Research project Indigenous epistemologies are grounded in diverse ways of producing knowledge that often include specific making practices and tangible material culture. The Nordic MAST network explores how we can strengthen our research and collaborative skills for a more sustainable society, by knowing-through-making and crafting together. The aim is to create a rigorous, creative and respectful space for safe exchange and capacity building across Indigenous and non-Indigenous Nordic academic institutions.
Indigenous approaches to knowing-through-making are profoundly relational, often incorporating connections with environmental knowledge as they are tied to lands and communities in complex ways that continue to be relevant today. Knowing-through-making is also present in contemporary Western academia. The intersection between Indigenous knowledge-through-making and art and design knowledge-through-making presents opportunities for cross-fertilization. In June 2026 we welcome the MAST network to Umeå where we weave together and learn textile techniques that embed North and South cosmologies.
Indigenous perspectives are increasingly regarded as contemporary and highly relevant world-making views, challenging previous understanding on Western-centric knowledge production. Yet Indigenous research landscapes in the Nordic region may be located far from main urban centres and rely on scarce resources for capacity building and mobilizing. At the same time, practice-based research in art and design orients to rethinking the objects of knowledge. Researchers in these traditions are increasingly collaborating with Indigenous researchers and engaging with Indigenous issues across Global North and South, but they lack solid frameworks for collaboration.
During the project, the MAST Network will:
In our workshops, we experiment with particular making practices and materials. Participant researchers will engage in sense-making through those practices and through them discover and discuss particular research skills and resources.
The MAST network provides support and possibilities to, for example, articulate Indigenous knowing-through-making while experimenting with sustainable digital designs based on Indigenous knowledge. In our project we aspire to making-together in ethical ways that safeguard Indigenous perspectives and build trust-based co-operation.
