October 12 is recognized as Columbus Day in the Americas and beyond, in honor of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America; for nearly 90 years, it has been marked here in the US by a federal holiday on the second Monday in October. But, as countries around the world increasingly grapple with the damage done to their native populations by colonialism, there has been a backlash against holidays that honor the colonizers, and a growing movement towards recognizing the rights, challenges, and contributions of Indiegnous people — last year, Joe Biden issued the first-ever presidential proclamation of Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the US. There is so much more that all of us could be doing to better support Indigenous people including, in our own world of scholarly communications, ensuring that our research infrastructure supports and respects Indigenous knowledge and knowledge management. This Indigenous People’s Day is a good opportunity to re-share my interview with Dr. Katharina Ruckstuhl on this topic from earlier in the year — and to encourage us all to recognize the critical, but often overlooked, importance of Indigenous knowledge.
Globally, there is an increasing awareness of the damage caused to Indigenous knowledge by colonisation. This very interesting interview looks at the issues from a Māori perspective. This is a useful read for all researchers, regardless of their career stage. It also should be considered when institutional policies, guidelines and professional development material is formulated. At the very least there should be a discussion about data sovereignty, intellectual property and the authorship of research outputs that is based upon First People traditional knowledge.
Coverage of Indigenous knowledge in The Scholarly Kitchen has been woefully lacking — the only post I could find is “Questioning Our Assumptions in Publishing Innovations: Inspiration from the Story of Indigital” by Lettie Conrad (if there are others, please let me know!). So I’m very grateful to Katharina for agreeing to answer some questions — a mix of basic and less so — to help us all advance our understanding of this important area of knowledge.
Katharina is an Associate Professor and Dean at the University of Otago Business School. She is a tribal leader and has many governance and Board roles in her community. She is a current ORCID Board member and a member of the IEEE P2890 working party on Recommended Practice for Provenance of Indigenous Peoples’ Data.
