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acAdemIC WoRkS

education for all

holding story & fire

I begin with fire. Not just any fire, but the kind that pulls people into relation. The kind that has been burning for millennia, where stories are passed, where knowledge is shared, where people learn not just by listening but by being.

This is how I approach this PhD. Not as a collection of words bound to a thesis, but as a living story, as something felt and experienced. NGARRA is not just a research project. It is a way of coming into relation with communities, with knowledge, with responsibility. It is a performance, a practice, an act of reciprocity. And so, this thesis is not just an academic document—it is a reflection, a map of relations, a story told around a fire that does not belong to me alone.

it is the way of Connection. Reflection. Collaboration. Action.

NGARRA is a community-driven methodology that places storytelling, photography, and film at the center of knowledge-sharing. It is a process, not a product. A way of seeing and being seen. Through NGARRA, young people in remote communities are given cameras, not just as tools but as extensions of their voice, their way of making sense of the world. They document their lives, their country, their families—not through an outsider’s lens, but through their own. The project is about self-representation, about the power of seeing oneself in one’s own story, and about the knowledge embedded in that act of seeing.

Why This? Why Now?

We live in a time where stories are taken, reframed, and fed back to us in ways that distort, diminish, or erase. Indigenous people have long been studied, documented, categorized—our ways of knowing turned into objects for analysis rather than lived experiences. NGARRA is a response to that. It is an assertion that knowledge is not something that can be extracted; it must be lived, practiced, and held within relationships.

This PhD is a performance-based one, meaning that NGARRA itself is the work, the practice, the performance of knowledge. The thesis you are reading is not the project—it is the trace, the reflection, the firelight flickering off the cave walls.

Indigenous research is relational. Knowledge is not stored in books but in people, in places, in the spaces between. This means that writing about NGARRA is inherently a paradox. How do you write down a process that is alive? How do you capture something that is always shifting, moving, adapting? The answer is—you don’t. You hold the story as best you can. You follow the songline it lays down for you, knowing that it is only one thread in a much greater weave.

This thesis follows the methodology of Indigenous scholars like Shawn Wilson, who asserts that “research is ceremony,” and Karen Martin, who speaks of “relatedness” as the foundation of knowledge. It is also inspired by the pattern thinking of Tyson Yunkaporta, who reminds us that all knowledge is relational, nested within complex, living systems. NGARRA follows these principles—it does not seek to define, but to reveal. It does not impose structure, but allows it to emerge from within the relationships it fosters.

The chapters that follow will take you through the journey of NGARRA – its origins, its process, its impact. But more than that, they will invite you into relation with it. You are not just a reader of this thesis; you are a participant in its story.

So, sit by the fire. Listen. The story is about to begin.

the way forward is back. this is how we come into relation. this is how we remember who we are. all one people.

the origins of ngarra

NGARRA did not begin in a research lab or the halls of academia. It was seeded in the everyday realities of remote communities—on Country, around kitchen tables, within intergenerational gatherings—where young people’s voices were yearning to be heard. In these spaces, I sat in circles, listened to elders speak of histories etched into the land, and watched as children absorbed these stories through play, laughter, and everyday tasks. Before it was ever called NGARRA, it was simply an impulse: a recognition that these stories needed a way to breathe in the world.

Listening Country into the Method

One of the grounding principles of NGARRA is deep listening, commonly known as Dadirri, a concept so beautifully articulated by Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr. Dadirri is about a quiet stillness, a respectful waiting, an openness to what Country and community have to teach us. In a Western research paradigm, there is often a rush to gather data, to fill silence with probing questions. NGARRA upends that approach by starting with listening—not merely hearing words, but feeling the resonance of place, the layered history that is always present.

In practice, this meant spending time—significant amounts of time—in communities without the agenda of producing “outputs.” We were not there to capture or catalog; we were there to connect. Even the act of deciding where we would meet became a gesture of respect: on verandas overlooking red desert sand, beside creeks where children fished, or in community halls where murals told local histories. Each location set a tone, allowing the environment to shape our conversations and approach.

A History of Images

Photography has long been a tool of colonial observation, used to objectify Indigenous peoples and frame them as “other.” Ethnographers and explorers wielded cameras with an unspoken power to define how the rest of the world would see us. These photographs often stripped away context, reducing complex lives and cultures to a single frame that served colonial narratives.

NGARRA reclaims that tool. By handing the camera back to the community, we shift the power dynamic. Young people become the ones choosing what to focus on—their grandparents’ hands as they weave baskets, the midday light dancing on gum leaves, the laughter of cousins playing on the dusty ground. These images are more than aesthetic choices; they are declarations of presence and self-determination.

Young People at the Heart

Central to NGARRA is the belief that young people are not just passive recipients of culture; they are active knowledge-makers. Too often, youth in remote communities are spoken about but rarely engaged in shaping their own narratives. Cameras became a way for them to articulate who they are and what matters to them. At the same time, elders recognized the potential of photography as a cultural bridge—a way to pass on knowledge in a form that resonates with younger generations steeped in digital media.

From the outset, this intergenerational collaboration fostered a unique dynamic. Elders guided the younger participants on what stories might be significant, what ceremonies or cultural practices could be filmed, and which needed to remain private. The young photographers, in turn, introduced new perspectives—experimenting with angles, playing with light, weaving hip-hop influences into traditional contexts. In these co-creative exchanges, NGARRA found its pulse.

Iterative and Community-Led

NGARRA is not a one-size-fits-all program. Each community decides how the project unfolds, how the cameras are used, and what kind of storytelling emerges. In one place, the emphasis might be on capturing the everyday heroics of community members—health workers, educators, rangers. In another, it might center on documenting cultural rites, ensuring that knowledge is passed down.

An iterative cycle underpins this approach:

  1. Listening – Understanding the community’s needs, concerns, and aspirations.
  2. Co-Designing – Developing a collaborative plan with local stakeholders, including elders, youth, and other community leaders.
  3. Implementing – Training, equipping, and supporting participants as they document their lives.
  4. Reflecting – Reviewing the images and narratives, discussing their meaning and impact.
  5. Adapting – Adjusting the project based on feedback and changing community dynamics.

This cycle is repeated as many times as needed, ensuring that NGARRA remains responsive and community-driven. The community’s voice guides every decision, reminding us that research, in an Indigenous context, must be fluid, dialogic, and accountable.

Challenges and Forms of Resistance

Nothing about this process has been straightforward. Funding bodies often want tangible metrics: how many photographs were taken, how many participants completed workshops. But NGARRA’s success cannot be captured by numbers alone. Its impact lies in the stories told, the transformations witnessed, the sense of pride that emerges when a young person sees their work displayed at a local gathering—or even beyond.

Institutional resistance also appears in the form of ethics boards and academic rigor that sometimes fail to acknowledge relational, narrative-based research as “valid.” NGARRA confronts this by grounding its legitimacy not in Western benchmarks but in Indigenous sovereignty. The communities themselves determine whether the project holds value. That is the most important measure.

Moreover, some families may worry about the permanence of photographs, concerned about protocols relating to imagery of people who have passed. In some communities, the names and images of the deceased cannot be viewed or spoken for a period of mourning, requiring respectful negotiation of how photos are stored, shared, or displayed. These cultural protocols shape the ethical framework of NGARRA, ensuring that it remains culturally safe and respectful.

A Living Methodology

Taken together, these elements form NGARRA’s living methodology—a tapestry woven from Indigenous knowledge systems, deep listening, intergenerational collaboration, and the creative spirit of youth. It adapts as it travels from one community to another, shaped by local realities, languages, and cultural protocols. Rather than being a rigid system, NGARRA is like a river, finding its path through the landscape, bending, turning, sometimes branching, but always flowing.

In the chapters that follow, we will delve deeper into how NGARRA unfolds in practice, examining the nuanced ways communities have taken it up and made it their own. We will look at the theoretical underpinnings that help frame this work in a broader academic discourse, while always returning to the stories, the images, and the people at the heart of it all. Because ultimately, NGARRA is not about producing knowledge—it is about living knowledge, carried forward by those who share in its story.

And so, the journey continues.

the way forward is back. this is how we come into relation. this is how we remember who we are. all one people.

Theoretical Foundations and Methodological Pathways

Where Chapter 1 traced the origins of NGARRA in community realities, this chapter delves deeper into the theoretical scaffolding and methodological threads that underpin the project. Here, we weave Indigenous epistemologies, performance-based research paradigms, and ethical frameworks into a coherent—yet always dynamic—foundation that informs NGARRA’s practice.

1. Tracing Epistemic Roots: From Country to Academy

At its core, NGARRA emerges from an epistemic orientation that privileges Country as a living source of knowledge. In many Indigenous cosmologies, Country is not merely a backdrop but an active participant in the creation and transmission of wisdom. This stands in contrast to Western frameworks that often treat environment as an inert object of study. In NGARRA, the environment is teacher, guide, and collaborator.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s seminal work Decolonizing Methodologies reminds us that research, particularly in Indigenous contexts, has historically been complicit in the colonization and appropriation of knowledge. NGARRA responds to this by situating knowledge within reciprocal relationships: between people, place, and ancestors. It insists that knowledge is not ‘out there’ to be collected, but in here, lived within stories and cultural protocols.

2. Performance and Practice as Knowledge Production

NGARRA is explicitly a performance-based PhD project, acknowledging that certain kinds of knowledge can only be generated through embodied practice. In other words, the doing is the knowing. This aligns with Indigenous philosophies that view knowledge as inseparable from the act of living it.

In academic circles, practice-based or performance-based research has gained recognition as a legitimate mode of inquiry. Artists, performers, and community practitioners often demonstrate that performance can reveal truths that elude purely textual research. Through movement, imagery, and co-creative processes, participants in NGARRA uncover layers of meaning that would be flattened by solely analytic or descriptive methods.

3. Relational Accountability and Ceremony

Shawn Wilson’s concept of ‘relational accountability’ asserts that researchers have responsibilities not only to their academic peers, but to all their relations—human and non-human, past, present, and future. This principle manifests in NGARRA as a continuous dialogue with community members, elders, and local environments, ensuring that the project honors cultural protocols and community aspirations. When decisions are made—about filming locations, subject matter, or the dissemination of images—they are guided by relational ethics rather than institutional checklists alone.

In parallel, the notion of ‘research as ceremony’ reframes inquiry as a sacred act of knowledge creation. Each phase of NGARRA—listening, co-designing, implementing, reflecting, adapting—is imbued with intention and respect. Rather than isolating the researcher from the researched, the methodology acknowledges that we are all participants in a ceremonial process that creates, shares, and safeguards knowledge.

4. Decolonizing the Lens: Expanding Photographic Practices

Photography, as noted in Chapter 1, has a fraught history in Indigenous contexts. Colonial cameras often served as tools of extraction, capturing images that were then repurposed for exploitative or voyeuristic ends. In NGARRA, the lens is reclaimed as a conduit for storytelling. The approach to photography is expanded beyond mere representation to encompass cultural revitalization, personal and communal healing, and the forging of new intergenerational connections.

This aligns with the idea of ‘photovoice,’ a participatory research method that empowers participants to document their own experiences. However, NGARRA extends photovoice by anchoring it in Indigenous relational frameworks. Rather than generating data for academic analysis alone, the images become catalysts for community dialogue, ceremony, and transformation. The camera no longer objectifies; it becomes a shared resource for reflecting communal identity and cultural continuities.

5. Collaborative Construction of Meaning

One of the central tenets of NGARRA is that meaning is co-created with community participants. After a series of photographic sessions, the images are not merely ‘data’ to be coded by an external researcher. Instead, the community collectively discusses the stories behind each photograph—What does it signify? Who holds the knowledge depicted here? How can it be shared ethically?

These discussions often unfold in yarning circles, where the linear structure of Western dialogue gives way to a more organic, inclusive conversational style. Each voice is valued, and stories are allowed to surface in their own time. This collaborative interpretation process not only enriches the research findings but ensures that the knowledge generated is owned and directed by the community.

6. Ethical Frameworks and Cultural Protocols

NGARRA’s ethical standpoint is grounded in Indigenous sovereignty and cultural safety. This means adhering to protocols that respect elders’ guidance on what can be captured or shared and recognizing that these protocols vary across communities. We also grapple with the complexities of publishing images in academic or public domains: Who decides if an image can be publicly exhibited? What happens when the cultural context shifts (for instance, when a person featured in a photograph passes away and becomes subject to naming or viewing restrictions)?

These considerations are not footnotes; they are at the heart of NGARRA’s methodology. Rather than a one-time ethics approval, the project requires ongoing consultation and reflexivity. As such, we practice what could be called an ‘iterative ethics,’ where each new phase of the project calls for renewed community consent and continuous alignment with local protocols.

7. Situated in a Global Indigenous Discourse

While NGARRA is rooted in specific remote Australian communities, it resonates with broader global Indigenous movements toward self-representation. From the Sami in Northern Europe using film to revitalize language, to Native American communities creating digital archives for cultural preservation, there is a shared impetus: to control the narrative and reclaim the means of cultural production.

By situating NGARRA within this transnational Indigenous discourse, we acknowledge a lineage of creative and intellectual resistance that predates and transcends any single project. In doing so, NGARRA adds its own voice to a global tapestry of decolonizing methodologies, contributing both practically (through photographic and film practices) and theoretically (by challenging Western paradigms of knowledge creation).

Looking Ahead

In this chapter, we’ve laid the theoretical and methodological groundwork for NGARRA. We’ve situated it within Indigenous epistemologies, practice-based research, and ethically minded, community-led inquiry. Moving forward, the subsequent chapters will delve into the on-the-ground realities of NGARRA—how these frameworks come alive in actual projects, the challenges that arise, and the vibrant stories that emerge when communities reclaim the lens and the narrative.

The path we follow next leads us into the heart of NGARRA’s living process: the real-world examples of how these theoretical constructs are enacted, adapted, and sometimes transformed by the communities themselves. Let us continue into that story.

the way forward is back. this is how we come into relation. this is how we remember who we are. all one people.

why integrate an academic process?

Integrating a Ph.D. into the NGARRA project offers a profound synergy between academic inquiry and real-world transformative initiatives. This symbiotic relationship is the keystone to unlocking the project’s full potential. By introducing academic depth and rigor, we not only enrich the project’s methodologies but also cultivate a more profound understanding of the intricate threads that connect indigenous knowledge systems, cultural preservation, and community development. This integration not only elevates NGARRA’s impact but also forms a bridge between the academic realm and tangible, meaningful change on the ground. Together, we forge a path towards cross-cultural empathy, indigenous heritage preservation, and a brighter, more equitable future for all.

Quinkan

NGARRA’s Uganda Village project is a community-based initiative aimed at empowering youth in a remote village in Uganda through the transformative power of photography and storytelling.

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