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ABSTRACT
The authors reflect on the methodology of using digital tools to learn about the experiences of Indigenous people enrolled from 1980 to 2000 as adult students at Tranby, an Indigenous-controlled post-secondary college. This collaboration between Tranby and the University of Technology Sydney drew on debates in post-colonial studies, oral history and archival studies. The authors found that participants prioritised personal control in all social media communication and engaged most actively in person-to-person communication to take part in this research. Participants were eager to share memories of student experiences but they have preferred to contribute to online publications which focused on activities, rather than on individuals. To support participants’ desire for control over digital communication, the authors slowed the pace of online outcome development to allow flexible and ongoing consent arrangements along with non-custodial approaches to oral, archival, photographic and material collections.
Acknowledgements
This article is based on a paper presented to the ITIC Conference, Melbourne, 2017.
The research has been funded through an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, in a collaboration between the University of Technology Sydney and the not-for-profit Tranby Co-operative for Aborigines. We wish to thank the research assistants on the program, Fiona Smith, Helen Randerson, Judith Torzillo and Lynette Bolt. We are grateful for the assistance of staff at Tranby National Indigenous Adult Education and Training and from the Friends of Tranby for their support. Most of all, we are particularly grateful for the enthusiasm and commitment of the former students of Tranby who took part in this study through their interviews, photographs, artwork and networking.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Shannon Faulkhead and Kirsten Thorpe, ‘Dedication: Archives and Indigenous Communities: Our Knowing Allison Boucher Krebs’, in Anne J Gilliland, Sue McKemmish and Andrew J Lau (eds), Research in the Archival Multiverse, Monash University Press, Melbourne, 2016; Nampombe Saurombe, ‘Decolonising Higher Education Curricula in South Africa: Factoring in Archives through Public Programming Initiatives’, Archival Science, vol. 18, 2018, pp. 119–41; Belinda Russon, ‘Culturally Specific Approaches to Learning’, Report from Churchill Fellowship in Norway, Canada and USA, 2018, available at <https://www.churchilltrust.com.au/media/fellows/Russon_Belinda_2013_Culturally_specific_approaches_to_learning.pdf, accessed 8 December 2018.
2. Gerald Friesen and Lucy Taksa, ‘Workers’ Education In Australia and Canada: A Comparative Approach to Labour’s Cultural History’, Labour/Le Travail, Labour History, vol. 38, no. 71, 1996, pp. 170–97; N Balnave and G Patmore, ‘Aboriginal Co-operatives: The Role of Alf Clint’, paper presented at the 7th Annual Conference of the Association of Academic Historians in Australian and New Zealand Business Schools, Auckland, New Zealand, 3 November 2015.
3. Kevin Cook and Heather Goodall, Making Change Happen: Black & White Activists Talk to Kevin Cook about Aboriginal, Union & Liberation Politics, Aboriginal History & ANU ePress, Canberra, 2013.
4. Philippa Gemmell, ‘Tranby College: The Aboriginal Soul in the Heart of Glebe’, Canberra Times, 26 May 1985, p. 6. The article ran over several pages and contains many photos.
5. Andrew Dewdney with Sandra Phillips (eds), Racism, Representation & Photography, Inner City Education Centre, Sydney, 1994; Debbie Durnan and Bob Boughton, Succeeding Against the Odds. The Outcomes Obtained by Indigenous Students in Aboriginal Community-Controlled Colleges, National Centre for Vocational Education Research, Adelaide, 1999.
6. Diana Plater, Other Boundaries: Inner City Aboriginal Stories, Jumbunna Aboriginal Education Centre, UTS and Leichhardt Municipal Council, Leichhardt, Sydney, 1993.
7. Andrew Flinn, ‘Community Histories, Community Archives: Some Opportunities and Challenges’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, vol. 28, no. 2, 2007 pp. 151–76; Jimmy Zavala, Alda Allina Migoni, Michelle Caswell, Noah Geraci and Marika Cifor: ‘“A Process Where We’re All at the Table”: Community Archives Challenging Dominant Modes of Archival Practice’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 45, no. 3, 2017, pp. 202–15.
8. Emma S Rice, Emma Haynes, Paul Royce and Sandra C Thompson, ‘Social Media and Digital Technology Use among Indigenous Young People in Australia: A Literature Review’, International Journal for Equity in Health, vol. 15, no. 1, 2016.
9. Linda Tuhawai-Smith, Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Zed Books, London, 2012; Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ‘Towards an Australian Indigenous Women’s Standpoint Theory: A Methodological Tool’, Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 28, no. 78, 2013, pp. 331–47; Martin Nakata, Disciplining the Savages: Savaging the Disciplines, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 2007; Lorina Barker, ‘“Hangin’ out” and “Yarnin”: Reflecting on the Experience of Collecting Oral Histories’, Oral History Association Australia, Sydney, 2006; Tracey Banivanua-Mar, Decolonisation and the Pacific: Indigenous Globalisation and the Ends of Empire, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016.
10. Sue McKemmish, Shannon Faulkhead and Lynette Russell, ‘Distrust in the Archives: Reconciling Records’, Archival Science, vol. 11, nos. 3–4, 2011, pp. 211–39.
11. Alistair Thomson, ‘Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History’, Oral History Review, vol. 34, no. 1, 2007, p. 70; Alexander Freund: ‘“Confessing Animals”: Toward a Longue Durée History of the Oral History Interview’, Oral History Review, vol. 41, no. 1, 2014, pp. 1–26.
12. Barker.
13. Sione Latukefu, ‘Oral Traditions: An Appraisal of Their Value in Historical Research in Tonga’, The Journal of Pacific History, vol. 3, no. 1, 1968, pp. 135–43; PM Mercer, ‘Oral Tradition in the Pacific: Problems of Interpretation’, The Journal of Pacific History, vol. 14, no. 3, 1979, pp. 130–53; Donald Denoon and Roderic Lacey (eds), Oral Tradition in Melanesia, Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, University of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby, 1981; Richard Feinberg, Polynesian Oral Traditions: Indigenous Texts and English Translations from Anuta, Solomon Islands, Kent State University Press, Ohio, 2018; Ruth Finnegan and Margaret Orbell (eds), South Pacific Oral Traditions, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1995; Ulrich Oslender, ‘Revisiting the Hidden Transcript: Oral Tradition and Black Cultural Politics in the Colombian Pacific Coast Region’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 25, no. 6, 2007, pp. 1103–29; Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology, translated by HM Wright, Aldine Publishing Co., Chicago, 1965; Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History, James Currey, London, 1985. For recent Australian development see Sue Anderson, Jaimee Hamilton and Lorina L Barker, ‘Yarning up Oral History: An Indigenous Feminist Analysis,’ in Katrina Srigley, Stacey Zembrzycki and Franca Iacovetta (eds), Beyond Women’s Words, Routledge, London and New York, 2018.
14. Freund.
15. Philip Bonner, ‘Apartheid, Memory and Other Occluded Pasts’, in Culture, Memory, and Trauma, Oral History Association of South Africa, Proceedings, Third Annual National Oral History Conference, 2006, pp. 11–33, available at <http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/9787/ohasa_1__2006-22-05-2013.pdf?sequence=1#page=24≥, accessed 31 May, 2018. See also Flinn.
16. Thomson, p. 70.
17. Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki, ‘Slowing Down to Listen in the Digital Age’, Oral History Review, vol. 7, no. 1, 2017, pp. 94–112. They were discussing the commercialisation arising from software companies, but this particular sentiment was expressed about the overall Linkage partnership process by our potential interviewees, p. 110.
18. McKemmish, Faulkhead and Russell; Tuhawai-Smith; Barker; Moreton-Robinson; Nakata.
19. Bronwyn Carlson and Ryan Frazer: ‘It’s Like Going to a Cemetery and Lighting a Candle: Aboriginal Australians, Sorry Business and Social Media’, AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, vol. 11, no. 3, 2015, pp. 211–24.
20. Rice et al.
21. Sheftel and Zembrzycki, p. 111.
22. Sherna Berger-Gluck’s best-known work has involved her early practice, in, for example, her 1991 edited volume with Daphne Patai, Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History, Routledge, New York. More recently, in late 2017, Berger-Gluck spoke at the OHA conference, Long Beach, CA, and discussed the cautionary practices she has now developed. Some of these concerns are addressed in her 2011 paper, ‘Has Feminist Oral History Lost its Radical/ Subversive Edge?’, Oral History, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 63–72.
23. Flinn; McKemmish, Faulkhead and Russell.
24. Sheftel and Zembrzycki.
25. Freund, 'Oral History As Surveillance? Digital Technologies, Internet Publicity, and Neo-liberal Economics', paper delilvered, 13 October 2016, at the 2016 conference of the Oral History Association, Long Beach California.
26. Dr Pearce, formally at Tranby, is now Regional Director of Inner Sydney Empowered Communities (ISEC).
27. Tolly Bradford, ‘Historians, Archivists and the Ongoing Work of Decolonisation’, pp. 7–10, in Greg Bak, Tolly Bradford, Jessie Loyer and Elizabeth Walker, ‘Four Views on Archival Decolonization Inspired by the TRC’s Calls to Action’, Fonds d’Archives, vol. 1, 2017, pp. 1–21, doi:10.29173/fa3;
28. We appreciate the continuing assistance of Kirsten Thorpe (Jumbunna), Ronald Briggs State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW), Sonya Pearce Inner Sydney Empowered Communities (ISEC) and Julia Mant National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) in our ongoing attempts to nurture flexible and conversational management of the Archives at Tranby.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Heather Goodall
Heather Goodall is Professor Emerita in History at the University of Technology Sydney. She has published in three major areas: Indigenous histories in Australia; environmental history, focused on rivers, water and social conflicts; and Indian Ocean inter-colonial networks, including decolonisation. Her recent publications include the transnational decolonisation history Beyond Borders: India, Australia and Indonesian Independence, 1939–1950 (in press, AUP); the collaborative political movement history Making Change Happen, co-authored with Kevin Cook (2013, New South Press); the urban, environmental history Rivers and Resilience: Aboriginal People on Sydney’s Georges River, co-authored with Allison Cadzow (2009, shortlisted NSW Premier’s award for Community History); the collaborative life story Isabel Flick: The Many Lives of an Extraordinary Aboriginal Woman, co-authored with Isabel Flick (2004, Margarey Medal for Australian Women’s Biography) and the co-edited Water, Borders and Sovereignty in Asia and Oceania (2009, Routledge) and Echoes from the Poisoned Well: Global Memories of Environmental Injustice (2006, Lexington).
Heidi Norman
Heidi Norman is Professor in Social and Political Sciences in the School of Communication. She researches and publishes in the areas of NSW Aboriginal history and politics with a particular focus on land and its management and the Aboriginal administrative domain. Her most recent work is a study of Aboriginal Land rights in NSW (published in 2015). This work is a critical account of the interface between the Government’s construction of Aboriginal interests in land and the emerging governance of those land and interests by Aboriginal citizens through their land councils. Her new area of research is focused on Aboriginal people’s interests in pursuing land management and cultural aspirations on their land, alongside imperatives to pursue economic development.
Belinda Russon
Belinda Russon is the Chief Executive Officer of Tranby National Indigenous Adult Education and Training. She has been associated with Tranby since 2004, becoming the Program Manager of the National Indigenous Legal Advocacy Program and later, in 2013, the Chief Executive Officer of Tranby. She has extensive research experience in Indigenous legal, human rights and social justice issues as well as long managerial experience in Indigenous organisations. She holds a Masters in Law (Human Rights and Social Justice) as well as a Doctorate of Juridical Science (investigating domestic violence outcomes for Aboriginal women). In addition to her role of CEO, Belinda is a qualified solicitor with over 15 years’ experience in the community justice sector and continues to be actively involved in Aboriginal community life. A Churchill Fellowship in 2013 enabled Belinda to travel to Norway, Canada and the USA to examine innovative and holistic approaches to Indigenous education. A Fulbright Scholarship in 2017 allowed Belinda to evaluate the benefits of student leadership and mentoring programs in American colleges, to bring back and apply that knowledge to engaging and retaining Indigenous learners in the Australian Vocational and Training sector.