Researching Remote Aboriginal Children's Services ...

Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood Volume 8, Number 4, 2007 www.wwwords.co.uk/CIEC

Researching Remote Aboriginal Children’s Services: it’s all about rules LYN FASOLI & RANU JAMES Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, Batchelor, Northern Territory, Australia

ABSTRACT This article identifies problems, issues and insights through critical reflection on the rules, written and unwritten, which encroach on the research process in the ‘Both Ways’ project. The project investigates the development and sustainability of remote Aboriginal children’s services in the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia. Children’s services, such as child-care centres and outside-schoolhours care, are fairly recent phenomena in the NT, with only a handful of services receiving government funding in 1995, increasing to approximately 100 in 2006. This article focuses on problems, issues and insights gained from conducting cross-cultural research in this unique context. In many ways, these insights apply to all research but take on added importance in Aboriginal research contexts where exploitation and unequal power relations continue to exist. Advice, illustrated with practical examples, is provided for researchers endeavouring to undertake cross-cultural research.

Introduction This article identifies problems, issues and insights through critical reflection on the rules, written and unwritten, which encroach on the research process in the ‘Both Ways’ project. The project investigates the development and sustainability of remote Aboriginal children’s services in the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia. Children’s services, such as child-care centres and outsideschool-hours care, are fairly recent phenomena in the NT in remote areas, with only a handful of services receiving government funding in 1995, increasing to approximately 100 in 2006. This article focuses on problems, issues and insights gained from conducting cross-cultural research in this unique context. The article has two distinct sections. The first provides background information and describes the ‘Both Ways’ project – the context for this article. The second examines understandings, practical implications and advice learned by the researchers and research participants in the process of completing the research. Section One The Setting The ‘Both Ways’ project is the context for this article and occurred in the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia during 2002-2004. The NT is quite different from the rest of Australia. It makes up approximately one sixth of the total landmass of the country but contains only 1 per cent of its population of 19 million. Nearly half of the NT residents (200,000) live in remote or very remote locations, a proportion higher than in any other State or Territory. Most remote residents are Indigenous Australians who live in small, self contained, self-governed communities for which a permit must be secured before an outsider to the community can visit. Indigenous people comprise

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Researching Remote Aboriginal Children’s Services nearly 30% of NT residents compared with 2% nationally and their age profile is much younger compared with non-Indigenous Australians. Indigenous languages and Kriol are the first languages spoken in most remote Indigenous communities. Indigenous people in the NT experience much higher levels of ill health and are more likely to die at significantly younger ages (about 20 years younger) than other Australians (Australian Divisions of General Practice, 1998). Indigenous children represent 38% of all students enrolled in NT schools and this percentage is growing. While the non-indigenous school enrolments declined in the five years prior to 2004, Indigenous enrolments increased by 10% (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2005). Indigenous children underachieve in relation to mainstream populations in the NT and interstate (NT Department of Employment Education and Training [DEET] Strategic Plan, 2006-2009). Recent research on child protection has found high levels of child neglect and abuse in the NT Indigenous population attributed to ‘endemic inter-generational poverty, unemployment, homelessness and dispossession … being largely ignored by child protection authorities with this form of neglect seen as “the norm” by communities, police and people with a direct role in child protection’ (Pocock, 2004, p. 9). These statistics are representational of the research sites involved in the ‘Both Ways’ project. Children’s Services in the NT The introduction of government-funded, age-specific, and regularly occurring children’s services is a relatively new phenomenon in remote Indigenous communities in NT. In 1995 there were no formal, licensed children’s services and only a handful of children’s services receiving government funding. By 2000, approximately 30 formal children’s services were operating in remote NT communities and, in 2006, there were approximately 100 such services. Children’s services include services for children such as child-care centres (17), jobs education and training crèches (24), mobile preschool services (17), outside-school-hours care services (35), and multifunctional Aboriginal children’s services (3). Such services became available in the mid-to-late 1990s, most often as a result of requests made over many years by remote Aboriginal women’s groups, arts centres and Aboriginal activist groups.

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Lyn Fasoli & Ranu James Figure 1.

The ‘Both Ways’ project is set within six community sites. Figure 1 shows the six research sites for the ‘Both Ways’ project depicted with a small hand. It also shows the small number of other children’s services in the NT as of 2005. Almost no research is available on these services, with the exception of the Bernard van Leersponsored projects Talking Early Childhood (Willsher & Clarke, 1995) and ‘Both Ways’ Children’s Services (Fasoli et al, 2004). The ‘Both Ways’ Project The short description that follows provides a basic overview of the ‘Both Ways’ project (see Fasoli et al, 2004, for a detailed explanation). The ‘Both Ways’ project analysed and documented factors contributing to the development and sustainability of services for children in six remote Aboriginal communities in the NT. It was undertaken by Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BIITE) in partnership with Charles Darwin University (CDU). Batchelor Institute is unique amongst educational institutions in Australia because it is governed by a predominantly Indigenous council and directly accountable to the Aboriginal communities it serves. It supports ‘the educational, social and cultural needs and aspirations of Aboriginal people and their communities’ (Ramsey et al, 2004, p. 17). Over the 30 years of its existence, it has established strong relationships with remote Aboriginal communities in the NT. The research was a participatory action research study (Wadsworth, 1998; Henry et al, 2002; Ermine et al, 2004) focusing on the views of Aboriginal community members regarding their children’s service, its development, practices, involvement of children and families and the hopes and dreams held for the future of the service. Participatory action research methods were adopted because they involved and provided concrete benefit to research participants and empowered participants within and beyond the research activity (Henry et al, 2002; Ermine et al, 2004). The research design focused attention on service strengths and successes and aimed to provide participants with an opportunity to learn about what worked for their communities and identify the problems to be addressed. The research participants were members of the Indigenous communities associated with the planning, development, management, use and/or implementation of the local children’s services. There were 75 participants. The research team included two Aboriginal and seven non-Aboriginal members. Most of the team had not been involved in formal research before this project. Three experienced researchers provided leadership and research training for the others. Four team members were from the Remote Area Children’s Services Support Unit (RACSSU), sponsored by BIITE, and visited remote Aboriginal communities on a regular basis, up to six times per year for 3-5 days each visit, providing professional development and support to children’s services. Two BIITE lecturing staff who visited communities regularly to deliver formal child-care training completed the team. The outcomes of the ‘Both Ways’ project revealed that no one model of a children’s service suited each community. Each community provided a unique context within which their children’s service developed. Services were a microcosm of their community and they worked well when they were supported by a strong community. Each service followed a different pathway produced in response to their community’s unique needs and, therefore, each differed markedly from mainstream services found in urban centres. A community’s population size was an important consideration for service development and sustainability, especially in terms of human resources. All of the communities struggled with finding and maintaining suitable staff for their service and none had completely resolved this issue. When cultural responsibilities and expectations that affected staff attendance were accommodated within staffing rules and conditions, the service was able to function more smoothly. Remoteness and lack of access to resources affected all of the services in similar ways. Of particular importance was access to culturally appropriate and ongoing training. The ways that each community had developed a ‘common purpose’ for their service, or enough of a common purpose, were crucial to initiating their service and allowing it to grow and develop.

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Researching Remote Aboriginal Children’s Services Participatory Action Research Most participatory action research sets out to explicitly study something in order to change and improve it. It most often arises from an unsatisfactory situation that those most affected wish to alter for the better, although it can also arise from the experience of something which works well, which provokes the desire to reproduce or expand it. (Wadsworth, 1998, p. 6)

Participatory action research (PAR) is a set of approaches with a concern for social justice and the involvement of research participants in research that affects them. It is seen as a methodology well suited to research with Indigenous peoples, including Aboriginal Australians, because of its libratory roots and action orientation (Henry et al, 2002; Ermine et al, 2004). It positions participants as ‘actively involved in analyzing their situation and defining their own solutions’ (Sinclair, 2003, p. 3). According to Henry et al (2002, p. 5), research involving Aboriginal Australians often has lacked ‘demonstrable benefit’ and produced ‘negative consequences’. Such research practice has pathologised Indigenous people and their experience and focused on their deficiencies rather than their strengths. PAR addresses these issues by requiring researchers to adopt methods that engage participants in addressing issues of local concern and empowering them to solve their own problems through research. PAR focuses on collective processes involving both researchers and participants; collective investigation of problems; collective analysis that enables participants to understand underlying causes of problems; and collective action to identify short- and long-term solutions (Tobias, 1982, in Sinclair, 2003). The ‘Both Ways’ project adopted participatory action research methods to enable research participants to learn more about their children’s services through active involvement in research processes. Research processes were adopted that had direct benefit to participants, their communities and children’s services. Section Two What did we learn about the rules of conducting research in the ‘Both Ways’ project? What follows is an exploration of the rules, written and unwritten, that became apparent through the ‘Both Ways’ project and our reflections on the process. Figures 2-4 depict Indigenous participants’ understandings of what research entails. These figures give a clear indication of what it means to be a researcher and how to do research from an Aboriginal perspective. Dangerous Researchers from a Far Distant Planet The image in Figure 2 provides a powerful insight into one community member’s perception of researchers being from far distant planets and armed with cameras and tripods and, in this image, being male. That she should portray the research world in this way suggests how alien this activity is for many remote Indigenous people. Researchers are perceived as ‘dangerous’. The ‘researched’ community member demands to know why and what the researcher wants and, by her aggressive stance, makes it clear that a relationship must be established prior to any signing of permissions. ‘I’ve got to know you,’ she says.

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Lyn Fasoli & Ranu James

Figure 2. [Left] I’m one dangerous researcher out of the far distant planet trying to take photos of beautiful centre and community… but I’ve got to find out the councilors or staff working in the areas. [Right] Why or what do you want without permission? I’ve got to know you so I can sign before you take photos of our community.

Figure 3. [Clockwise from top left] Let someone know so that you can take photos. Make sure you have permission so you can come with us on a trip. You got permission from someone so you can visit country? Get council permission so that you can come on a visit.

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Researching Remote Aboriginal Children’s Services You got permission? Figure 3 focuses on the importance and impact of permission to undertake research in remote communities. The notion of outsiders ‘getting permission’ is a well-known procedure for remote Indigenous community members. They know that non-Aboriginal people must secure Aboriginal Land Council permits prior to entering Aboriginal land or ‘visiting country’. As in Figure 2, this portrayal shows a concern with researchers taking photographs, a practice that has occurred often in remote Indigenous communities without the necessary permissions being secured. Don’t be shame to say no if you don’t want to do it! The power and the words to resist the research ambitions of outsiders to the community is the focus of Figure 4.

Figure 4.

The research participant portrayed in Figure 4 implores Aboriginal people to say ‘no’ and to do it without ‘shame’. Shame is a concept often used by Aboriginal people in relation to interactions that leave them feeling humiliated. The idea that researchers can be refused has not seemed possible to many Aboriginal people, even though they have been researched relentlessly and continuously. Note that the researcher has been portrayed as a white man, with a camera, in both Figure 2 and 4, although the visiting research team members in the current project were exclusively women. Note

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Lyn Fasoli & Ranu James that the researched are always women. This choice may have been unconscious or reflect participants’ prior experiences of being researched. It is also possible that participants chose to portray researchers as men rather than women in deference to the team of women who were working with them, a tactful way to voice their views to us. Participants also wrote the policy (below) to give all future researchers wanting to conduct research in their communities. Research Policy Any researchers/visitors need to approach the community council and/or Land Council for permission first. The following information would be required in an application to conduct research in the community: 1. What is the research for? 2. Who is funding the research? 3. Where are you from? What is your history? 4. Is the research funded by a non-profit or a profit organisation? 5. What happens to the end product? 6. What will the end product look like? 7. When will we get to proof read and approve the end product, to verify the contents before publishing? 8. When will we get to look at the photos and check they are ok? 9. How will your research help our community?

Important practical advice to researchers is clearly articulated through these posters made by research participants at the conclusion of the ‘Both Ways’ project. They address the same rules that are embedded in formal ethical guidelines consulted by researchers in preparation for undertaking research, such as informed consent, assurance of anonymity and benefit, but in much more direct and powerful ways.

Figure 5.

An interruption to the ‘Both Ways’ workshop illustrated the importance of making research rules explicit for research participants. A participant received a phone call on her cell phone (mobile) from an organisation in Sydney asking whether a cameraman could fly up to her community to ‘quickly drop in and take some photos of the kids’ for a project they were working on. The participant’s response highlights the value of establishing clear guidelines for Indigenous communities. She responded, ‘Can I have your fax number? We have a policy about that so I’ll fax it through to you right now.’

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Researching Remote Aboriginal Children’s Services The next section continues to explore the notion of rules in cross-cultural research and identifies three types or levels of rules that emerged from the research team’s reflections on the research process. Rules for Conducting Research in Indigenous Communities First are the standard rules readily available and set out by regional Aboriginal Land Councils, university ethics committees and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Guidelines for Ethical Research in Indigenous Studies (2000). Second are the unspoken and unwritten rules that become apparent or arise within a cross-cultural research relationship where mutual obligations and unstated expectations impact on research activities. In our investigation, we discovered ‘It’s all about rules’! The Official Rules Research in a remote Aboriginal community requires adherence to strict and demanding ethical procedures. For example, a formal permit to visit and undertake research on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory is required before entering land owned by Aboriginal people and is granted by the relevant regional Land Council. This project involved three different Land Councils. In addition, each local Community Council and the local relevant Traditional Owners of the land must be consulted and permission granted. Sometimes the Traditional Owner is someone who does not speak or read English. In addition, a number of Traditional Owners are often available for consultation but, without a trip to the community to identify who would be the most appropriate person, the decision about who is consulted is often made by the Community Chief Executive Officer (CEO) who may or may not be Indigenous or originally from the community. Researchers often conduct this activity via phone, fax and email. The local Community Council’s approval process is also complicated. Community Councils may or may not be representative of families that make up the whole community. In some communities one family group can dominate within the community and others can be excluded. Gaining Council approval is made more complex by the fact that the researcher is rarely in the community to represent the case for the research directly and answer questions that may arise. The local contacts in each community who participated in the ‘Both Ways’ project had a history of involvement with BIITE through other projects undertaken by members of our research team. They acted as a liaison between researchers and the community and provided invaluable ‘on the ground’ advice about who to consult. Prior established relationships made this possible. Acquiring these permissions was particularly complex and time consuming given the location of communities spread across such a vast area. In addition, the question arises, ‘Who is the community?’ The answer to this can vary from community to community. In one community, permission to conduct the research was granted by the CEO and one Traditional Owner. Martin (2005) argues that ethical research with Aboriginal participants must reflect culturally relevant, respectful and safe research processes. The rules established by Land Councils and Traditional Owners go some way towards ensuring these values are realized. Institutional Rules BIITE and Charles Darwin University (CDU) were joint partners in this project and both required ethical clearance. Preparation of ethical clearances to do the research started a year before any research was conducted. Each institution’s ethics procedures contained subtly different requirements revealing how arbitrary this level of rules can be. For example, BIITE procedures suggested that we appointed a Critical Reference Group of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal early years professionals to provide critical input on the research design, processes, questions and potential products of the research. It also required detail on how participants would be kept informed, before, during and after the research had finished, especially in relation to language and cultural issues. These issues were not so prominent in CDU’s procedures. It can be seen as

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Lyn Fasoli & Ranu James appropriate that BIITE, as an Indigenous organisation, focused more on issues of Indigenous input and control over the research activity. These rules are non-negotiable and backed up by institutional structures and accountabilities. They regulate and remind researchers of their ethical responsibilities. Local Rules: unspoken and unwritten Is your spirit clear? Do you have a good heart? What other baggage do you carry? Are you useful to us? Can you fix our generator? Can you actually do anything? (Reid, 2002, p. 17)

Reid’s quote above embodies the essential quality of local rules, often unspoken, that impact on the research process. These rules become evident through the relationships established between researchers and research participants. Who Researches Whom? One unspoken rule is that research involving Aboriginal people should be done only by Aboriginal researchers. If non-Aboriginal researchers want to do cross-cultural research they must work in collaboration with Aboriginal researchers. The rather simplistic assumption is that Aboriginal researchers can mediate and counterbalance perspectives and biases of non-Aboriginal team members. In the ‘Both Ways’ project, the inclusion of Aboriginal researchers was important and changed the way non-Indigenous team members participated. A simple example illustrates this point. The issues confronting Indigenous researchers are often ‘unexpected’ by the non-Indigenous researchers. At the beginning of the project, an Indigenous researcher was reluctant to sign a consent form. Her explanation follows. There was a point at the beginning of the research project when we had to sign an agreement to participate in the research. I remember not feeling quite right about how something was worded in the agreement. I was not only feeling uncomfortable for me, but had concerns about how this would be read and accepted out there in the communities that were involved in the project. (Indigenous researcher notes, 2004)

Until she was sure how the research would benefit the ‘researched’, she was unwilling to sign. Her initial refusal took some of the team by surprise. Clearly, she was thinking about the longer term responsibilities and potential consequences of our proposed activities. Her reaction made us stop and reflect more deeply on what we were doing and why. These moments of awareness continued throughout the research project, prompted most often by the Aboriginal members of the team. While we all assumed that Indigenous co-researchers were necessary, it appears that we had not expected to be changed by their inclusion. The Two-Edged Sword Prior relationships with community participants were central in gaining access to the communities and to people’s views and beliefs about their children’s service. Relationships can be two-edged swords in that they create, as well as solve, research dilemmas. Research relationships, like any other relationship, carry both privilege and responsibility. We learned that these relationships were built on unspoken rules and these took time to emerge. A sense of mutual trust and reciprocal responsibility was built over months and, with some participants, years. Communities agreed to be involved because of the existence of established relationships. Without them, the heart of the research would not be revealed. We believe that participants talked freely and honestly to us because they knew who we were, had tested our trustworthiness in the past and knew that the relationship would endure beyond the research. We knew that we had privileged access through these relationships and took seriously the responsibility inherent in such a relationship. We guarded against exploiting the people with whom we were working. Defining the boundaries and avoiding ‘stepping over the line’ and exploiting our power as academics were significant concerns for our involvement.

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Researching Remote Aboriginal Children’s Services In one community, we were advised not to speak to anyone we did not know until our local Aboriginal contact person had formally introduced us. Community members we did not know would not speak to us without this introduction. The introduction acted as a kind of handover of trust and positioned us as people who could be talked to, or not, depending on the nature of the relationship we had with the contact person and her relationships within the community. When we were introduced our contact person emphasised our links to Batchelor Institute and our past experience in that specific community or other local Aboriginal communities. She made reference to shared histories and/or family links with people in that community when these existed. Aboriginal people new to us, whether in group meetings organised by our contact or as individuals, talked freely to us about their perspectives on the children’s service. We recognised that this acceptance was based in large part on the introductions we had received. On the other hand, the local contact person did not want us to talk to some people, although they had been identified as potential interviewees. We could have gone against her wishes and sought them out, but we didn’t. Approaching someone against the advice of the local contact would have been a breach of trust affecting not only the research, but the ongoing relationship the researcher had with that community. Yet we were aware that excluding some participants potentially compromised the research. Our reliance on our local contact person determined who we talked to and included and who we didn’t. At the time it was not possible to negotiate further than we did, because jeopardizing the relationship in order to pursue possible richer and more diverse data was not an option. Towing the Car to the Interview Interviews rarely went according to schedule. Sometimes we waited days until a participant was ready to talk. On one occasion we encountered a key research participant and members of her family standing next to a broken-down car a few hundred kilometres from her community. We towed her back to the community. It took six hours to cover a distance that would normally have taken two hours. It was apparent that towing her car was critical to our relationship and required this action, inconvenient though it was at the time. This example illustrates another unwritten rule to do with reciprocity in the research relationship. Despite giving prior notice, occasionally the participant we had hoped to interview was not even in the community when we arrived. We naturally were surprised and disappointed when this happened. We had to remind each other that community members are often called out of the community for practical reasons such as unplanned meetings scheduled by other agencies or health crises involving themselves or a relative. The nearest hospital is often hundreds of kilometres away from a community. Participants could be absent for any number of other reasons which we would not be told about because it was none of our business. Research relationships that are culturally relevant, respectful and safe (Martin, 2005) rely on researchers understanding the unspoken rules that relate to the everyday lives of research participants. The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) guidelines attempt to embody this unwritten rule. Working with difference in a research context takes time, care, patience and the building of robust relationships. Of all these issues the element of time and difference can be the most challenging to researchers on a tight timeline. Research in remote communities takes inordinate amounts of time to do well. (NHMRC Guidelines, 2003, p. 3)

‘Can You Actually Do Anything?’ The arrival of a researcher in a remote community can significantly interfere with participants’ lives. Any visitor is time consuming for participants trying to run a service. Our local contacts were always workers central to the overall effective functioning of the community and already overloaded. Based on their sense of responsibility to the established relationships, they gave us significant amounts of their work and personal time. One way for us to reciprocate, and to minimize our interference, was to try to be ‘of use’, to which Reid (2002) alludes.

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Lyn Fasoli & Ranu James For example, in one community our contact person was organising a disco during our visit. While there was no request or overt expectation of our involvement, we recognised that we had to make time for participants’ as well as our own priorities. By helping with the disco preparations and attending the event, we could ‘be of use’. Whether our participation in these types of activities made any difference to the research is impossible to gauge. It shows, however, that research relationships extend beyond the research and rely on researchers’ awareness of the realities and priorities of research participants’ lives. Many unspoken rules permeated the research relationships that evolved and deepened over the course of the research project. Conclusion This article has discussed rules affecting research practice using examples from the ‘Both Ways’ Children’s Services Research Project. It emphasised the importance of established prior relationships with remote Indigenous participants that formed the basis for reflecting on research rules. While official rules help researchers to be more accountable and remind them of their responsibilities, rules cannot convey important expectations and responsibilities that emerge within research relationships. Research relationships are deeply intimate and critical to research in remote Aboriginal communities (Gower, 2003). They affect how people become involved and whether they will stay involved. Expectations and responsibilities within a research relationship are not always expressed directly but can be pivotal to the ultimate research process and benefits that flow to participants. This article has highlighted the importance of knowing the rules, written and unwritten. The keys to uncovering and understanding the rules associated with research relationships in cross-cultural contexts are a readiness to negotiate, to do so on an ongoing basis, and an awareness of the need to do so. Acknowledgements The authors gratefully acknowledge the Bernard van Leer Foundation, the remote NT Indigenous communities of Titjikala, Ikuntji, Nguiu, Galiwin’ku, Barunga and Gurungu and the co-authors of the original report on which this article is based, the ‘Both Ways’ Children’s Services Project, Robyn Benbow, Kathy Deveraux, Ian Falk, Renata Harris, Mel Hazard, Ranu James, Veronica Johns, Carolyn Preece and Katrina Railton. We would also like to acknowledge Veronica Pompei and Kaye Lowe for their assistance and support. Note Since this article was written, Federal government intervention has removed the permit system. Correspondence Lyn Fasoli, Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, c/o Batchelor Post Office, Batchelor, Northern Territory 0845 Australia ([email protected]). References Australian Bureau of Statistics (2005) 1362.7 – Regional Statistics, Northern Territory. http://abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/ProductsbyCatalogue/04C2CF10FAC92FF3CA256AE2007D1 C83?OpenDocument (accessed 1 September 2006). Australian Divisions of General Practice (1998) General Practice & Primary Health Care Northern Territory. http://www.adgp.com.au/site/index.cfm?leca=201 (accessed 29 August 2006). Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (2000) Guidelines for Ethical Research in Indigenous Studies. http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/corp/docs/EthicsGuideA4.pdf (accessed 2 March 2005). Darwin, Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal and Tropical Health, 30. http://192.94.208.240/Crc/General/CRCPubs/ocps/op%20files/issue005.pdf (accessed 2 February 2006).

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