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.
acAdemIC WoRkS
education for all
holding story & fire
Listen close, and you might feel the old rhythms pulsing beneath these words. They come from a place where stories stretch back millennia—where insights aren’t pinned down in books but carried by songlines, layered in memory and country. This page is a small window into that ongoing tapestry. You’ll find drafts, half-formed musings, and collaborative works still in flux, because true knowledge flows in circles—it never stands still, never hoards itself behind iron gates and paywalls.
I’ve laid out my workings here for anyone who wishes to wander these tracks. Take what resonates; leave footprints of your own. In ancient patterns of custodianship, we share not just the final wisdom but the journey—the fumbling, the rethinking, the epiphanies at dawn. It’s messy. It’s alive. And that’s how knowledge should be: a fire that sparks new embers every time fresh eyes see it.
You’ll also notice mention of a scholarship system, woven into each collaborative project we undertake. That’s part of the old teachings, too: when you gain, so must your kin. A portion of our academic endeavors goes back to lifting others—funding their learning, backing local workshops, or seeding community-led research. In this way, we honor the reciprocal cycle: knowledge coming home to feed the very people who sparked it into being.
So, step softly through these pages. Pick up the threads, feel the textures, and maybe add your own. Because wisdom isn’t something you lock away—it’s something you share, like a well-worn path guided by footprints from all who have walked before. Join us around the campfire of ideas, and we’ll see what new trails open up on the horizon together.
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.
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.
read the transcript
Keeping the Fire Alive: How NGARRA is Transforming Indigenous Research and Storytelling
in language. My name is Andrew, from Wonnorua Awakabal land from the continent currently known as Australia, I am speaking to you on X country, and I pay my respects to the elders and custodians of this last past and present. * in their language.
I invite you to imagine a fire burning under a vast desert sky. The flames flicker against red earth, while Elders, young people, and visitors sit in a circle, speaking softly, reflecting on memories etched into the land. This circle isn’t just a random gather – it’s a space of shared knowledge, reciprocity, and deep listening that is alive, that is always burning, kept alive but stories sung by those who tend the fire.
Tonight, I want to bring you into that circle, into the world of NGARRA: a performance-based Indigenous research project that challenges conventional academic norms by returning cameras to communities and placing stories in the hands of those who live them.
In many ways, NGARRA is not just a research project. It is a ceremony, a meeting place, and a family gathering rolled into one. It began as part of my doctoral journey—yet it quickly evolved into a grassroots movement, inviting us all to rethink what it means to “study,” to “document,” and ultimately, to belong.
1. Origins: Listening to Country, Listening to Community
When I first stepped into remote communities across Australia—desert settlements, coastal towns, and everything in between—I did not arrive with a questionnaire or a laboratory kit. I arrived with listening. I sat on verandas, shared cups of tea, helped carry groceries. I was taught about a principle that many communities call Dadirri—deep listening. This principle underpins NGARRA.
•Deep Listening: In a Western research setting, silence can feel awkward. But in Indigenous contexts, silence is filled with presence and story. Through NGARRA, we learned to wait, to feel what Country and Elders had to share before we ever pressed “record.”
•Reciprocity: Rather than come in to “gather data,” we asked, “What can we offer?” Sometimes it was media workshops or help with archiving family photos. Other times, it was simply respect—recognizing that knowledge is offered, never extracted.
In those first days, a pattern emerged: young people longed to document their own daily lives, telling their stories from behind the camera, not just in front of it. Elders recognized the opportunity for preserving cultural knowledge. So, rather than a static plan, we created a living methodology—NGARRA—that adapts to each community’s needs and protocols.
2. Methodology in Motion: Performance and Relational Research
What separates NGARRA from conventional studies is its performance-based nature. Research here is a living, breathing exchange—like a dance, a ceremony, or a yarning circle. Let’s break that down:
1.Performance as Knowledge Creation
In many Indigenous epistemologies, knowledge is embodied. It emerges when we sit around a fire, dance in ceremony, or collectively share stories. NGARRA taps into these practices: a camera lens can capture a moment of healing, a child learning from an Elder, or a communal event that weaves past, present, and future together.
2.Yarning Circles
Instead of interviews with set questions, we gathered in circles—Elders, youth, facilitators, guests. Each person speaks and listens, forging a shared narrative. I became less a “researcher” and more a facilitator-participant—someone who holds space for stories to emerge. This breaks down traditional hierarchies, centering the community as co-researchers.
3.Ethics and Protocols
Certain ceremonies cannot be filmed, certain names or images must be respected after a death, certain knowledge is only for a specific group. NGARRA respects these protocols with an unwavering principle: community sovereignty trumps all. If Elders say, “Delete that footage,” we delete it—no matter what academic curiosity might say.
3. Stories from the Field: NGARRA in Action
I want to share a few brief vignettes that bring NGARRA to life:
•A Coastal Community: Youth captured traditional fishing techniques on film, from reading tides to reciting blessings. Elders beamed with pride, relieved that these methods would not be lost to time. The young people, in turn, gained a renewed sense of identity, weaving modern media skills with ancient practices.
•Healing on Country: In another community grappling with trauma, photography became a form of therapy. Participants documented sites of personal significance—old mission stations, water holes, bush medicine spots—transforming raw pain into communal reflection. A short film made by teenage boys about their mental health struggles prompted wide community support and deep empathy.
•Intergenerational Conversations: In one desert settlement, a grandmother and granddaughter worked together to film interviews about bush medicine. The granddaughter learned camera techniques while the grandmother shared botanical knowledge, bridging two generations through the lens of an old digital camcorder.
In each context, the stories that emerged were not static data points, but living tapestries of laughter, memory, resilience, and sometimes tears—captured by the very people who live them.
4. Grounding in Theory: Decolonial and Relational Paradigms
NGARRA resonates with broader decolonial and Indigenous research frameworks:
•Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s “Decolonizing Methodologies” reminds us that colonial systems often portrayed Indigenous peoples as research subjects. NGARRA defies this, making communities the authors of their own narratives.
•Shawn Wilson’s “Research is Ceremony” emphasizes relational accountability—our duty to maintain respectful relationships with participants, environment, and the knowledge itself. Through NGARRA, accountability isn’t a checklist; it’s a sacred bond woven into every step.
•Tyson Yunkaporta’s “Pattern Thinking” invites us to see knowledge as relational, patterned, and cyclical. Through yarning circles, cyclical feedback loops, and iterative filming processes, NGARRA enacts this holistic perspective.
5. Evaluating Impact: Beyond Numbers
Universities and funders often ask: “How many hours of footage? How many participants finished the program?” Yet the real impact emerges in intangible, relational shifts:
•Confidence and Pride: A teenager too shy to speak in class suddenly organizes a local screening of her short film.
•Elder-Youth Connection: Elders see that their stories won’t fade into obscurity; youth see that their creative perspective matters.
•Policy Influence: A short documentary on language revitalization can catch the attention of local education boards, leading to expanded language programs.
Yes, we have data points and workshop logs, but the deeper significance is felt in these transformations—moments of recognition, tears of pride, or digital archives that sustain cultural knowledge.
6. Future Horizons: Scaling, Sustainability, and Global Dialogue
As NGARRA moves into new phases:
•Scaling Carefully: The question is how to bring this model to more communities without losing the relational depth. Training local facilitators and co-creating a “federated” approach can ensure each community’s unique protocols are honored.
•Policy and Education: There is growing interest in integrating NGARRA’s methods into formal curriculum, bridging academic institutions and community-based cultural projects. This could shift how we teach film, art, and even anthropology.
•Global Conversations: Indigenous initiatives worldwide—from Aotearoa to Canada—share similar goals of self-representation. By sharing insights, we can spark a global tapestry of Indigenous media activism, each community weaving its own pattern.
7. Carrying the Fire Forward
In closing, NGARRA teaches us that research can be a gathering around a communal fire—a space where everyone’s voice matters, where knowledge is lived and shared rather than extracted. It teaches us that a camera is not a neutral tool; it can be colonizing or liberating, depending on who holds it and how it’s used. Above all, it reminds us that culture, language, and heritage thrive when youth, Elders, and the land itself shape the story together.
If there’s one thing you take away from this address, let it be this: research does not have to be cold or extractive; it can be warm, relational, and dynamic. It can amplify voices long silenced, and it can keep the fires of cultural knowledge burning bright for generations yet to come.
Let us continue to support Indigenous-led projects like NGARRA—projects that remind us of the power of stories to heal, connect, and transform. As we leave this gathering, I invite each of you to think about how you, too, might help carry the fire—in your own research, your creative endeavors, or your everyday interactions. Because ultimately, that’s what NGARRA is: a living flame of shared story, resilience, and hope.
Thank you.
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:
- Listening – Understanding the community’s needs, concerns, and aspirations.
- Co-Designing – Developing a collaborative plan with local stakeholders, including elders, youth, and other community leaders.
- Implementing – Training, equipping, and supporting participants as they document their lives.
- Reflecting – Reviewing the images and narratives, discussing their meaning and impact.
- 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.
Chapter 3: Stories from the Field – NGARRA in Action
“Stories are our maps; through them, we navigate Country, culture, and community.”
— Elder’s reflection during a yarning circle
Introduction: Where Methodology Becomes Lived Practice
In Chapters 1 and 2, we explored the conceptual roots and methodological foundations of NGARRA. Yet methodologies truly come to life only when they intersect with real people, real places, and real stories. This chapter offers a closer look at NGARRA in practice—the day-to-day realities, unexpected challenges, and transformative moments that emerge when youth pick up cameras, when elders sit in a yarning circle, and when communities shape the narrative of their own representation. Here, theory meets the warm, messy complexity of lived experience.
Entering Community: The Threshold of Trust
No NGARRA project begins with a camera in hand. It starts with relationship-building and earning trust. In remote communities—some accessible only by dirt roads—our first engagement often involves sitting on someone’s veranda, sharing tea with an elder, or helping unload groceries from a community bus. These small acts signal genuine intention; we are not there to merely collect data.
Vignette – First Impressions in a Desert Community
I recall arriving at a desert settlement where red dust coated every surface. An elder greeted us, curious but cautious. We spent the afternoon walking around with her—observing a waterhole where local kids played, listening to stories of how floods once reshaped the land. Only after this informal “tour” did she mention that she had photos of her father’s Country she wanted to preserve. In that moment, NGARRA’s purpose—to empower communities to document their stories—suddenly felt tangible. She saw in the project a way to protect family memories while sharing them on her own terms.
This threshold period of “being with” rather than “doing to” a community is foundational. It underscores that NGARRA’s success depends on authentic relationality—without trust, there is no story.
Deep Listening: The Pulse of Every Project
Central to NGARRA is a commitment to deep listening—often referred to as Dadirri in many Aboriginal languages. This practice goes beyond mere note-taking. It is about feeling the land and the people, hearing the stories that are spoken in passing as well as those shared in formal circles.
Yarning Circles as Performative Encounters
When the time is right, a yarning circle is convened. Under a broad gum tree or in a community hall, people gather in a circular formation—each person’s voice equally visible and valid. This format breaks the hierarchy of a typical researcher-participant dynamic. Instead, it performs community knowledge-making in real time. If a point arises that resonates with multiple people, the energy shifts. Laughter, tears, or thoughtful silence can punctuate these gatherings, reflecting the collective nature of truth-telling and sharing.
By prioritizing Dadirri and yarning circles, NGARRA creates a safe container where stories can be offered, not extracted. The result is a research process shaped not by rigid questionnaires but by organic, relational dialogue.
Bridging Generations Through Cameras
One of NGARRA’s most recognizable features is the use of cameras—video and photography—as tools of empowerment. However, their significance extends beyond simply pressing “record.”
1. Young People as Storytellers
In many communities, youth are already engaged with digital media—using smartphones to capture everyday moments. NGARRA formalizes and expands these skills, offering workshops on composition, lighting, and editing. Yet the biggest shift occurs when young people realize they have permission to frame their world. Suddenly, the mundane becomes a canvas for creativity: the early-morning chores, the footprints left by kangaroos at dawn, the laughter that bounces off the tin walls of a community center.
2. Elders as Cultural Anchors
Elders often serve as knowledge guides, offering context on what can be filmed or photographed and what must remain private. They share stories of the land’s history, interpret local ceremonies, and sometimes even co-direct the filming process. This two-way exchange reinforces intergenerational bonds: technology-savvy youth document cultural knowledge, while elders affirm the meaning behind each image or narrative.
3. Vignette – Language Preservation Through Film
In one community facing a rapid decline in fluent speakers of their traditional language, NGARRA participants decided to create short video segments featuring elders speaking everyday phrases. Younger community members scripted scenarios—shopping, hunting, greeting visitors—then filmed elders enacting these scenarios. Subtitles in both English and their Indigenous language were added in post-production. The final clips were shared on the community’s local network. Elders beamed with pride at seeing their language brought into the digital realm; youth felt a renewed sense of ownership over their linguistic heritage.
Project Variations: One Method, Many Expressions
Though NGARRA operates under a unifying framework, it adapts to the unique contexts of each place. The following examples illustrate this flexibility:
• Urban Fringe Collaborations
Near the outskirts of a major city, a group of Indigenous high school students documented the experience of commuting to an urban school from their country community. Their videos highlighted the push-and-pull of navigating two cultural worlds. These personal testimonies later spurred discussions with education policymakers about improving cultural support in mainstream schools.
• Healing Journeys
In a coastal community grappling with high rates of youth mental health issues, an NGARRA project focused on land-based healing. Youth captured time-lapse footage of fishing trips, shared personal reflections on camera, and interviewed elders about the healing properties of sea Country. The collective storytelling process became a form of communal therapy—a way for the community to talk about trauma while reaffirming connections to each other and the ocean.
• Elders’ Testimony Archive
Another project revolved around filming elders’ life stories—an urgent endeavor given the passing of many knowledge-keepers. Videos were carefully edited with elder guidance, ensuring respectful portrayal. Scenes of bush medicine preparation were captured with close-ups showing how each plant is processed. These archives now serve as living documents, accessible to future generations who may never meet these elders in person.
Encountering Challenges: Navigating Ethics and Protocol
Despite its successes, NGARRA is not without complications:
• Cultural Protocols
Some dances, songs, or ceremonies hold deep sacred value. When an elder initially authorizes filming, another might later voice concern about sharing it publicly. In such situations, NGARRA defers to collective consensus. The footage is either restricted to community-only viewings or, at times, deleted altogether if necessary. Upholding protocol supersedes academic or artistic goals.
• Institutional Hurdles
Funding bodies often demand quantitative metrics (“How many hours of footage?” “How many participants graduated from your workshops?”), whereas NGARRA’s most profound impacts (increased communal pride, revitalized language use, shifts in intergenerational dynamics) are less easily measured. Navigating these bureaucratic requirements while maintaining NGARRA’s integrity is an ongoing balancing act.
• Tech Infrastructure
Remote communities face frequent power outages, limited internet bandwidth, and outdated computer hardware. Creative solutions—such as offline editing, solar chargers, or local file-sharing networks—must be employed, requiring adaptability and resourcefulness on the part of facilitators.
Moments of Transformation: When the Lens Shifts
Every NGARRA project has at least one moment that everyone points to, saying, “This changed things.” Sometimes it’s a raucous film screening under the stars, or an elder seeing their childhood photos restored in high resolution. Other times it’s the quiet conversation after a yarning circle, where someone admits they never thought their voice mattered until they saw it reflected back in a video.
Vignette – A Community Screening
In a particularly remote desert region, the local council set up a portable projector against the side of a corrugated iron shed. The entire community gathered as dusk fell. Children, elders, and families watched short films produced by local youth, featuring daily life—goanna hunting, families cooking kangaroo tails, and elders reminiscing about long-gone mission days. Laughter echoed as community members recognized themselves onscreen, and tears were shed when elders spoke of lost traditions. By the end of the evening, a collective pride filled the air. People discussed ways to continue filming beyond NGARRA’s official timeline, determined to keep telling their stories.
Reflections: Threads That Bind
Through these field experiences, several core principles of NGARRA become evident:
1. Relational Accountability
Without genuine relationships, NGARRA cannot function. This accountability extends beyond the duration of a project, fostering enduring connections between facilitators, elders, and youth.
2. Decolonial Praxis
By centering Indigenous voices and placing control of cameras in local hands, NGARRA counters the historical pattern of outside observers defining Indigenous realities. The result is a reclamation of the narrative.
3. Adaptive Methodology
No two communities adopt NGARRA in the same way. Rather than a rigid formula, it is a living methodology—adaptive, context-driven, and grounded in community needs.
4. Performance and Ceremony
The performance aspect of NGARRA is not merely for show. It is embedded in every workshop, screening, and yarning circle. These are ceremonial gatherings where knowledge is enacted, shared, and honored.
Looking Ahead
Chapter 3 has provided a glimpse into the vibrant tapestry of experiences that constitute NGARRA in action. In the next chapters, we will delve into a more critical analysis of these stories, connecting them to decolonial theories, Indigenous futurities, and the broader discourse on performance-based research. Yet the narratives shared here stand as the heart of NGARRA’s methodology—reminders that at its core, this work is about hearing, seeing, and feeling the lives of those whose stories have too often been marginalized, and inviting them to take center stage in their own telling.
the way forward is back. this is how we come into relation. this is how we remember who we are. all one people.
Chapter 4: Decolonial Dialogues and Theoretical Reflections
“Theory can guide us, but lived experience is the fire that keeps it alive.”
— Community Elder during a NGARRA workshop
Introduction: Placing NGARRA Within Broader Conversations
NGARRA, as an Indigenous-led, performance-based methodology, finds resonance in several academic fields: decolonial studies, Indigenous research paradigms, arts-based inquiry, and performance theory. This chapter contextualizes the project within these intellectual currents, illustrating how NGARRA does more than gather stories—it actively intervenes in longstanding debates about who produces knowledge, how it circulates, and for whose benefit.
By drawing on these intersecting discourses, we can better understand why NGARRA takes the form it does, how it challenges conventional norms of scholarship, and what it implies for the future of Indigenous research.
4.1. Locating NGARRA in Decolonial Thought
4.1.1. Decolonial Critiques of Knowledge Production
Decolonial scholars such as Walter Mignolo, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and Aníbal Quijano argue that academic knowledge has been historically shaped by colonial hierarchies, privileging Western epistemologies and marginalizing Indigenous perspectives. In this framework, research often becomes an extractive endeavor: data is taken from Indigenous communities to serve the interests of distant institutions.
NGARRA directly challenges these hierarchies by returning agency to the communities themselves. Rather than data extraction, we see community co-creation. Rather than rigid academic outputs, we see living, iterative processes shaped by local wisdom. When young people film their everyday realities or elders speak openly about cultural practices, they reclaim the power to define what knowledge means on Country.
4.1.2. Reclaiming Narrative Sovereignty
One of the key objectives of decolonial scholarship is to disrupt narrative sovereignty—the ability to tell one’s own story, in one’s own words, without external distortion. NGARRA operationalizes this principle by placing cameras and editing tools in the hands of community members themselves. The result is a dynamic exercise in self-representation, where Indigenous identities are neither frozen in time nor filtered through exoticizing lenses, but actively shaped by those who live them.
This act of reclaiming narrative sovereignty further extends to decisions about what remains private. Communities decide which images can be shared publicly, which ones stay within family circles, and which knowledge is too sacred for external viewing. These self-determined boundaries reflect a decolonial stance, in which the community, not the researcher, wields ultimate authority over how knowledge circulates.
4.2. Indigenous Research Paradigms and Relational Methodologies
4.2.1. Research as Ceremony
According to Shawn Wilson (Research is Ceremony), Indigenous research is fundamentally relational—it is grounded in connections among people, land, ancestors, and the cosmos. NGARRA exemplifies this perspective through yarning circles and deep listening practices that foster communal spaces of mutual respect. The term ceremony here is not metaphorical; it underscores the sacred responsibility of the researcher to uphold communal values throughout the research journey.
This approach contrasts with positivist or objectivist paradigms, where distance between researcher and subject is often seen as a hallmark of “rigor.” NGARRA flips that assumption by centering closeness, empathy, and reciprocity as cornerstones of rigorous inquiry.
4.2.2. Relational Accountability
Karen Martin’s concept of “relatedness” and Wilson’s emphasis on relational accountability inform the ethical framework of NGARRA. Accountability is not owed to an abstract disciplinary standard but to actual people and places. When an elder expresses concern about sharing ceremonial footage, or a youth hesitates to display personal images, NGARRA’s methodology responds by negotiating solutions that prioritize their well-being.
In this sense, ethics is not a bureaucratic checklist—it’s a living, evolving commitment. Every camera lens, yarning circle, or community screening is governed by the principle that the research belongs to and serves the community first and foremost.
4.3. Arts-Based and Performance Theories
4.3.1. Arts-Based Research: Beyond the Written Text
Elliot Eisner and Tom Barone have argued that arts-based research fosters forms of understanding that are not easily communicated through conventional academic prose. Images, films, dances, and performances can capture embodied, emotional, and sensory dimensions of human experience in ways words cannot. NGARRA’s emphasis on photography and video aligns with this perspective, highlighting the expressive power of the arts to engage viewers on multiple levels—intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic.
Moreover, arts-based research challenges the notion of the researcher as a “neutral observer,” inviting active collaboration and creative exploration. In NGARRA, the camera becomes a shared tool of discovery, dissolving the boundary between “researcher” and “participant.” Instead, everyone involved becomes a co-creator of knowledge, merging the artistic with the academic.
4.3.2. Performance as Knowledge Creation
Performance studies scholars like Dwight Conquergood have long emphasized that performance is a form of inquiry in its own right. By engaging bodily, emotionally, and interpersonally, performers and audiences generate insights that might otherwise remain hidden. For NGARRA, performance surfaces in yarning circles, community film screenings, and everyday interactions wherein cameras are used to frame and re-frame reality.
This performative element fosters live, communal moments of recognition and transformation. A youth showing their film to an elder is simultaneously learning, teaching, and performing a new understanding of cultural identity. These micro-performances accumulate into a collective rethinking of who holds knowledge and how it circulates.
4.4. Political Dimensions: Decolonizing Academic Structures
4.4.1. From Extractive to Generative Research
Historically, academic research on Indigenous communities often served colonial agendas, reinforcing stereotypes or collecting data primarily to serve institutional interests. Decolonial practice demands that the flow of benefit be reversed or at least balanced. NGARRA moves in this direction by:
1. Investing in Community Skills
Through workshops and training, local participants gain technical and creative skills they can use long after the project ends. This ensures that intellectual and material resources remain embedded within the community.
2. Valuing Indigenous Expertise
Rather than positioning elders and youth as “subjects,” NGARRA acknowledges them as co-researchers and knowledge keepers. Their expertise—linguistic, cultural, historical—is recognized as equivalent (if not superior) to academic credentials.
3. Shared Authorship and Credit
When outputs like short films or photographic exhibitions are produced, communities have the option to co-author or claim co-ownership of the final product. This disrupts the typical hierarchy where the academic researcher claims primary authorship.
4.4.2. Institutional Resistance and Possibilities
Even with strong community backing, projects like NGARRA face institutional barriers. Ethics committees and granting agencies frequently operate with entrenched assumptions about what constitutes valid data or publishable findings. NGARRA’s emphasis on process over product can clash with funding structures that demand quantifiable deliverables.
Nevertheless, there are signs of positive shifts. Increasingly, universities are embracing the value of community-engaged, creative, and Indigenous-led scholarship. Initiatives that prioritize “research impact” and “knowledge translation” can serve as entry points for recognizing performance-based and community-centered research. By existing and thriving within these institutional frameworks, NGARRA exemplifies the possibility of transformation from within.
4.5. Imagining Indigenous Futures
4.5.1. Futurities and Self-Determination
Ngarrindjeri scholar Irene Watson and Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith both champion the concept of Indigenous futurities, asserting that re-centering Indigenous ways of knowing is not only about rectifying historical injustices—it is also about shaping future pathways of political, cultural, and intellectual life. NGARRA contributes to this effort by giving young people in particular the chance to envision themselves as cultural guardians, media creators, and community leaders.
4.5.2. Intergenerational Continuity
The visual archives produced through NGARRA—photos, videos, digital narratives—stand as living testaments for future generations, bridging the gap between ancestors and descendants. By digitizing stories, the methodology ensures they can travel beyond the lifespan of any single generation, offering a platform for ongoing cultural revitalization. Through these archival materials, younger community members can continue to learn from elders long after they’ve passed on, thus maintaining a continuous line of cultural inheritance.
4.6. A Reciprocal Dance Between Practice and Theory
NGARRA’s core strength lies in its dance between theory and practice. While firmly grounded in decolonial and Indigenous scholarship, its true power emerges in on-the-ground interactions—in the laughter shared during workshops, the collective hush of a film screening, and the cautious negotiations around cultural protocols. This interaction between lived experience and theoretical lens ensures that NGARRA is neither purely conceptual nor merely anecdotal. It embodies the best of both realms.
Conclusion: Charting the Way Forward
By locating NGARRA within decolonial, Indigenous, and arts-based frameworks, we see that its methodological innovations are part of a larger movement: one that seeks to reconfigure the politics of knowledge production, respect the sanctity of cultural narratives, and empower communities to define their own research agendas.
In the chapters that follow, we will deepen our focus on evaluation—not in a conventional sense of metrics and charts, but in terms of community impact, cultural revitalization, and the ongoing relationships that persist long after cameras are switched off. Ultimately, the theoretical dialogues in this chapter serve as scaffolding for understanding why NGARRA’s approach is both deeply political and profoundly healing—a conversation where performance, decolonial discourse, and Indigenous resilience converge.
the way forward is back. this is how we come into relation. this is how we remember who we are. all one people.
Chapter 5: Reflective Evaluations – Tracing the Ripples of NGARRA
“When a rock is thrown into water, you measure not just the splash, but the circles it leaves behind.”
— Reflection by a Senior Elder on NGARRA’s ongoing legacy
Introduction: Rethinking Impact
In academic contexts, evaluation often hinges on quantifiable outcomes—numbers of participants, hours of footage, peer-reviewed publications. But in NGARRA, the most profound transformations tend to defy easy measurement. They reside in a young person’s newfound confidence behind the camera lens, in an elder’s tearful gratitude for the preservation of cultural stories, or in the subtle shifts in community relationships that manifest after the cameras are turned off.
This chapter delves into how we might evaluate NGARRA’s impact without reducing it to metrics alone. We consider multiple vantage points: the communities themselves, academic institutions, funding bodies, and Indigenous research paradigms that value relational accountability and cultural resurgence. By weaving these perspectives together, we reveal how NGARRA’s “ripples” continue long after any single project concludes.
5.1. Community-Centered Assessment
5.1.1. The Currency of Trust and Pride
In many Indigenous contexts, trust and pride hold far more weight than formal certifications of success. An elder once remarked: “You know it’s good when everyone’s calling you over for a feed, instead of shutting the door.” This sentiment highlights a fundamental measure of community approval: Are people wanting to keep the relationship alive?
Similarly, pride—especially among young people—is a key indicator. When youth begin voluntarily organizing film screenings or photography exhibits (sometimes with minimal assistance), it signals true ownership of the process. Rather than a one-off project, NGARRA evolves into a community-driven endeavor.
5.1.2. Yarning Evaluations
Formal surveys rarely capture the relational nuance of NGARRA. Instead, communities often conduct yarning evaluations, gathering in circles after each project phase to discuss what worked, what didn’t, and where the stories should head next. These yarning-based reflections can be recorded or transcribed if the community permits, creating a living feedback loop that directly informs ongoing practice.
5.2. Academic Institutions: Negotiating Two Worlds
5.2.1. The Pressure for Tangible Outputs
Universities and funding agencies frequently require measurable “deliverables”—reports, publications, presentations. While NGARRA’s primary audience is the community itself, we also navigate academia’s demands by translating the relational depth of NGARRA into forms recognizable by institutional stakeholders. This can involve producing audio-visual essays, arts-based research showcases, or co-authored academic articles with community members.
Yet there is a cautionary note: Over-institutionalizing NGARRA risks diluting its grassroots essence. We walk a fine line between staying true to community priorities and satisfying the systems that fund, legitimize, or disseminate the work.
5.2.2. Scholarly Contributions Beyond Metrics
Tyson Yunkaporta often reminds us that Indigenous knowledge is not just content but also process—the way we weave meaning from stories, the cyclical nature of our learning, and the relational protocols that guide us. Through NGARRA, scholars gain insight into how performance-based research can reconstitute the very structures of academic inquiry. This is a conceptual contribution, expanding how research might be done in ethically robust, community-led ways.
Whether or not this conceptual shift neatly fits into Western metrics, it matters—it plants seeds for future researchers to incorporate more Indigenous and arts-based methods.
5.3. Funding Bodies: Demonstrating Value While Honoring Community Realities
5.3.1. Bridging Worldviews
Funding agencies often view “success” through the lens of project deliverables and reportable outcomes. NGARRA, on the other hand, focuses on process, relationships, and intangible transformations. To navigate this, we create hybrid models of evaluation that document participant feedback, community-driven outputs, and narrative case studies—in addition to numerical data on workshop attendance or hours of footage.
These hybrid reports can help funders see beyond statistics to the human stories at the heart of NGARRA. By converting some of the intangible, relational gains into accessible narratives, we sustain financial support while maintaining cultural integrity.
5.3.2. Sustainability and Long-Term Impact
Most grants fund projects on annual or multi-year cycles. But communities need long-term stability. A frequent question arises: Who keeps the cameras rolling after external funding ends? Sustainable impact can emerge from a core group of local champions who continue the work, forging alliances with local councils, schools, or health services. By training these local champions as facilitators, NGARRA ensures that skills and knowledge remain embedded within the community, extending the project’s reach well beyond grant timelines.
5.4. Intangible Outcomes: A Story of Transformation
5.4.1. Personal Empowerment and Healing
Nearly every NGARRA project contains moments where individual transformation is palpable. A young participant might have never spoken up in public, only to find their voice through a short film they create. An elder may have felt a sense of loss regarding the continuity of cultural knowledge, then sees renewed hope when youth eagerly document their stories.
These personal shifts—boosts in self-esteem, reawakened cultural pride, deepened community cohesion—are challenging to quantify, yet they are often the true legacy of NGARRA.
5.4.2. Intergenerational Dialogue
The cameras in NGARRA projects frequently act as bridges between generations. Elders gain confidence that their knowledge is being carried forward; youth feel a sense of stewardship in preserving culture. This intergenerational handover can be subtle—an elder passing on a story about the old mission days, a teenager recording a younger sibling singing a traditional lullaby. But these everyday acts become powerful in ensuring cultural continuity.
5.5. Reflecting on Setbacks and Learning Curves
5.5.1. Technology Failures and Resource Gaps
Cameras break. Hard drives crash. Internet connections vanish in a remote community. These setbacks often force NGARRA to improvise: repurposing an outdated laptop, using solar chargers, or working offline. While frustrating, these challenges highlight community resilience and the significance of low-tech adaptability.
5.5.2. Ethical Dilemmas
Not every story can—or should—be told. Some ceremonial knowledge requires strict privacy. In a few NGARRA instances, footage had to be deleted after internal consensus deemed it inappropriate for external or even community-wide sharing. Though such moments can feel like “failure” from a purely output-focused standpoint, they reaffirm the core principle of relational accountability: protecting cultural integrity over generating content.
5.6. Emerging Frameworks for Evaluation
5.6.1. Relational Impact Index
One idea that has taken shape through multiple NGARRA projects is a Relational Impact Index, a qualitative measure co-designed with communities. It tracks themes like trust, confidence, cultural pride, story ownership, and community initiative. Communities score themselves on these areas at different project stages, using yarning circle discussions to anchor the assessment. This approach places community voices at the center of evaluation, blending qualitative nuance with some structure that funders or institutions can grasp.
5.6.2. Story-Driven Metrics
Another emerging practice is to replace standard “evaluation forms” with story prompts:
•“Tell us about a time you felt proud during this project.”
•“Describe a moment when you realized something important was changing.”
By gathering narrative vignettes, NGARRA teams compile a mosaic of transformations that illuminate the depth of community impact. These stories form a tapestry more powerful than any single statistic.
5.7. The Road Ahead: From Evaluation to Evolution
Assessing NGARRA’s impact is not a final step—evaluation and evolution happen in tandem. Each insight gleaned from the field informs the next community visit, the next yarning circle, the next adaptation of the methodology. This cyclical process resonates with Tyson Yunkaporta’s notions of pattern thinking—where knowledge is not linear but emergent, forming new patterns each time it’s engaged.
The chapters ahead will explore future implications and scalability—how NGARRA might grow or shift as it interfaces with new cultural settings, global digital networks, and evolving decolonial discourses. But at this juncture, it’s crucial to pause and acknowledge: real transformation often takes shape in intangible, relational spaces—moments that defy quick measurement yet leave indelible marks on hearts, minds, and communities.
Conclusion: Circles Within Circles
In measuring the “success” of NGARRA, we look beyond project endpoints to the ongoing ripples—the youth who continue filming, the elders who maintain cultural protocols, the new relationships that blossom. These circles of influence expand outward, interweaving personal, communal, and structural change. While academia and funding bodies may seek tangible outcomes, Indigenous research paradigms remind us that impact is most profound when it is felt, lived, and carried forward in the stories people tell long after the project is done.
By embracing fluid, relational, and story-driven evaluations, NGARRA remains true to its Indigenous ethos—ever mindful that the ultimate measure of success lies in upholding the integrity of the people and places it serves, ensuring that knowledge is not just documented, but embodied and cherished for generations to come.
the way forward is back. this is how we come into relation. this is how we remember who we are. all one people.
Chapter 6: Futures and Legacies – Where NGARRA Goes From Here
“Futures aren’t just something distant on the horizon—they’re forming right here, in the seeds we plant today.”
— Reflection from a young NGARRA participant
Introduction: Growing from Strong Roots
So far, we have journeyed through NGARRA’s origins, its performance-based methodology, real-life stories from the field, theoretical grounding, and the challenges and successes of evaluating impact. Now, we turn our gaze toward the future. In many ways, NGARRA was born from communities’ urgent need for self-representation and cultural preservation. Yet its potential extends beyond immediate local contexts, calling forth possibilities of regional, national, and even global engagement.
This chapter explores how NGARRA might evolve, addressing pressing questions of scalability, technology, policy influence, and long-term sustainability. It also considers the crucial role of community guardians, who continue this work when external researchers step away. Ultimately, the future of NGARRA rests in the hands of those who hold these stories—and the creative ways they choose to carry them forward.
6.1. Scaling NGARRA Without Losing Its Soul
6.1.1. Beyond One Community, One Workshop
Many performance- and arts-based programs struggle to scale effectively because they are deeply context-dependent. NGARRA’s methodology is similarly rooted in local relationships, cultural protocols, and specific community needs. So, how might we bring NGARRA to more communities without diluting the relational core?
•Local Facilitators, Local Ownership: A guiding principle for scaling is to train community champions who can replicate NGARRA processes in neighboring regions. This includes workshops on camera work, editing, and ethical storytelling, but more importantly, it involves nurturing the relational and cultural sensibilities that make NGARRA transformative in the first place.
•Federated Model: Instead of a centralized structure dictating “how to do NGARRA,” each community can adapt the core principles—yarning circles, deep listening, performance-based media creation—to local contexts. Shared experiences across communities form a network of support, exchanging resources and insights, but each NGARRA node remains sovereign in its approach.
6.1.2. Technology Platforms and Grassroots Distribution
Wider reach often implies digital expansion—yet Indigenous communities face varied levels of Internet access and technological infrastructure. One approach is to develop low-bandwidth platforms or utilize offline file-sharing systems, ensuring that NGARRA’s stories are accessible even in the most remote regions. A community in the desert might store all footage on durable drives and share them via traveling facilitators, while a coastal region with better connectivity could stream short films online.
A crucial lesson is to not over-rely on high-tech solutions. NGARRA’s strength lies in people’s relationships, not in cloud servers. Technology should serve as a tool of connection, not a barrier.
6.2. Policy Influence and Structural Change
6.2.1. From Local Stories to Systemic Shifts
The stories documented through NGARRA don’t just stay within communities; they have the power to inform policy on housing, healthcare, education, and cultural funding. For instance, films showcasing the importance of language revitalization can influence educational boards to allocate more resources for bilingual programs. Documentaries highlighting youth resilience could inform social services about more culturally grounded approaches to mental health support.
Encouraging local leaders to engage with NGARRA outputs—screenings, photo exhibitions, digital archives—helps bridge the gap between community experiences and the legislative processes shaping their realities. Policy-makers who see these stories firsthand are more likely to recognize community strengths and adjust policies accordingly.
6.2.2. Co-Authoring Policy Briefs
One emerging practice is co-authoring policy briefs with community members, building on NGARRA’s storytelling. Instead of third-person reports that flatten lived experience into abstract data, these briefs amplify community voices directly. Images, quotes, and short videos from NGARRA projects can accompany written recommendations, giving policy-makers a tangible sense of local priorities. Such an approach asserts narrative sovereignty even within bureaucratic arenas, ensuring that Indigenous communities speak for themselves, not just as data points.
6.3. Fostering Future Generations of Researchers and Artists
6.3.1. Mentorship Networks
One of the most exciting outcomes of NGARRA projects is the spark that ignites in certain individuals—those who discover they love filmmaking, photography, or community organizing. Building mentorship networks connects these budding creatives with established Indigenous artists, media professionals, or scholars who can offer guidance and career pathways.
This mentorship model can be a powerful pipeline: from initial NGARRA workshops to university media courses, or apprenticeships in film production houses, and eventually returning to serve their own communities with enhanced skills.
6.3.2. Integrating NGARRA into Formal Education
Schools and tertiary institutions increasingly acknowledge the importance of Indigenous perspectives and creative inquiry. NGARRA’s approach—yarning circles, deep listening, intergenerational knowledge—could be integrated into curricula, engaging students with hands-on storytelling projects. In this way, learning by doing replaces more abstract, siloed classroom methods.
When youth see their own cultural narratives in school assignments or university modules, it validates their identities and strengthens community-academic partnerships. Imagine a media studies class where local elders co-teach about cultural protocols in filming, or an art course where NGARRA’s relational ethics guide project design. These collaborations foster reciprocal learning that benefits everyone involved.
6.4. Indigenous Digital Futures and Global Dialogues
6.4.1. Beyond Borders
Though NGARRA is rooted in Australian Indigenous communities, its relational and performance ethos resonates with Indigenous movements globally. Digital storytelling initiatives in Aotearoa (New Zealand), Canada, and Latin America share striking commonalities in using media to reclaim narratives, revitalize languages, and decolonize knowledge production. By connecting with these international networks, NGARRA could evolve into a global dialogue—cross-pollinating ideas and strategies for reclaiming visual sovereignty.
6.4.2. Ethics of Online Sharing
As more communities opt to share their content internationally, issues of misappropriation and cultural protocols become urgent. A video intended for internal community reflection could be lifted and taken out of context on social media. Balancing the benefits of digital reach with protecting sacred knowledge remains a key tension.
NGARRA participants often develop community guidelines for digital sharing, such as requiring local approval before uploading footage to public platforms. This ensures that technology never supersedes cultural sovereignty. In the future, blockchain or NFT technologies might be harnessed to protect and authenticate Indigenous media, though these solutions must remain community-driven, not imposed from outside.
6.5. Sustaining the Fire: Long-Term Visioning
6.5.1. Guardianship Councils
Some communities have started forming Guardianship Councils—local committees that oversee the stewardship of NGARRA archives, protocols, and future storytelling projects. Comprising elders, youth representatives, and occasionally external allies, these councils ensure the intent and spirit of NGARRA remains intact. They approve new filming proposals, safeguard sensitive materials, and coordinate local screenings or exhibitions. This structure weaves NGARRA into the institutional fabric of the community itself.
6.5.2. Evolutionary Methodology
NGARRA is never static. As technology evolves, as younger generations innovate, and as cultural protocols adapt to modern realities, the methodology must flex and grow. Rather than fearing these shifts, communities embrace them as continuations of ancestral knowledge in contemporary forms. An elder once said, “Our old ways show us how to adapt—like water, we find new paths, but we remain true to who we are.” That capacity to transform while holding onto core values defines NGARRA’s enduring strength.
6.6. Concluding Thoughts: Carrying the Story Forward
The future chapters of NGARRA’s story are unwritten, waiting for new voices to pick up cameras, pens, or paintbrushes. Whether a single community or a global network, the essence of NGARRA thrives where relational accountability, deep listening, and creative performance intersect. As it branches out, it also loops back, continually revitalizing the roots that gave it life: Indigenous sovereignty, intergenerational connection, and the land itself.
In the chapters to come—both literal and metaphorical—we see how NGARRA might extend into policy arenas, intercontinental collaborations, educational institutions, and beyond. Yet it remains, at heart, a community-first initiative, shaped by the people who bring their stories to life through image, sound, and shared ceremony. As we close this chapter, we keep the door open for the infinite permutations of NGARRA’s future, guided by the wisdom that knowledge is alive when it is lived, and that every story—like a seed—holds the potential for vast forests yet to emerge.
the way forward is back. this is how we come into relation. this is how we remember who we are. all one people.
Chapter 7: Weaving the Threads, Holding the Future
“Knowledge never stands still; it moves with the land, the people, and the stories that bring them together.”
— Reflection shared during a NGARRA showcase
7.1. Circles Closing, Circles Continuing
Throughout this thesis, we have journeyed with NGARRA from its community-centered origins, through its performance-based methodology, and into the transformations it sparks in diverse contexts. Each chapter illuminated a different facet of NGARRA—how it defies extractive research norms, honors Indigenous sovereignty, and uses photography and film as vessels for living knowledge. Now, as we arrive at the final chapter, we recognize that in Indigenous frameworks, endings are rarely abrupt. Rather, they signal the start of another cycle, a new songline waiting to be followed.
Just as a yarning circle never truly “ends,” but disperses until the next gathering, so too does NGARRA continue beyond the pages of this dissertation. Cameras may be switched off momentarily, laptops closed, but the relationships, stories, and communities remain vibrant. This chapter reflects on the insights gained, the challenges encountered, and the new horizons that beckon as NGARRA continues its journey in and beyond academic contexts.
7.2. Revisiting Core Insights
Let us first gather the major insights that emerged throughout this research:
1. Relational Accountability Over Extractive Methods
By positioning community voices and protocols at the center, NGARRA contests the colonial legacy of “studying” Indigenous communities. Instead, it demonstrates how research can become a reciprocal practice—a meeting ground where stories are offered and responsibilities are shared.
2. Performance as a Conduit for Embodied Knowledge
NGARRA thrives on performative spaces—yarning circles, screenings, celebrations—where knowledge is enacted and felt rather than merely discussed. This approach not only validates Indigenous epistemologies but encourages innovative forms of arts-based research within academia.
3. Digital Tools as Bridges, Not Destinations
Cameras and editing software are crucial instruments in NGARRA, yet they remain tools for deeper goals: cultural resurgence, self-representation, intergenerational dialogue. Their power lies in amplifying stories that might otherwise remain hidden, reminding us that technology serves human relationships, not the other way around.
4. Community-Led Evaluation and Flexibility
Chapter 5’s exploration of impact illustrated the necessity of yarning evaluations, narrative-based assessments, and local definitions of success. These approaches challenge academic norms of measurement, urging a broader view of what constitutes meaningful, ethical research “outcomes.”
5. Towards an Indigenous Future
The final chapters pointed to how NGARRA might expand, inspiring policy, feeding into educational frameworks, and connecting with global Indigenous networks. At each step, the central ethos remains: Indigenous people decide how their stories are told, shared, and safeguarded.
7.3. Enduring Challenges
Even as we celebrate NGARRA’s strengths, it is essential to acknowledge the persistent challenges:
• Balancing Community Needs and Institutional Demands
Navigating funding cycles, ethics boards, and academic deliverables requires ongoing negotiation. How can we ensure community priorities remain paramount when external structures hold the purse strings or demand quantifiable metrics?
• Technological Limitations in Remote Areas
While cameras and editing gear have become more accessible, many Indigenous communities still face infrastructure hurdles—unreliable power, limited internet, or outdated devices. Continued resourcefulness and advocacy will be needed to level these disparities.
• Cultural Protocols and Privacy in a Digital World
As more NGARRA stories appear online or at public events, the risk of misappropriation or unintended circulation grows. Safeguarding sacred knowledge remains an evolving conversation, requiring vigilant community protocols and respectful use of technology.
• Sustaining the Fire Over Time
NGARRA has, by design, an iterative cycle that encourages local facilitators to keep the methodology alive. Yet consistent leadership changes, shifting funding climates, and the pressures of daily life can slow momentum. As with any movement, continuous nurturing is vital.
7.4. Pathways Forward: Carrying the Flame
7.4.1. Building Stronger Regional and Global Networks
NGARRA does not exist in a vacuum. Similar initiatives worldwide are reclaiming Indigenous narratives through film, digital media, and performance. Connecting these movements—through conferences, online platforms, or collaborative projects—amplifies each community’s voice and fosters shared learning. By forging alliances with Indigenous media collectives in Aotearoa, Turtle Island (North America), Latin America, and beyond, NGARRA’s philosophy can cross-pollinate with other contexts, strengthening a global tapestry of Indigenous storytelling.
7.4.2. Evolving Academic Structures
Another horizon is the institutionalization of NGARRA principles within universities. We might imagine new curricula for media studies, cultural studies, or anthropology that emphasize co-creation, deep listening, and relational accountability. Thesis committees and ethics boards could adapt policies to accommodate performance-based, community-led research. Such systemic shifts would ensure that future Indigenous researchers do not encounter the same bureaucratic roadblocks but find institutional allies who celebrate relational and arts-based methods.
7.5. A Personal Reflection: The Researcher’s Journey
No conclusion would be complete without acknowledging the personal transformations encountered along the way. As the principal researcher in this performance-based PhD, I have been reoriented by NGARRA’s demands—learning to slow down, to listen more carefully, to welcome discomfort when protocols differ from academic expectations. Each community project, every yarning circle, and all the intergenerational conversations have reshaped my understanding of what it means to be in service to knowledge, rather than a wielder of it.
Ultimately, NGARRA has taught me that research is a gift—a gift of trust offered by communities who allow us to co-witness their stories. This gift carries the responsibility to uphold cultural integrity, to facilitate honest representation, and to remain accountable long after a thesis is written or a film is edited.
7.6. The Journey Continues
Where do we go from here? The simple answer: everywhere. NGARRA’s spirit resides not in a rigid methodology but in an ethical commitment to Indigenous sovereignty, cultural revitalization, and relational knowledge. As communities adapt NGARRA to their local realities, they generate new patterns—new ways of stitching the old and the new, the past and the future.
In the act of concluding this written document, we mirror the circle of a yarning session: we stand, gather our belongings, and prepare to return to daily life. Yet the essence of the circle never closes; it stretches across time and Country, tying us all to a network of storytellers and knowledge keepers.
NGARRA will continue wherever people choose to pick up a camera, host a yarning circle, or innovate ways to perform knowledge. It endures in the subtle shift of how we see ourselves and each other, in the resonance between land and story, in the recognition that research can be ceremony—a sacred dance of reciprocal learning.
To those who have traveled with me through these chapters—on paper and on Country—thank you for being part of the conversation. May the fires of NGARRA keep burning brightly, lighting paths yet unknown, guided by the wisdom and resilience of communities who hold their stories with courage and care.
the way forward is back. this is how we come into relation. this is how we remember who we are. all one people.
Afterword: Distilling the Fire
“Some fires never die; they lie beneath the ash, waiting for the next breath of wind.”
— Words shared around a late-night campfire after a NGARRA screening
The Embers That Remain
After the final chapter draws to a close, there is often a quiet moment—a pause where the weight of the journey settles in. Research, in the Western sense, might stop at the conclusion: the thesis is submitted, the findings are published. But for those who have walked alongside NGARRA, the work continues in real-time, real places, and real relationships.
Just as coals stay hot long after the flames have visibly subsided, NGARRA’s impact smolders in the hearts of those who participated. You see it in a young mother showing her child a short video on a cracked phone screen, proudly pointing out relatives and places that matter. You sense it in an elder who mentions “that time we filmed the old mission site” as if it happened yesterday. Like hidden embers, these moments spark new connections whenever a gust of curiosity or need stirs them up again.
Carrying the Flame Forward
In many Indigenous traditions, knowledge is a collective fire. No single person “owns” it; the flame is kept alive by the community’s ongoing efforts. NGARRA, in this sense, is a shared hearth—not a solitary candle to be snuffed out when the dissertation is filed away. Each photograph, video clip, or story told around a yarning circle becomes fuel for a cultural fire that warms and illuminates.
•For Communities: The cameras, editing tools, and storytelling methods remain in local hands. Facilitators emerge from within each place, ready to adapt NGARRA as new challenges or aspirations arise—documenting seasonal ceremonies one year, oral histories the next, perhaps even capturing the everyday resilience of the community’s response to environmental changes.
•For Researchers and Allies: NGARRA offers a template of integrity—a reminder that you don’t come to extract knowledge; you come to sit by the fire, adding kindling when needed, respecting the circle of people who have gathered around it. This relational ethic extends beyond Indigenous contexts. It has lessons for anyone seeking to conduct research that does not exploit but empowers.
Stories Yet to Be Told
Even the most comprehensive thesis can’t contain every voice, nor should it try. Stories remain in the hush of private ceremonies, in the unsaid truths people aren’t ready to share, in the fleeting glances captured off-camera. These untold stories are not omissions but reservoirs of potential, waiting to be expressed when the time and the people are ready.
Some communities might take NGARRA in directions we never anticipated—merging it with local radio broadcasts, interactive digital murals, or community-led tourism initiatives. Others may keep it smaller scale, focusing on archiving elders’ knowledge for internal use. There’s no singular “correct” path; each iteration of NGARRA belongs to the people who shape it.
Continual Transformation
Indigenous knowledge systems are dynamic, never static. The same is true for NGARRA. Over time, new technologies will emerge, protocols will evolve, languages may shift. The challenge—and the beauty—lies in allowing NGARRA to transform while holding on to the core principles of relational accountability, communal storytelling, and creative performance.
Change does not weaken NGARRA; it strengthens it by acknowledging that living cultures adapt. An old song can find a new melody, a dusty camera can be swapped for a smartphone, and a small screening under the stars can become a virtual gathering that links multiple communities at once. Through it all, the essence remains: tell your story, honor your ways, and share what must be shared—no more, no less.
Final Reflections
In weaving together these words, it’s clear that this thesis is not the final destination. It is one way-station on a path that extends backward to Ancestors who first taught us how to pass on knowledge, and forward to generations yet unborn who will claim it for themselves. The hope is that what’s written here will contribute—a spark that keeps the embers glowing until they burst into renewed flames in another place, another time.
As we take our leave of these pages, may we remember that research can be a ceremony of connection, a performance of respect, and a story told among friends. And may the fire of NGARRA guide us—softly, persistently—toward futures shaped by the people who hold the stories in their care, forever lit from within by the sovereign right of a community to define its own narrative.
The fire endures. So does the 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.
