Learning with country, rewriting care: Indigenous epistemologies and kinship care

This article develops a decolonial sociological framework grounded in Indigenous epistemologies and demonstrates its significance through kinship care. The framework brings together five commitments: relational ontology; Country and place-based epistemology; collective responsibility and kinship governance; Indigenous sovereignty over knowledge and data; and relational accountability in research and practice. Rather than supplementing established sociology, it reorients sociological authority, method and purpose towards Indigenous ways of knowing and governing. Drawing on research with 16 First Nations young people in therapeutic residential care in New South Wales, Indigenous yarning methodologies, Bundjalung cultural research and Gnibi Elders’ principles, the article shows how state-centred, individualised child-welfare systems misrecognise kinship care. While policy treats kinship care as a placement category, Indigenous epistemologies understand it as relational governance that sustains identity, collective responsibility, cultural continuity and connection to Country. The framework offers a pathway for culturally governed, relational changes in knowledge production, policy and care across sociology.