Art Yarning: On an Integrated Social Science Research Method

ABSTRACT

This article presents a messy social science research method that integrates art therapy tools and Indigenous yarning – a concept loosely translated as complex conversational storytelling. The method – Art Yarning – is an innovative research tool that mirrors and responds to the complex social and research realities in interactions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and researchers in Australia. Drawing on collaborative research with Indigenous communities on Gunditjmara and Wathaurong Countries in Victoria, I present and discuss Art Yarning as a ‘messy’ method (Law 2004): that is, as shifting, uncertain, slow, modest, and diverse, only capable of delivering situated, incomplete, temporary knowledge – a valuable, humbling position that recognises and respects boundaries around Indigenous knowledges. Art Yarning prioritises Indigenous and visual ways of knowing and challenges the problematic conviction that any social science method can deliver complete, single-source knowledge. Art Yarning enhanced participants’ sense of Indigenous identities, healing, and non-Indigenous participants’ adaptation to aspects of Indigenous ways of knowing-being-doing (Martin 2003). Rich multilayered new knowledge was achieved via processes that reduce power imbalance in research. Critically, the integrated method facilitates learning from, rather than learning about, Indigenous peoples in social science research.

KEYWORDS:

• Art therapy
• Indigenous Australians
• yarning
• visual methods
• decolonised research

Acknowledgements

My eternal gratitude goes to the participants, Wurundjeri, Gunditjmara, and Wathaurong Countries, and to the Art – the materials and processes – for being, knowing, and doing the relational with me. I acknowledge Winda Mara and BADAC Corporations, Eileen Alberts-Aunty Maude, Edward Alfred Lovett-Uncle Ted, and Gunditjmara and Wathaurong Countries as collaborators on the Artful Mob research project, and whose generous parting of knowledge had expanded myself in significant and permanent ways.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration

All participants in this research project have given written consent for their ‘art yarnings’ to be published by the author. Nearly all participants have chosen to have their full names stated in this article, and in some cases, this open sharing of stories is seen by these participants as part of their relational responsibilities and accountabilities. I have assigned pseudonyms and omitted name/s of Country/ies for those who preferred confidentiality.

Notes

1 Through her Quandamooka ontology, Martin assigns the term ‘knowing-being-doing’ to an Indigenist research framework, emphasising the relationship between different activities within this trio.

2 Indwelling involves focused gazing with the purpose of allowing deeper levels of meaning to surface (Douglas and Moustakas 1985).

3 Names of Country/ies are not disclosed.

4 The origin of dot painting can be traced to trade with missions in the 1930s (Morphy 1991; Myers 2002), but its formulation as an inter-cultural product began in the 1970s through collaboration between a group of displaced Pintupi, Luritja, Arrernte, Anmatyerre, and Warlpiri men in Papunya – a government-initiated assimilation project – and a hierarchy of governmental and art world representatives.

5 Paul does not specify which Country he refers to here.

Additional information

Funding

RMIT’s HREC, approval number 19758.

Notes on contributors

Elinor Assoulin

Dr Elinor Assoulin is an academic and an art therapist whose research interest concerns the intersection between art, race, identity, and visual pathways for expression, communication, and research.