Collaborative research in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health spaces is rightfully contentious. Our shameful history of research as colonization, and its legacy of harmful health research done 'on' rather than 'with' Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities, is well documented and must be acknowledged. Over the last 50 years there have been a series of important Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-driven reforms in the research space which are meant to foster equitable research partnerships, meaningful community engagement and involvement, and most importantly, to support the self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities in health research. While there is no denying the positive impacts of these reforms on collaborative community-engaged research there remains several apparent system-level inconsistencies in their application.

Led by a non-Indigenous researcher, this research is scaffolded by Two-Eyed Seeing and guided by grounded Aboriginal mentorship. As the necessary starting point, the thesis first describes what genuine community-engaged research practice looks like through yarns with Cherbourg Regional Aboriginal & Islander Community Controlled Health Service (CRAICCHS) staff and community members who have collaborated with universities and outside organizations for health research and underscores the essential relational processes involved to meaningfully support community self-determination in health research. Second, the thesis identifies the structures within the wider research ecosystem which constrain/enable community-engaged practice through yarns with research professionals who have collaborated with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities for research and highlights the bottom-up adaptative strategies utilized to contend with these influences. Third, the thesis provides a contextualized example of how community-engaged practice can be optimally operationalized in a collaborative research protocol through the sharing of my own critically reflexive Two-Eyed Seeing journey of learning guided by grounded Aboriginal mentorship.

This thesis demonstrates that when rooted in community self-determination, and developed through self-reflection, two-way learning, and guided by research partners, genuine community-engaged research practice is an incredible strength-based lever to transform the 'doing' of collaborative health research in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities, and to support wider research ecosystem transformation.

In sum, this thesis provides a more nuanced understanding of community engaged practice than is available in the existing literature, by anchoring it first in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander self-determined community expectations of research, but also recognizing the dialectic involved in its production in the wider research ecosystem. Understanding how these elements interact is essential if we are to optimize community-engaged research practice, improve the experience of our research partners, and to meaningfully support community self-determination in collaborative health research. A novel explanatory dialectical model of community-engaged research practice is also proposed as a starting point for theory-building.