Indigenous Knowledge & Relational Ontology

Explores Kanyini, Tjukurrpa, Indigenous knowledge systems, relational epistemology, and relational ontology as foundations for understanding reality, relationship, knowledge, and responsibility.

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Indigenous Knowledge & Relational Ontology

Exploring relationships with Country, community, culture, kinship, and the living world.

What does it mean to belong?

Research Questions

  • What does it mean to belong?
  • How do humans participate in relationships with Country, community, culture, and the living world?
  • How does belonging influence identity, wellbeing, and human flourishing?
  • How do Indigenous knowledge systems deepen our understanding of relationship and responsibility?
  • How do dialogue, reciprocity, and care transform communities?
  • What conditions allow belonging to emerge, persist, or fracture?
  • Can belonging become a foundation for ecological and social renewal?

Current Research

Country and identity
Migration and belonging
Dialogue and relationality
Community wellbeing
Loneliness and social connection

project 1

Living Participation: David Bohm, Kanyini, and the Recovery of Human–World Relations

Brings Bohm’s concept of participation into dialogue with Kanyini to explore the restoration of human–world relationships.

project 2

Ubuntu and Kanyini: Toward a Relational Ontology of Belonging

Brings African and Australian Indigenous traditions into dialogue around belonging, relationship, responsibility, and care.

project 3

Kanyini, Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ, and Indigenous Ontologies of Belonging Across Continents

Compares Australian and North American Indigenous philosophies of kinship, relationship, care, and responsibility.

project 4

Living Continuity: Anangu and Māori Thought on What Comes Before, Through, and Beyond Us

Explores how Anangu and Māori relational traditions sustain continuity across generations, places, relationships, and forms of life.

project 5

Resonant Knowledge vs Linear Knowledge

Contrasts relational and participatory ways of knowing with linear models of knowledge and information.

project 6

Knowledge That Walks

Explores knowledge as a lived and embodied practice sustained through participation, relationship, and responsibility.

project 7

Holding Without Holding

Investigates Indigenous approaches to custodianship grounded in care, responsibility, relationship, and non-possession.

project 8

When Science Overreaches

Examines the limits of scientific reductionism and the possibilities created through dialogue with other knowledge traditions.

project 9

Relational Ontology as Structural Recurrence

Develops a relational ontology connecting recurrent structures across science, philosophy, Indigenous knowledge, and spirituality.