ABSTRACT
Drawing from her own lived experience, research, and research-experience as an Aboriginal woman in navigating post-colonial theatres as fields of enactment, Gabrielle explores the fluid and contested site of Local Aboriginal Land Councils (LALCs) in New South Wales, Australia, as a ‘made’ community. In doing so, she reveals the fraught terrains of research and the ethics of connection and responsibility as an Aboriginal ‘intimate’ within this arena. Considering insider knowledge and the constraints of knowing within broader methodologically Indigenist frameworks, Gabby traces the fractious terrains of cultural responsibility, obligation and the privilege of traversal in the multiple iterations of translation in respectful, meaningful research against histories and practices of erasure and trauma. Presented in a storied approach, this research narrative makes visible the multiple and nuanced ethical and cultural challenges of ‘place’ in an Aboriginal community and shows the process through which Gabby mobilized a different form of honouring voice, Knowledge and relationships in navigating the fault lines of a space with two distinct histories settled within it.
