Reports by Michael Christie
Papers by Michael Christie
The Yolŋu Studies stream of tertiary teaching and academic research has a long history within the... more The Yolŋu Studies stream of tertiary teaching and academic research has a long history within the School of Australian Indigenous Knowledge systems at Charles Darwin University. This case study tells the story of the gradual unfolding of the engagement between the university and Yolŋu (northeast Arnhemland Aboriginal) knowledge authorities and their practices. It begins with the long negotiations to set up the teaching program under the authority of senior Yolŋu advisers, to set up a curriculum and classroom practice which remains faithful to Yolŋu laws around knowledge exchange and representation. Alongside the Yolŋu laws, was a particular epistemology which we worked hard to validate and support within the academic classroom. The institutionalisation of Yolŋu knowledge practices in the academy allowed the academics and the Yolŋu advisers to develop collaboratively a transdisciplinary research methodology which attends to the requirements of both Yolŋu and academic knowledge traditions. The paper gives examples of successful research collaborations, and examines some of the philosophical work which needed to be done for successful respectful engagement.
ANU Press eBooks, 2021
The purpose of this chapter is to describe how urban and regional planning practice applied to th... more The purpose of this chapter is to describe how urban and regional planning practice applied to the creation of development plans reinforce social and economic dislocation in remote settlements in Northern Australia. This chapter examines the range of planning policies that affect regional planning and development in remote Queensland using the Cape York region as a case study. The planning literature readily acknowledges that regional economies and land use planning are interrelated , yet little is known about how a change in land use regulation may affect the performance of local and regional economies (Kim, 2011). In urban and regional planning the interaction between regional economies and land use have traditionally been considered through a top-down approach (Kim, 2011). The literature regarding planning for economic development in remote regions in Australia (Harwood et al., 2011) and Canada (Markey et al., 2006, 2008, 2012) highlight the inadequacies of top-down and industry sector-based approaches in favour of a placebased approach, yet the practice of place-based planning remains elusive. This chapter analyses the implications of contemporary planning practice on development opportunities for the Aboriginal people of Cape York in Queensland and provides a conceptual framework for a place-based approach to land use planning for future application.
Theorising Engagement in Remote Aboriginal Intercultural Contexts
The renewed focus on the economic potential of Northern Australia recognises its unique proximity... more The renewed focus on the economic potential of Northern Australia recognises its unique proximity to Asia and the Indo-Pacific region and its strategic position within the fastest growing global zone, the tropics
Learning Communities: international journal of learning in social contexts, 2010
Human technology, May 31, 2007
Indigenous Australians are often keen to use digital technologies in their struggle to develop su... more Indigenous Australians are often keen to use digital technologies in their struggle to develop sustainable livelihoods on their own lands. This paper tells of gradually coming to recognize how an Aboriginal Australian elder struggled against the grain of digital technologies designed to represent, in using them in Aboriginal Australian knowledge practices where knowledge is always actively performative rather than representional. The performance of Aboriginal knowledge must express the remaking of an ancestral reality. At the same time, this man exploited possibilities the technologies offered for representation in achieving political ends in dealing with representatives of mainstream Australia.
Ground Up Inquiry: Questions and Answers About the Emergence and Development of a Northern Australian Tradition of Situated Research
Learning Communities: international journal of learning in social contexts, Aug 1, 2022
Ground Up Inquiry is the name of a situated approach to researching used by the Contemporary Indi... more Ground Up Inquiry is the name of a situated approach to researching used by the Contemporary Indigenous Knowledge and Governance (CIKG) team in CDU’s Northern Institute (Charles Darwin University, 2017a). The team partners with Indigenous researchers working under the authority of Elders in their home places. Many of our partner researchers offer research services through Indigenous Researchers Initiative (Charles Darwin University, 2017b). In the Northern Territory of Australia, Ground Up is often contract research and service delivery, but it is also increasingly recognised as an established research method where Indigenous and academic knowledge authorities work together as equals under the aegis of the modern university system. Composed as answers to questions, this paper revisits the origins of Ground Up, and gives an overview of this approach as situated research.
‘We help each other’: Stories and experiences of disaster management and preparedness in Aboriginal communities in Darwin
More than a roof overhead : consultations for better housing outcomes
"CDU’s part, sub-project 1, ‘Consultation for Better Housing Outcomes’ is the subject of thi... more "CDU’s part, sub-project 1, ‘Consultation for Better Housing Outcomes’ is the subject of this report. Our aim was to understand the practices and perspectives of both government and Aboriginal community members around consultation process. There were two stages in the research. In Stage 1, a group of eight Yolgnu elders from remote communities in east Arnhemland came together to discuss and provide their perspectives on housing in their community, its history and current state, their vision for the future and consultation processes, particularly those of the Housing Reference Groups. In Stage 2, staff at all levels of DH, and Aboriginal community members from Top End and desert communities, mostly HRG members, were interviewed using loosely structured questions around consultation processes. !is summary integrates the findings of Stages 1 and 2." Executive summary
Postcolonial Databasing? Subverting Old Appropriations, Developing New Associations
The MIT Press eBooks, 2014
![Research paper thumbnail of The ethnographer in the text: Stories of disconcertment in the changing worlds of north Australian social research [Editorial]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/108413380/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Learning Communities: international journal of learning in social contexts, 2013
This collection of papers grew from a workshop held at the Northern Institute, Charles Darwin Uni... more This collection of papers grew from a workshop held at the Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University, early in 2012. We set ourselves the task of writing short ethnographic texts that attend to some of the often subtle disconcertments which arise when we as social scientists in the Northern Territory go about our everyday work with Aboriginal individuals and groups. We began our workshop by talking about the researcher in the text, contrasting that figure with the researcher in the flesh. Of particular interest were the conventional writing position of the removed judging observer analyst, and the pervasive practices of distancing, temporally and physically which so often seem to infect and alienate the writer and the writing of social sciences. From an analytic perspective how can we usefully think about the relation between the textual and fleshy figures? The scholarly articles we set as readings for the workshop-Kathryn Pyne Addelson, The Emergence of the Fetus (2002), and Brit Ross Winthereik and Helen Verran, Ethnographic Stories as Generalizations that Intervene (2012)-directed our focus to ontological issues, bringing in the notion of public problems and the question of how ethnographic stories are generalisations.
Societies, May 27, 2014
Yolŋu Aboriginal understandings of the body, health, life and sickness, and roles their ancestral... more Yolŋu Aboriginal understandings of the body, health, life and sickness, and roles their ancestral epistemologies and knowledge practices play in making agreement have seldom been taken seriously in the biomedical world. In this paper, we describe how insights developed in three different cross-cultural collaborative transdisciplinary research projects led to the design of a digital device aimed at intervening in communicative practices around body, health, life and sickness, interrupting the received practices and assumptions on both sides of the practitioner-client divide. The interrupting device slows down and opens up communication practices potentially leading to mutual understanding, collective agreement making, and bottom-up changes in remote Aboriginal health policy and practice.
Disaster resilience and emergency management in Indigenous communities in Darwin and Palmerston
"This research was carried out in two stages. Stage 1 (January 2016) involved a number of co... more "This research was carried out in two stages. Stage 1 (January 2016) involved a number of consultations, the aim of which was to explore the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Darwin when a cyclone, bushfire or severe weather event strikes and in its aftermath, and to identify determinants of vulnerability from the perspective of these communities. Stage 2 of this research has focused on Indigenous researcher development, and ways in which Indigenous researchers participating in projects such as this one, may be recognised for their contributions, and supported in their professional development, within and beyond the life of the project." - Executive summary
Learning Communities: international journal of learning in social contexts, 2013
Digital lives in postcolonial Aboriginal Australia
Journal of Material Culture, Sep 1, 2013
In this article, the authors relate brief stories of episodes spanning a period of 10 years when ... more In this article, the authors relate brief stories of episodes spanning a period of 10 years when they worked with Australian Aboriginal groups and individuals as they incorporated digital technologies into their cultural practices. Their story telling is leavened with a dissonant working imaginary designed to interrupt both itself and the stories. As their stories of their digital lives proceed, however, the carefully contrived, resourceful dissonance unexpectedly recedes as the new and surprising digital lives that form part of their collectives evade the grasp of their interrupting tool.
Digital Creativity, Jul 1, 2007
ThepaperdescribesdigitaldesigngroundedinIndigenouscollectivememory making.Wearguethattheresearchs... more ThepaperdescribesdigitaldesigngroundedinIndigenouscollectivememory making.Wearguethattheresearchshouldbeunderstoodasperformativeknowledge makingandarticulateamethodappropriateforthismodeofknowledgeproduction, andcriteriaforevaluatingitsadequacy.Theargumentismadethroughjuxtaposing descriptionsofthreeheterogeneouselements:theYolnguAboriginalGarmaceremony anditsusesinsecularsettings,anactor-networktheory(ANT)accountofmethodas anagentialassemblage,andanepisodeintheworkoftheIndigenousKnowledgeand ResourceManagementinNorthernAustralia(IKRMNA)project.
ANU Press eBooks, Sep 20, 2021
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Reports by Michael Christie
Papers by Michael Christie