Samuel Curkpatrick

How can we live well with others? How can local connections to place and past generations strengthen our cultural, political and economic futures globally? Indigenous Knowledge: Global Perspectives brings together leading scholars from Australia and the Asia-Pacific to explore how Indigenous knowledge tackles common challenges in governance and research, environmental sustainability and cultural diversity. Contributors reveal how Indigenous knowledge, while distinct, can inform new collaborations that respect and build on local wisdom and initiative, sparking understandings of identity and place that are often overlooked in mainstream scholarship. This book ignites insightful conversations, opens new ways of understanding Indigenous knowledge, and honours the richness and resilience of global Indigenous traditions.

How are we to live well with others? How can we sustain abundant environments and nourishing cultures? How might connections to place and generations past strengthen our cultural, political and economic futures? Indigenous knowledge traditions have been fundamental to human life in Australia for countless generations. They carry understandings of ancestral histories, and exemplify beneficial behaviours for living well on country, managing environmental resources and maintaining social cohesion. Australia has developed collaborative approaches to Indigenous Knowledge research that are unique in the global context. These approaches centre the wisdom of Indigenous knowledge-holders across interdisciplinary fields of enquiry as diverse as medicine, health and wellbeing, social and economic development, environmental management, agriculture and horticulture, history, law and the creative arts. Indigenous Knowledge: Australian Perspectives reveals how Indigenous ways of being and knowing are intricately tied to place, expressed through beauty, and resound with wisdom. It argues that the world's contemporary challenges can be addressed, and socio-environmental diversity sustained, through conversations with both our ancestral pasts and the ancestral futures that we leave behind.

Manikay are the ancestral songs of Arnhem Land, passed down over generations and shaping relationships between people and the country. Singing Bones foregrounds the voices of manikay singers from Ngukurr in southeastern Arnhem Land and charts their critically acclaimed collaboration with jazz musicians from the Australian Art Orchestra, Crossing Roper Bar. It offers an overview of Wägilak manikay narratives and style, including their social, ceremonial and linguistic aspects, and explores the Crossing Roper Bar project as an example of creative intercultural collaboration and a living continuation of the manikay tradition." Through song, the ancestral past animates the present, moving yolÅu (people) to dance. In song, community is established. By song, the past enfolds the present. Today, the unique voices of Wägilak resound over the ancestral ground and water, carried by the songs of old." Audio examples are available at: https://open.sydneyuniversitypress.com.au/singing-bones.html.