Moving Forward Together in Aboriginal Women's Health: - Theses ...

Moving Forward TogetherJanet KellyChapter 7 Collaboration Area One - LocalAboriginal Women’s PrioritiesOverviewIn this chapter I discuss how four local Gilles Plains Aboriginal communitywomen co-researchers and I worked together to address their most pressingwomen’s health and well-being needs. This first Collaboration Area exploresthe possibilities and challenges of democratic knowledge sharing, workingtogether in collaborative action, and addressing colonising, discriminating andexclusionary practices through working in partnership with Aboriginalcommunity women. As guided by Aboriginal health research ethics, I focus onboth the process of developing, enacting, experiencing and evaluating ourcollaboration, and the outcomes. Together we adapted Stringer’s participatoryaction research and in the process, created a model of collaborative practicesuitable for heath care and research involving Aboriginal community members.Tangible outcomes included the development of a women’s friendship group,identifying and making choices, and co-presenting our findings at conferencesand workshops. Importantly, this chapter focuses on these Aboriginalcommunity women’s experiences and knowledges at a time when they werefeeling unheard and unacknowledged. It is necessarily a long chapter, becauseit honors an agreement made with the four community women and theAboriginal Reference Group that a discussion of past and subsequent eventsfrom the four Aboriginal women’s perspective would be included. My historyand changing role working with the women is also purposefully ‘written in’,highlighting the importance of developing relationships over time.MethodsCommunity consultations, semi structured interviews and focus groups withtrigger questions and document analysis were used in this Collaboration Area.Together the Aboriginal community women (co-researchers) and I codevelopedlocally appropriate participatory action research with repeatedcycles of Look and Listen, Think and Discuss and Take Action. I invitedstakeholders (those who influenced or were influenced by the research) to160