Indigenous knowledge is a dynamic concept that encompasses a large variety of contexts and practices across Asia. While the concept developed amid global efforts to safeguard global biological and cultural diversity, it resists singular definition, especially within Asia’s complex tapestry of political histories, cultures, beliefs and ways of life. Further, efforts to strengthen Indigenous knowledge through community initiatives or research partnerships are concerned with more than scientific data or cultural content and are expressions of living political and social identities, particularly where indigeneity is contested or officially unrecognised.
Contexts and practices of Indigenous knowledge are essentially unique to the local relations and traditions within which they emerge. Yet while recognising this diversity, the term variety is somewhat problematic. Imagine a box of chocolates marketed with the label Varieties. Every chocolate has a different filling, identified by shape and pattern. Like a box of chocolates, Indigenous knowledge is sometimes treated merely as a collection of delightful varieties, attractively presented for sampling.
For those seeking better to understand Indigenous knowledge, appreciating variety is a necessary start: Indigenous knowledge often stands out as an alternative to mainstream ideas and practices. But appreciation needs to go further if it is to become sustained engagement. Similarly, many Indigenous communities aspire to a fuller enjoyment of epistemic inheritances, in the sense of freedom to exercise responsibility and participation in those inheritances—beyond measures of recognition afforded those traditions as cultural heritage.
Across Asia, Indigenous knowledge is appreciated in familiar settings. At the opening of a public building in a provincial town, for example, visiting dignitaries are welcomed by traditional musicians and dancers, paid to bring vibrancy and colour to the event. Or in a report on geothermal development, a small text box observes several ancestral stories and sacred sites that are associated with volcanic activity. In both cases, engagement with Indigenous knowledge may not extend further than cursory acknowledgement. In the welcoming dance, hospitality is displayed while associated practices of governance and diplomacy remain unrecognised. In the development report, ancestral beliefs are acknowledged only to be set aside when decisions about land use and economic futures are made elsewhere.
Practices and relationships of Indigenous knowledge are extraordinarily sophisticated and varied. Governments, organisations and educational institutions frequently invoke its importance in addressing challenges facing humanity, from cultural and linguistic diversity to environmental sustainability. Yet while widely appreciated in various forms, a fuller enjoyment of Indigenous knowledge is constrained by the conceptual frames through which it is approached.
Two such framings recur with particular force. The first is the bureaucratic imagination, which defines Indigenous experience through administrative categories such as custom, heritage and art. The second is the technocratic desire to instrumentalise Indigenous knowledge within policy agendas, as a resource for development, sustainability or innovation. Both approaches appreciate diversity, but only within a managed frame, reducing living practices to symbolic recognition or technical input, while leaving authority over purpose and outcomes elsewhere.
This edition of Melbourne Asia Review invites readers to move beyond an appreciation of Indigenous knowledge as cultural variety or instrumental information, toward ways of thinking that are capacious enough to let it act as a source of ethical, social and economic formation. This requires a conceptual broadening beyond appreciation to perceive Indigenous knowledge as generative source of agency, practical wisdom, memory and imagination within and beyond Indigenous communities in Asia.
The articles in this edition show how this shift toward enjoyment might come about in diverse and concrete ways. Several contributors focus on cultural issues, such as the way Indigenous musicians in Taiwan (Yuh-Fen Tseng) and the Naga Homelands (Christian Poske) utilise music not only to give voice to political aspirations but to constitute innovative identities, through the development of new musical instruments, styles and approaches to collaboration. Others writing from Laos (Tara Gujadhur) and Japan (Mayumi Okada) explore how intellectual property rights in design, arts and crafts offer much needed protections while also supporting the development of economic activity via tourism and enterprise. Museums and archives are recast as sites of Indigenous diplomacy and cultural revitalisation rather than repositories of prehistory (Sophie McIntyre et al).
The nexus between ecological knowledge, food security and local economies is another important theme. Local patterns of land use and ownership are related to innovation and resilience in smallholder farming (Eric D. U. Gutierrez et al) and the sustainable development of renewable energy sources (Justin Wejak et al).
Given the immense diversity of people and places across Asia, contributors also consider the potential for Indigenous-to-Indigenous partnerships to reshape academic discourse (Aaron Corn et al) and build new capacities through exchange across national and institutional borders (James Pilbrow et al). In a similar way, Indigenous knowledge holds potential for addressing challenges of religious pluralism by fostering a shared relational ethos across traditions and communities (Samuel Curkpatrick et al). Through these and other contributions, this edition foregrounds the importance of values to the future of Indigenous communities, which are shaped by stories that not only recount historical struggles but build capacity within younger generations via literature and publishing in Taiwan (interview with Paelabang Danapan in Chinese and English) and contemporary retelling of traditional stories in Malaysia (Clare Suet Ching Chan).
These varied contexts demand a wider conceptualisation of Indigenous knowledge. Enjoyment marks this shift beyond recognition toward practices that enable Indigenous peoples to exercise authority over their inheritances. This is not a matter of preserving knowledge for its aesthetic or instrumental value, but of sustaining it as a living force through which political, cultural and economic relations are reshaped.
Main image: A group of women in traditional dress in Nagaland. Credit: Photo by MOHAMED ABDUL RASHEED on Unsplash.
