Guest editorial: Centring indigenous peoples’ knowledges, perspectives and experiences in social marketing

Social marketing has carefully built an extensive, credible evidence base for influencing behaviour in ways that benefit individuals, communities and the broader public good. As the discipline has matured, so too has its ambition, extending from a heavy focus on downstream individual behaviour change towards systems-level thinking and structural reform. However, one dimension of the discipline’s maturity remains underdeveloped. Although the need to centre Indigenous peoples’ knowledges, perspectives and experiences in social marketing is widely recognised, social marketing scholarship has not kept pace.

Indigenous knowledges, perspectives and experiences are largely missing from the social marketing literature, yet they can extend and enrich social marketing scholarship and practice (Harris et al., 2022; Raciti, 2021). As “the future is Indigenous” (Carlson, 2023, p. 9), it is time for social marketing to join other disciplines and “go beyond learning about Indigenous cultures and start learning from them” (Neale and Kelly, 2020, p. 179). As inclusivity is at the heart of social marketing, there is a pressing need to boost articles that centre Indigenous peoples in the current stock of knowledge (Raciti et al., 2024).

The global Black Lives Matter (#BLM) movement prompted a growing interest in Indigenous peoples’ knowledges, perspectives and experiences in social marketing (Forrest and Raciti, 2022). Indeed, this is inspiring, sparking a welcomed uplift in allyship and action from individuals, organisations, institutions and governments alike. Although much social marketing work involves Indigenous peoples, these endeavours and the voices of Indigenous peoples more broadly are not finding their way into the social marketing literature (Kubacki and Szablewska, 2019; Madill et al., 2014).

Indigenous studies that have made their way into social marketing literature typically pre-date #BLM, focus on downstream programs, use a limited range of theories and rarely recognise the power dynamics that impact their effectiveness (George, 2020). Furthermore, the dearth of Indigenous social marketing literature is at odds with the broader business and social sciences literature, where Indigenous research that speaks to social justice and other core social marketing principles is more common (e.g., Akbar and Sharp, 2023; Cooms et al., 2022; Eva et al., 2024; Love and Hall, 2022; Manganda et al., 2022; Salmon et al., 2023). Hence, our special issue seeks to change this pattern and showcase social marketing research and practice that centre Indigenous peoples’ knowledges, perspectives and experiences.

We are both Australian Aboriginal social marketing academics. As our special issue is the first on Indigenous peoples in the Journal of Social Marketing, we adopted an inclusive call for empirical, conceptual, case study and viewpoint contributions that highlight the diverse ways in which Indigenous peoples are involved in social marketing. Importantly, as guest editors we sought strengths-based articles that amplify Indigenous peoples’ voices, resilience, ingenuity and self-determination worldwide. All methodologies and both “insider” and “outsider” perspectives were welcomed. Furthermore, we applied Raciti’s (2022) recommendations, requiring all authors to position themselves in their articles and make clear to readers whether they are Indigenous or non-Indigenous. In accordance with the principle of “nothing about Indigenous people without Indigenous people” preference was also given to articles that included Indigenous authors and/or acknowledged Indigenous contributors.

The current body of work on Indigenous peoples in social marketing remains small. The first systematic review by Madill et al. (2014) identified only a handful of studies and highlighted the importance of cultural appropriateness, community involvement and storytelling. A subsequent systematic review confirmed that global evidence is limited, often downstream in orientation, concentrated in settler-colonial contexts and inconsistent in applying core social marketing principles (Kubacki and Szablewska, 2019). More recent contributions in social marketing (i.e. Cateriano-Arévalo et al., 2022, 2025) and marketing more broadly (i.e. Love and Hall, 2022; Salmon et al., 2023), along with emerging Indigenous-led scholarship such as systematic reviews of Indigenous business research (Akbar et al., 2026), analyses of Indigenous enterprise success (Jones et al., 2026), examinations of the footprint of national Indigenous business conferences (Williams and Cooms, 2026) and work on economic sovereignty in procurement (Watson, 2026), collectively indicate that the issue is not only the volume of publications but also the epistemic frameworks that shape representation and cultural authority.

Across this corpus, a clear and consistent pattern emerges, with much research conducted on or for Indigenous peoples rather than with or by them/us. This foregrounds questions of epistemic justice and intellectual sovereignty, namely, whose knowledge is recognised, whose priorities matter, what respectful co-production entails and how ethical accountability should be understood (Rigney, 2001; Santos, 2014). Epistemic justice requires that Indigenous peoples are recognised as legitimate knowers or knowledge holders and exercise meaningful influence over how knowledge is created, interpreted and used (Fricker, 2007). Work from psychology (Dudgeon and Bray, 2024), health (Fatima et al., 2025a; 2025b), social work (Bennett et al., 2018; Bennett and Prehn, 2026) and education (Shay et al., 2024; Shay and Sarra, 2026) demonstrates that Indigenous governance, power-sharing, decolonial co-design and with-and-by approaches can be standard practice in social marketing rather than aspirational ideals.

Our special issue moves social marketing further into this space by strengthening commitments to Indigenous intellectual sovereignty and advancing epistemic justice in both scholarship and practice.

Indigenous knowledges, perspectives and experiences are gifts from Indigenous peoples. This gift is an invitation to learn from ways of knowing, being, and doing that have been sustained over millennia by Indigenous peoples (Neale and Kelly, 2020). It also invites the reader to consider often-overlooked questions about whose knowledge counts, who is recognised as a knower and how social marketing positions itself in relation to the communities it seeks to serve (Santos, 2014; Rigney, 2001).

Gifts are offerings, and gift giving is a relational practice that nurtures respect, reciprocity and responsibility (Wilson, 2008; Simpson, 2017). In the case of our special issue, we as editors, others as authors and you as readers find ourselves at Nakata’s (2007) “cultural interface”. Here at the cultural interface, Indigenous and Western knowledge systems meet and rub up against each other, and it is here that social marketing can learn the most. The cultural interface is not always a comfortable, frictionless or neutral space. Conversely, it is contested, historically shaped and requires all participants to engage honestly and transparently with the asymmetries of power that have privileged certain ways of knowing, being and doing over others (Nakata, 2007).

Importantly, centring these Indigenous knowledges, perspectives and experiences presents the opportunity for a reorientation of social marketing scholarship and practice. When Indigenous knowledges, perspectives and experiences sit at the core rather than the margins, social marketing becomes more capable, more sustainable and more enriched (Yunkaporta, 2019). Simply put, it strengthens everyone, and we all become better (Carlson, 2023). Our special issue reflects the discipline’s readiness to learn from Indigenous peoples and invites readers to receive the gift of Indigenous knowledges, perspectives and experiences with humility, and to carry these learnings forward in research and practice.

As this is the first Indigenous-centric special issue in the Journal of Social Marketing, readers who are new to Indigenous research may find it helpful to be oriented to core frameworks that guide ethical, rights-based and culturally grounded practice. The items below introduce key rights, codes, frameworks, protocols and principles:

• United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP): Affirms the collective rights of Indigenous peoples to self-determination, governance, participation in decision-making, culture, lands and resources, and to free, prior and informed consent in matters that affect them (United Nations General Assembly, 2007).

• Codes of Ethics for Research Involving Indigenous Peoples: Many countries and institutions publish ethics codes that require cultural authority, free prior and informed consent, Indigenous governance, reciprocity, benefit-sharing and accountability across the research lifecycle. The AIATSIS Code of Ethics is a leading example from Australia that operationalises these principles for research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (AIATSIS, 2020).

• Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) Frameworks: Establish permissions, attribution, integrity protections, benefit-sharing and ongoing governance over use and reuse of Indigenous knowledge, stories, designs and cultural expressions, extending beyond conventional copyright to recognise community authority and collective ownership (Janke, 2021).

• Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS): Affirms the rights of Indigenous peoples to govern the collection, ownership, access, use and stewardship of data about their peoples, communities, lands and knowledges. IDS links data governance to self-determination, authority and benefit across the full data lifecycle (Kukutai and Taylor, 2016).

• Principles for Indigenous Data Governance: Indigenous data governance is guided by three complementary frameworks that work together across the full data lifecycle. The CARE Principles emphasise Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility and Ethics, centring people, purpose and power so that data practices deliver community-defined benefits and uphold Indigenous decision rights (Carroll et al., 2020). The FAIR Principles set technical standards for data quality and infrastructure by making data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (Wilkinson et al., 2016). The OCAP Principles assert Ownership, Control, Access and Possession for First Nations in Canada, articulating Indigenous jurisdiction over data, with possession operating as the practical mechanism that protects ownership in real-world stewardship and storage contexts (First Nations Information Governance Centre, 2014). Together these frameworks ensure Indigenous rights, benefits and accountability are embedded in data design, management, sharing and reuse.

• Provenance and cultural metadata protocols: Provenance and cultural metadata protocols ensure that the origins, custodianship, language group, place, consent conditions and cultural authority associated with knowledge and data are accurately recorded, supporting transparency, ethical reuse and equitable benefit-sharing in research and digital environments. In parallel, Traditional Knowledge (TK) and Biocultural Labels provide digital notices that communicate community permissions, access conditions, cultural responsibilities and protocols for using Indigenous cultural heritage and knowledge. Together, provenance documentation and TK and Biocultural Labels create a practical governance layer that clarifies Indigenous authority, protects against misuse and guides respectful sharing and reuse across research, education and digital collections (Local Contexts, 2026).

Our special issue comprises seven articles, four of which open up social marketing readers to translanguaging, with Indigenous languages used alongside English. Although translanguaging is uncommon in social marketing (e.g., Bádéjọ and Gordon, 2022), it is prevalent in other fields such as education, and its presence in this special issue is an intentional commitment to epistemic justice and Indigenous intellectual sovereignty. García and Wei’s (2014) seminal work defines translanguaging as the strategic mobilisation of one’s entire linguistic repertoire to make meaning across named languages and semiotic resources. Hence, translanguaging operates both as a linguistic practice and a tool for epistemic justice. As such, it holds Indigenous languages alongside English as legitimate vehicles of scholarship and, rather than merely describing translanguaging, several articles in this special issue fully immerse readers in its practice through purposeful bilingual explanation.

Asher (2026) offers a pūrākau (story)-based haerenga (voyage) through Te Ao Māori (Māori worldview) and Western knowledge systems, arguing for dual lenses of mātauranga (knowledge) that validate Indigenous epistemologies and position kaitiakitanga (guardianship), whakapapa (lineage and intergenerational connection) and intergenerational responsibility at the core of social good. Fong-Emmerson et al. (2026) examine how socialisation agents shape Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ higher education journeys, showing the salience of family, elders, peers, schools and indigenous centres, and calling for upstream, midstream and downstream strategies that are strengths-based and culturally safe. Antric and Reeder (2026) advance a Tiriti-dynamic framework for Aotearoa New Zealand grounded in He Awa Whiria (braided rivers), centring Māori concepts such as mauri (life force), whanaungatanga (relationships), kaitiakitanga (guardianship), mana motuhake (self-determination) and tūrangawaewae (place-based belonging), demonstrating how braided knowledge streams and Indigenous governance reshape practice, measures of success and legitimacy. Chan et al. (2026) provide a reflective account of embedding an Indigenous graduate attribute in social marketing curricula, surfacing educator hesitancy, the need for scaffolded reflective practice and the importance of institutional support and explicit professional capabilities to work with and for Indigenous Australians, while noting the absence of such capabilities in current marketing standards.

Hayward et al. (2026) deliver a whānau-centred (extended family-centred) evaluation of the F.A.S.T. stroke campaign that redesigns survey instruments to capture collective decision-making, affective responses and te reo Māori (the Māori language) framing, revealing inequities in unprompted awareness and the centrality of whānau processes, as well as the need to protect communities from harm in online recruitment environments. Meena (2026) synthesises 30 studies in a global systematic review, identifying four thematic clusters that include community care and socio-economic determinants, demographic and psychological influences, governance and structural inequities and cultural competence, and concludes that co-production, Indigenous leadership, formative research and sustainability are essential for ethical and effective Indigenous social marketing. Finally, Phillips and Henry (2026) using a Kaupapa Māori (the Māori way) approach focused on pūrākau (story, akin to narrative enquiry) of the Mānuka honey trademark dispute, showing how commercial use of the kupu (term) “Mānuka” without Māori consent reproduces colonial power and breaches Te Ara Tika (a Māori ethical framework), manaakitanga (cultural and social responsibility), mana (justice and equity) and whakapapa (relationships). They position pūrākau (story) as a decolonial, rights-based methodology and argue that ethical social marketing requires Māori-led co-production and structural reform to uphold tino rangatiratanga (self-determination) and protect taonga (treasures).

Across the special issue articles, a set of interconnected gifts emerges that encourages social marketing to move from knowing to doing. These gifts reposition Indigenous peoples not as informants within Western frameworks but as knowledge authorities providing pathways for reshaping the discipline. These gifts are translated into at-a-glance actions for social marketing in the following Gift Box.

As Australian Aboriginal social marketing scholars, we are honoured, as guest editors, to present this first special issue in the Journal of Social Marketing that centres Indigenous peoples’ knowledges, perspectives and experiences. This editorial, along with the articles included, strengthens the knowledge base and advances an epistemically just social marketing discipline. Across the special issue, the Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors demonstrate ethical and culturally anchored research and practice, showing how Indigenous knowledges reshape the discipline’s ways of knowing, being and doing. They reveal that social marketing is most valid, sustainable, and effective when Indigenous peoples are at the centre. This special issue is therefore a starting point rather than an endpoint, inviting social marketers globally to continue building a discipline that learns from Indigenous peoples.