Search Climate Insights Directory

The research identifies a 'procedural vulnerability' in climate change studies where Indigenous perceptions of environmental change, rooted in 'Dreaming', are marginalised by Western scientific discourses of risk. The author argues that adaptation efforts in remote Indigenous Australian communities risk failure if they ignore cosmologically embedded risks, assume universal vulnerability based on ecosystem reliance, or fail to recognise colonisation as an ongoing disaster. Such failures may lead to policies that move people away from colonial-defined risks but into risks defined by the Indigenous communities themselves.