Bulldust, flat tyres and roadkill: a disorderly decolonising fieldwork journey through remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the iterations and outcomes of a doctoral fieldwork experience where the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants challenged me to radically adapt my constructivist grounded theory methodology and commence decolonising data gathering and analysis while in the field. The starting point for the research was a discourse of defeatism in the literature around mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university graduates and students, which the participants, my doctoral supervisors and I perceived as unjust and unjustifiable. The aim of the ongoing research, therefore, is to explore and explicate an alternative discourse, beginning with the emic perspectives of mature- age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university graduates. In the context of the remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander field, I detail the early and some- what disorderly enactment of decolonising methodology — disorderly because I was unprepared for the extent to which the participants would take control of both the research agenda and methods. Disorder also partly characterised our collabora- tive methodological adaptation, in that it was initially more intuitive than deliber- ate. I discuss how the participants shifted the post-graduation narrative from one of personal and professional uplift to one they dubbed ‘the blessings and burdens of being an educated black’. This narrative unequivocally challenges the notion of Australia as a postcolonial society and positions the participants as activists in the fight for indigenous self-determination. I reflect on mistakes made and lessons learned, and articulate pragmatic and achievable fieldwork research methods that privilege participants as knowledge producers and custodians. The paper concludes by discussing the next stages of the decolonising constructivist grounded theory project, which necessitated a return to the field to test and refine the emerging conceptual categories with the participants, most of whom have remained active partners in the research.