Indigenous peoples on the Australian continent have had long contact with Indonesian
peoples that pre-date ideas of Australia and Indonesia as states; trading, sharing
cultures, moving peoples between one another for centuries. These relationships go
beyond traditional notions of modern borders and show alternatives to current
narratives on the Australia-Indonesian relationship. Focusing on peoples, relational
thinking, and cross-cultural trade, rather than the standard Australian survivalist
frames of security, immigration, and the “Indo-Pacific”, present ways to prioritise the
development of a stronger relationship with our closest northern neighbour while
focusing on culture and shared history. This is not to say that such an approach is
entirely rosy and without contention; issues of Indigenous rights in West Papua, and
cultural appropriation in commerce are still present and need to be addressed at both
ends. But the story of Indigenous-Indonesian relationships, and the lessons in cross-
cultural learning, are underrepresented in current discussion, and deserve to be shared
more widely, and show what Indigenous approaches can teach us in international
relations thinking.