Conversations between disciplines: historical archaeology and oral history at Yarrawarra

This Is Not a Guide to Indigenous Research Partnerships

“…Partner negotiations discuss risks and benefits, and should occur in a space where all partners can speak with authority about their needs. This can mean listening to criticism and voicing confusion to enable further investigation or understanding (Beck & Somerville 2005). Anxiety or defensiveness about criticism can prevent flexibility and responsiveness that will enable solutions to problems that may arise.…”

“…It is possible that proposed research can be tweaked and altered to fit community needs and in the process create benefit to the research project as well (Faulkhead 2008). In fact obstacles and contradictions can be important junctures that provide productive analytic information to improve research quality (Beck & Somerville 2005). These occurrences can unearth episodes where evidence and research methods from colonizing views are a misfit when applied to Indigenous contexts (Tuhiwai Smith 1999).…”

“…This effectively shifted the focus from Indigenous people being the problem to a partnership responsibility to resolve problems (Eversole & Routh 2005). Other methods involve recognizing and integrating Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge or two way learning (Beck & Somerville 2005;Pyper;Carter 2008;Haswell-Elkins et al 2009). These methods use non-Indigenous research knowledge and resources alongside Indigenous knowledge and resources to gain understanding about a situation or find a better way to implement an activity.…”

“…This requires consideration of communication and physical space. Some projects described meeting on the partner's traditional country as significant in allowing the research team to engage with the lands of traditional custodian partners (Beck & Somerville 2005;Pyper 2005).…”

Mapping Local Perspectives in the Historical Archaeology of Vanuatu Mission Landscapes

“…Oral traditions, ethnographic observations, archaeological remains, and written documents alongside ecological, geological, and climatological data all represent valid material for this pursuit; approaches that integrate many of these perspectives often provide the most insightful discoveries (e.g., Carson and Athens 2007;Hayden 2011;Lape 2002). Where archaeologists work as close collaborators and partners with local communities, and as control over the archaeological process is increasingly relinquished to those communities (Marshall 2002), there has been an effort to integrate documentary evidence, material remains, and oral histories, as well as other types of data, without privileging one line of evidence over the others ( Beck and Somerville 2005;David et al 2012;McNiven and Russell 2005 : 242-248;Stewart et al 2004).…”