A transdisciplinary engagement with Australian Aboriginal water and the hydrology of a small bedrock island

Abstract

Yolŋu Aboriginal people's knowledge about water ("gapu") and its governance has strong cultural significance and meaning in East Arnhem Land Aboriginal worlds in northern Australia. This study used transdisciplinary research methods to explore the ways in which Yolŋu Aboriginal gapu and Western science hydrological knowledge can work together and contribute towards water management on Milingimbi Island, a small, resource-constrained, bedrock island. Transcending disciplinary boundaries is distinctly different to an interdisciplinary, socio-hydrological perspective, which can pose a risk to hybridizing Aboriginal knowledge and Western science. Community engagement activities and workshops were conducted as part of a three-year research project to bring together the incommensurable knowledge communities. A participatory three-dimensional mapping exercise created a shared space, facilitating an open-dialogue exchange of insight and knowledge among Aboriginal knowledge authorities, hydrologists, public servants, and academic researchers. This paper prompts readers to reconsider the ways water can be perceived and conserved in a decolonizing way.

Bridging the gap: reply to discussion of “Guiding principles for hydrologists conducting interdisciplinary research and fieldwork with participants”

“…For example, Quandt (2022) highlights the importance of case studies to allow researchers to study a specific socio-hydrological space or geographical area in a landscape. We completely agree and have seen a fantastic example from Beaumont et al (2020) where a field site visit to a salt marsh was used as a way to bring together the different disciplines and perspectives of researchers as a first step in finding ways to communicate across the spectrum (with other examples found in Hayashi et al 2021).…”

Ground Up Inquiry: Questions and Answers About the Emergence and Development of a Northern Australian Tradition of Situated Research

“…The story describes what scientists do and say as they enact the scientific concept of water as an element of landscape, and what Yolngu land-owners do and say as they experience that scientific concept as disturbingly different to their concept of their island's water (Hayashi et al, 2021). Gapu normally unthinkingly translated into English simply as water, nevertheless in ordinary Yolngu parlance is knowlable in Yolngu people enacting quite different practices than the scientists, and in using different names.…”