Submitted Project

Painting by Payi “Cables - Technology and Engineering”, April 2022.

The artist is Payi Linda Ford a Rak Mak Mak Marranunggu woman. Payi Linda Ford’s Country is Kurrindju southwest of Darwin on the Finniss and Reynold’s Rivers, Northern Territory, in Australia. My painting title: “Cables -Technology and Engineering”.

Aboriginal Housing

There is a large body of technical reports on town planning and architectural design of Indigenous houses. These suggest guidelines for successful designs in remote areas.

Thuwarri Thaa (Wilgie Mia): Ancient Aboriginal Mining Technology in Cultural Context

Thuwarri Thaa is an enormous, awe-inspiring underground Aboriginal ochre mine that was nationally heritage listed in 2011 in recognition of its high cultural significance and for the unique evidence it preserves of ancient Aboriginal mining...

The Duality of Metric Concepts of Contemporary Indigenous Australian Lifeways: Kinship Categories and Numbers

The metric system of measuring - metres and kilometres; litres as cubic decimetres; grams and tons. We learn and teach the series of names with their precise relations in primary school classrooms.

The Aboriginal Technical Worker (ATWORK) in the 21st Century: A critical reflection on decolonising technical curriculum to privilege community technological empowerment

In 1989 the Australian Conference of TAFE Directors approved funding for the Centre for Appropriate Technology in Alice Springs as a place to research and develop a new response to the rise of housing and health hardware maintenance needs...

Fire Management and Information Technology

NAILSMA has been working for more than a decade to ensure that people recognise the value of Indigenous knowledge and properly respect it and the people who own it.

Sustainable processes in engineering

Sustainability is a difficult concept to convey to students in western approaches to engineering, so we are proposing a First Peoples’ approach, situated in deep learning from across time and place...

CfAT and the EMU

The Centre for Appropriate Technology, the Bushlight program and the technology indigenous people appropriated for energy equity in remote community owned solar power.

Reflections on Western Archaeology Training from a First Nation’s Perspective: Whose Knowledge and Whose Methods?

Some driving forces of our research into First Nations engineering is for creating a space that is relevant and supportive to Indigenous students who may wish to join the profession and educating our professional engineers to work with Indigenous...

Simulation: Dropping the ego

Simulation procedure to assist students to understand the need to drop their ego in community liaison, but also retain their technical ability to judge.

Appropriate Technology

This chapter is focused at the academic and practical aspects of developing technology that is appropriate to context, in the environment of remote, rural, and urban Aboriginal Australian communities.

Software Process of Participatory Action Research

This chapter describes four co-design software project areas worked on with Aboriginal Australian communities which occurred over many years.

Cultural Knowledge Management: for creating Community Benefit and Strengthening Cultural Identity

This chapter is written by Ngemba Elders and contains First Nations Cultural Knowledge, which has been passed down through generations.

Learning about Nanotechnology and spinifex grass

The authors of the work summarised here are members of a transdisciplinary research team who evaluated the use of spinifex grass through traditional Aboriginal knowledge...

The Original Water Industry

Water is fundamental to life, and fundamental to society, it has a certain nebulosity that is unrivalled which, combined with its inherent flexibility...

First Peoples’ methods of communication and knowledge sharing in Australia

This chapter is about ways of communicating knowledge to users of our technology designs, in a way that utilises the knowledge sharing skills of Aboriginal people in Australia.

Blue Wrens take Flight in Engineering Education

Teaching engineering students how to work with Aboriginal Peoples and to consider Aboriginal ways of ‘Knowing and Being’ is more than just a one-off history and cultural awareness lecture.

Materiality and design in Aboriginal engineering

A vast of array of engineered structures were designed and employed by Aboriginal First Nations societies in pre-colonisation times.

Community in Academia: Framework for teaching engineering from Gunditjmara

Faculties and schools at the University continue to increase the Indigenous content in the curriculum. Each faculty and school as now produced a Divisional Indigenous Development Plan that collectively commit the University to further increasing ...

Visions of a Bushman: The Community led participatory Design of an Olkola Cultural Knowledge Centre as a Research Through Design Project

This chapter outlines the foundational principles of a collaborative design partnership between the Olkola Aboriginal Corporation, The Centre for Appropriate Technology, the University of Melbourne and Monash University...

First Nations project contexts in first-year engineering: extending the EWB Challenge in two Universities

Many universities across Australia teach the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Challenge as part of their first-year engineering curriculum, introducing engineering design and professional practice.

Creating authentic, reflexive, and enduring ways to embed Indigenous perspectives into a first-year engineering course

This project aimed to authentically embed Indigenous perspectives into a core first-year engineering design course within the design process.

Indigenous Automation in the Brewarrina fish and Budj Bim eel systems: Cultural Responsivity in Cross-Cultural Indigenous Science Education

In this chapter we outline how an understanding of pre-invasion Indigenous engineering can contribute to teaching and delivery of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) materials in high schools and universities.

Creating Enduring Engineering – Applying Project Based Service-Learning to Foster Community Engagement in Engineering Education

This chapter will explore approaches to projects with community organisations within engineering and related technology higher education. The goal is not to provide new guidelines, approaches, or principles, there are many excellent ones documented.

Mechanics and Materials

The field of knowledge management may appear to be a long way from that of engineering but in fact it provides a vital insight into ways in which Indigenous engineering knowledge was developed and continued through millennia.

Acoustics of the Yidaki

In many cultures there are drone instruments, the underlying sound to music performances. In Northern Australia the Yidaki was used.

Case study in radio communication

Provides a case study in electrical engineering working with the strong cultures of the western desert, covering their governance systems

Engineering within Community

These are projects that have been run with local communities are example of types of coverage and approach used, including construction and software.