We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the first peoples, knowledge‐holders, and knowledge-creators of this country. We acknowledge that First Nations people never ceded their lands or seas. We value the knowledge and traditions that reflect the wisdom of ancestors going back 65,000 years and more and recognise the significance of this in the ways that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are custodians of Country. We will continue to learn ways to care for and be responsible for Country, and we will seek to build a future that is based on truth‐telling, mutual understanding, hope, empowerment, and self‐determination.
This research stream focuses on supporting and enhancing Indigenous-led efforts to manage and care for Country, an approach that has been practiced for tens of thousands of years. Today, many programs are funded by various levels of government, employing over 1,600 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in ranger groups and managing Indigenous Protected Areas across Australia. These initiatives play a crucial role in preserving Australia’s natural and cultural heritage through activities like managing heritage sites, protecting threatened species, monitoring environmental changes, managing bushfires, and preserving traditional knowledge.
Central to this stream is the idea that decision-making power should be in the hands of Indigenous communities, allowing them to maintain their traditions and respond effectively to new challenges, such as climate change and economic development. By combining Indigenous knowledge with scientific data and historical insights, this stream develops best practices for managing land and sea that benefit both the environment and Indigenous communities.
The Centre’s approach is based on co-designing research with Indigenous partners, ensuring that their knowledge and priorities guide the process. The stream also focuses on monitoring the impact of these co-designed practices, ensuring that they continue to evolve and improve over time. Key activities include facilitating discussions about different future scenarios, trade-offs, and potential management strategies, helping communities to make informed decisions about their land and sea Country. The stream also engages with government agencies and other stakeholders, translating research into actionable policies that can guide land and sea management across Australia.
This research stream uses advanced mathematical models to integrate and analyse the diverse data gathered across all other research streams, producing insights that would not be possible by examining each dataset separately. This stream bridges Indigenous and Western knowledge, and provides a comprehensive view of how cultural and environmental factors interact across time and space, and helping to predict future changes in Australia’s ecosystems and cultural landscapes.
By aligning different types of data—such as Indigenous knowledge (including Songlines and trade routes), ecological records, and archaeological findings—this stream creates detailed models that reveal how human activities, climate change, and other environmental factors have shaped the continent over the past 1,000 years. It also assesses how these patterns have changed since European settlement and projects how they may evolve in the future.
Key components of this modelling approach include quantifying historical change, local and regional modelling, mapping cultural and ecological networks, predicting future changes and creating vegetation models.
This research stream develops collaborative environmental and cultural heritage monitoring programs that are led by Indigenous partners. Effective monitoring is essential for managing ecosystems that are already under stress, especially in the face of climate change, species extinction, and invasive species. By tracking changes over time, these programs can assess the impact of interventions, such as new fire management practices or efforts to control invasive species.
This approach is grounded in co-design with Indigenous communities, ensuring that the programs reflect local priorities and knowledge systems. Indigenous perspectives are central to the design and implementation of these monitoring efforts, helping to align the programs with cultural values and needs. This stream builds on existing community-based monitoring initiatives in Australia, but with a focus on understanding longer-term changes in landscapes and ecosystems over the past 1,000 years, integrating both Indigenous knowledge and Western scientific methods.
The Centre will co-develop frameworks that enable Indigenous partners to establish new monitoring sites on their lands and adapt the existing ones to better meet their needs. This model is designed to be transferable, allowing other communities and regions to adopt it over time. The seven-year timeline of the Centre provides an opportunity to refine these methods and ensure their effectiveness before broader implementation.
This research stream creates a detailed picture of how cultural and environmental changes have unfolded across Australia over time, especially before and after European contact. This stream brings together data from various sources, such as cultural records, archaeological findings, genetic data, and environmental histories, to better understand how people and ecosystems interacted over long periods. This synthesis helps identify patterns of adaptation to changes, like extreme weather events or the spread of diseases, as well as model potential future changes in climate and environment.
This research will produce time-specific “snapshots” of Australia’s environment and cultural landscapes as they existed before European arrival. These records will allow researchers to explore the ways that Indigenous cultures and the environment changed over the last two centuries, following the arrival of European settlers. By doing so, it helps to identify the chain of changes triggered by colonisation, offering insights into both cultural disruptions and environmental shifts.
The research integrates spatial models of ancient trade networks, cultural routes like Dreaming tracks and Songlines, and ecological data to produce maps of pre-European Australia. This includes examining rock art, historical trade routes, and genetic data from culturally significant plants. The goal is to understand how trade and cultural connections functioned across the continent, comparing them to post-contact developments like stock routes and modern highways. The study will use Indigenous knowledge as a foundation for this work, combined with scientific data, to ensure an accurate and respectful representation of Australia’s deep history.
This research stream focuses on using advanced genetic techniques to better understand how Australia’s landscapes have evolved in connection with Indigenous cultural practices. Genomic sequencing has become increasingly powerful, allowing researchers to uncover new insights into the interactions between people, plants, animals, and their environments.
This stream combines genetic data from important plant species with archaeological and ecological records to reveal the history of Indigenous trade networks and land management practices.
This research will create detailed genetic histories for plants that have been culturally or economically important to Indigenous Australians, such as those used for food or trade. This information, combined with traditional knowledge and other research data, will map out historical trade routes, and how Indigenous practices have shaped the landscape over time. This research also explores ancient DNA (sedaDNA) from sediments to understand how ecosystems and human activities have influenced each other over long periods. SedaDNA can provide information about past plants and animals even when no physical remains are present, allowing researchers to reconstruct ancient environments and see how they have changed. This includes studying the long-term effects of fire on ecosystems, which is important for understanding current biodiversity and predicting how ecosystems might respond to future environmental changes. The findings will support conservation efforts and inform strategies to manage culturally important species and their habitats.
This stream focuses on understanding how Australia’s climate and environment have changed over long periods, using detailed scientific data and Indigenous knowledge. By studying past climates and ecological changes, the stream aims to extend the understanding of environmental baselines beyond recent history, reaching back hundreds or even thousands of years. This deeper historical perspective can help us better understand recent changes and anticipate future shifts.
High-resolution methods, such as analysing ancient lake sediments, shells, tree rings, and even old aerial photographs, are used to reconstruct past climates, vegetation, and fire patterns. These methods allow researchers to create precise records of environmental conditions over time, including seasonal shifts and extreme events like droughts and fires. This information is essential for improving current approaches to managing fire-prone landscapes and adapting to climate change.
A key focus of this research is to understand how people historically interacted with their environment at a local level, especially in relation to the seasonal availability of resources. Indigenous knowledge, including community-specific seasonal calendars, provides valuable insights into how different communities timed activities around natural cycles. This stream will work closely with Indigenous partners to gather and integrate this local knowledge, to improve understanding of how both people and environments have adapted to changing conditions over time.
This research stream explores how encounters with outsiders from the 17th century onwards—such as the Macassans, Dutch, French, and British—impacted Australia’s cultural and environmental landscape. This stream combines historical records, long-term archaeological findings, and oral histories to create a comprehensive narrative of how these interactions have shaped the continent over the last thousand years. This approach helps to understand changes in land and sea management over time, from the arrival of early visitors to the disruptions that came with European settlement post-1788.
The research will investigate how these historical events, such as the introduction of new agricultural practices and forced resettlements, affected Indigenous communities and their traditional ways of managing Country. It will also investigate how the mixing of different social groups under colonial policies influenced contemporary land-use practices and native title issues.
This research stream will understand how Indigenous cultures in Australia have evolved over time, especially during the last thousand years. Recent research done in collaboration with Traditional Owners is revealing the rich cultural diversity across different regions of Australia. Many areas of the continent still lack thorough archaeological investigation, even though these local histories are crucial for Indigenous communities. This stream emphasises studying local cultural practices and how people have interacted with, and shaped their environments over time.
This research combines high-resolution archaeological data with Indigenous knowledge and oral traditions. For example, geochemical analysis helps trace the origins of stone artefacts and other materials, showing how people and resources moved across the land and sea. This method has uncovered ancient trade routes that spanned thousands of kilometres, but more research is needed to fill gaps in our knowledge about specific regions.
The Centre will blend traditional stories and scientific techniques, to map out ancient trade routes and cultural connections between communities. This will help us better understand the flow of people, goods, and ideas across Australia. The Centre’s research will expand our understanding of how cultural practices and innovations adapted over time, especially in response to environmental changes. The stream will also examine how Indigenous societies managed their resources sustainably
This stream will highlight and incorporate Indigenous knowledge systems into environmental and land management practices. There is a vast store of Indigenous knowledge that is increasingly being recognised for its potential in areas like sustainable food practices, fire management, and water systems. A key aspect of Indigenous knowledge is the deep connection between people and Country, where land and sea are seen as living, interconnected entities. This understanding of the environment goes beyond just practical methods; it includes a spiritual and social perspective that sees humans as part of a living, sentient landscape.
Centre research will respect the distinct nature of Indigenous and Western knowledge systems. Rather than blending them into a single approach, works alongside both, through a co-design process. This involves Indigenous and Western researchers working together to support Indigenous-led initiatives for managing land and sea, and ensuring that community rights to cultural knowledge are maintained. The goal is to strengthen Indigenous-led research and create sustainable opportunities for Indigenous communities.