We engage Aboriginal knowledge and governance authorities through a commitment to Aboriginal sovereignty in Australia.
We take seriously Aboriginal commitments to people-places: to people not being ontologically distinct from their places (as in Western metaphysics), to reality as emergent, to knowledge and authority as always owned, governed and located, and to the growing up of new generations in the modern world connected to ancestral law, knowledge and discipline.
The complexities of research with government and nongovernment organisations has led us to differentiate three distinct – but sometimes overlapping – Aboriginal knowledge workers on country:
- the elders – knowledge and governance authorities – who supervise and lead the local knowledge work,
- the local researchers who often work between the elders, the government workers and the GroundUp researchers, and the emergent researchers
- the mentorees – who act as learners and observers of traditional knowledge and governance work, as well as assistants to their elders.
GroundUp commitment to supporting and developing these critically significant roles is supported through the Indigenous Researchers’ Initiative. [link to iri.cdu.edu.au]