Geographers, Geospatial Technology and Indigenous Knowledge

Geographers, Geospatial Technology and Indigenous Knowledge

Recent scholarship suggests that “collaborating with Indigenous nations and organizations to support and/or enhance Indigenous land management practices clearly represent one potential route to achieving global targets for biodiversity conservation, and simultaneously advancing Indigenous rights to land, sustainable resource use, and human well-being” (Schuster et al 2019 p.4). Geospatial technologies are a key part of this growing and evolving trend. Indigenous communities benefit from spatial technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing and communicating spatial data that help advance their land and environmental management issues (Olson et al. 2016, Reid and Sieber 2019). However, issues with the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge in geographical research remain as the integration of knowledge systems and geospatial technologies in particular pose methodological, theoretical, political, practical (Edwards and Heinrich 2006) as well as epistemological problems (Rundstrom 1995, Reid and Sieber 2019). This project addresses this problem by identifying and developing methodological approaches which integrate Indigenous land and water management practices with western science. It aims to identify the most effective land and water resource management strategies to optimise the practices for both cultural and economic activities.

Advisory Team: Dr Scott Lieske, Dr Peter Earl