Storying Ways to Reflect on Power, Contestation, and Yarning Research Method Application

Abstract

Internationally within academia settler-colonial processes occur in various ways alongside a growth in the use of research methods conceived with Indigenous knowledges. However, most research environments and practices are built upon and privilege dominant non-Indigenous settler-colonial knowledge systems. It is within this power imbalance and contested space that Yarning research method is being applied and interpreted. Underpinned by an Indigenous Research Paradigm, we employed storying ways to examine researcher experiences of settler-colonialism and the Yarning research method. The story outlines challenges and pitfalls that researchers can fall into and critically examines how researchers can fail to recognise the depth of Indigenous knowledge embedded within the practice. This story is gifted by creating an imagined narrative interview with a character called Settler-Colonisation, whereby we identify a litany of settler-colonial processes impacting Yarning research. Scrutinising the epistemological and methodological practices and processes enacted in academia is imperative for better-informed application of Indigenous research methods and create sustainable research more generally.

Dissonance, Disagreement, Difference: Challenging Thematic Consensus to Decolonise Grounded Theory

“…As community 'insiders' alert to the risk of Western bias, Murrup-Stewart et al (2021) decided to modify the rules of Grounded Theory, and carefully filtered themes to ensure they represented an Indigenous worldview rather than allow themes to emerge spontaneously from the data. In a later collaboration (Murrup-Stewart et al, 2022) Murrup-Stewart further explores the tendency of Western epistemologies to be privileged through an imagined yarn with a research participant called 'Settler-Colonisation'. The paper concludes that settler-colonisation remains unfinished business, finding new guises even within methodologies that seem to promote First Nations worldviews.…”

“…These have been developed from knowledge sharing practices in particular communities. They include, amongst others, Dadirri – a Ngan’gikurunggurr and Ngen’giwumirri concept from the Aboriginal peoples of the Daly River region in Northern Australia that means a “deep contemplative process of ‘listening to one another’ in reciprocal relationships” (Ungunmerr-Baumann et al, 2022, p. 94), yarning (Bessarab and Ng’andu, 2010; Walker et al, 2014; Geia et al, 2013; Barlo et al, 2021; Hughes & Barlo, 2021; Kennedy et al, 2022), storying (Murrup-Stewart et al, 2022; Phillips & Bunda, 2018), story-work (Kovach, 2009) and sharing circles (Lavallée, 2009). These are all cultural forms of communicating that differ from structured or semi-structured interviews and standardised questionnaires.…”

Yarning about e-mental health tools: First Nations Australian youth perspectives of well-being and e-health

“…Collaborative Yarning is an Indigenist method of data and knowledge analysis which aims to gain a deeper understanding of First Nations stories (Shay et al, 2021). Murrup-Stewart et al (2022) outline how Collaborative Yarning, as a tool of reflection, is a valid and culturally appropriate approach to data analysis. As shown in Figure 1, Collaborative Yarning first involved two researchers independently reflecting on each transcript.…”