Exploring practitioner’s engagement with Indigenous communities to work towards sustainability

Abstract: With the focus on addressing the sustainability challenge increases in the global agenda, the role of Indigenous communities and the knowledge they hold has been receiving increasing attention as a vital aspect in working towards sustainability. This research sought to bring forth the importance of Indigenous communities and their knowledge in addressing ecological and social sustainability. The research focused on practitioners` engagement with Indigenous communities with the objective of exploring their stories and experiences to offer learning and guidance to other sustainability practitioners. A pragmatic qualitative research approach was adopted in conjunction with literature review, collaborative autoethnography diaries by the authors and nineteen semi-structured interviews with practitioners with experience across sixteen different countries. The results revealed four themed lessons Indigenous communities offer in ecological sustainability, enhancing social sustainability, adaptive capacity in complex human systems, structural obstacles and definitions. Results also presented best practices and guidelines across four main themes for successful engagement with Indigenous communities. The discussion offers insights on what all sustainability practitioners can learn when working in the Indigenous context. Ultimately, becoming the bridge to foster mutual learning between Indigenous and Industrialized world toward global sustainability.