LibGuides: Mathematical Sciences: Indigenous resources in ANU Library Collections on Mathematics topics

ANU Graduate Attribute - Insight into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ knowledges and Indigenous peoples’ perspectives (IP-GA)

Development of this content supports the ANU Graduate Attribute - Insight into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ knowledges and Indigenous peoples’ perspectives (IP-GA). Content that explicitly explores Indigenous ways of knowing relevant to the discipline.

"Maths has no borders: Professor Rowena Ball brings indigenous mathematics to ANU." More here from science news, and "Researching the fascinating link between mathematics and the origin of life on Earth" More here.

Indigenous resources in ANU LIbrary Collections on Mathematics topics can be explored from the boxes below.

Non numeriical mathematics topics

Search the ANU Catalogue and SuperSearch with the following search terms to find books and articles and other resources on Indigenous topics in ANU Library Collections on mathematics.

(rotation OR symmetry OR geometric OR "Desert kinship" OR maths* OR symbols OR "non numerical" OR "chiral symmetry" OR "dynamical systems" OR signalling) AND (aborig* OR "australian aborig*" OR "aboriginal australian" OR "first nations" OR "australian indigenous" OR "indigenous australia*" OR indigenous OR "first nations" OR "torres strait" OR "torres strait islander")

A select list of ebooks is in the box below and click here for the full search results for books and ebooks and for a selection of journal articles on the topic.

The Meanings of Things by Ian Hodder (Editor)
Call Number: View online [ANU staff and students only]
ISBN: 1306131294
Publication Date: 2013
This book concentrates on the varying roles and functions that material culture may play in almost all aspects of the social fabric of a given culture. The contributors, from Africa, Australia and Papua New Guinea, India, South America, the USA, and both Eastern and Western Europe, provide a rich variety of views and experience in a worldwide perspective.
Sand talk : how Indigenous thinking can save the world by Yunkaporta, Tyson
Call Number: LAW GN666 .Y86 2019
Publication Date: 2019
This remarkable book is about everything from echidnas to evolution, cosmology to cooking, sex and science and spirits to Schrodinger's cat. Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from an Indigenous perspective. He asks how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently? Sand Talk provides a template for living. It's about how lines and symbols and shapes can help us make sense of the world.
The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art by Bruno David (Editor); Ian J. McNiven (Editor)
Call Number: View online [ANU staff and students only]
Publication Date: 2018
Rock art is one of the most visible and geographically widespread of cultural expressions, and it spans much of the period of our species' existence. Rock art also provides rare and often unique insights into the minds and visually creative capacities of our ancestors and how selected rock outcrops with distinctive images were used to construct symbolic landscapes and shape worldviews.
Indigenous Graphic Communication Systems by Katarzyna Mikulksa (Editor); Jerome A. Offner (Editor)
Call Number: View online [ANU staff and students only]
Publication Date: 2020
Indigenous Graphic Communication Systems challenges the adequacy of Western academic views on what writing is and explores how they can be expanded by analyzing the sophisticated graphic communication systems found in Central Mesoamerica and Andean South America.