Applied over generations, a bioengineered gene drive promises to radically reduce invasive species’ populations through suppressed breeding. As this technology develops, synthetic biology (synbio) scientists have identified islands as potential environments in which to trial the release of approved gene drives in the future. But what happens when a cross-cultural, Indigenous lens is applied to synbio? The Torres Strait Islands stretch between mainland Australia, of which they are a part, and Papua New Guinea. The Straits’ water facilitates Islanders’ mobility and fosters customary connection and trans/national notions of kin, while also informing engagement with and care for this environment. In this watery world, how might Torres Strait Islanders’ understandings complicate and/or contribute to synbio scientific concepts of islands as contained, “watertight” field sites for future gene drive trials? Bringing together Torres Strait Islanders’ perspectives and synbio science, this paper will consider early cross-cultural conversations about novel conservation set within settler-colonial legacies in science and synbio aspirations to unsettle nature. 

Kirsty Wissing is a Research Fellow at the Australian National University and a Visiting Scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). She has previously been a member of CSIRO’s Synthetic Biology Future Science Platform and CSIRO’s Advanced Engineering Biology Future Science Platform. Trained as an anthropologist (social scientist), Kirsty’s research considers Indigenous and customary values, relationships with and resource responsibility for tangible and intangible environments in Australia and Ghana. Her work sits at the intersection of Indigenous and non-Indigenous science approaches to environmental disasters such as flooding, invasive species incursions and loss of biodiversity.