Using Indigenous ecological-cultural exchange to heal, reduce the risk of disasters and adapt to climate change: Australian-Taiwan Indigenous Exchange Initiative

Traditionally, the social mandate of universities has been to contribute to betterment of humanity by gaining an understanding of how the world works and to pass on these knowledges. However, universities have become increasingly contributors to creating and maintaining a Western worldview that has led to a dysfunctional culture and society that creates suffering rather than health and well-being of citizens and other living creatures. Fortunately, growing recognition of this pathway being destructive and that collaboration with society is necessary to address wicked problems, is leading to universities remembering their original mandate and desiring to engage again with governments, NGOs, businesses and community agencies. However, commonly collaboration partners experience many challenges in effectively working together. On the one side, interdisciplinary and intersectorial collaboration is complex and dynamic due to diverse and often conflicting knowledges, interests, needs and expectations partners bring to the table. On the other side, there is generally a lack of knowledge and experience how to effectively collaborate with people and organisations with diverse backgrounds. Additionally, governance systems and process are typically unsuitable for collaborating. Together, these two aspects create complex, rapidly changing and challenging contexts for working together. In this presentation, I offer the key trials and tribulations as well as learnings from two interdisciplinary and intersectorial community-based participatory action research projects with Indigenous communities in Australia and Taiwan. I propose that co-designed, co-implemented and co-evaluated community-based participatory action research with Indigenous peoples that are long-term, emergent interdisciplinary and intersectorial and are utilizing sociocracy as governance system could be an effective pathway for universities to fulfil their social responsibilities.