Abstract
In this introductory chapter, we establish this book as a story of relationships, intersecting lives and experiences, as they have taken place in a remote township in northern Australia, between local Indigenous residents and a group of researchers. These researchers include three anthropologists, an artist, archaeologist, and literary scholar, each of whom has shared in the documenting of Indigenous people’s lives through the interface of ethnography, relational encounters, and knowledge sharing. The introduction outlines why this book commits to a high level of reflexivity and consideration of how we build knowledge, share knowledge, how we encounter new knowledge, and how well we are positioned to understand the lived experiences of others, while making ourselves fully available to personal change.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Adgemis, P. 2017. We Are Yanyuwa: No Matter What—Town Life, Family and Change. PhD diss., Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
Arendt, H. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Arendt, H. 1994. Essays in Understanding 1930–1954, ed. J. Kohn. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co.
Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2016. Borroloola Census Quickstats. Available at: https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/SSC70037. Accessed 6 June 2019.
Australian Government. 1976. Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, No. 191. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019C00117. Accessed 22 July 2019.
Australian Government. 1993. Native Title Act 1993, No. 110. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019C00054. Accessed 22 July 2019.
Avery, J. 1988. The Law People: History, Society and Initiation in the Borroloola Area of the Northern Territory. Doctoral diss., University of Sydney.
Baker, R. 1990. Coming In? The Yanyuwa as a Case Study in the Geography of Contact History. Aboriginal History 14: 25–60.
Baker, R. 1999. Land Is Life: Continuity Through Change for the Yanyuwa from the Northern Territory of Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Behar, R. 1990. Rage and Redemption: Reading the Life Story of a Mexican Marketing Woman. Feminist Studies 16 (2): 223–258.
Behar, R. 2003. Ethnography and the Book That Was Lost Ethnography 4 (1): 15–39.
Behar, R. 2014. The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. Boston: Beacon Press.
Behar, R. 2018. General Anthropology Division Distinguished Lecture. Presented by Ruth Behar, University of Michigan. 117th American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, San Jose, 16 November. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySnSNSRjzjw. Accessed 22 May 2019.
Borroloola Aboriginal Community. 1981. Kanymarda Yuwa—Two Laws [film]. Produced and directed by Carolyn Strachan and Alessandro Cavadini. Red Dirt Films and the Australian Film Commission.
Borroloola Aboriginal Community. 1992. Ka-wayawayama—Aeroplane Dance [film]. Produced and directed by Trevor Graham. Film Australia.
Bourdieu, P. 1996. Understanding, trans. B. Fowler. Theory, Culture and Society 13 (2): 17–37.
Bradfield, A. 2018. Decolonising Consciousness: Art, Identity and Engaging Indigenous Artists in far western New South Wales. Ph.D. thesis, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Bradley, J. 1988. Yanyuwa Country: The Yanyuwa People of Borroloola Tell the History of Their Land. Melbourne: Greenhouse Publication.
Bradley, J. 1997. Li-Anthawirriyarra, People of the Sea: Yanyuwa Relations with their Maritime Environment. Ph.D. thesis, Northern Territory University, Australia.
Bradley, J. 2008. Singing Through the Sea: Song, Sea and Emotion. In Deep Blue: Critical Reflections on Nature, Religion and Water, ed. S. Shaw and A. Francis, 17–32. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Bradley, J., G. Friday, A. Kearney, and L. Norman. 2011. That’s the Choices We Make: Animating Saltwater Country. Screening the Past 31. Available at: http://www.screeningthepast.com/?p=1030. Accessed 22 May 2019.
Bradley, J., M. Holmes, D. Norman, A. Isaac, J. Miller, and I. Ninganga. 2006. Yumbulyumbulmantha ki-awarawu (All kinds of things from Country) Yanyuwa Ethnobiological Classification. Ngulaig Monograph, St Lucia: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Unit, University of Queensland.
Bradley, J., and K. Seton. 2005. Self-Determination or ‘Deep Colonising’: Land Claims, Colonial Authority and Indigenous Representation. In Unfinished Constitutional Business, ed. Barbara Hocking, 32–46. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Bradley, J., and S. Johnson. 2014. We Sing Our Law, Is That Still TEK? Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Can the West Come to Know? PAN: Philosophy Activism Nature 11: 1443–6124.
Bradley, J., and Yanyuwa Families. 2010. Singing Saltwater Country. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Bradley, J. with Yanyuwa Families. 2016. Wuka nya- nganunga li- Yanyuwa li-Anthawirriyarra: Language for Us, the Yanyuwa Saltwater People, vol. 1. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing.
Bradley, J. with Yanyuwa Families. 2017. Wuka nya- nganunga li- Yanyuwa li-Anthawirriyarra: Language for Us, the Yanyuwa Saltwater People, vol. 2. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing,
Brewer, J. 2000. Ethnography. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Clifford, J., and G.E. Marcus (eds.). 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Crapanzano, V. 1977. On the Writing of Ethnography. Dialectical Anthropology 2 (1): 69–73.
Crapanzano, V. 1980. Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cowlishaw, G. 2017. ‘Tunnel Vision’: Part One—Resisting Postcolonialism in Australian Anthropology. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 28: 324–341.
Cowlishaw, G. 2018. ‘Tunnel Vision’: Part Two—Explaining Australian Anthropology’s Conservatism. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 29: 35–52.
De Santolo, J. 2008. Two Laws Still: Notes on Resonance. Studies in Documentary Film 2 (2): 185–189.
Ellis, C. 1999. Heartful Autoethnography. Qualitative Health Research 9 (5): 669–683.
Finlay, L., and B. Gough (eds.). 2003. Reflexivity: A Practical Guide for Researchers in Health and Social Sciences. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Fourmile, H. 1989. Who Owns the Past? Aborigines as Captives of the Archives. Aboriginal History 13 (1/2): 1–8.
Geertz, C. 1988. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Hinkson, M. 2018. In and Out of Place: Ethnography as ‘Journeying with’ Between Central and South Australia. Oceania 88 (3): 254–268.
Hinkson, M., and E. Vincent. 2018. Shifting Indigenous Australian Realities: Dispersal, Damage and Resurgence. Special issue, Oceania 88 (3): 240–253.
Hirschauer, S. 2006. Putting Things into Words: Ethnographic Description and the Silence of the Social. Human Studies 29 (4):413–441.
Hokari, M. 2011. Gurindji Journey: A Japanese Historian in the Outback. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.
Jackson, M. 2002. The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgressions, and Intersubjectivity. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
Jackson, M. 2005. Existential Anthropology: Events, Exigencies and Effects. New York, Oxford: Berghahn.
Jackson, M. 2009. Where Thought Belongs: An Anthropological Critique of the Project of Philosophy. Anthropological Theory 9: 235–252.
Johnson, S., 2011. Barra bawuji marrirru, Lhaba anymaya, anyngkarriyia ki-awarawu! Stop! Be Quiet! Listen to Country! A Yanyuwa Informed and Critical Reflection on Place, Belonging, Culture and Sustainable Futures. Doctoral diss., University of Queensland.
Kearney, A. 2009. Before the Old People and Still Today: Yanyuwa Places and Narratives of Engagement. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing.
Kearney, A. 2014. Cultural Wounding, Healing and Emerging Ethnicities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kearney, A. 2017. Violence in Place: Cultural and Environmental Wounding. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Kearney, A. 2018. Returning to That Which Was Never Lost: Indigenous Australian Saltwater Identities, a History of Australian Claims and the Paradox of Return. History and Anthropology 29 (2): 184–203.
Kearney, A., and J. Bradley. 2009. Manankurra: What’s in a Name, Place Names and Emotional Geographies. In Aboriginal Placenames Old and New: Discovering, Interpreting and Restoring Indigenous Nomenclature for the Australian Landscape, ed. H. Koch and L. Hercus. Canberra: ANU E-Press and Aboriginal History Inc.
Kearney, A., and J. Bradley. 2015. When a Long Way in a Bark Canoe Becomes a Quick Trip in a Boat: Changing to Sea Country and Yanyuwa Watercraft Technology. Quaternary International 385: 166–176.
Kearney, A. with J. Bradley, B. McKee, and T. Chandler. 2012. Representing Indigenous Cultural Expressions Through Animation: The Yanyuwa Animation Project. Animation Journal 20: 4–29.
Kirton, J., and N. Timothy. 1977. Yanyuwa Concepts Relating to ‘Skin’. Oceania 47 (4): 320–322.
Mackinlay, E. 1999. Music for Dreaming: Aboriginal Lullabies in the Yanyuwa Community at Borroloola, Northern Territory. British Journal of Ethnomusicology 8 (1): 97–111.
Mackinlay, E. 2015. Blurring Boundaries Between Restricted and Unrestricted Performance: A Case Study of the Ngadirdji of Yanyuwa Women in Borroloola. Perfect Beat 4 (4): 73–84.
Mahood, K. 2000. Craft for a Dry Lake. Sydney, NSW: Penguin.
Mahood, K. 2007. Blow-ins on the Cold Desert Wind. Griffith Review. Available at: https://griffithreview.com/articles/blow-ins-on-the-cold-desert-wind/. Accessed 6 June 2019.
Mahood, K. 2012. Kartiya Are Like Toyotas—White Workers on Australia’s Cultural Frontier. Griffith Review. Available at: https://griffithreview.com/articles/kartiya-are-like-toyotas/. Accessed 6 June 2019.
Mahood, K. 2016. Position Doubtful: Mapping Memories and Landscapes. Brunswick, VIC: Scribe.
Manne, R. 2010. W.E.H Stanner: The Dreaming and Other Essays, with an Introduction by Robert Manne. Collingwood, VIC: Black Inc. Agenda.
Morris, S. and the Borroloola Songwomen. 2013. Song Peoples Sessions—Ngambala Wiji Li-Wunungu—Together We Are Strong [sound recording]. Executive produce Patrick McCloskey. Universal Music Australia.
Rademaker, L. 2019. White Grief, Happy Friendship: Jane Goodale and Emotional Anthropological. History and Anthropology 30 (3): 313–330.
Rabinow, P. 1978. Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Reay, M. 1962. Subsections at Borroloola. Oceania 33: 90–115.
Roberts, T. 2005. Frontier Justice: A History of the Gulf Country to 1900. St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press.
Rosaldo, R. 2010. How I Write—Renato Rosaldo Bio. Stanford University, 11 December. Available at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/howiwrite/Bios/renatorosaldo/index.html. Acccessed 10 June 2019.
Rosaldo, R. 2014. The Day of Shelly’s Death: The Poetry and Ethnography of Grief. Durham: Duke University Press.
Rose, D.B. 1996. Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.
Rose, D.B. 2014. Arts of Flow: Poetics of ‘fit’ in Aboriginal Australia. Dialectical Anthropology 38 (4): 431–445.
Ruby, J. (ed.). 1986. Crack in the Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Salmón, E. 2000. Kincentric Ecology: Indigenous Perceptions of the Human-Nature. Ecological Applications 10 (5): 1327–1332.
Seton, K., and J. Bradley. 2004. ‘When You Have No Law You Are Nothing’: Cane Toads, Social Consequences and Management Issues. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 5 (3): 205–225.
Smith, L.T. 2012. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. New York: Palgrave.
Stanner, W.E.H. 1968. The Boyer Lectures: Black and White Australia—An Anthropologist’s View. Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Stoller, P., and C. Olkes. 1987. In Sorcery’s Shadow: A Memoir of Apprenticeship Among the Songhay of Niger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tamisari, F., and J. Bradley. 2005. To Have and to Give the Law: Animal Names, Place and Event. In Animal Names, ed. G. Ortalli, A. Minelli, and G. Sanga, 419–438. Venice: Instituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Plazzo Loredan, Campo Santo Stefano.
Thorner, S., F. Edmonds, M. Clarke, and P. Balla. 2018. Maree’s Backyard: Intercultural Collaborations for Indigenous Sovereignty in Melbourne. Oceania 88 (3): 269–291.
Trigger, D., M. Forsey, and C. Meurk. 2012. Revelatory Moments in Fieldwork. Qualitative Research 12 (5): 513–527.
Wolfe, P. 1991. On Being Woken Up: The Dreamtime in Anthropology and in Australian Settler Culture. Comparative Studies in Society and History 33 (2): 197–224.
Wunungu Awara: Animating Indigenous Knowledges (formerly Monash Countrylines Archive). n.d. Available at: http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/Countrylines-archive/. Accessed 22 May 2019.
Yanyuwa Community. 1989. Buwarrala Akarriya—Journey East [film]. Produced by Debbie Sonnenberg. Marndaa Productions.
Yanyuwa Community. 2000. Diwurruwurru—Message Stick Website. Archived website: Originally hosted by Deakin University.
Yanyuwa Families, J. Bradley, and N. Cameron. 2003. Forget About Flinders: An Indigenous Atlas of the Southwest Gulf of Carpentaria. Canberra, NSW: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Acknowledgements
In writing this book we acknowledge that there are a number of scholars who have worked with Yanyuwa families in the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria, throughout the decades. Their research has contributed valuable information on the region’s social and cultural history, and has been key to documenting Yanyuwa experiences and voices. These scholars include John Avery (1988), Richard Baker (1999), Jason De Santolo (2008), Stephen Johnson (2011, Bradley and Johnson 2014), Jean Kirton (Kirton and Timothy 1977), Elizabeth Mackinlay (1999, 2015), Marie Reay (1962), and Kathryn Seton (Seton and Bradley 2004; Bradley and Seton 2005). The choice of contributors for this edited volume reflects current research being undertaken collaboratively with Yanyuwa and the close research relationships between and among the six authors, John Bradley, Amanda Kearney, Nona Cameron, Frances Devlin-Glass, Liam M. Brady, and Philip Adgemis.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kearney, A., Bradley, J. (2020). Introduction: The Scene for a Reflexive Practice. In: Kearney, A., Bradley, J. (eds) Reflexive Ethnographic Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34898-4_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34898-4_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-34897-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-34898-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)