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The Minangkabau community in West Sumatra, Indonesia, is one of the world’s largest matrilineal Indigenous societies. Governance is organised through a collaborative leadership structure in which customary and state authorities coexist. The community functions through a collaborative leadership framework before making decisions. This process entails continuous reflection, monitoring and regulation as the core of metacognition (Flavell, 1979; Mazancieux et al., 2026; Ordin & Polyanskaya, 2025).

Research suggests that metacognition extends beyond individuals to collective evaluative practices (Heyes et al., 2020; Shahvali & Zarafshani, 2002). Arrows (2016) argues that Indigenous decision-making is grounded in reflection on lived experience. In this blog post, I summarise my recent study (Shalihin, 2025), which employed a neuroanthropological approach (Lende & Downey, 2012), interviews with four Indigenous leaders and a neuroimaging meta-analysis to address a central question: How do Indigenous leaders make communal decisions, and what cognitive processes underpin these practices?

In Indigenous communities, decision-making is shaped through ongoing communal deliberation and peer-based validation (Schultz et al., 2025). A similar pattern is found in Minangkabau society, where authority is distributed across four interconnected leadership roles: clan leaders, scholars, religious leaders and female leaders.

In Minangkabau society, decision-making is distributed across interconnected leadership roles. Clan leaders use deliberation and consensus to regulate judgment through collective reasoning and shared responsibility (Karso, 2025).

Meanwhile, religious leaders are responsible for preserving harmony between religious practices and customs. They are also assessing the moral, spiritual and ethical consequences of communal issues. In this context, metacognitive practices are closely tied to moral reflection and the examination of underlying beliefs and values (Arrows, 2016). Cognitive flexibility also becomes important because scholar leaders continuously negotiate between tradition and modernity. Besides, metacognition is described as being shaped by sociocultural experiences and by the need to navigate different worldviews (Rajcoomar et al., 2025).

‘Metacognition is shaped by sociocultural experiences and by the need to navigate different worldviews.’

Besides, female leaders contribute to cultural preservation, intergenerational learning, emotional resilience and social cohesion, as they are the key actors in preserving local knowledge (FAO, 2025). Emotional regulation and empathy help them to respond carefully to collective pressure while sustaining communal resilience and cultural continuity.

I argue that metacognition in Indigenous leadership extends beyond individual self-reflection. The practices described by Indigenous leaders show that decision-making is distributed across complementary leadership roles and enacted through communal gatherings and consensus-building. Metacognition in Indigenous governance is embedded in social relationships towards meaning-making and decision-making. Hence, metacognition practices may never be limited to ‘thinking about thinking’, but can emerge with collective thinking.

References

Arrows, F. (2016). The CAT-FAWN connection: Using metacognition and Indigenous worldview for more effective character education and human survival. Journal of Moral Education, 45(3), 261–275.

Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive–developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34(10), 906–911.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO]. (2025). Indigenous women researchers speak their knowledge in an academic voice. Ìý

Heyes, C., Bang, D., Shea, N., Frith, C. D., & Fleming, S. M. (2020). Knowing ourselves together: The cultural origins of metacognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 24(5), 349–362.

Karso, A. J. (2025). Natural resources governance and the vulnerability of Indigenous communities in Indonesia. Frontiers in Political Science, 7, Article 1601480.

Lende, D. H., & Downey, G. (2012). The encultured brain: An introduction to neuroanthropology. MIT Press.

Mazancieux, A., Hat, K., Rutiku, R., Wierzchoń, M., & Sandberg, K. (2026). Metacognition in decision-making across domains and modalities: Evidence from three studies. Psychological Science, 37(2), 106–124.

Ordin, M., & Polyanskaya, L. (2025). Bilinguals’ metacognition is affected by the language used as a medium of education. Review of Education, 13(2), Article e70088.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD]. (2019). The future of education and skills: Education 2030.

Rajcoomar, R., Morabe, O. N., & Breed, B. (2025). A socio-cultural model that promotes metacognition and creativity: An analysis of intercultural experiences within the metacognitive process in physical sciences classrooms. International Journal of Research in Education and Science, 11(2), 319–340.

Schultz, C., Collova, J., Pengilly, J., Walker, R., Darwin, L., Shand, F., Chang, E. P., McPhee, R., & Dudgeon, P. (2025). Indigenous consensus methodology: A bricolage qualitative exploration. First Nations Health and Wellbeing – The Lowitja Journal, 3, Article 100097.

Shahvali, M., & Zarafshani, K. (2002). Using PRA techniques as metacognitive strategies to develop indigenous knowledge: A case study. International Social Science Journal, 54(173), 413–419. Ìý

Shalihin, R. R. (2025). Intersecting brain processes and Indigenous leadership systems: A neuroanthropological analysis of the Minangkabau community. Social Identities, 31(1), 99–117.