Engineers are drawing on the land, sea and relationship knowledge of Indigenous peoples to inform relevant, sustainable solutions.
This article was originally published in the February 2025 issue of create with the headline “On-County innovation”.
The Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps, known traditionally as Baiame’s Ngunnhu, are a perfect example of simplicity, sustainability and insight into Country.
These characteristics are all common ingredients of Indigenous engineering, Dr Cat Kutay CompIEAust, computer and electrical engineer and Senior Lecturer at Charles Darwin University’s School of IT, told create.
By leaning into the knowledge offered by Australia’s Indigenous peoples, Kutay said, the engineering sector can innovate around existing resources and processes, improve outcomes, use less materials, ensure infrastructure is relevant and resilient, and attract and retain Indigenous talent.
The fish traps, located on the Barwon River in Brewarrina, NSW, involved a complex and carefully designed network of river stones that filtered a proportion of fish into a series of ponds and channels as they travelled downstream. They enabled fish to be corralled alive and, therefore, kept fresh. This meant they were easily caught by hand or with spears whenever they were required for eating.
At the same time, most fish in the river were able to continue downstream, where their important part in the ecosystem could continue to be played.
When a local weir was engineered in the 1970s, this balance came to an end. One of the world’s oldest human-made structures – representative of “spiritual, political, social, ceremonial and trade relationships between Aboriginal groups from across the greater landscape … an important site of food production, work, trade and consumption”, according to the Murdi Parki Regional Assembly – was significantly damaged.
“We have a problem with real sustainability in engineering,” Kutay, a Yugambeh engineer, said. “A colleague of mine said it perfectly when he told me that, when younger, he was an engineer working on dams in Brisbane and didn’t worry about the river below the dam. Unless you have the bigger picture in mind, sustainability isn’t possible.”
This overarching view of the ecological system is just one benefit Indigenous insight can bring to engineering, Kutay said. A lack of such insight brings solutions such as cane toads to control agricultural pests, rocky beaches to protect real estate from storm surges and king tides, and highly unsuitable houses being built for remote communities.
“In remote communities, we build houses with basic urban materials, like concrete blocks,” Kutay said. “These blocks hold heat and radiate it into the houses during the night, making the houses unliveable.
“In some houses, they put a hole in the wall for the air conditioning and, to save money, a steel flap over the hole, so the people can buy their air conditioner, if they wish. The steel flap, of course, also radiates an incredible amount of heat.”
In some places, where builders install air conditioning units into such houses, camels have not been considered, she said.
What do camels have to do with air conditioning? Wild camels in the Australian outback regularly pull out air conditioning units from the walls in search of water.
Read more: Tackling Indigenous underrepresentation in engineering
Many benefits
Indigenous communities didn’t necessarily get everything right in terms of engineering prior to colonisation, said Budawang man Michael Hromek, Technical Executive of Indigenous Design (Architecture) at WSP Australia. But they certainly had a better recognition of the ways Country will always revert to its original condition. Therefore, it is better to know and understand that condition and to work with rather than build against it
“Indigenous insight in engineering means a lot of different things to different people,” Hromek said. “But for me, it means original and relevant ideas and ways of dwelling, and of living in a place.
“If you live next to a river, you’re always going to have mosquitos and floods. The river will always be changing, and that’s where a lot of the value can be found. That’s also where a lot of western processes have lost their magic. Engineering knowledge should tap into that aspect of designers wanting to know more about place.”
Engineering, of course, is always going to be partly about taming the natural environment. That is what Aboriginal people wanted, too, Hromek said.
“They planned Country around that, specifically. You see areas around Australia where the Aboriginal people have done that, more or less successfully.
“In Sydney, they were very successful. They burned the Country, then set it up so it was basically a well-managed system. As a result, they had so much time for leisure, design, dance and culture. Whereas when you go over the hills into Wiradjuri, it’s very different. They struggled for resources, so a lot of their culture and language came from places like Sydney.”
Bringing Indigenous insight and involvement into the engineering feedback loop introduces numerous benefits, Hromek said. It results in a “culturally charged space”, one that engages people, Indigenous and otherwise, in stories of the Country’s past.
The rail industry is “knocking it out of the park” right now, Hromek said, particularly with Indigenous inspired co-design of parks and public spaces around various parts of Victoria’s Level Crossing Removal Project.
“Success comes from getting around a table and bringing the plans out, on paper and with pens and pencils. That is the process that Aboriginal people want. They don’t want 3D renders on a computer screen.”
“This is also what works really well for engineers and architects, and others in the design process, to get together and have design workshops, or design jams, using pen and paper.”
Asking better questions
Professor Angie Abdilla, a Palawa woman from ANU’s School of Cybernetics, is the founder of Old Ways New, a consultancy specialising in a unique, cultural approach to design and technology.
Abdilla created what she calls “Country-centred design” to incorporate Indigenous traditional knowledges into a strategic design practice, supporting engineers in working with Indigenous peoples and asking better questions.
“How is the solution in standing with the core principles of reciprocity, of social and environmental sustainability, of regeneration, and of giving back to Country and community?” she said. “How does the process itself give back to communities? Country-centred design enables us to work through a problem, arriving at a technical solution that harnesses traditional knowledges of that place and community.”
This methodological process, Abdilla said, is the result of genuine, working relationships with Traditional Custodians.
“We work with Traditional Custodians to understand the nature of their Country. Whether it’s rainforest or spinifex, saltwater or freshwater, we learn about the way their Country moves, breathes and their responsibilities of caring for Country.”
Often, when non-Indigenous peoples present the problem to Indigenous communities, the first realisation is that the wrong questions have been asked. Enabling Indigenous knowledge-holders to analyse and redefine the problem often sets up the right pathway. In naturally asking the right questions, the local people around the region known today as Brewarrina designed and developed the fish traps.
“They are an incredible example of engineering, for so many reasons,” Abdilla said. “They’re also a brilliant example of governance, aquaculture, civil engineering and infrastructure. They were sustainable, offered equity of access and gave back to the entire community in numerous ways.”
The boomerang – the returning stick – is another example of engineering and automation that should never be underplayed, she said. So is spinifex resin. Indigenous knowledge around spinifex resin is currently being utilised by researchers at the University of Queensland and its UniQuest spin-out company, which is using spinifex grass nanofibres to develop safer, easier-to-inject and more effective medical gel products.
“Many years ago, I was working on a large-scale infrastructure project in Waterloo, a large train station, part of the metro line,” Abdilla said. “We delivered a holistic systems approach to the built form and placemaking, with Country.
“Sydney is a big wetland. It’s a watery place. It’s not just a beautiful harbour – it was, still is and always will be, a very wet, watery place. It’s full of wetlands, and Waterloo is one of the essential components of that wetland system.”
Aboriginal people know that such wetland areas act as Country’s kidneys, cyclically wetting and drying.
“How should we design a system and its infrastructure that works with those essential attributes, instead of fighting against it by pouring vast quantities of concrete against the inevitability of water?
“What would happen if engineers worked with Indigenous knowledge-holders to design with Country? I expect a radically more regenerative and resilient type of infrastructure. Engineering with Indigenous knowledge: that future is absolutely possible.”
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