Astronomy, Indigenous Knowledge, and Advancing Science

On clear April nights, Peter Swanton knows where to find a distinctive shadow etched into Australia’s star scape, something his ancestors have tracked for millennia: the Emu in the Sky. Formed by clouds of gas and dust that block some of the Milky Way’s light from streaming to our planet, the birdlike dark spot shapeshifts on a yearly cycle. “And based on what we see the emu doing in the sky, we can tell what the emus are doing down here on Earth,” Swanton says. The changes mark mating, breeding, and dry seasons, indicating when hunting can start and when it should stop, so that the emu population doesn’t die out. It’s a connection between the cosmos and humans’ responsibility as stewards of their land. And it is an alternative perspective for people accustomed to Western astronomy, where constellations are not dark spaces but a connect-the-dots of bright stars.

Swanton is of Gamilaraay/Yuwaalaraay Indigenous heritage. At The Australian National University (ANU), he works to apply Indigenous knowledge to Western astronomy and to protect the night sky from increasing light pollution and space junk.

“A lot of Indigenous knowledges are stored and shared through access to the night sky,” Swanton says. “If you lose access to the night sky, you then risk losing access to those knowledges.”

Development and sprawl threaten to interfere with Western astronomy as well. “It’s a moment where there’s two sets of interests coming together that I think is very exciting,” says Joan Leach, who directs the Centre for Public Awareness of Science at ANU. But given the fraught history of colonization in Australia and around the world, it is not easy for Indigenous knowledge-holders and Western researchers to set up equitable collaborations, even amid a shared moment of concern.

“I don’t think people set out to disrespect other people. But without principles or a framework, it can be easy to bulldoze your way across lines that you don't even know are there,” Leach says.

Leach, Swanton, and their colleagues are developing principles to help the international astronomy community ethically engage Indigenous groups about astronomical issues like the impact of dark skies, the implications of choosing Indigenous-owned sites for new telescopes, and more. While myriad ethical guidelines for research with Indigenous peoples exist, these guidelines will be specific to astronomy and to the ethical considerations of astronomy research.

The team will collect examples of effective engagement and will use them to co-design guidelines with input from Indigenous leaders and scientists. They will host events for the sky-watching public in Australia and the United States to explain the importance of ethical guidelines and the contributions of Indigenous astronomy knowledge. And they will raise awareness of the guidelines among the astronomy research community by seeking feedback at leading professional conferences. The work is supported by a grant from The Kavli Foundation.

“We are excited to support this work to facilitate collaboration of Western astrophysics and indigenous astronomy, across a number of cultures and geographic areas. As we seek to support more thoughtful ethical and societal considerations of scientific discovery, embedding this work sooner into the discovery process itself is critical,” says Brooke Smith, Director of Science and Society at The Kavli Foundation.

This project builds on a years-long foundation, Leach says. Her center has worked to build relationships with communities, including Indigenous groups, for 30 years. Swanton and co-grantee Brad Tucker of ANU served on the first working group regarding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Astronomy for the Australian Academy of Science 10-year research roadmap. Through their work, Leach says, there’s been broader recognition in the Academy that guidelines for ethical Indigenous engagement are necessary. “What's really special about the Kavli funding is that it allows us to take this example that we're still working on within Australia and put it into conversation with principles that are being developed elsewhere,” Leach says.

To that end, Leach, Tucker, and Swanton are collaborating with experts on multiple continents. The team’s first step will be to take stock of how astronomers around the globe interact with society, especially regarding observatories on Indigenous lands. Wendy Freedman, a senior member of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP) at the University of Chicago and astrophysicist and science communicator Matthew Bothwell at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge will collaborate with the team. They’ll be joined by astronomer Brian Schmidt, a former ANU vice-chancellor who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011. Schmidt created a pathway for Indigenous students working toward a Ph.D. to incorporate their cultural knowledge into their research.

Astronomers excel at setting up engagement events like stargazing nights, Leach says, but this project seeks the rarer instances where they defined success and measured progress. There are bright spots of collaboration to learn from, Leach says, like the Square Kilometer Array, the world’s largest radio-astronomy observatory, of which the Australian portion sits on lands owned by the Wajarri Yamaji people.

Once the team drafts a set of principles, they will hold events for the public in Chicago—with KICP colleagues— and in Australia. They hope to guide the field of astronomy to move forward, in a manner that respects and integrates Indigenous knowledge, and having a set of principles will facilitate that. “That’s a new message for a public audience,” Leach says.

To raise awareness of the guidelines among scientists and consult with the greater astronomy community, the team will share and discuss insights at meetings of the International Astronomical Union, the American Astronomical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Swanton is energized at the possibility of guidelines that facilitate using Indigenous expertise to inform Western science. For example, modern-day astronomers in China used recordings from ancient counterparts to find remnants of a supernova that was visible to Earth in the year 393 CE. He sees opportunities to learn more about supernovae and other transient phenomena that Western science didn’t record. Indigenous Australians have been observing the night sky for more than 65,000 years. “There’s no telling what we might be able to know.”