Researching communities with community participation. Indigenous views in Victoria about keeping oral memory

Johanson, Graeme, Kirsty Williamson, Don Schauder, Shannon Faulkhead

Monash University.

(Refereed Stream)

The inter-relationships between researchers and the Indigenous community in the state of Victoria, Australia, are analysed in this chapter. In order to gain an understanding of the expectations of Indigenous Victorians of a planned process for the capture and preservation of their oral knowledge, researchers undertook an analysis of Indigenous views. Views were elicited by means of 72 interviews about what Indigenous communities needed by way of a trusted system to help to create, collate, and maintain stories in an online repository of their oral memory.

The research team included a liaison officer who, as an Indigenous Elder recruited participants and liaised with them during and after interviews. They agreed that the long-term value of oral memory has been overlooked by historians and curators in the past, and that storytelling is fundamental to community identity, and essential for cultural continuity.

Responses to this project from Indigenous communities were positive. The enthusiastic co-operation of Indigenous interviewees provided much useful data. A combination of community-based action research and user needs analysis provided systematic methodological approaches. Evaluation of the suitability of these interpretivist theories forms part of the discussion.

The research team and Indigenous communities share common goals. The interactions between the researchers and the researched were open and frank, and deliberate effort has gone into the mutual contributions which will sustain a good working relationship into the future. The means for achieving collaboration are described.