This project seeks to explore how threats to our well-being posed by climate change can be addressed by drawing upon indigenous knowledges rooted in the deep past. It compares two ecologically important regions transformed by colonialism: the homelands of the Cherokee in the Appalachians of the United States, and those of the Ngarigo and Walgal peoples of the Great Dividing Range in Australia. Using settler and indigenous sources, Professor Gregory Smithers will map a ‘genealogy’ of indigenous ecologies in order to construct the first deep history of a set of indigenous responses to fluctuations in climate. The project will result in the publication of a research monograph that forges connections between the history of indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and conventional science-based responses to climate change.
