Gababala banma-li bumala-y gaalanha ngaawa-y guwaa-l: Healing through resistance and finding voice

Abstract

The article discusses strategies in ways that Aboriginal groups in Australia are overcoming censorship imposed via the hegemonic principals of Western education, neoliberal control of the media and government sanctions against them. The narrative introduces autobiographical ethnicity as a unique research methodology that generates greater emphasis on the Indigenous voice rather than either autobiographic or ethnographic writing, in that it moves beyond the qualitative research method framed by anthropologists for which ethnographic studies was born. Autobiographical ethnicity originates from traditional forms of Aboriginal ceremony and storytelling, where deeper meaning is given to the Aboriginal experience rather than purely observational data as collected in ethnographic writing. As a form of research-based practice, autobiographical ethnicity creates greater accessibility to the Aboriginal writer in telling our stories and maintaining her (his) story our way.