ABSTRACT
In wanting to engage directly within his own Aboriginality and at the same time remain inclusive to other cultures, while paying respect to 'academic rigour' and scholarship, Marcus Woolombi Waters introduces autobiographical ethnicity as his narrative. It is a form of writing that generates greater emphasis on the Aboriginal voice than either autobiographic or autoethnographic writing. This is because autobiographical ethnicity moves beyond the qualitative research method, predominantly framed by anthropologists, for which ethnographic writing was born. When applying autobiographical ethnicity Woolombi Waters write objectively, utilising rhetorical construction of his own lived ethnic experiences as an Australian Kamilaroi Aboriginal. In an era when the diversity of human experience in social groups and communities, with languages and epistemologies, is undergoing profound cultural and political shifts. Woolombi Waters establishes Autobiographical ethnicity in order to provide his people with a voice previously silenced not only within the Western academy, but also the media and popular culture.
