s very increasingly strong knowledge about rights and responsibilities in these spaces. But the model that we’re increasingly adopting in the research teams I work as partnership with is having an extended period of co -design workshops. So this is where we visit and sit down on country, on Indigenous land, and listen to the country and listen to elders, listen to what the community want to do. We have multiple meetings kind of defining the types of projects

16:48the community want to do. But most importantly, those discussions are not only about what the project is, but who the community want involved. So, you know, which family groups or which Indigenous landowners need to be involved, what knowledge holders, what the product would be, whether it’s a confidential report or a policy document or a research article. And really importantly, what the Indigenous data sovereignty arrangements are around the data produced. So is this data to be shared with others? Is it to be restricted?

17:27Which members of the community will be co -authors on any publications? Indeed, does the community want any publications? So it’s actually not thinking about the research process in isolation. It’s thinking about… whole research cycle from the beginning to the end. And looking into the future, one of the problems we have, and I’ll just mention specifically the Indigenous data governance space, that if we put data in a repository now, in a data repository now with certain conditions around it, what happens in 10 years’ time if people change their mind about how they want to manage their data? Now, the current You know, the mainstream system we use is that when you deposit research data, you set the restrictions and that’s it.

18:16But that doesn’t honour, you know, the vitality of Indigenous culture and the fact that knowledge holders and aspirations change over time. So when we’re designing these Indigenous data governance structures, we need to allow, they need to be amenable to be responsive to those sorts of changes in the community. and acknowledge that Indigenous cultures are living cultures and changing. And, you know, just to give you one example that one community I work closely in, senior women have now taken over some of the knowledge responsibilities of senior men because many of the senior male knowledge holders have passed away. And I did want to expand on this a little bit. It’s one of the things I think we really need to confront as researchers that in the communities where I work, Indigenous life expectancy is up to 30 years younger than non -Indigenous people. So many of the people I’m very proud to call brothers and sisters and mothers and grandfathers have passed away. You know, people I’ve been working with over the last three decades. you know, it’s really, it weighs heavily on me, the responsibility researchers have to support the knowledge aspirations

19:46of communities. And researchers play a really important role in being allies to Indigenous communities to support how they want to record and maintain and govern their data. And I think, you know, a lot of us, me included, you know, felt we would always have an opportunity in the future to talk to that old man again. And the reality is sometimes we don’t have that opportunity.

20:15I mean, the fact that there’s such a gap in longevity and Australia is not isolated in that really rams home that many of the places we work have a long way to go to remediate that. gap in life expectancy and health outcomes and infant mortality rates, but indeed all the way through the research process to reproducing cultural data and making sure that researchers are supporting what communities want to do to ensure the reproduction of their cultural information. And you point out a really important issue, and it’s that when you work with the across different cultures and generations.

21:06How do you build up this trust and mutual understanding with the Indigenous elders and the knowledge holders? How do you build up this trust with Indigenous communities and in your experience and specifically in your field? Look, it’s a good question. And I think there’s some fundamental principles that I hold dear. I mean, you know, the first one is that it’s about a relationship.

21:32It’s not a transactional thing. It’s not a one -off thing. So that relationship building might go on for many years before any research is conducted. And even after you get a research grant and you do a research grant with a community and you do all the reporting, your responsibilities to that relationship don’t end there. They’re a lifelong commitment. I think a lot of people don’t appreciate. So, you know, starting from that basis that it’s all about relationship, it’s about being authentic and entering those relationships that it’s not transactional that, you know, I’m entering into this relationship because I want to do this research. It’s entering into a reciprocal bond which binds you into a certain set of obligations that don’t end when the research money is spent. I’m very proud to say that I still have close relationships with the very first community that I ever worked with 30 years ago. And I feel those responsibilities very keenly to service those responsibilities.

22:45And when community members, frankly family members to me, ask for something, I will do everything I can to support. support their request because that’s part of servicing that relationship with those people. You know, and when you frame research as relational in like that, it’s quite different to a, you know, in a Western academic framework where you talk about our networks and we talk about leveraging our networks for our career advantage and this sort of thing. That’s not what I’m talking about here. You know, I’m talking about genuinely entering into a personal relationship with community. And if you’ll indulge me, I’ll give a little personal, you know, anecdote. About, well, I know exactly when it was. About 15 years ago, I was living with the Kydelt community in an outstation called Nilnuki on Bentic Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. So one of the most remote places you can get to in Australia and still be in Australia. And my partner was due to give birth to our first daughter about a month after that fieldwork ended. And I think I was living in the village at that time for about two months. And a couple of days before we were due to charter off the island, my partner’s waters broke and the satellite phone rang and it was

24:18at night time. And there was no lighting on the dirt airstrip, so we couldn’t get an aircraft in to get me off the island until the next day. And so all night, the senior Kydelt women sang songs to help the labor progress smoothly and for the baby to be born healthy and for the mother to be born healthy. And there was a lot of debate about what that baby should be called. And so all night. There was an active discussion amongst all the senior knowledge holders about what that baby should be called. And the women decided her name should be Baranka, which is the edible part of the water lily. So the next day I was able to charter off the island and I made it for the birth of our first daughter four hours or something before she was born. But the women made me promise to bring that girl back to country.

25:18And, you know, we spent her first birthday back on country and her sister was conceived on country. And that’s a very important part of Kydok culture where you’re conceived. And the older women knew that we were pregnant before we did. And for several months, you know, talked about what that girl should be called. And they felt that that girl would be very strong and needed a strong name and strong in story. And they called her Juwan, which is the black -nosed dolphin. And when that daughter was born, when she was three months old, we took her back to country to meet her extended family. and understand her obligations to country. But I’ve been very fortunate in my career to have such loving, generous, welcome family. And that’s just an example of the many places I work and have had the enormous privilege to work. And I have to say those experiences have fundamentally changed the worldview I bring to every piece of research I enter into. That’s a beautiful experience. Thank you for sharing it. They’re probably going to be shamed that I told that story, but I’m very proud of that story. No, it’s a beautiful story. It’s just

26:49unique. It is, it is. Yeah, it is. And precisely within these personal relationships and beyond the data and the research. What do you think is the most important message or lesson that indigenous stories like this can teach us about how to live sustainably and harmoniously with the environment and with the planet in general? Yeah, look, and I think this is, you know, a clear and present challenge for, you know, all researchers. And it doesn’t matter whether we’re working in the archaeological or paleoecological or ecological or indeed health and medical research, all of us should be attentive to the enormous reservoir of indigenous knowledges that have really been marginalized in our understandings of the world from a Western perspective. And, you know, I mean, we often hear these stories of, for example, detailed indigenous plant knowledge.

27:51being used for everything from wound dressings on battlefields to cancer treatments. I have to say a lot of that research has been very exploitative and the benefits of the patents and income earned has not necessarily flown back to the Indigenous knowledge holders. But I think we have to be a little bit careful about essentialising Indigenous knowledges. You know, we talk a lot about sustainability and that’s really important. And I think, you know, in many of the Indigenous countries I collaborate with, there is very long -term evidence of sustainable management of country. But that sustainable management has been very adaptive. So to give an example, in Australia, there’s very sophisticated use of fire technologies to manage ecological, floral and faunal diversity. But people often simplify that into that traditional owners burn their country once a year. And that’s far from the truth, that those use of fire technologies are drawing on a very deep knowledge of the climate, seasonal changes, observing very detailed observation of flora and fauna, and tailoring the use of fire technologies to those changing conditions.

29:13you know, that might be ENSO frequency and intensity, like La Nina, you know, seasons in Australia, that the way that that sustainability has been maintained has only been possible through the application of that very detailed knowledge. And I think we often simplify that into thinking about it as a very blunt instrument, but it’s not the case. And for my own part, I specialize in coastal and island archaeology. So I’m very interested in the way that people sustainably harvest shellfish and finfish resources. And one of my frustrations is that, for example, fisheries permitting and restoration targets are exclusively based on historical fishery records.

30:02And in Australia, we’re very lucky if those records go back 60 years. Whereas, of course, indigenous traditional owners have been managing their fisheries for thousands of years before European industrialized fishing. So my view is that if we can’t understand that long -term management of country and how it articulates with more recent use of those resources, we can’t possibly have effective management systems if we ignore… Indigenous management and Indigenous knowledges. And every domain you can think of fits into the same boat, whether it’s fisheries or dugongs or whales or ecological diversity of trees and things. We really, we have been for decades ignoring the past. And I think… more and more we’re recognising that we need to understand the past to inform the present and the future, and that by not doing that, we’re facing the future with one hand tied behind our back. And now that you mention this, what is the best approach to change this way?

31:17Because our research continues based on that, this westernising and colonising point of view. We haven’t changed anything. Nothing has been changed. We know the problems, we say the problems, and we have the communities. It’s changing in some places, but how we can extend this in the way that the people and the general public also participate and put the pressure on that, because that’s one of the constraints that we have as scientists and also the communities have, because there’s not a communication. There’s not a big communication between all the parties. I agree.

31:57And I think there’s three central pillars where we need to work. One of them is supporting capacity building of Indigenous researchers across the world. And that is building a pipeline from primary school through to higher schooling and university. And that is not an easy task because High school completion rates for many Indigenous people is quite low. So there’s a lot of work to be done to support, to meaningfully support Indigenous communities to achieve those outcomes. And I think all of our disciplines could use many more Indigenous researchers. So that Indigenous researcher capacity building is very important. I think it’s also very important to build the cultural…

32:49capabilities and capacities of non -Indigenous researchers, because non -Indigenous researchers are the majority of researchers. And for the foreseeable future, non -Indigenous researchers will be really important allies to supporting the aspirations of Indigenous communities. So each and every one of us can take a personal responsibility for upskilling our cultural capabilities. And that could be through you know, undertaking formal cultural awareness programs or seeking out Indigenous mentors, for example, and also reflecting on decolonizing our own practice.

33:29So reflecting on the way we’ve always done things and questioning why that is so. Many researchers reproduce the kind of approaches that their own supervisors have adopted. And unfortunately, that can simply you know, reproduce the same ways of doing things. So I think, you know, each of us can challenge that. The final pillar is the one you mentioned, Linda, and the one your podcast leans into, that every researcher has a responsibility to change the narrative. And I think all of us, you know, I always agree to do public outreach. I always do agree to do interviews because I think, you know, every one of those interviews will reach someone. And they help people challenge their own way of comprehending the world. And I think, you know, the reality is that many people, many non -Indigenous people do have a deficit of knowledge. And that deficit of knowledge about the complexity and sophistication of Indigenous cultures leads to a homogenization of Indigenous experiences rather than respecting diversity and often leads to quite uninformed views. of Indigenous people and culture. And I think, you know, the more, you know, evidence -based and culturally appropriate information we can put into the public domain, the stronger we will be. And I think research communication is a critical pillar of achieving that. I agree.

35:01Yeah, and actually in that point, how do you see the evolution of this relation with the ancestral knowledge has been in the recent years? Look, you know, I see it being more pervasive in discussions. I think many people, many Indigenous communities, many non -Indigenous research agencies are grappling with this. For example, just a few weeks ago, the Australian Commonwealth government announced its new national science and research priorities.

35:34And out of the list of five priorities, number three is elevating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges. So, you know, that’s a recognition that’s never been on the national stage before, which has been building over a long time. And, you know, I’m well aware in other major research, you know, agencies are contemplating similar things. So there’s been a groundswell. I mean, I think there’s a lot of experimentation happening at the moment, and I think that’s a really good thing. I think it’s a very contested space. And I think, you know, this is not an easy space to work in. And I think people need to be really aware that to authentically engage in this space, you will be challenged. And that’s not a bad thing. But often researchers can find that very confronting and shut down. And I think, you know, my appeal is that we should expect to be challenged and we should… Frame that as a very productive part of the dialogue that, you know, for too long, Indigenous knowledge systems have been marginalised in research. Indigenous scholarship has been marginalised in research. So those voices, you know, need to be strident to be heard. And sometimes that can be very challenging when it’s framed in a, you know, it can be framed in a combative way, for example. But I think the confronting part of it is that in Western research training, we’re trained to engage in very polite forms

37:06of dialogue and respectful, very, what would you say, vanilla ways of having dialogue. And we’re not used to being robustly challenged. And I think the reality is that we need to enter a space where our very… The very ontological underpinnings of how we comprehend the world are being challenged. And, you know, we need to be open to that challenge and we need to be open to challenging some of those pillars of self -belief we all carry with us that have been socialized in our education, probably from kindergarten, throughout, you know, the values our parents and society has given us. This is a very, I think we shouldn’t sugarcoat that it is a difficult space to work in, but I’d like everyone to think about that as a source of a productive space.

38:08And it’s that by entering into that space with kindness and authenticity, and it harks back, Danny, to what we were talking about earlier about authentic relationship building. If we’re entering into these conversations with authenticity, that they’re not transactional, that we’re bringing hope and kindness to service, that they’re the pillars that will see those discussions being productive. And I think it’s also being cognizant that you’re entering into a relationship that will likely last the rest of your life. And, you know, my colleagues, my non -Indigenous colleagues who work in this space very similarly, feel keenly their responsibilities to their Indigenous partners that they work with, that, you know, it’s well beyond research. It’s a wholism about, you know, that partnership is about familial obligations.

39:12And yes, it is about doing the research, but it’s doing the research in a way that honours the aspirations and ways of knowing and doing of the partner. And that means you can’t develop a one -size -fits -all approach because of that fundamental diversity of different Indigenous communities. And that’s important because our system, as you mentioned before, how the grants are, how you obtain the funding is not a continuity.

39:43There’s not a continuous project, but it’s not only about the project, but the relationships and how we relate with the indigenous communities, but also how we relate actually with the project that we are doing, where we are working, for example. I have the perfect example with the spiders because they are not even in the Conservation Act. So they are not even the importance. But then actually, if we join all this past knowledge about these animals, if we acknowledge how they live, that they can be even older than me and other people, and then how we relate with them, how we do this continuous project, that’s a different approach. Not only starting from the… ecological or behavioral point of view or all the science and how it’s approached in a short term because it’s like a five year period or two year period where you have to squeeze everything leave everything apart and then oh start another one you can’t give continuity to this project that’s that’s one of the biggest challenge that we have that we we are not Seeing the continuity of the projects and even less the continuity of the relationship with the people and how we relate within that place where we collect or where we do the measurements and how we relate with the people that is helping us around. We just leave it apart. Look, I think it’s a big challenge. And look, I think there’s a couple of things here that are really important.

41:10I mean, you know, there’s a lot of mid -career researchers at the moment and early career researchers. who are global leaders working in this space. And they inevitably will become senior researchers. And the way they undertake their research will socialise new generations of researchers. And I think that’s how we get generational change in the academy and we change the way we’re doing things. And those senior researchers become…

41:41reviewers of grants and publications. So when they’re undertaking peer review, they’re approaching it with a different way of seeing those applications. So when those applications are asking for money to undertake partnership building and co -design processes, hopefully those requests will be looked on more favorably by assessors. Look, and I think the other part of it, I think, you know, realistically, I know many early career researchers who self -fund continuing their relationships with Indigenous partners in between grants and indeed in between jobs when they’re employed on precarious sessional contracts. But that just underscores to me how people elevate the importance of the relationships, that just because you don’t have a job or a grant doesn’t mean… your obligations to service that relationship go away. And to me, that’s just the heart of enacting an authentic relationship, that if it was just about the research grant, it could be purely framed as transactional. But look, I think the academy and the funding agencies need to do a lot of work in this space to understand how we honour those relationships. You know, we talk a lot about elevating these knowledge systems, but we need a lot of scaffolding of infrastructure in the research agencies, in the

43:14academy, to really work alongside, to support in Indigenous communities to elevate their knowledges in the way they want them to be elevated and managed. Yeah, that commitment is crucial for any project in any field. Will you share a memorable experience with… Your daughters. That was amazing that that changed, I guess, your life. But what message would you send to the public researchers from this amazing interview? What message do you send to them? Look, I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have been mentored by so many Indigenous knowledge holders. Simple act of generosity has totally, I often say, I said earlier that it’s transformed my worldview, but it’s actually enriched my life and enriched the lives of my family members as well. And a lot of the communities I collaborate with specifically ask that I bring my family with me when we’re doing research. But they also extended that invitation for PhD students to bring their children as well. So we’ve often had fieldwork where there’s many young children and, you know, it’s been an extraordinary opportunity

44:48for those students to have that opportunity and to have that invitation. So, look, the message I guess I’d send is that, you know, we really need… to understand how little most of us have had the opportunity to know about Indigenous cultures around the world. And my experience has been that the mainstream public has a very homogenised view of Indigenous culture, and it’s often framed around knowledges that are not accurate.

45:23And the problem is that… you know, homogenizing knowledges that easily gets harnessed into devaluing Indigenous knowledge systems. So, you know, one of my projects is really digging down into that diversity. And it’s not just historical diversity that we know in the past Indigenous cultures all around the world have changed dramatically, but also every Indigenous community has experienced has had a different experience of invasion and colonization. So some people have been dispossessed from their country or forcibly removed. Some of them don’t even live on their own country anymore and have many barriers for them returning to their country and maintaining it. So as a general public, I think it’s really important to appreciate those diverse histories and really come to terms with truth -telling and come to terms, with the genuine trauma and loss that many Indigenous communities have been subjected to. And to me, that is a fundamental starting point for building for the future, that if we continue to whitewash the past and pretend it’s so distant in the past, it doesn’t matter to today, we’re never going to move forward. The reality is that there are many Indigenous people living today. who were directly subject to those,

46:53you know, controlling regulations that controlled their behaviours and, you know, indeed, if they could have children or not, or controlling their movements. That’s people living today. It’s not their grandparents or great -grandparents. That’s part of our contemporary lived experience of Indigenous people. So I get very frustrated when some people… attempt to distance that type of distensation of Indigenous experience to belittle its significance for contemporary dialogue. So, you know, I think truth -telling is an extraordinarily important part of it. And researchers need to be, you know, have a self -responsibility, you know, encouraging and supporting those processes in our own research communities. You know, each of us can be proactive. each of us can have agency.

47:48But really importantly, all of us should be active bystanders. We’re hearing racist commentary, for example. We shouldn’t just let it go. We should be challenging, finding safe ways to have a respectful conversation that challenges framings that are derogatory or are unsupportive. If we’re really committed, to changing the narrative and improving the research space to be more welcoming to elevating Indigenous knowledges in the future, each and every one of us has a personal responsibility for making that happen. And part of that is that kind of corrective behaviours. There’s a challenge for you. Yes, I agree. And I’m going to add something else. When I arrived to Australia, I didn’t have much knowledge about the… Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. But then it just was, I came up with a course about their history. Because, of course, you listen and hear different comments from different opinions. But the good advantage of being a scientist is I have a critical thinking and I want to read. But it doesn’t come up for every person. I’m pretty sure 100 % that most of the Australians don’t know anything. about the past and about the culture that they have in this country. And actually, I feel quite ignorant with my own culture and the indigenous communities

49:18from Colombia because the history that tell us is more like a colonization history. So when I end up knowing a little bit about the communities, it was until I started the university. So something that has to be changed is the way how we can get the information, not only for us, but how can achieve that information and grasp that information and the general public seeing what happened to the communities, what happened to the indigenous, and also knowing how to step forward, how to be resilient, how to help them. It’s our responsibility and it’s also responsibility of each of us trying to reach that knowledge, but it’s also responsibility how to put it there for them. Look, and I think that’s a really good point, Linda, I think. And the reality is that different members of the public and indeed all of us consume knowledge in different ways. So some people will listen to a podcast, some will, you know, see it on a news program or their social media feeds. So I think. It’s important in terms of this attempting to change the narrative that research communication is multiplexed across many, it’s pervasive. It’s also really important that Indigenous voices are elevated, you know, in all of these forums so that it’s normalised to see Indigenous people

50:50in all sorts of roles, you know. that Indigenous people make up about 4 % of the population in Australia, but they make up a much lower proportion of university students or professionals in every field. So, you know, there’s a lot of issues to deal with here. Look, and I deliberately use the term research communication. I don’t like the term science communication because science…

51:20has a certain elitism and has been elevated as a way of knowing. Whereas, you know, what we’re actually talking about is research communication and research communication is more holistic and doesn’t marginalise Indigenous ways of knowing and it doesn’t marginalise the humanities and social sciences or creative arts, which are also, you know, also vital fields in this space. So, you know, I think… There are courses you can do on science communication. And I always bristle a little bit being a humanities scholar that even the language is exclusionary. That, you know, I think in that training we can do a lot better in, you know, language is very important.

52:04You know, language reflects our cognitive structures and the way we communicate. And even the general population hearing the word science multiple times a day. is reinforcing this reification of science. And, you know, when you think about it, that can work to exclude and denigrate other ways of knowing the world. So there’s a lot of things we need to think about in this space.

52:29I completely agree. Yeah, yeah. It’s an interesting topic to think about. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Happy, really a pleasure to speak with you both today. And we covered a lot of ground. We hope that you have enjoyed this episode. This episode was inspired by curiosity. If you want to know more about our host, we will leave the references in the podcast description.

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