Introducing Michael Charlton, Postdoctoral Fellow

We interviewed Michael Charlton, one of the many highly qualified personnel on the Sharing Our Knowledge project team!

Michael Charlton, our postdoctoral fellow with Cranfield University!

Tell us about yourself!

I’m a Yindjibarndi man from Australia. Yindjibarndi country is in the northwest of Western Australia, in the Pilbara region. Due to colonization and the establishment of the pastoral and mining industries in the region, most Aboriginal groups in the Pilbara were pushed off their lands, and there is only one small Yindjibarndi community on our country these days. Most Yindjibarndi now live in towns near the coast. Despite being displaced, we have maintained our connection and responsibility to our country, and our families visit and spend time on country as much as we can. I grew up visiting Yindjibarndi country with my brothers and sisters, learning about our culture and history, and doing lots of fishing with my grandmother.

After university, I started my career as an anthropologist working in the cultural heritage industry in the Pilbara. That was cool, I got to spend a lot of time with family members and Elders, going out bush and on country with them. I really got to learn from them about family and culture, about our history and the impacts of pastoralism and mining. After that, I moved over to Sydney and got into Indigenous policy and advocacy work. I worked at the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples in Redfern, and then with an Indigenous-led consulting firm. I was lucky during this time to work with and learn from some really inspiring Aboriginal leaders, who continue to work hard for Indigenous-led reforms today.

In 2020, I started my PhD at the University of Technology Sydney. My PhD is largely autoethnographic and place-based. I am bridging two periods in Yindjibarndi history - my grandmother’s generation and the present - by looking at how government Acts from each period have shaped life in community. I’m also coming at it from an Indigenous resistance and nation-building approach, thinking about what Yindjibarndi-led futures look like alongside dominant groups and development discourses. I am coming to the end of my PhD now and am looking forward to submitting my thesis!

Last but not least, I’m a family man with four beautiful kids and a lovely wife, so that keeps me busy and very family-oriented outside of work! I’m also a musician. Writing and playing music on the guitar is a big focus of mine, in fact my thesis is both a written piece of work and collection of songs.

Michael in Yindjibarndi country

What are you researching at Cranfield University?

I am a research assistant at Cranfield University on the Sharing Our Knowledge project. I work across each of the work packages, particularly supporting the outcomes and aims of work packages 2 and 3. I assist the Cranfield team in incorporating Indigenous-led research and governance models to help us bring together two different ways of working and thinking about things. I’ve been working on methodologies and discussion guides for engaging with local communities and western science stakeholders. We’re also working on a literature review around climate related risks to Indigenous water security.

It's been really good so far! We went to Norway last year as part of the International Indigenous Salmon Peoples Gathering, where we got to meet and hear from Indigenous researchers from the Arctic, from Sápmi to Canada to Alaska. It was really inspiring hearing about the different Indigenous-led research that is happening across the Arctic. I learned about the importance of salmon to Arctic Indigenous cultures and the kinds of threats and challenges that climate change is posing for communities in caring for their waters and salmon. It was interesting hearing about the burden of conservation that Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic are facing. We heard how government-led conservation efforts often don’t allow Indigenous communities to fish for salmon as they always have. The uneven relationship between decision-makers and communities reminded me of back home.

This shared experience of colonization and its ongoing legacy is really what I took away from the conversations we had in Norway. The other thing that struck me was the connection and responsibility to our lands and waters that we have as Indigenous peoples, how strong that is for our communities. It was a really good few days and I am looking forward to getting over to Unama’ki later this year to learn about things on that side.

What is a lesson you’ve learned from your work in Indigenous governance?

That’s a good question, there’s so much! Early on in my PhD, I spoke with an Indigenous nation—building specialist from back home, and we considered the governance challenge faced by Indigenous groups. By this I mean the challenge of balancing community and cultural governance with western and corporate governance models, which are often at significant odds. Back home in the Pilbara, we spend a lot of time dealing with mining companies and native title matters, which is done primarily within corporate governance settings and structures, which creates a lot of tension for community because it’s so different to how we do business. We spend a lot of time coming together these days for AGMs and board meetings and things like that. The community wants information and have questions, often to do with agreements with mining companies, but they have to be raised at these meetings with set rules, and it can be frustrating for community to engage with these processes.

My key lesson around governance is that as long as we have a strong community-led vision for our future, which is backed by cultural governance and decision-making processes that are understood and inclusive, the rest can fall in behind that. And we’ve got to make sure we’re always building our leadership capacity by supporting and giving our young people a voice in decision-making. There’s a lot of pressure on Indigenous groups to fit in with the way development industries and governments do business - we have to push back on that and do things our own way because it’s really important for our futures.

Ultimately, we need to make sure that we are not letting western governance models and development priorities undermine our own ways of doing things, ways of doing things that have cared for our country and sustained our communities for thousands of years.

What are you looking forward to about working with the Indigenous Peoples in Unama’ki & Sápmi?

I am looking forward to making connections with other Indigenous Peoples and learning about their cultures, their histories, and their connection to their country. Just to learn and see different ways of doing and approaching things. Having conversations with people and picking up on those little bits of knowledge and wisdom is always the best part of working with new communities. As Indigenous Peoples, we face similar challenges around our rights, but how we address them can be quite different, so I’m looking forward to seeing this in action. It is important for me to see and learn new things, and to be able take some of those learnings back home one day is exciting for me.

What about this project made you want to join the team?

When we moved over to the UK, I was wondering how I was going to be able to use my experience and passion for Indigenous-led futures. I saw this project about Indigenous knowledge systems and governance, and couldn’t really believe how well it aligned with my work experience. I was just happy to find an opportunity in the UK that was Indigenous-led, which would expand my understanding on an international scale. The project seemed like a perfect fit, and it’s been very lucky timing really. I’ve already learned a lot, met great people, and am excited by what the project can achieve for the communities we are working with.