DERCCHATS: Making Space for Indigenous Research
November 16, 2021
The final DERCChat of 2021 was a hybrid panel session – a combined live-in-person event that was also streamed to an online audience via Facebook.
The event explored the following questions:
How is Indigenous knowledge recognised in research?
How do we create space for it in our work?
What does capacity building and community look like in practice?
I was honoured to join a panel of six academics whose work brings them into contact with Indigenous Knowledge systems, cultural practitioners, places, ICIP and more.
The event was recorded and will be available online soon. (I will edit this post and share the link to the recording.)
Daniel Featherstone recently began at RMIT researching digital inclusion in remote Indigenous communities. He was previously General Manager of First Nations Media Australia from 2012-19 and Archiving Projects Manager to April 2021. He managed Ngaanyatjarra Media from 2001-2010, supporting media and communications programs in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands of WA. Daniel has a PhD on evaluation and policy in Indigenous media and communications.
Cathy Greenfield is a teacher–researcher and brings an interdisciplinary, ecologically, politically and economically informed Communication Studies to those dual roles. Her research situates communication artefacts, practices and relations within the politics of how populations are governed and seek to self-govern. As part of a cross-disciplinary team she is researching the use of media technologies to assist cross-cultural engagement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.
Olivia Guntarik is a descendent of the Dusun-Murut hilltribes of East Malaysian Borneo. Her research examines cultural models of storytelling through the digital, performative and deep ecology. She is a practice-based researcher and member of RMIT’s Digital Ethnography Research Centre.
Megan Kelleher is a Vice Chancellor’s Indigenous Predoctoral Fellow in the School of Media and Communication. She is a core member of DERC and a PhD member of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society (ADM+S). Her thesis is investigating whether the affordances of blockchain technology are culturally appropriate for Indigenous governance and decision making. Grounded in her Barada/Baradha and Gabalbara/Kapalbara heritage, the research will be approached from an Indigenous standpoint, contributing to the field from an important Australian research perspective.
Neil Morris is a Yorta Yorta musician and PhD Candidate at RMIT. His research centres on heavily-impacted colonial regions in south-eastern Australia and First Nations globally with similar experiences. He is interested in how creativity shapes culture, identity and belonging in the ongoing work of archival remembrance and song keeping.
Lyndon Ormond-Parker of Alyawarra descent from the Barkly tablelands region of the Northern Territory. A cultural heritage expert with significant experience in repatriation, archives, information technologies, materials conservation, heritage, and policy. Ormond-Parker has held numerous positions across universities, organisations, government committees and boards. He is a Principal Research Fellow with the Mapping Digital Inclusion and Media Use in Remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, RMIT University.
Escritoire Noir 