The latest issue of the Australian Journal of Public Administration contains a gem of a research paper by Catherine Althaus on the exciting contribution that Indigenous evidence and knowledges can make to public administration in the fields of engagement, sustainability, and policy innovation.
Catherine Althaus is the Professorial ANZSOG Chair of Public Service Leadership and Reform at the Public Service Research Group at UNSW Canberra and ANZSOG Deputy Dean. She is a non-Indigenous academic woman who has been privileged by the great generosity and hospitality of Indigenous peoples from across Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. She has also observed with frustration the many barriers to the contribution of Indigenous knowledges in the scientific and policy-making realms.
Her paper — Different paradigms of evidence and knowledge: Recognising, honouring, and celebrating Indigenous ways of knowing and being — proposes that public administration can benefit from these Indigenous ways of knowing and being.
Catherine starts by tracing some of the contemporary reasoning in favour of such acknowledgement and prioritisation. She then turns to practical examples to demonstrate how the field of public administration and the practice of policymaking will benefit (including a discussion on the potential barriers to uptake). And she closes with a call for dedicated and respectful work by the discipline and practitioner communities.
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