Decolonizing Methodology in an Arnhem Land Garden

IntroductionNot so long ago, I was invited to take part in a government consultancy into the feasibility of a remote Aboriginal community garden. The Crops Forestry and Horticulture Division of the Northern Territory Government was seeking input and on a proposal by an international group called Community Supported Agriculture. It was proposed that a Balanda (non-Indigenous) gardener would establish the garden at Galiwin'ku, a Yolgu Aboriginal island community off the north coast of Arnhem Land. On remote Aboriginal communities, unemployment rates are among the highest in Australia, and food prices, because of the transportation costs, are also among the highest. A community garden makes good sense for a range of reasons including community health, employment, and food security.Having worked coordinating the studies of Yolgu languages and culture at our small regional university for nearly twenty years, and having been a linguist in remote Yolgu communities for almost twenty years before that, I knew the community and its people and languages well, and my colleague John Greatorex and I had worked with senior Yolgu knowledge-authorities as co-researchers on many other research and consultancy projects including health interpreting, financial literacy, educational philosophy, and negotiations over government housing. We were constantly refining what we came to call a transdisciplinary research methodology - one that takes seriously both academic and Aboriginal knowledge practices.1 Yolgu knowledge-authorities have taught us much about their situated collective epistemologies,2 and we work together to understand how our research can be generative3 and how it may help us work effectively within the changing worlds of north Australian research and govemmentality.4In each of our previous collaborations we felt we had struggled to find ways to talk to government which did not compromise the methods or epistemologies of Yolgu knowledge making. This time, now that land was involved in a significant way, I was challenged to rethink my own coming-to-be a responsible researcher in the Anglo-European tradition.The Box of VegiesThe consultants we engaged were all local Yolgu whom we had known for many years. All were fluent in their own and other Yolgu languages and in English, and were all connected through webs of kinship to each other, to the whole population of Galiwin'ku and to their various ancestral estates on the island and on the mainland. The task was simple: using a specially prepared poster, map, and pictures, consult with the community to seek feedback, input and comment on the proposal for the community garden.The consultants gathered together with John to make a plan. Everyone agreed that it was crucial first to talk to Demala, a senior ceremonial figure from a significant clan group, who is recognized by everyone as the expert Yolgu gardener. They met with Demala, who told them to think about the land first. Each piece of land belongs to particular people, is managed by particular other people, and everyone else has one kind of relation or another to that place. When we listen to any new idea, Demala said, we need to begin with the connections we already have.In agreement, Gotha, an elder from a related clan, told the story of the old days when we used to have harvest festival every year, people bringing their clan-based produce to the church to celebrate their life together - as well as tiie produce of the mission garden. Demala reminded them of how the old mission garden had eventually been taken over by the community council, and the Yolgu felt run over, and drifted away. Gotha agreed - unnegotiated projects are like cyclones which come blowing through consuming energies and plans. Over the past few years, the Northern Territory Emergency Response - commonly known as the 'intervention' - has been seen as taking away from Aboriginal elders even that small amount of negotiating power they had with governments

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• Renewing the Yolŋu ‘Bothways’ philosophy

  Open Access•Ben Van Gelderen, Kathy Guthadjaka•The Australian Journal of…•2019

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