ANBG Plant Science Group Technical Talk

Place: Theatrette, ANBG

Title: Linking Indigenous botanical knowledge and western plant species concept

Speaker: Linda Broadhurst, Director CANBR

Summary: Globally agreed conventions for naming plant species have primarily evolved to underpin western science and do not reflect how Indigenous communities view and use the world around them. Indigenous ecological knowledge (IEK) represents a wealth of experience that these communities have and could contribute to conservation and land management. However, linking Indigenous and scientific plant names is incredibly challenging for many reasons. The decline of Indigenous Australian languages and the lack of authoritative Indigenous Australian language dictionaries challenge our ability to link Indigenous and western plant species concepts. Western science often recognises far more plants species than Indigenous communities do, and there can be many Indigenous names for the same plant species as well as for different parts of a plant (e.g. leave, fruit, etc.). Perhaps the greatest challenge is, however, the large number of Australian Indigenous plant names and IEK yet to be recorded.