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

Moving Forward TogetherJanet KellyTesting our PAR in a wider domainAt a more personal level, this conference enabled co-researchers and I to roadtest our collaborative PAR in a wider, inter disciplinary, inter-organisationalsetting. We found that our process of look and listen, think and discuss workedjust as well for organising a national conference as it did to work with a smallgroup of community women, an emerging health service, or across health andeducation sectors. The Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health(CRCAH) (Brands 2005) has identified the need for brokering betweengovernments, academics and community controlled health services, andeffective ways of bridging evidence, policy and implementation strategies. Ourcollaborative approach enabled us to address many of these issues. By bringingtogether a diverse range of people to discuss health, research, education andenvironment in a myriad of ways, research knowledge and experiences wereeffectively transferred.Addressing issuesRecognition of Indigenous postcolonial knowledgeOne significant issues addressed by this collaboration project relates to therecognition and support of Indigenous knowledge. As suggested by Browne etal (2005), Battiste (2000) and Smith (2003) it is important for Indigenouspeople to add their voice to postcolonial discourses, developing postcolonialknowledge based on Indigenous ways of knowing, worldviews, researchprocesses and experiences. Aboriginal knowledge, like other Indigenousknowledge, has developed to address the complexities, discriminations andassumptions associated with colonialism, such as those discussed in thecolonisation chapter. It can be used with Western postcolonial theory indemocratic and respectful knowledge sharing ways, but should not beconsumed by Western postcolonial knowledge, or taken over by non-Aboriginal people. Our conference enabled both Aboriginal and Westernpostcolonial knowledge to be recognised in its own right, and then sharedintentionally through respectful two-way Ganma knowledge sharing. Forexample, the panel discussions at the opening of the conference enabled thisconcept to be experienced by all participants as they watched and heard the319