The Indigenous Turn: Epistemic Justice, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and Social and Emotional Well-Being

Colonial research practices across centuries have appropriated, exploited, and effectively ignored Indigenous knowledges across time. Part of Indigenous struggles for justice is to validate their own knowledges and knowledge holders. The protection of Indigenous knowledge is widely acknowledged by a number of human rights conventions and declarations. Article 31 of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), for example, emphasizes the right to maintain, control, protect, and develop Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS). Central to the Indigenous self-determination movement is the reclamation and rebuilding of Indigenous knowledge systems and Indigenous ways of living, doing, and being, including languages, governance, spirituality, and healing systems, as well as the strengthening of core eco-centric, holistic, and place-conscious Indigenous relational principles for living well, which are expressed relationally as respect, reciprocity, and harmony. This chapter situates Australian Indigenous psychology within the context of the global Indigenous psychology movement. One key aspect of the research and practice of Indigenous psychology is the revitalizing of Indigenous knowledge systems. Here the Indigenous psychological paradigm social and emotional well-being (SEWB) is explored as an expression of an Indigenous knowledge system.