Other ways of knowing, thinking, feeling and doing

Climate adaptation is often framed as a complex technical challenge. But the deeper question may be simpler: what kind of ancestors do we want to be?

“Other ways of Knowing, Thinking, Feeling, Doing.” The AdaptNSW Forum 2025 theme was an invitation to rethink our values, systems and actions as we respond to climate change.

The scene was set by Amanda Close, a Minjungbul, Githabul and Widjabul Wia-bul woman from the Northern Rivers and a cultural scientist with the NSW Government.

“In my culture, plants, animals, wind, Country, fire and water are all regarded as living beings with spirit, purpose, law and relationships,” Amanda said.

A human being is “one part of the surrounding world,” not “an observer that is separate to the world and can do with it whatever he or she pleases,” Amanda noted. “In Aboriginal culture, roles and responsibilities do not allow this.”

Many of our systems – education, science and policy among them – privilege a single way of seeing the world. Yet human experience, across cultures and communities, continually reminds us that knowledge takes many forms.

Knowing

Setting the scene, Amanda invited the audience to reconsider what counts as knowledge.

Traditional ecological knowledge, she explained, is “not a standalone database” or a body of environmental observations, but a living system revitalised through cultural practice, responsibility and relationships with Country.

For thousands of generations, First Nations peoples have passed down knowledge about landscapes, plants, animals and seasonal change through stories, ceremony and daily care for Country.

Amanda pointed to the satin bowerbird, “a totem in my father’s Country”. 

“Western science can describe the fact that the bird utilises the moss to create its bower and attract females,” she said. “But it cannot describe the fact that the bird is responsible for the moss and its survival.”

Thinking

Rethinking climate adaptation means recognising the value of knowledge systems developed over millennia.

Speaking in a powerful keynote session, Dr Terri Janke, a Wuthathi, Meriam and Yadhaigana woman and leading authority on Indigenous cultural and intellectual property, outlined how Indigenous knowledge is governed by cultural laws and responsibilities that ensure knowledge is shared respectfully and used appropriately.

“You don’t get to have a 65,000-year-old culture without having strong rules around practice,” she said.

Increasingly, scientists, governments and Indigenous communities are working together to bring First Nations knowledge and Western science into dialogue. 

“Imagine if everyone thought their Country was kin and cared for it like their mother, child or grandchild?”

Dr Terri Janke, Indigenous cultural and intellectual property lawyer

Terri was one of three chief co-authors of the 2021 State of the Environment Report – the first holistic assessment of scientific, traditional and local knowledge, developed in collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

The task was “an interesting challenge as a writer,” Terri said.  “How do you [bring together] Western scientific observations [with] a culture that’s steeped in traditions and stories that are passed down through the generations and told from one person to another… How do you give equal weighting to them?”

The authors began with one guiding principle: both perspectives would be brought together.

This approach is sometimes described as two-eyed seeing – a concept explored in depth at the AdaptNSW Forum 2024. The opportunity is to learn to see the world through both Indigenous and Western knowledge systems, drawing on the strengths of each.

Feeling

If knowing guides understanding, and thinking means embracing other knowledge systems, then feeling guides “our thinking, our decision-making, our behaviours and actions,” Amanda said. She emphasised how emotions, including eco-anxiety, influence our ability to adapt to a changing climate. 

Reconnecting with Country through the senses – through smell, touch, sound and memory – can restore calm and curiosity, creating the conditions for new ways of thinking about climate solutions.

Concluding the forum, cultural scientist Paris Norton Goolagong – a Gomeroi, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa, Ngāi Tūmapūhia-ā-Rangi and Ngāti Te Ātiawa woman from Gunabarabin (Coonabarabran) – spoke about feeling as the foundation of kinship between people and Country.

“The earth has always carried us,” Paris said. “Cradled us in her soils, rocked us in her waters, breathing life through her winds. Country is our first mother.”

What would it mean, Paris asked, to lean back into this “sacred architecture… not as owners or managers [of the land], but as kin held within this living house of creation?”

“Let us remember that wisdom is not only held in the mind. It beats in all of our hearts. When we honour the heart as a source of knowledge, we open ourselves to truths that data alone cannot hold. This is not a rejection of logic. It is us acting in our completion.”

Paris Norton Goolagong, Cultural Scientist, NSW Government

Doing

The final theme focused on action.

“We have responsibility and we belong to this Country. And that first law is: if we look after Country, it will look after us,” Terri said.

Across Australia, Indigenous ranger programs, cultural fire management and collaborative research projects demonstrate how cultural knowledge and scientific practice can work together to care for Country. These partnerships inform environmental monitoring, species management and new sustainable technologies.

Yet many climate policies and programs are still built on a narrow set of assumptions: time is short; the present generation – voters, taxpayers and shareholders – are the primary stakeholder; and success is measured in accumulation of wealth, assets and economic growth.

But the choices made today will ultimately be judged through the lens of future generations, Terri noted. Temporal humility recognises that our decisions sit within a much longer human story.

It begins with a simple question: what kind of ancestors do we want to be?

“I want to be an honourable ancestor at a personal level. Just last week, I became a grandmother for the first time. And as I watched my granddaughter take her first breaths, I wanted to really connect with her and tell her that the world was a safe place,” Terri said.

“I want the air to be clean. I want her to experience clean oceans and I want her to walk the forests and to have the opportunity that I had and that you had.”

“And then I thought about the great-great-grandchildren that would come; the legacy that we would leave. All Australians have the opportunity to connect with this Country and to be honourable ancestors. And the first steps are to observe that first law… if we look after Country, it will look after us.”