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Indigenous Information Sources: Respecting Indigenous Knowledges

This guide will help you to locate and search effectively for Australian Indigenous Information Sources.

Sourcing and accurately attributing Indigenous knowledge

Using works of First Nations peoples

The Indigenous Referencing Guidance for Indigenous Knowledges Guidelines are the result of substantial research and policy development by peak Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and researchers into best practice for the respectful use and attribution of Indigenous Knowledge. 

The Guideline aims are to ensure

  • The prefacing of Indigenous perspectives and voices on issues and research about or for Indigenous people, and 
  • The proper acknowledgment of the affiliated Country/Language groups associated with Indigenous authors.

These practices represent crucial ways through which First Nation peoples' fundamental rights to self-determination can be achieved (Faulkhead et al., 2023).   

IKAT 

The Indigenous Knowledge Attribution Toolkit (IKAT) within this guideline will help you to:

  • Evaluate and select resources that are representative of Indigenous voices, having either been collected with informed consent and/or have Indigenous authors. 
  • To cite and reference through proper attribution of the Indigenous Knowledge source your have referred to by acknowledging an authors/editors or contributors Nation/Country and Language group were ever possible.   

See IKAT for examples for an outline of evaluative selection criteria you should use and examples of acknowledgment of Indigenous Nation/Country/Language groups for different types of source formats (books, journals articles, social media, personal communication etc).

These examples are based on the adaptation of the APA 7 Referencing Style.  You will find a summary of these IKAT priniciple in our APA Referencing Style Guide.  

Figure 1: 

Image depicting the guidance provided in IKAT

 

Note. From: "Indigenous Referencing Guidance for Indigenous Knowledges", by S. Faulkhead et al., (2023) https://members.caval.edu.au/media/images/Documents/CRIG/CACIK/CAVAL_Indigenous_Knowledges_Citation_Guide.pdf

 

References: 

Indigenous Archives Collective; Faulkhead, S; Thorpe, K; Sentance, N; Booker, L; & R Barrowcliffe. (2023) Indigenous Referencing Guidance for Indigenous Knowledges. Indigenous Archives Collective and the UTS Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research. 

James Cook University (2022). Using works of First Nations People for APA (7th Edition) as referencing guidance. [Webpage]. Available here: https://libguides.jcu.edu.au/apa/First-Nations

 

Working with Indigenous data

Data involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples has legal and ethical considerations, and needs to be managed and shared with care. The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) Guide to working with indigenous data covers:

  • protocols and research guidelines
  • advice for the Australian context
  • guidance from communities
  • information on Traditional Knowledge (TK) labels
  • Indigenous data tools and platforms

More Indigenous data sources and tools are available from the Government, University and Partner Sources tab

CONTENT LICENCE

 Except for logos, Canva designs, AI generated images or where otherwise indicated, content in this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence.