Moving beyond ontological (worldview) supremacy: Indigenous insights and a recovery guide for settler-colonial scientists

Today, biological scientists often assume an ‘objectivist’ and universal knowledge stemming from early Western science philosophy (Stewart, 2001). The UK Science Council defines science as ‘the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence’ (The Science Council, 2009). But ‘the scientific method’ is not captured by a single, simple pattern. Pursuing the ‘myth of scientific objectivity’ (Bauer, 1992; Halpin, 1989; Leonelli, 2015; Mitroff, 1972; Woodcock, 2014), scientists working on natural systems often engage with the natural world as an ‘object’ (Halpin, 1989), contrasting with relational ethics and Indigenous ways of being and knowing (Box 1; Althaus, 2020).

Although the pursuit of objectivity is a powerful tool, it can lead scientists and science learners to mistakenly deem other forms of science as ‘unscientific’. When scientists pigeon-hole their views on how knowledge can be created, they constrain and erase opportunities for more holistic science, including collaborations between Western and Indigenous scientists [e.g. understanding the biophysics of rivers as living entities in Aotearoa (Brierley et al., 2022) or investigating the genetic–linguistic links between grizzly bears and Indigenous communities (Henson et al., 2021)]. Part of the issue with the corporate model of contemporary research and teaching institutions is the tendency to commodify, co-opt, market and assimilate Indigenous knowledges for consumers trained to look at scientific knowledge and data through a settler-colonial (see Glossary) lens.

Academic knowledge systems (see Glossary) preserve a power imbalance with Indigenous ways of knowing and being, often by omitting, misinterpreting, extracting from and devaluing Indigenous knowledges while creating singular narratives of ‘truth’ and ‘discovery’ (Brown and Strega, 2005; Liboiron, 2021a; O'Brien, 1993; Shiva, 2016). Indigenous peoples are inherently sovereign peoples (Goenpul scholar Moreton-Robinson, 2003; Moreton-Robinson, 2015; UN General Assembly, 2007), which can raise anxieties and discomfort for settlers who must reconcile their own ontology (see Glossary) and diasporic relationship with the lands they live and work on (Carroll et al., 2020; McCredden, 2020). As visitors (trespassers?) on Indigenous lands, settlers are subject to Indigenous laws, even though these are usually not recognised by the colonising powers (Birch, 2007; Lloyd and Wolfe, 2015; Moreton-Robinson, 2007, 2015; Shrinkhal, 2021).

We, as Indigenous peoples, connect through our deep cultural responsibilities and ethics as custodians of the worlds that hold us (Graham, 1999; Suchet-Pearson et al., 2013; Kimmerer, 2013; Wilson, 2016). Contemporary institutional science must learn to respect the pluriversal, context-specific and often sacred nature of Indigenous knowledges to help shape the grounded narratives of truth and knowledge we develop as scientists. As a small collective of early career Indigenous environmental scholars, our relationships reach across oceans to Australia, the United States and Aotearoa New Zealand. We find solidarity and support in one another's experiences, and our collective lived experience provides insights which, in this Perspective, we offer to the wider scientific community. The settler-colonial institutional science systems founded on universalist ‘enlightenment thinking’ places blinders on science learners, reinforcing an ‘ontological supremacy’ (Fig. 1). It is in all our interests to combat this illusion and move forward toward a paradigm where Indigenous sciences are truly respected.

Though our local contexts vary, we share parallel experiences in the current shift within the scientific community to engage more Indigenous peoples, and we attempt to highlight some issues here. We provide suggestions for change and offer a non-exhaustive list of guiding advice and questions for the scientific community (Table 1). However, we cannot realistically hope to provide all the solutions: we encourage settler-scholars to share in the workload, which is disproportionately shouldered by Indigenous peoples. We need to move past tokenistic gestures to build genuine and equitable partnerships with Indigenous knowledge holders and institutions, instead of assimilating them into settler-colonial constructs that commodify, misappropriate and distort them.

In the push to engage more Indigenous peoples, little attention is paid to engaging minds and ‘bodies of culture’ (Menakem, 2017); there is a failure to engage with Indigenous sciences as legitimate ways of knowing. The pursuit of ‘objective’ science often leads biologists to ignore the social and political context of their projects. All scholars can exercise integrity through engaging with their own positionality (see Glossary) in their research, which underpins their epistemological assumptions (Holmes, 2020; Jafar, 2018). Considering the myth of scientific objectivity (Bauer, 1992; Halpin, 1989; Leonelli, 2015; Mitroff, 1972; Woodcock, 2014), understanding how your ways of being and doing inherently influence the questions you ask and the way you do science can shed light on how your research could be at odds with Indigenous peoples and communities.

Science endeavours engaging Indigenous peoples often prioritise knowledge extraction and assimilation (Potawatomi scholar Whyte, 2018), i.e. ‘what can (Western) science gain from Indigenous knowledge’. For example, in climate research, most studies show outside researchers extracting from Indigenous knowledge systems with minimal participation or decision-making authority from communities that hold the knowledge (David-Chavez and Gavin, 2018). More examples include the exploitation of Havasupai peoples’ biological material (Santos, 2008), or exploitative research against Lumbee peoples (Lumbee scholar Emanuel and Bird, 2022). These extractionist approaches fail to recognise the validity of Indigenous science on its own terms, and the rights and responsibilities of Indigenous peoples and our kin. Amidst the extractive discourse among our colleagues, we find ourselves repeatedly providing counter-narratives to disrupt this hindering and harmful trajectory. For example, we find the need to explain that field-based experiments should include the free, prior and informed consent of local sovereign peoples and communities. We interpret these issues as deriving from institutional sciences born from capitalist, neo-liberal, settler-colonial, racist and patriarchal societies, where engagement with knowledge historically prioritised extraction, profit, power and gain. The solutions to many of these tensions are not straightforward. We all inherit these institutions, and we ask that settler-scholars commit to working with Indigenous scientists to minimise these issues.

Scientific institutions reflect settler-colonial design, with knowledge traditions built upon the dispossession, genocide and erasure of our ancestors (Patel, 2021; Smith et al., 2021); therefore, we see the disruption of these spaces by Indigenous peoples as inevitable and necessary. For the sake of our shared futures, we invite settler-scholars to interrogate how their short-term benefit from current neo-colonial (see Glossary) systems occurs at the expense of Indigenous and other marginalised peoples and our shared healthy futures. Settler-scholars should realise they work on occupied lands and move past land acknowledgements, instead asking what is required of them should they want to become ‘proper guests’ (Stewart-Ambo and Yang, 2021).

The academy (i.e. academic institutions and related communities of scholarship) often functions as an ‘elite club’, accessible to a select, privileged group of individuals rewarded for their personal prestige more so than interpersonal/kinship relationships. We experience this in our annual performance reviews, where our outputs are measured by prestige and publications rather than our relationships and positive broader impacts. This misaligns with Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing, often privileging one set of Indigenous scholars over others who may not fit the standards of ‘excellence’ espoused and enforced by Western research institutions. Indigenous knowledge systems have their own contexts, institutions and scholars worthy of honouring and supporting. A vast imbalance persists in how much money goes towards academics, whereas community knowledge holders are consulted, exploited and tokenised with scarce reciprocity (Tachera, 2021). Institutions and researchers should communicate with local Indigenous communities for guidance towards where their support should go (AIATSIS, 2020). We, as Indigenous peoples, have responsibilities to our communities and kin to uphold. In many of our laws, philosophies and customary governance systems, human ethics are tightly interrelated with animal, plant, land, water and other kin ethics; ethics committees and the academy more broadly fail to accommodate these responsibilities (Wong et al., 2020). Prioritising community collaborations, relationships and trust as indicators of researcher success, as well as working with and empowering Indigenous communities to make sure they are upholding community expectations, can increase ethical science among scholars (AIATSIS, 2020). New context-specific models of ethical engagement in scientific research are emerging, such as Ikaarvik and the SciQ concept led by Inuit youth in the Arctic (Nowosad and Beattie, 2023).

Balancing our science institutions would require a dramatic rethink of institutional values and governance, disrupting hierarchies and instilling ‘power with’ instead of ‘power over’ relationships between scientists and their subjects. This could look as simple as embedding ethics in project protocols (AIATSIS, 2020) with equitable leadership of Indigenous peoples; encouraging interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research projects and considering the impact they have on the wider community; and challenging the extractive nature of scientific ‘discovery’ on stolen lands (i.e. ‘Columbusing’ knowledges, David-Chavez, 2020; or ‘firsting in research’, Liboiron, 2021b).

The nuances of being an Indigenous educator working within and disrupting the dominant settler-colonial science mode presents a great strategic challenge for our ‘cultural safety’. Being asked to represent institutions to our communities, and vice versa, creates tricky pathways and personal risks (Tachera, 2021). The academy is often incompatible with local Indigenous cultures and politics. For example, we may be expected to comment on matters outside of our cultural authority, particularly when working outside of our ancestral homelands. We have experienced being taken to sacred and taboo sites without local permission. Many biologists work in field sites without permission from local Indigenous peoples in violation of Indigenous laws, and we are often expected to be complicit in these violations. Furthermore, scientists too often treat our more-than-human kin as if they were objects, on a purely rational basis (Halpin, 1989). Would you do the same kinds of experiments if the ‘object’ were your family member? These are Indigenous realities, and the socio-political landscape on which biological scientists often unknowingly tread when undertaking experiments on stolen lands.

Additionally, we inherit culturally insensitive language, research protocols/practices and course activities/materials that we must remedy in fulfilling our job duties. We have witnessed numerous courses where origin stories of scientific fields erase Indigenous presence and contributions. Naturally, we make the appropriate corrections, filling data gaps and addressing the bias of these datasets – often involving heavy course revision/preparation. Concurrently, we are expected to remove our perspectives from the course so that it is transferable to settler-scholars and educators. We feel major tensions in the growing push to bring Indigenous academics into universities. Why would we bring more Indigenous peoples into the academy before changing the space to ensure their safety from systemic harms (Walters et al., 2019)? Should this change not be the first priority? Equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI/DEI) committees are not enough to solve these deeper-rooted tensions.

Forced into roles as ‘harmonisers’, ‘facilitators’ and ‘translators’ to accommodate the need to bring people with us to effectively disrupt colonial norms, Indigenous scholars can experience ‘translation exhaustion’ (https://twitter.com/Indigenia/status/1087762882983538689). There is a need for spaces in which to unpack our experiences and recharge from niceness and ‘respectability politics’ (see Glossary). Navigating these issues increases our workload, leading to a kind of racial battle fatigue from ‘cultural taxation’ (Padilla, 1994). We are asked to heal histories, lead service efforts, become overnight experts in EDI, justify whole bodies and theories of knowledge in addition to our scientific fields of scholarship. We must justify our position at every turn and uphold cultural responsibilities, while dominant settler-colonial science practices are disproportionately privileged and affirmed by the institutions. We feel that these issues push for our removal from academic spaces. Yet our roots reach deeply beneath and beyond these institutions, to sources of life and value in community and Country (see Glossary).

We call on scientists to question their hidden assumptions about scientific knowledge and challenge power relationships between their institutions and Indigenous peoples and worldviews. Despite the tensions discussed above, many Indigenous people remain in academia to create a future where we can exist and flourish within the sciences. Our persistence benefits the entire academic community who share like-minded interests in understanding and protecting the planet.

Many scientists working on natural systems do so from a place of love for and connection with the natural world, yet can unknowingly inherit from colonial science ways of working which are harmful to Indigenous peoples. Scientists must ask: how does engaging with the natural world solely as an object hinder our understanding and engagement with relational ethics and Indigenous ways of being and knowing? Scientists can benefit from building a better appreciation of the cultural significance of their study systems and field sites, and challenging assumed knowledge superiority over Indigenous knowledges. Scientists on stolen lands should ask how they can support Indigenous peoples in upholding their cultural responsibilities, and whether their methodologies violate these responsibilities. The scientific community must honour Indigenous rights, including free, prior and informed consent, mutually agreed terms, and access to benefits in engagement with relevant Indigenous communities (Adams et al., 2014; UN General Assembly, 2007).

Indigenous scholarship is reclaiming Indigenous spaces in the engines of knowledge production. As Kishebakabaykwe scholar McGuire (2010) highlights: ‘We can then fill it with words that reflect who we are and what our dreams and aspirations are… We, as scholars, do this work so that the next generation of scholars will have Indigenous spaces to build on’. There is much work to do in the biological sciences towards this goal. Settler-scholars must learn to engage with Indigenous knowledges on our terms, as legitimate and worthy ways of knowing. As Watego (Mununjali, South Sea Islander; 2021) writes: ‘We simply don't need more texts that teach whitefullas about us on their terms’. This will require many settler-scholars to approach Indigenous knowledges in ways that ask for greater acceptance of diverse values and beliefs about the nature of realities. It also requires supporting Indigenous scientists, so we can maintain our connection, education and solidarity with each other, and apply Indigenous frameworks and knowledges, while navigating the unique tensions inherent in these roles (Reano, 2020; Masta, 2018; David-Chavez, 2020; Hernandez, 2022; Cajete, 1994). We call for integrity, bravery and commitment from scientists, institutions and publishing bodies to help us in realising a shared vision for a future where Indigenous peoples can thrive as leaders and respected contributors in science.

We acknowledge the Indigenous knowledge lineages we are situated within, and in disruption of scholastic norms pay respects to these lineages through the ordering of our authors from oldest to youngest lineages. We acknowledge all Indigenous practitioners of our many and varied knowledge traditions today and since time immemorial as well as lands and lifeways who hold them: the artists, philosophers, original scientists, those within Western research and teaching institutions and those who maintain our traditional knowledge institutions. We acknowledge our connectors who keep us working together across our approaches, skills and modes of practice. Engaging with all parts of our knowledge traditions deepens our understanding of the world and our place within it. We also give deep thanks to the editors and reviewers who handled this paper for their generosity and insights, even where viewpoints differed. We appreciated the effort to include Indigenous reviewers and view the journal's courage to critically engage in these discussions as a positive commitment toward supporting Indigenous scholars.