Compiled by Gary Scott
School of Australian Indigenous Knowledge Systems
Charles Darwin University, Darwin.

The task of the Indigenous Knowledge Database Audit Subproject
has been to audit existing digitised data in Indigenous Knowledge (IK) collections in Northern Australia, including the ways in which they are stored, potential access and hardware/software configurations.

There are three general questions to consider:
• What is the full range of digital data representing Aboriginal knowledge in Northern Australia?
• How useful might the data be in the traditional education of young people?
• What approaches are recommended to achieve this for specific contexts?

The audit involved phone interviews with specialists from a range of indigenous and non-indigenous organisations working with digitised IK. It catalogued their experiences working on database projects with indigenous people. It also recorded some of their reflections and opinions of what constitutes good policy and practice in this field.

Audit of Indigenous Knowledge Databases in Northern Australia
Draft Report pdf 520K

A Bibliography of Indigenous Ecological Knowledge in Northern Australia Data sheet pdf 352K

Note:
For the purposes of constructing this bibliography the following search limits were set:
Geographic extent: Northern Australia was broadly defined as including Torres Strait Islands, Cape York and Far North Queensland, the Gulf Country, the Top End (roughly comprising the jurisdiction of the Northern Land Council, the Tiwi Land Council and the Anindilyakwa Land Council) and the Kimberley region. A few references from the Pilbara region of Western Australia are also included along with one or two references from Central Australia as well as a number of references with nationwide geographic coverage.
Subject extent: The general rule followed was that references needed to
directly address the indigenous people / environment (country) relationship, particularly, but not exclusively, in the context of contemporary resource management practices. Searches were made under terms such as 'indigenous fire management', 'traditional bush medicine', 'Aboriginal environmental knowledge', 'Aboriginal resources' and so on. Therefore anthropological studies that primarily described indigenous kinship relationships, even if they discussed them in relation to land ownership patterns, were generally excluded. Otherwise, the final result would have been to make the bibliography top-heavy with references more relevant to land claim research than to indigenous ecological knowledge research.