Keywords

Introduction

In this book, via three case studies and the inclusion of additional shared perspectives, we have explored the nature and refrains within Indigenous adaptation to climate change. While we remind the reader that we are not offering prescriptions about this issue, nor have we been able to give an example from every region of the world, these case studies highlight some commonalties of experience. Globally, Indigenous territories cover 24% of lands worldwide and contain 80% of the world’s biodiversity (Etchart, 2017). This means Indigenous peoples are placed to play a significant role in addressing and being affected by big issues like climate change. However, as we have explored in this book, a range of factors need to be considered to support Indigenous adaptation and voices.

Colonisation and Adaptation

Firstly, colonisation in many Indigenous contexts remains an active agent in the formulation of adaptation strategies and as such, adaptation and adaptive governance need to acknowledge its legacy. As shown in Chap. 4, in relation to the experience of First Nations peoples in the United States, this colonial presence in many Indigenous lives today is also important when considering the enjoining of Indigenous peoples to the decision-making tables about climate change across the world. Too often Indigenous peoples are absent from the negotiating tables that decide resource use (which will still profoundly affect Indigenous groups), at much larger scales. In the Pacific and other regions, the establishment of missions and Christianity is a related but enduring colonial impact that has had substantive effects on traditional knowledge, via its imposition of prohibitions to speak Indigenous languages and practices (Nursey-Bray et al., 2021). Thus, “what may appear to be politically neutral routines and procedures are important sites of contemporary colonial power, through which Indigenous resistance is managed and diffused” (Schreiber, 2006, 20).

Indigenous adaptation will be less successful if universal assumptions about Indigenous vulnerability, do not recognise the ongoing legacy of colonisation. We cannot overlook Indigenous capacity to care for their land and seas: we must all listen and engage in conversations that create ways of “seeing with both eyes, while not being blind to the hazards of colonisation” (Veland et al., 2013, 314).

Adaptation to climate change in Indigenous contexts is not just about climate change – it brings with it cultural and economic responsibilities to redress other and deep wounds and ongoing traumas. Adaptive responses then, need to be understood and engaged with in relation to what Howitt (2020) characterises the ‘messy’ contexts of lived experience in settler-colonial societies, where policy, science and practice “all need to develop a much more sophisticated literacy in the scale politics of response to the risk landscapes that Indigenous groups negotiate” (Howitt, 2020, 2).

Joining the Dots: Multiple Impacts Are Linked

Our case studies have also shown that any discussion around climate change also relates to the importance of livelihoods to Indigenous peoples. As the examples from the Wa and Jinhuo peoples show, amongst many others, in order to build capacity to adapt to climate change, building the capacity to maintain livelihoods is crucial. In relation to this, Maximiliano Garcia, a makuna of the Pirá- Paraná River notes:

the world sees natural resources as a source of money; this is what we suffer from these days. It is not just climate change; it is changes in the way of thinking. The sacred places are a part of us, whereas the world sees these sites as a source of monetary resources to extract gold, wood. That is why climate change is abrupt, if we do not have our sacred places there is no life, for it is there that there is air, food, cures. Today it starts to rain when it is not supposed to rain, it is hot out of season, and this is what causes poverty. Because there is lack of food when it is very dry and very full, there are no crops, there are no places to hunt or fish. Nature regulates itself, there will be no fertility in the land if it rains a lot. (Nakashima et al., 2018)

Of significance here is the way in which Indigenous narratives coalesce these observations into a demand for adaptation to be built around all these effects, the socio-economic risks and impacts, not just climate per se. As the examples from Aotearoa and Sweden show, extractive violence and other appropriation of Indigenous resources run the danger of being compounded and amplified by climate impacts, and this needs to be monitored. Changes to seasons, species and ecosystems will have correlative impacts on subsistence livelihoods.

Many studies identify the holistic nature and interconnectedness of factors and risks outside of climate ones in Indigenous contexts (Tengo et al., 2014). They are not “simply ‘local’ but often articulate a connectedness that insists on holding global systems of economic, environmental and political governance accountable” (Howitt, 2020, 7). Thus, the way that climate impacts are linked to other activities, (as in the case of the USA and Australia) highlights that ongoing climate governance and management approaches need to acknowledge that climate change is but one of multiple issues and drivers of change affecting Indigenous peoples world-wide, and thus cannot be simply isolated in its management (Wildcat, 2013).

The Importance of Knowledge

Of course, as our case study of ethnic minorities in China highlights, not all Indigenous people live within colonial contexts, but our collaboration shows that all Indigenous peoples share a pre-occupation with, and attachment to, their traditional knowledge systems. Indigenous knowledge is an integral part of both old and new ways of adapting to climate change. Indigenous traditional knowledge has power, contributing to a rich understanding of place:particular formations in particular places – embodied dwelling in nature – a lived and creative relationship with the natural world (Johnson & Murton, 2007, 127).

There is growing evidence of the importance of traditional knowledge in responding to climate change (Nakashima et al., 2018; Berkes et al., 2000; Berkes, 2009; Gyampoh et al., 2009, IPCC, 2014, 864–7). The IPCC report recognises thatIndigenous, local and traditional knowledge systems and practices, including Indigenous peoples’ holistic view of community and environment, are a major resource for adapting to climate change (IPCC, 2014, 19).

The United Nations University Traditional Knowledge Initiative (UNU- TKI) has also identified over 400 cases of Indigenous peoples’ being active in climate change monitoring, adaptation and mitigation, including a variety of successful strategies. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has recognised the importance of traditional knowledge, in decisions on ‘enhanced action on adaptation’ and within the Cancun Adaptation Framework.

Our case studies highlight the many active and present instances of applied traditional knowledge in the context of climate change. As noted by Barber (2018) in a study of the Yolngu people in Blue Mud Bay in the Northern Territory, the knowledge that the Yolngu people possess can also give them surety about their capacity to negotiate possible futures, and he cites a key reflection from an Elder confident about his capacity to adapt:Yolngu have been here for 50,000 years and we have survived many changes in the past. It is going to affect you guys, not me. Because I’ve done it in the past. If the store runs out of food, that will simply make people go back to the bush and start eating healthy again (Barber, 2018, 107).

In Norway traditional knowledge is the foundation for adaptation and the building of socio-ecological resilience to rapid change for over 200,000 reindeer and about 3000 Sami people working in reindeer husbandry (Mathiesen et al., 2018). In Southern Malawi, the integration of Indigenous Knowledge systems into adaptation provides spatial at scale information that is relevant to local adaptation to the impacts of climate change (Nkomwa et al., 2014). There are multiple opportunities for and examples of scientific and Indigenous knowledges working together, including dealing with uncertainty (Fernández-Llamazares et al., 2017). The following perspective from Australia offers another insight into the role Indigenous knowledge can play to address climate impacts, but cautions that it needs proper investment.

Perspective 7.1Indigenous Communities Managing Wildfire

Douglas Bardsley and Annette Bardsley

There is growing evidence that a major early impact of global climate change will be experienced through changes in wildfire (bushfire) regimes (Bardsley et al., 2018). Many temperate, alpine and boreal regions are experiencing fires that are unprecedented in modern histories. Regions on the warmer and drier edge of temperate zones in California, Chile, south-eastern Australia and the Iberian Peninsula, have experienced particularly severe disasters in recent years. These changes are being caused, in part, by a warming, drying climate in association with more storm events, which together suggest that a global ecological transition is partly being driven through the agency of fire.

Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) could be fundamental to the development of solutions to these new levels of risk. Indigenous TEK and actions offer a large range of relatively untapped opportunities for improvements in the management of all of the drivers of the wildfire hazard, while also assisting societies to follow transitional pathways to sustainable futures (Bardsley, 2018). One aspect of TEK – fire burning has had transformational impacts on landscapes and been foundational for many socio-ecosystems across the globe: relatively small numbers of Indigenous people living within North America for example had transformational impacts that drove “abrupt, climate-independent fire regime changes” (Roos et al., 2018, 8147). Anthropogenic fire was also used to manage southern European Alpine landscapes for over 7000 years (Tinner et al., 1999; Tinner et al., 2005). From 1400 BCE, it is clear that burning had opened up densely forested landscapes to facilitate hunting and agriculture (Conedera et al., 2004). Importantly, records suggest that during the period when the Roman Empire dominated, anthropogenic burning was constrained and it was not until the Middle Ages that the Indigenous Celtic knowledge could again be used to transform the forested landscapes (Conedera et al., 2007, 2017).

The exploration of, and support for, the normalisation of complex Indigenous knowledge to inform wildfire and land management would not only improve hazard and land management, but can also offer financial and socio-cultural benefits for the Indigenous people who retain, re-generate and share that knowledge. There has, for example, been a recent step-change in interest in the roles of Indigenous knowledge in burning regimes and land management in Australia.

In work we undertook with local communities in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in north-west South Australia, we found that the wildfire risk to communities and cultural assets had increased due to a combination of climate change, higher fuel loads (less controlled burning, more invasive Buffel grass), and a lack of capacity to manage fire locally (Wiseman & Bardsley, 2016). Traditional patch burning remains a key element of land management, but Buffel grass in particular has changed the nature of fires on the APY lands, making them far more dangerous to people, settlements and cultural assets. While the Indigenous Anangu people are burning the Buffel grass in an attempt to reduce fuel loads, the fire often advantages the exotic grass because it burns very hot, damaging native species while surviving and re-shooting itself. There is thus an understandable reluctance by some people to continue to burn landscapes, especially as local traditional knowledge and cooperation to support effective burns is seen to be in decline (Bardsley & Wiseman, 2012). This finding parallels conclusions from South America by Mistry et al. (2016, 4), who note that “the current status of traditional fire management within Indigenous communities can be associated with inter-related issues of a general loss of knowledge, a breakdown of social cohesion within communities, and conflicts (particularly ideological) between Indigenous and non-Indigenous stakeholders.”

Nonetheless, unique fire strategies are required for the specific places and systems, and the way to do that is to focus on people. For example, in Australia, the confidence to advocate for and undertake successful prescribed burns based on TEK requires strong cooperative approaches between traditional owners, rangers and trainees, government officers and other stakeholders to undertake burns as community events. Confidence could also be re-developed by trialling techniques within relatively low-risk situations where conditions involve low fuel-loads, high relative humidity, low-wind speeds, and large barriers to spread, such as cleared areas with relatively low ecological and cultural value. If institutional support could continue to be provided, it may be possible for Indigenous communities to generate mutual knowledge on how to manage the wildfire hazard. It would also help to “Reset the relationship” (Tebrakunna Country & Lee, 2019), between governments, societies and private landholders and Indigenous communities through the generation of mutual knowledge and action (Photo 7.1).

Photo 7.1
figure 1

Patch burn in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. (Credit: Douglas Bardsley)

Full size image

Traditional knowledge is important, but we also argue that the effective incorporation of Indigenous perspectives requires an embracing of all forms of knowledge, notably Indigenous Knowledge (IK) in all its manifestations. Indigenous knowledge is not just the form and types of information that Western policy makers may find culturally palatable but embraces all forms of knowledge that is understood as knowledge and relevant by the respective Indigenous group. For example, in Australia, historical knowledge, gathered after/as a result of colonisation, is used by Indigenous groups to inform climate adaptation, and has become part of their cultural domain (Nursey-Bray et al., 2020). In so doing, cultural dynamism and knowledge maintenance and revival is exercised.

This process also builds on the reality that many cultures have now experienced some loss of traditional knowledge, and hence an inclusive understanding of IK per se provides the space for its evolution since fracture, whether derived from colonisation or globalisation. In Malekula Island, Vanuatu for instance, religious and other shifting values, require policy makers to design nuanced responses to the ongoing loss of cultural knowledge and practice:

Understanding the historically embedded social support systems that encourage self-help and working together is likely to enhance the outcomes of donor programs and development initiatives. (Fletcher et al., 2013, 8)

In accepting all forms of Indigenous knowledge, cross generational dissemination of climate perspectives (from Elders to young people) occurs. This process acknowledges that part of the challenge of dealing with climate change today is a generational one and needs to address “the fragmentation of the culture, countryside and language” so prevalent in many communities (Sanchez-Cortes & Chavero, 2011, 386), and the importance of recognising and combining multiple forms of knowledge (Race et al., 2016).

Terminology

We also assert that language matters in developing climate adaptation collaborations with or led by Indigenous peoples. As described, in the development of ongoing effective adaptive practice Indigenous peoples have also asserted their own ways of constructing and understanding climate change and adaptation. For a start, as we have shown, the very way in which Indigeneity itself is understood varies wildly. As highlighted by the perspective on how to understand the word in African nations, even the term “Indigenous” is contested. In addition, the scientific underpinning of much climate change terminology both imposes colonial Western knowledge as ascendant, but also thereby inherently dismisses other ways of talking about climate, weather, change, adaptation, ecology and connection to place.

We argue that the automatic adherence to the view of Indigenous peoples as ‘vulnerable’ and/or ‘resilient’ can in turn, entrench existing and historical (i.e. colonially derived) structures that make the ‘other’ invisible in decision making, additionally complicating the way climate change knowledge is communicated. This picks up on some work that argues more generally that resilience theories need to be more critical (Weichselgartner & Kelman, 2015), otherwise they can depoliticise and hide significant structural and political issues, and create exclusionary practices by the withdrawal of support for groups deemed to be ‘not resilient enough’ (Porter & Davoudi, 2012). A discourse that focusses on a frame of ‘a lack of’ in relation to Indigenous peoples also has the effect of removing opportunities that could be taken to build agency and assert Indigenous knowledge and power into wider policy domains.

Further the entrenching of Western notions of Indigeneity and Indigenous ‘vulnerability’ or ‘resilience’, creates a ‘forgetting’ or blindness to the agency that Indigenous people actually continually exercise in building their adaptation programs. As highlighted in many examples throughout this book but particularly with our specific case study chapters, Indigenous agency in responding to climate change is not just a practice but a state of mind. As Kuruppu and Liverman (2011) highlight in a study of Kiribati, it is important to understand not just the capacity to adapt, but one’s belief in one’s own subjective capacity to act.

Finding ‘Fit’

The way in which language and knowledge is used to reinforce dominant narratives about Indigenous peoples in climate contexts (such as the linguistic entrenching of Western norms and perspectives into climate policy) has another powerful impact: spaces are not found within governance structures to incorporate Indigenous interests and voices in climate policy, especially in urban contexts. State policy frames that do not recognise Indigenous rights or knowledge or their capacity to contribute to social and environmental recovery, both compound and contribute to how Indigenous peoples experience climate impacts and “entrench patterns of racialized disadvantage and marginalization” (Howitt & Klaus, 2012, 47).

Indigenous people’s knowledge, while being increasingly valued, is seen as a resource to be used, as part of wider policy regimes. Indigenous knowledge is often ‘harvested’ to fill the gaps in current science but is not treated equally and that compromises Indigenous knowledge sovereignty (Cameron, 2012; Reo et al., 2019; Veland et al., 2013; Whyte, 2017). While the deployment of Indigenous knowledge into environmental policy arenas may be necessary, we must also consider how to support Indigenous knowledge sovereignty, intellectual property and maintenance in those same processes of policy and decision-making (Bardsley et al., 2018; Nursey-Bray et al., 2015, 2020; Nursey-Bray & Palmer, 2018). Indigenous peoples do not wish to just give their knowledge away, and this is a factor additionally complicated by the fact Indigenous knowledge is itself under pressure (Cockerill, 2018; Nursey-Bray et al., 2020; Whyte, 2020).

However, there are very few mechanisms available to ensure that there is Indigenous representation on the management committees or governance arrangements that oversee climate and adaptation policy, nor mechanisms that may assist Indigenous people to use their own knowledge to help their own communities. Further, the traditional governance modes that different Indigenous cultures use to mediate their own decisions, are not recognized at all in wider governance regimes. Important work by Robinson and Raven (2020, 2017) highlights the centrality of recognising customary law to help prevent bio-piracy and connect State and Indigenous law in relation to Indigenous knowledge and species management. Engaging with Indigenous knowledge in the Anthropocene offers insights for stewardship (Hill et al., 2020).

This also has implications for power sharing arrangements within adaptation planning. While Indigenous peoples will often seek to build partnerships with other external agencies who have the expertise to assist them implement climate change adaptation, doing so in a way that ensures they do not lose power and can maintain their own knowledge domains is an additional challenge. In Australia, Hunt et al. (2008) highlight the complexities involved in this endeavour, reflecting that: “It is simply impossible to understand the governance of Australian Indigenous communities and organisations as separate from the encapsulating governance environment of the Australian state” (Hunt et al., 2008, 3). Finding a space for Indigenous peoples within climate adaptation planning then is also about power sharing, which in turn will require a shift in management understanding of what ‘local’ and ‘cultural ‘knowledge is and the role it plays in the decision-making processes.

How can this be done? Existing scholarship has focused on how science becomes policy, how this is done, and the strengths and weaknesses of the process (Matuk et al., 2020; Diver, 2017; Jasanoff, 2004). Studies on knowledge integration articulate how Indigenous knowledge could be included at the knowledge interface (Hill et al., 2020). But knowledge integration is a fraught issue, involving conflict over knowledge, interests, and values (Diver, 2017; Boehensky & Maru, 2011), often creating binaries where Indigenous knowledge and science are pitted against each other (Evering, 2012). Traditional approaches to integration are also critiqued for ignoring the role of power relations and for prioritising certain kinds of knowledge over others, leading to knowledge products that serve science and the state over the interests of Indigenous communities. Attempting to ‘integrate’ both paradigms can create a management tension, as in practice each knowledge system operates in entirely different ways (Nursey-Bray & Arabana Corporation, 2015).

‘Integration’ also implies the adopting or incorporation of Indigenous knowledge into current jurisdictional and institutional arrangements – but they simply may not fit. This is partly due to the reality that Indigenous conceptions of knowledge, climate and adaptation cannot be compartmentalised into the various dimensions of ‘management’ aligned with common law that often occurs today.

The key to respecting different knowledge domains is accepting the holistic connections that designate cultural affiliation to, responsibilities for, and knowledge and use about an area of land and sea. A connection, that in many Indigenous contexts reflects an indivisibility between people and place: Indigenous peoples are themselves connected to it, are part of, and thus seamlessly connected to their regions. As such, the splitting and distinction between different parts of that region into ‘policy’ arenas, does not align with traditional modes of governance, nor knowledge keeping and dissemination in managing those lands and seas.

There is thus, no need to always ‘integrate’ but to seek ways in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples can build bridges between, and to, each other. We suggest that knowledge co-production is one useful response in this context. It is one that builds knowledge in ways that transgress disciplinary boundaries and includes multiple knowledge realms. It is jointly produced and agreed to, the result of partnerships between societal actors, such as scientists and Indigenous peoples. Co-produced knowledge at the knowledge interface challenges entrenched norms of knowledge, including the sciences and increases its legitimacy, relevance and usability (Jasanoff, 2004). Co-production of knowledge via a partnership between Ltyente Apurte Rangers and staff from the Central Land Council in Australia has resulted in the co-creation of climate change presentations in the local Arrernte language and also the identification of potential adaptation actions (Hill et al., 2020). Successful co-production approaches such as these, yield insights into how context affects outputs and outcomes, identify how drivers and barriers to success differ, and challenge the hegemony of particular ways of knowing.

However, ultimately, we suggest that the notion of co-existence is perhaps a better ‘fit’ and provides a way in which to conceive how multiple knowledge may work together: sharing space and place in just, sustainable and equitable ways (Coombes et al., 2013). Knowledge co-existence can build on these insights to provide a pathway by which different forms of knowledge can co-exist at the knowledge interface (Nursey-Bray & Arabana Aboriginal Corporation, 2015). As Howitt (2020) argues knowledge co-existence is a means of acknowledging colonial invasion and the enabling practices of mutual recognition, collaborative building of consent, and appreciation of cultural continuity. Indigenous scholar Whyte (2020) additionally notes that such relational qualities are crucial for cross-societal coordination: and builds responsibility and collective action (Whyte, 2014, 2017). Trust, strong standards of consent, and genuine expectations of reciprocity can, in concert, act to build conservation outcomes.

Processes of knowledge co-existence also provide the opportunity to create new inter-cultural arrangements that both acknowledge different knowledge systems while finding common ground (Rea & Messner, 2008, 86). As such, Indigenous interests and values about adaptation, can co-exist alongside, rather than being integrated within, other rights and interests. This approach implies a recognition that both parties are equal and that all knowledge systems are legitimate and valid. It is a process that does not focus on seeking ‘the’ answers but on how to trigger engagement between multiple knowledge systems, to create modes of co-existence in adaptation management that harnesses the essential dynamism within and between each system (Byg & Salick, 2009).

Indigenous peoples have been managing complex problems within their territories for much longer than western society and they still hold valuable knowledge for dealing with complex societal problems (Pert et al., 2015). Innovative governance changes will enable processes of co-production of adaptation systems that can bring together multiple parties to co-jointly adapt to climate change, build wellbeing, while recognising difference (Jordan et al., 2010). Allowing spaces for the development of what Artelle et al. (2019) refer to as the resurgence of Indigenous led governance in environmental management, enables innovative and socially just ways forward.

Agency and Survival

Ultimately, our case studies and collaborations have revealed, notwithstanding huge challenges, a compelling and positive story of Indigenous agency and survival. Agency is a challenging term and can be qualified in a range of ways: Ahearn (2001) provides a working definition of agency as: “the socio-culturally mediated capacity to act”. Agency can also be constructed as resistance to power (Frank, 2006), the “flexible wielding of means towards ends” (Kockelman, 2007); where power and knowledge intersect in dynamic ways. Agency is the mediating factor between them, and manifest as the push and pull between the individual and structure of the state. As such, agency might initially be understood as the relatively flexible wielding of means toward ends, and as such can also be seen as a form of resistance.

Of relevance to the Indigenous context, Dissanayake (1996, ix) states that agency is also about understanding the “historical and cultural conditions that facilitate the discursive production of agency, and on useful ways of framing the question of agency” and that doing so would enable better understanding of the “contours of the cultures that we study”. In this context, resistance is the product of the interplay between multiple subject-positions. Cairns (2009) builds on this idea, noting that structure/agency can be differentiated where one is about individual, collective and immediate action, while the other is systemic, anonymised and bureaucratic. As such, agency is conceptualised as the tension between the individual and the social, political and economic structures that can constrain those (Cairns, 2009). Indigenous political agency can be based on multiple forms of power, changeable over time, embody multiple sites of encounters and powers, and can be produced across and within multiple agencies (Tennberg, 2010).

Agency is also asserted through Indigenous innovation, where old ways really do provoke new days: via the transformation of traditional knowledge into future adaptations.

Ultimately, Indigenous groups situate current climate projections within a discourse around an age-old trajectory of change and adaptation; where livelihoods equalled survival and adaptations have been experienced for millennia. Hence, climate change, and twenty first century projections, are situated within a temporal continuum that reflects enduring survival to multiple climatic changes. Adaptation is not just adapting to climate change but ALL change and is embodied within Indigenous insistence on documenting all changes, not just climatic ones. Contemporary adaptation partnerships would benefit from the integrated perspective this insight brings.

A Last Reflection

Indigenous peoples across the world play a key role in global conservation and increasingly in addressing the impacts of climate change. Globally, 370 million people identify as Indigenous, and manage or have tenure rights over 38 million square kilometres (Garnett et al., 2018). This represents over a quarter of the world’s land surface and includes multiple protected and other environmentally significant areas (Garnett et al., 2018). Further, Indigenous peoples now also live in multiple cities and regions.

Overall, we find that despite the incredible hardships faced by Indigenous groups across the world there is a current and growing wealth of Indigenous led adaptation that reflects agency and will to survive in the midst of the climate crisis. However, adaptation is not simply a reply to the call to action on climate change, it also, in many cases, such as in Australia and the United States, represents a palimpsest of Indigenous voices that seek to deploy adaptation as a vehicle for the redressing of the hurt and destruction caused by colonisation, and today globalisation. Their collective knowledge and histories have provided a basis from which to develop culturally driven adaptation that will ensure their survival.

We have demonstrated that Western climate terminology can be used to entrench existing inequalities, and to prioritise Western knowledge over other knowledge, yet we also show how, in their rejection of these terms, and subsequent articulation of their own discourses about change, Indigenous peoples assert power and agency, as well as their capacity to survive and change. We do not present idealised ideas about what Indigeneity is, nor will all of the topics and issues raised in this book apply to all peoples, but we suggest that rather than pre-judging how and what Indigenous adaptation is, that we learn to listen, hear, observe and empower every Indigenous group to decide what it is for themselves.

We conclude that Indigenous adaptation is not just about developing a program that employs one or two Indigenous people. Nor is it about documenting their knowledge, or supporting them to develop a plan, that is then not supported in practice or implementation because it does not ‘fit’. Nor is it about responding to the friendly overtures of policy brokers who seek to work with Indigenous peoples to document – and then potentially appropriate – their knowledge for implementation into Western adaptation programs. It is about developing co-existence: the co-production of adaptation systems, ones that promote inter-sectoral and context specific coordination in ways that can enjoin many parties to co-jointly manage the impacts of and build adaptive solutions to climate change. It is about embracing all forms of knowledge not just the ones deemed culturally palatable by non-Indigenous voices.

Ultimately it is about creating spaces and places for Indigenous peoples at the decision-making tables, and about supporting Indigenous driven and crafted governance and policy responses. These spaces will enhance Indigenous wellbeing by ensuring equality while recognising cultural difference. Such a collaborative decision-making system would also need to recognise different Indigenous knowledge systems (pre-and postcolonial), in ways that encourage gender equity and facilitate hybrid economies to build community capacity and resilience. This is an area that is ripe for future research: the development of modes of co-existence that incorporate cultural differences, histories and that will facilitate the opening of spaces in policy regimes that support and advance Indigenous voices at all levels of decision making.

Indigenous people face enormous challenges in navigating climate change. They cannot do it alone, yet as the examples and case studies in this book have shown, they are not passive victims of global environmental change and are actively seeking to adapt or cope with the changing climatic conditions. Indigenous adaptation is both a process, enacted over many ages, and a practice, where in the here and now, old ways have been adapted to new ways, to build contemporary adaptation programs and new futures (Photo 7.2).

Photo 7.2
figure 2

Sturt Desert Pea, Arabana Country, Australia. (Credit: Melissa Nursey-Bray)

Full size image