Mapping Indigenous Futures: Decolonising Techno-Colonising Designs

Abstract

This paper provides a critical interrogation of the consequences of modernity and coloniality, particularly in an Aboriginal Australian context, with focus on the accelerating speed of socio-communicative technological change. I argue from a perspective of being Australian with both Aboriginal and European heritage, with a designing politics for human ‘sustainment’ (Fry, 2009). Five provocations are provided that illustrate ways in which the seductive and repressive nature of modernity/coloniality enables socio-communicative technologies to increasingly eliminate groups’ capacities to imagine decolonising being-human. I summarise ways in which I apply learnings surrounding decolonising design modes of listening and comprehending that can contribute to help groups think, talk and map their situatedness among this phenomenon and mobilise decolonising options for their own worlds.

Keywords: decolonising design, ontological design, respectful design, Indigenous design futures, Indigenous knowledge, sustainment, techno-colonialism.