Workshop: Heritage, history and Indigenous astronomy

SARAO recently hosted a virtual conversation focusing on Indigenous Astronomy as part of Heritage month in South Africa.

The event brought together important international stakeholders in an effort to acknowledge and reflect on the heritage of Indigenous peoples in partner countries, drawing on commonalities in the context of the SKA. It focused on the importance of Indigenous knowledge systems and their role in current and future scientific research.

The land on which the SKA telescopes will be constructed in both host countries has strong ties to Indigenous heritage. In South Africa, the Karoo region was inhabited by the early ancestors of the San people, who are considered to be some of the most ancient people on Earth, having been around for the past 22,000 years. There are still significant amounts of cultural heritage found on the land to date.

In Australia, the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, which was established in 2009, while being one of the world’s newest observatories, is built on ancient land where geologists have identified some of the oldest rocks on Earth. There is evidence that Aboriginal communities lived on this land for tens of thousands of years before it was settled in the 1800’s by pastoralists.

Throughout the conversation, common themes around the use of astronomy in the everyday lives of Indigenous peoples came to the fore; stories on how the moon and stars were used to determine weather patterns, agricultural cycles and the telling of mythological tales across generations.

This was the first conversation of its kind and opens more opportunities for knowledge sharing on the social context that the SKA project exists within.

By SARAO Communications

The chieftainship of four San tribes and the Griqua Khoi held a ceremonial blessing and cleansing of the SKA project and South African SKA site during a visit in 2017 ahead of the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with SARAO.

Credit: SARAO