Indigenous Knowledge

How can we live well with others? How can local connections to place and past generations strengthen our cultural, political and economic futures globally?

Indigenous Knowledge: Global Perspectives brings together leading scholars from Australia and the Asia-Pacific to explore how Indigenous knowledge tackles common challenges in governance and research, environmental sustainability and cultural diversity.

Contributors reveal how Indigenous knowledge, while distinct, can inform new collaborations that respect and build on local wisdom and initiative, sparking understandings of identity and place that are often overlooked in mainstream scholarship.

This book ignites insightful conversations, opens new ways of understanding Indigenous knowledge, and honours the richness and resilience of global Indigenous traditions.

Dr Samuel Curkpatrick is a McKenzie postdoctoral fellow at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on Australian Indigenous music and philosophical issues of language, epistemology and religion. He has collaborated on music performance and teaching with Yol?u and Warlpiri ceremonial leaders, exploring creativity and understanding across diverse knowledge traditions. His books include Singing Bones: Ancestral Creativity and Collaboration (2020), Indigenous Knowledge: Australian Perspectives (edited by Langton, Corn and Curkpatrick, 2024) and Critical Irony, Renewed: Engaging Faith and Culture with Terry Eagleton (2026).

Professor Dolly Kikon is a Lotha Naga anthropologist and a documentary filmmaker. She is the inaugural director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Kikon's research and advocacy initiatives on extractive resource regimes, food sovereignty and Indigenous ecology are grounded on inter-epistemic approaches that centre Indigenous knowledge and lifeworld. Her publications include Living with Oil and Coal: Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India (2019), Leaving the Land: Indigenous Migration and Affective Labour in India (2019), Ceasefire City: Militarism, Capitalism, and Urbanism in Dimapur (2021), Seeds and Food Sovereignty: Eastern Himalayan Experiences (2022); Food Journeys: Stories from the Heart (2023); Our Burden of Grief: Baghjan and the Gas Blowout (2025), and Pothar Pedagogy (2026).

Laureate Professor Dr Marcia Langton AO, of the Yiman and Bidjara nations of Queensland, is an anthropologist, geographer and academic. Since 2000, she has held the position of foundation chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne and also serves as Associate Provost. A prolific author, her academic and popular publications span Indigenous cultures and knowledge systems, laws, land tenure, agreement-making, art and film. A fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia, Langton is an influential voice in the Australian community, industry, government and non-government sectors.

Professor Aaron Corn is a leading interdisciplinary scholar at the University of Melbourne, and has helmed many Australian and international grants and research centres. His award-winning research focuses on intersecting issues in music and the arts, museums and collections, knowledge traditions and translation, intercultural exchange, archiving and data management, adaptive technologies, universal access and disability. His publications include the bestselling Law: The Way of the Ancestors (2023), with Laureate Professor Dr Marcia Langton AO.