Indigenous Knowledge in Resource Governance and Decision-Making

Despite historical, political and socio-cultural differences, Indigenous peoples share experiences of how their knowledge is being understood and assessed in land and resources conflicts. Impact assessments and technocratic approval processes often subvert and render unseen local and Indigenous ways of being. Analyzing cases from Sápmi (Norwegian and Swedish sides) and Australia in this thematic series, a main research insight is that in cases of disputed knowledge, Indigenous peoples must call attention to and demand that their perspectives and knowledge are included in planning and decision-making. Another common aspect shared by Indigenous peoples in different contexts is the authorities’ failure to consider the cumulative repurcussions in conflict cases, whether related to impact assessments or decision-making.

This thematic series includes articles based on the outcomes of the research project Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Planning and Environmental Decision Making: The Role of Community-Based Impact Assessments (IndKnow), funded by the Research Council of Norway, and one article based on an independent, but thematically closely related study of how Indigenous knowledge forms the basis for understanding adaptation in reindeer herders’ decision-making regarding supplementary feeding in Northern Sweden. The emphasis of the IndKnow project was on how Indigenous knowledge systems can be included in planning processes and impact assessments, with the objective of examining the role of Indigenous knowledge (IK) systems in land and marine-based planning processes, environmental decision-making, and other decision-making processes impacting Indigenous peoples’ livelihoods. One main point concerned comparison and learning across and between Indigenous geographies and contexts, both near (as, for example, between the Norwegian and Swedish sides of Sápmi) and far (between Australia and Sápmi).

In the first article, Kennedy et al. present the Moolawang Ngayagang Yanba program delivered in place, on the shores of Lake Illawarra, New South Wales, Australia. They show how government employees, planners, scientists, environmentalists, and community members already involved with the lake engaged in this Aboriginal-based knowledge program. The aim was to introduce to participants a relational and generative way of knowing: an ethos that has the potential to inform future decision-making in relation to the lake. An important insight from this case study is the need for Indigenous designed and implemented programs to educate decision-makers about Indigenous knowledge. The second article, by Horstkotte et al., explores how Sámi reindeer herders in Northern Sweden navigate the complexity of decision-making on adaptation, specifically, decisions regarding supplementary feeding when winter grazing resources are inaccessible. The third article, by Broderstad and Gross, presents a single case study of the permit process of the Nasa mountain – Násávárre – mining case in Nordland County, Norway. The analysis focuses on the extent to which the reindeer herders have been enabled to engage with the mining company Elkem, with a particular emphasis on the reindeer herders’ experience of how their knowledges have been assessed by the company. In the fourth article, Löf et al. interrogate the guiding presupposition that conflict can be planned away through a case study on the Reindeer Husbandry Plan. Drawing on critical policy analysis and environmental justice frameworks, they analyze the problematizations, silences, and effects emerging from the tool’s use in forestry planning and land-use decisions. Additional articles in this series are forthcoming.  

- guest editors: Lena Gross (NIKU–Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research and UiT The Arctic University of Norway) and Else Grete Broderstad (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)

(Photo: Reindeer, Nasafjell. © Lena Gross)