<p><a name="_Hlk133770449">Australia is seen as part of the Global North due to its strong economy and high living standards. However, Aboriginal communities in remote locations represent the Global South with a severe dearth of basic facilities, appalling living conditions and poorly educated youth. This Aboriginal reality existing within Australia is often ignored or perceived through biased lenses by the larger Australian society, blaming the community rather than the system for their plight. </a></p> <p>While various government agencies and universities seek to promote inclusion and reconcile the contrasting realities of Aboriginal and modern Australia, the outcome remains dismal. For example, programs aimed at facilitating remotely located youth to travel to enrol in short courses at tertiary educational institutions, face many challenges. Adding indigenous content to the university curricula and disjointed attempts to introduce cultural awareness among their staff to promote awareness and acceptance of the Aboriginal reality have not made meaningful impact.</p> <p>This paper makes the case for universities to move beyond merely adding selected bits of the Aboriginal heritage and culture into the curricula that remain unintegrated and is eventually not retained. One-off exposure to poorly understood and non-contextualised information that is not processed into knowledge nor applied within their context, fall off the students’ and academics’ attention. It is proposed that cumulative knowledge that has been developed by Aboriginal communities over thousands of years and their living culture needs to be recognised, understood, and valued. Deliberate effort needs to be made to identify skills and knowledge that exist in these communities that can potentially be utilised for the betterment of the larger society. The paper explores the potential for utilising indigenous knowledge and skills relating to the ecological stewardship of the land to mitigate the environmental hazards currently heightened by climate change. </p>
