Our Sisterlabs

We support the ongoing funding and research of IKSLab (Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab) in the NIKERI Institute at Deakin University. The IKSLab has partnered with AIME and the Kearney Group to research and design solutions to many complex problems, including online disinformation and radicalization, trust/scalability issues in regenerative finance, and network saturation in sustainability initiatives. We also support the creation of similar IKS ‘sisterlabs’ around the world, including startup costs and travel for Ceremony and kin-making between the labs. The sisterlabs collaborate in systems knowledge production, with practical and academic projects to design and share innovations in various media and publications.

Anishnaabe Sisterlab

Based at Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig Indigenous University, this Canadian lab has collaborated with the Australian IKSLab to produce protocol handbooks to guide sustainability organisations and philanthropists in projects involving the use of Indigenous knowledge.

Kinray Sisterlab

Based in the Amazon Andes, this relationship with Kara/Kichwa scholars and knowledge keepers has involved travel, ritual and exchange during Indigenous gatherings in Australia and on Turtle Island. This ongoing collaboration has produced deep knowledge, enriching research and projects across the labs, including co-authored papers on hybrid/kriol methodologies, Indigenous borderwork and interdependent governance models. More Kinray knowledge has been shared through podcasts, and a book chapter on Serpent Lore and ritual embassy.

Marine Matriarchs Sisterlab

Indigenous scholars Chels Marshall and Jodi Edwards have formed a mobile lab that moves along Australia’s coast, following the migration routes of whales. Their research and traditional practice has formed a large collective of Indigenous women who are reviving and sharing Indigenous knowledge that is vital for preventing the looming destruction of saltwater systems worldwide. The Marine Mothers and Matriarchs revive and maintain women’s traditional practices, knowledge, and cultural connections to Sea Country, restoring their authority in marine governance and management. They revitalise sustainable practice in production of marine food, textiles, medicine, adornment and vessels. Astonishingly, they are also reviving the ancient practice of cooperative fishing with non-human partners like dolphins and orcas. They are producing Indigenous seasonal calendars to guide the management and protection of fisheries and coastal ecologies, and working with sisters in Africa, Asia and Oceania to extend their models and methods globally.

Obuntu Sisterlab

We are supporting Abdul Semakula’s ‘Impala in Kampala’ project with seed funding and ongoing design collaboration. This lab’s research and practice applies traditional Obuntu principles to the restoration of wetlands and collective land ownership systems, creating alternative real estate models that allow the emergence of a commons economy in districts of Kampala in Uganda. 13 districts have joined the project, creating governance structures based on the traditional clan system with local government support. The aim is to design communities and housing embedded in an ecology emerging from wetland restoration, with people living alongside key indicator species restored to the environment, such as monkeys, papyrus and impala.

Our Embassy Relations

Traditional Lore, Law and Ceremony have always grounded protocols of exchange between Indigenous Peoples, near and far. Novel human and non-human symbioses emerge in totemic webs of entanglement, a profound relatedness embedded in sacred landscapes and lines of travel, migration and flow. This enables the feats of collective intellect required for humans to exist in our biocultural niche as the custodial species of the Earth.

Borders are not defensive barriers, but dynamic sites of kin-making, trade and Ceremonies of increase. Negotiating proper flows of culture, migration, elements and species in seasonal and novel movements creates economies and ecologies of regenerative increase.

Feral Embassy

This is a gathering of diverse Lore-keepers: Aboriginal, Maori, Gaelic and Scandinavian. We communicate daily and have regular gatherings on Djadjawurrung Country with Elders and traditional craftspeople from across the Kulin Nations of Victoria and all over Australia. We carve cultural objects from stone, wood and bone, and share Lore about our non-human totemic relations. These include feral plants and animals from Europe, so our Gaelic and Scandinavian colleagues share songs, stories and traditional ecological knowledge about these species. We use this knowledge and our ritual embassy practices to find ways of changing the behaviour and impact of these invasive ‘pests’, which resist eradication programs, and we figure out how we can bring them into balance with native species in our changing environment. Fox, gorse, blackthorn, hazel radiata pine, psilocybin funghi and privet are some of the species we have worked with. We write papers and film footage for documentaries about the project. We have also funded an Aboriginal artist to travel to Ireland as part of this Embassy, so he can create an exhibition to showcase the dynamic relationship between Celtic and Aboriginal Peoples.

Gum Tree Embassy

This is similar to the Feral Embassy, but for non-native species that have already been accepted and incorporated in Indigenous Lore in that place. This is an ongoing exchange between Indigenous Australian and Ecuadorian people. Eucalypts in the Amazon have become part of traditional medicine and the bark is used to make sacred objects for Ceremony. Cane toads from Ecuador and the surrounding region have song and story in Australia from Murris in Southern Queensland, who we indentured sugarcane cutters when the toads were first introduced from South America. We have written an article together, and traded songs, stories, gifts and knowledge to establish this ritual connection, as we gather resources to follow our displaced plant and animal kin to each other’s lands, and bring our Elders together in Ceremony. We are developing an Indigenised theory of borderwork that we believe will help in establishing more productive protocols of communication across political, cultural, gender and class divides.

Ring of Fire

The Marine Matriarch’s sisterlab is establishing a vast women’s collective through embassy with Indigenous ocean stewards across Australia, Aotearoa, Pacific Islands, and coastal Asia including Hawaii, all sharing an understanding that the ocean, volcanism, and seismic life forces of the region’s Ring of Fire demand a matriarchal approach to resilience. Women’s ecological knowledge holds solutions for climate adaptation, food security, and sustainable marine practices.

This embassy will focus on re-activating women’s practices such as cooperative fishing with dolphins whales, deep-sea free diving, seaweed weaving and medicine, canoe and surfboard making, and kinship rituals with whales, turtles, and sharks. An intergenerational network of diverse Indigenous women will apply their interoperable systems of traditional knowledge to inform sustainable innovation across global infrastructures of trade, legislation, defence, transport energy and food production that are currently mismatched with living saltwater systems.

Bunya Bunyas Embassy

The Bunya Mountains in South East Queensland are the centre of our gathering Ceremony protocols and wanjau (collective sense making), as a sacred site of huge multi-tribal gatherings from across the continent for millennia. With traditional owners from the region we work with Gunya Meta to design innovative structures of collective governance in large urban communities, for bottom-up self-determination in education, health and childhood initiatives. In affiliation with Griffith University and Cynefin, we use large-scale narrative data collection technology (sensemaker app) and a network of CROs (Community Research Officers) for grassroots innovation and planning. This has resulted in the formation of a community owned and led Aboriginal school, along with a raft of mutual support programs.