Co-developing Indigenous seasonal calendars to support ‘healthy Country, healthy people’ outcomes

Abstract

In caring for Country, Indigenous Australians draw on laws, knowledge and customs that have been inherited from ancestors and ancestral beings, to ensure the continued health of lands and seas with which they have a traditional attachment or relationship. This is a reciprocal relationship, whereby land is understood to become wild/sick if not managed by its people, and in turn individuals and communities suffer without a maintained connection to Country. It is well understood by Indigenous people that if you ‘look after country, country will look after you’. Indigenous knowledge systems that underpin the local care (including use and management) of Country are both unique and complex. These knowledge systems have been built through strong observational, practice-based methods that continue to be enacted and tested, and have sustained consecutive generations by adapting continually, if incrementally, to the local context over time. This paper describes a research partnership that involved the sharing and teaching of Ngan’gi Aboriginal ecological knowledge in order to reveal and promote the complex attachment of Ngan’gi language speakers of the Daly River, Australia, to water places. This engagement further led to the incremental co-development of an Indigenous seasonal calendar of aquatic resource use. The seasonal calendar emerged as an effective tool for supporting healthy Country, healthy people outcomes. It did this by facilitating the communication of resource management knowledge and connection with water-dependent ecosystems both inter-generationally within the Ngan’gi language group, as well as externally to non-Indigenous government water resource managers. The Indigenous seasonal calendar form has subsequently emerged as a tool Indigenous language groups are independently engaging with to document and communicate their own knowledge and understanding of Country, to build recognition and respect for their knowledge, and to make it accessible to future generations.

Developing Visual Messages to Support Liquefied Petroleum Gas Use in Intervention Homes in the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) Trial in Rural Guatemala

“…Our current study goes beyond a description of the problem as done in these two studies; our calendar messages are used to promote behavior change, increasing adherence to the LPG stove intervention. We found one example of a seasonal calendar developed in Australia to promote aquatic resource management based on the ecological knowledge of Ngan'gi Aboriginal people (Woodward & Taggart, 2019). While the intent of the seasonal calendar was used differently than ours, both incorporated local knowledge of seasons, climate change, and natural resource management.…”

Seasonal Calendars Enhance Climate Communication in the Pacific

“…In some cases, it was unclear whether names provided for the months were local names for the Gregorian months or names for traditional ''months'' (e.g., Lefale 2003Lefale , 2010. The practice of relating traditional seasonal calendars back to the Gregorian one can make it easier for those with limited or no local indigenous knowledge to understand and engage with, but this can lead to the loss of finer details, such as variances in the timing of the start of seasons or months from year to year, due to changes environmental cues (Woodward 2010;Woodward and McTaggart 2019). Similarly, it is important to consider who the target audience is when deciding on the language (indigenous, English, or a mix of both) for the names of seasons, months, phenomena, and species depicted within the calendar (Goldman et al 2018;Latulippe and Klenk 2020).…”

“…Although some authors recognize some of the issues mentioned above (e.g., Taulaufale 2015), most authors who develop seasonal calendars do not discuss verification of the information collected, that is, they collect information during community visits but do not appear to take the final product back to the community to ensure that it is accurate and representative. An exception is Woodward (2010), who repeatedly checked and rechecked the indigenous Australian knowledge collected, including the meaning and spelling of words, and that these words were used in the correct context, as were their links with other words and seasons. In Woodward's case, the community decided what knowledge (and images) were to be included in the final calendar.…”

“…Fortunately, interest is growing among indigenous communities in revitalizing seasonal calendars, particularly as tools for building capacity to cope with climate change (Kassam et al 2018). Traditional knowledge can be sensitive in nature, and permission should always be sought from the knowledge holders before using the seasonal calendars and the information within them (Woodward 2010;Malsale et al 2018).…”

“…The women fieldworkers involved in the program have also documented the traditional calendar that is now one of the primary tools for teaching culture in schools (Huffer 2006), and the calendars developed under this project will also be used by the NMSs during school visits. Elsewhere, Woodward (2010) found aboriginal elders wanted seasonal calendars developed to enable the information to be accessible to younger generations, including as teaching aids, for example, posters, they could use in local schools, thus promoting intergenerational transfer of knowledge (Woodward and McTaggart 2019) as well as assisting in the revitalizing of traditional knowledge and language.…”