Making Indigenous knowledge count in policy
A paper in the Australian Journal of Public Administration focuses on the question of whose knowledge counts in policy directed at Aboriginal people, and why Western knowledge systems play a dominant role in policy processes. The paper charts how a research hub in Alice Springs came into being and the role it plays in making Aboriginal perspectives visible. The authors seek to understand why Aboriginal voices and perspectives remain sidelined even when made visible. They call for a shift in how Aboriginal knowledge is positioned within policymaking, advocating for a more inclusive and equitable approach that acknowledges the impact of colonial processes.
Starting in place
Alice Springs lies almost in the centre of the Australian continent on central Arrernte country. It also goes by another name, Mparntwe, drawn from Lhere Mparntwe, the name of the river that runs through it. Aboriginal people make up more than a quarter of the population of the town, which has around 25,000 residents. Most of the Indigenous population is not central Arrernte. The town is a regional centre, providing a base for people from around central Australia.
Aboriginal knowledge practices have both changed and stayed the same, changing in response to the presence of people from elsewhere (both Aboriginal and non-Indigenous) and enduring through their embeddedness in country. These Aboriginal practices continue to inform the lives of the bulk of the Aboriginal people residing in central Australia, despite all the change that has taken place.
Self-determination in action
The 1970s saw the establishment of Congress (a local Aboriginal-controlled health and medical service) and the Tangentyere Council. In 2001, the new NT government decided that Alice Springs would be the site of an alcohol policy experiment. The trial design sought community feedback via a telephone survey. People at Tangentyere knew it would mean that Aboriginal people in Town Camps were effectively excluded as virtually no house on a Town Camp at the time had a telephone.
Tangentyere lobbied to make changes to the evaluation process so that Aboriginal people could be heard. However, its calls fell on deaf ears. Tangentyere took matters into its own hands and reached out to the National Drug Research Institute to work together to conduct a separate evaluation. This project meant that Aboriginal views were explicitly sought and made visible, despite being sidelined formally.
The evaluation project was a success, both in engaging within the Camps and for its role in generating visibility for Town Campers as legitimate stakeholders. This prompted Tangentyere to establish the Tangentyere Council Research Hub with two aims:
to provide a permanent structure through which the views of Aboriginal people living in Town Camps could be sought
to communicate what was found to external audiences.
Knowledge grounded in Aboriginal practice
As the Research Hub grew, an explicit articulation of its practices emerged. The Research Hub recognised that it was making a new institution, a space of knowledge production that was grounded first and foremost in Aboriginal knowledge practice. In time, several maxims were adopted which distil the philosophy of the Hub: “no survey without service”, “making a difference”, and “connecting up with the past”.
The Research Hub provides a unique service in the ‘shared world’, helping to make visible what is not necessarily easy to see from an outsider’s perspective. It continues to work to make Aboriginal perspectives visible, developing and refining a knowledge-making practice which allows Aboriginal people and their experiences to be made available for use in policy development processes.
The invisible pitfalls of evidence-based policy
Given the Research Hub has been producing evidence around issues of concern for central Australian Aboriginal people for more than 20 years, the question arises: why does its work make little difference in the policies it seeks to inform, especially when there are efforts to ensure it is visible to policymakers?
One answer to this question is that a particular kind of expertise is valued, one where Western-trained “expert” practitioners are seen to be the only ones capable of producing robust evidence on which policy can be based. A positional superiority is ascribed to Western knowledge makers. This places Aboriginal knowledge in opposition to Western-framed knowledge making, with its claims of neutrality and objectivity compared to Aboriginal knowledge as particular, partial, and subjective.
A case of epistemic injustice
Epistemic injustice is a specific type of unfairness where a person or group is wronged in their capacity as a “knower”. This sums up the situation for Aboriginal knowledge makers, like those from Tangentyere. Marginalised knowledge is devalued at the same time they are positioned as having a reduced capacity to know. Aboriginal people’s knowledge of themselves as situated knowers, critical to generating knowledge in Aboriginal worlds, means that they are vulnerable to epistemic injustice.
Western knowledge making rests on the idea that “true” knowledge is objective. It builds a picture of the world that sidelines Aboriginal knowledge as a matter of principle. The stories Aboriginal people tell might be ‘interesting,’ and they might even be insightful, but they are not “true” knowledge that can inform policy in a substantive sense.
The bottom line
The Tangentyere Council Research Hub and the lessons learned symbolises self-determination in action and have made a difference to Central Australian Aboriginal people. While it has not generated more change, it is an exemplar of what governments and other organisations might support if they want to address the epistemic injustices identified in the article.
Epistemic injustice arises structurally and this means that developing alternative structures is necessary. Providing practical support to Aboriginal organisations to build their own knowledge production capacities would tangibly demonstrate that governments recognise that Aboriginal people are best placed to understand their own issues and communicate these understandings on their own terms.
Want to read more?
Politics of knowledge and policy uptake - Matthew Campbell and Vanessa Davis, Australian Journal of Public Administration, June 2026
Read other Research Briefs on First Nations knowledge and policymaking below:
Co-designing policy with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
Knowledge, policy design and impact in Indigenous policy-making