Who are the Experts Here?: Recognition of Aboriginal women and community workers in research and beyond

Abstract

This paper explores how Indigenous-centred methodologies are crucial to the design and conduct of research projects that seek to have meaningful outcomes for Indigenous women and communities. We draw on experiential observations of an advisory group led by Indigenous experts that was part of the Social and Cultural Resilience and Emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal Mothers in prison (SCREAM) research project. From their experience we identify lessons for how Indigenous expertise can be utilized to promote mutually respectful relationships among Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, organizations and agencies. We found that the formation of an Indigenous-led advisory group from a project's inception is a powerful vehicle for informing its purposes, method and dissemination of findings back to Indigenous participants and communities. Our approach has produced a set of data on Indigenous women prisoners that prioritizes, rather than pathologizes, Indigenous standpoints, and recognizes the complex effects of colonization for these women. This paper seeks to convey the research process to inform future research that engages Indigenous participants.

Incarcerated Aboriginal women’s experiences of accessing healthcare and the limitations of the ‘equal treatment’ principle

“…This project was guided by a community collaborative participatory action research methodology [52] and a grounded theory approach [54]. Community collaborative participatory action research is an iterative, multimethods approach positioning Aboriginal people as the experts [48,51,52]. In this project, collaboration with Aboriginal women and their communities guided all stages of the project from planning through to dissemination, including 2 years of consultation preceding the data collection.…”

“…Western research contributes to this agenda through employment of methods that exclude consultation with Aboriginal people and communities and, consequently the proliferation of deficit understandings of Aboriginal people [48,50]. We sought to decolonize these ways of doing research, collaborating with Aboriginal women and their communities, acknowledging them as the experts on their needs [51].…”

“…Methodologies used in research for surveillance of prison population health lead to problematic understandings of incarcerated Aboriginal women due to the lack of attention to context, including lack of acknowledgement of the ongoing effects of colonization on Aboriginal women and their communities and lack of attention to issues of health equity and women's subjective experiences [19]. Our decolonizing approach acknowledges the ongoing effects of colonization on Aboriginal health, and the variation of the effects of colonization in different locations across Australia, guided by Aboriginal concepts of health and social and emotional wellbeing [51,52]. We used a reflexive, iterative and intersubjective approach to the construction of knowledge in collaboration with Aboriginal women and their communities.…”

Conceptualizing the Association Between Community Participation and CQI in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander PHC Services

“…Finally, there is the element of two-way learning that has been continually promoted by Australian Indigenous scholars often from the perspective of arguing for recognition of Indigenous capacity (Geia, Hayes, & Usher, 2011; Sherwood et al, 2015). In our study, the two-way learning referred to the challenge of sharing values, perspectives, and understandings of health and CQI against the backdrop of different cultures and world views.…”

Primary Health Networks’ impact on Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services

“…In accordance with a decolonising methodology, following Hart () and Sherwood et al. (), Tuhiwai‐Smith (), this article lets representatives from Aboriginal community‐controlled organisations speak for themselves. This methodology is grounded in an ethical commitment to partnering with Indigenous communities in research.…”