From @phycodurus:

• relevant documentation: https://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/authentication/#tokenauthentication
• in the absence of token-authentication for the TOM Toolkit REST API, at the moment, including auth = (<username>, <password>) for and account on the TOM in the request.post( ..., auth=auth) will work

This is related to:

• Create an extended User Model #1051

See api token auth url pattern and create_auth_token