With an uncertain climate future ahead, the resilience and millennia of knowledge of First Peoples is being prioritised and canvassed as potentially holding some answers as environmental disaster threats increase.

Recognising the disproportionate impact of major disasters on Indigenous people and communities, National Indigenous Disaster Resilience (NIDR) is an Australian-wide research program established in 2022.

The program is holding its biennial national gathering in Lakes Entrance, on on Gunaikurnai Country, in Victoria's East Gippsland region in early May.

Academic, Land Council and Cultural Heritage Organisation, legal, youth, community-based, council and international voices will contribute to the Indigenous-led conversations at the three-day event, described as an 'unconference'.

Euahlayi man Associate Professor Bhiamie Williamson leads the NIDR research program out of Monash University.

His experience in environmental practice and advocacy is extensive, from working with Indigenous ranger groups and cultural burning in Australia, as chair of Country Needs People, among a list of academic research areas, including those overseas.

While the gathering is informed by the disproportionate impact major environmental hazards have on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, its purpose is to build upon this recognition into celebrating inherent strengths and leadership in these communities, bringing stories and knowledge together, Associate Professor Williamson said.

Organisers describe the NIDR Gathering as celebrating Indigenous leadership and excellence in emergency management, community recovery, disaster resilience and Caring for Country.

"It's well understood that climate change is accelerating the impacts and frequencies of major environmental hazards," Associate Professor Williamson said, from bushfires both in an out of summer months, to floods, cyclones and heatwaves.

"The NIDR Gathering is really a way to come together, to acknowledge all of these hazards, these increasing threats that we all face, and kind of start to ask the question 'What might we learn by considering the tens of thousands of years of deep history held by Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people?' — people who know these hazards not as threats, but as necessary cycles of Country. People who have learned to live with them. People (for whom) these events are actually really important and restorative.

"We see a lot of talk about adaptation to climate change in modern times, but really what Australia needs is kind of like a cultural or intellectual adaptation to how we understand these events, because they are happening."

Indigenous leaders and disaster specialists will give keynote speeches at next month's gathering alongside cultural practice demonstrations at nearby Lake Tyers Aboriginal Trust, other on-Country experiences, workshops and panel discussions.

The NIDR Gathering is delivered in partnership with Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation, Lake Tyers Aboriginal Trust and East Gippsland Shire Council and land management and resilience non-for-profit Jagun Alliance.

"What Indigenous communities have been doing - caring for Country through fire, through water, through deep knowledge of place - that's at the heart of disaster resilience," Jagun Alliance executive director Oliver Costello said, adding the gathering "is a chance for that knowledge to travel further and into the conversations shaping how we all prepare and recover together".

The 2024 NIDR Gathering was held on Bundjalung Country in Lismore.

According to Lismore City Council, the area — one of the most flood-prone urban centres in Australia — registered its highest flood on record when the Wilsons River at Lismore gauge reached 14.4 metres in 2022.

In March 2025, Tropical Cyclone Alfred saw the river peak at 9.7 metres, just shy of 'major' flood levels still met by local evacuation orders.

Already in 2026, remote and regional communities have been battered by multiple cyclones in the Kimberley, Top End, Pilbara and North Queensland.

A national snapshot via NIDR, last updated October 2025, outlines 743 disasters declared since 2007.

Across local government area's impacted by these disasters, the average percentage of the local community who are Indigenous is 14.7 per cent. This is as high as 25.4 per cent in Queensland, and 65.9 in the Northern Territory.

"This conversation is incredibly relevant to what we are all experiencing at the moment," Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation chief executive Nick Ashburner said.

"Energy insecurity around the world and the unstable price of fuel affects our most vulnerable communities first, and punishes those who choose to live on remote Country.

"Couple those pressures with the increase in extreme weather events, and you can see why there is such interest in learning what we can from the deep knowledge of First Nations people when it comes to matters of Country, and community, and healing. I hope as many people as possible take advantage of this remarkable opportunity."

The bulk of the event, from Tuesday to Thursday, May 5-7, is hosted at the local land council's Wangun Amphitheatre.

"Governments no longer have the luxury of responding to increasing threats of climate change in a slow or incremental way. Meeting the scale of the challenge must start by listening to the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities," Associate Professor Williamson said.

"This is an opportunity to come together to recognise and celebrate the inherent strengths of Indigenous communities and ask what we might learn from the resilience of our communities as they continue to stand up despite the deeply embedded discrimination in modern Australia."