2022: culturally grounded reflective practice
For Community First Development, reflective practice is the ability to reflect on the thinking, behaviours, and actions associated with our First Nations’ approach to Community Development and our organisational values, Caring for Country, Culture, Partnership and Ethics. This practice allows us to engage in a process of continuous growth, learning and change.
In 2022 our participatory action research project gave us space to collectively, across our regions, engage in questions and design. It allowed us to collectively connect through a lens of auto-ethnography (Ellis, 2004), that of research, story and a way of being together that connects the personal to the cultural, social and political, and examination of our systems; the connection between First Nations’ community development and data.
Community Dreams
Our research project continues to emphasise the importance of understanding and connecting to the journey of communities’ long-term dreams. Community dreams are deep and multi-dimensional they allow for cultural fluidity of space, time and being, including the messages and ongoing learnings from Country, cultural practice, language, social patterns and the economic, environmental, and spiritual. The power of a self-determined dream narrative cannot be understated, not only for the success of community development projects but for the cultural revitalisation and resurgence strategies that communities are putting in place.
As Yunkaporta and Baressa (2021) expressed, the variation within and between Australian First Nations’ communities has been shaped by generations of policies and lived experiences that continue to complexly impact our lives. Considering multiple variables of language, Country, cultural practices and social patterns is essential for self-determined First Nations’ community development. As is viewing cultures not as static but recognising that they are fluid and adapting because of collective and community history, and continually unfolding.
Our Community of Practice
To do this deep work over 2022 we connected the questions and learnings that our participatory research project unearthed within a space to listen, identify challenges, and create our next steps together. We did this collectively through not just looking back on our systems and practices, but consciously considering our individual and collective lens’, through auto-ethnography, reflecting on our emotions, experiences, actions, and responses, and building on this to improve our processes, templates and data system.
To do this, we shifted the format of our internal Community of Practice sessions. The group consisting of Senior Community Development Officers, Regional Managers, Volunteer Coordinators, Impact and Strategy Team, including Senior Researcher and our System and Information Manager, were invited to explore a theme, topic of interest and/or an identified continuous improvement opportunity. Structured yarning and storying, First Nations’ ways of knowing, being and doing were established, inviting the group to share concerns, identify barriers and propose solutions through active and collective participation. As explained by Yunkaporta and Baressa (2021),
Yarning is deeply embedded in the structures and processes of Aboriginal society, a traditional process of knowledge sharing in which community and family members produce and keep knowledge through story, negotiation, disagreement, and humour, with several yarning methodologies emerging in recent years.
Using structured yarning processes, we have created a space for reflexive and innovative thinking, building on collective and individual strengths, engaging in perceptual positioning theory, and our current Action Research Project’s early findings.
The rich narrative and ideas that emerged from the sessions meant that we spent much of 2022 collating, continually yarning, growing and implementing suggestions and solutions to the challenges we asked of ourselves, our systems and our organisation. This included the questions our participatory research unearthed including connecting shorter-term projects to the longer-term Dream of communities.
We developed a process of documenting the next steps required as part of our yarning practice sessions and this has become a major component of our ability in 2022 to refine, and update our data system, forms, and tools we use when engaging with communities.
Wayne Harvey, our System and Information Manager, was able to implement ideas and creative solutions in our data base (D4) to some of the challenges and questions we posed ourselves as part of our reflective learning. The deep work undertaken in 2022 has enabled the:
Re-design of post-project evaluation questions to encourage storying, using open ended questions and refining the language of existing questions.
Adding ‘signposts’ and links throughout the project records in the database (D4) to keep the Community Dream and related data entry connected and continuously relevant.
Re-designing field guides as part of a yarning process, focusing on community facing information, including a booklet designed for communities engaging with us for the first time and initial assessment and project proposal and evaluation forms that now reflect changes made in the database so that yarning in the field is easily matched to data entry requirements.
Development of a community focused guide to the Story of Change Journey and Elements, as a tool for yarning with communities about our theory of change and how this connects to the Dream and projects.
The reflective, deep, and culturally grounded way of knowing, being and doing through structured yarning is made explicit through our Community of Practice to both users and observers. Naming Aboriginal methodologies as part of our organisational practice enables us to enact culturally strong self-determined processes and ways of being and doing that bring our knowing and understanding of our Community Development Framework and cycle to life as a First Nations’ led organisation. As our CEO Stephanie Harvey stated,
Self-determination is the only way for sustainable success and the key to our success as an organisation and as a people. We want to influence social policy so that more policies and programs are designed to support our self-determination. The more people that do this, the more Australia will benefit from our impact economically, socially and culturally. Our success story should be something that wider Australia is proud of.
The yarning process we embedded in 2022 through our Community of Practice is a powerful step in enacting cultural strengths and methodologies as we work with First Nations’ communities. This work is fluid and continuous, it allows us to respond internally to community needs, changes and self-determination through practicing culturally grounded processes and systems of knowing, being and doing.
We welcome your support to ensure the continuation of this important work.
Reference: Frazer B, Yunkaporta T (2021). Wik pedagogies: adapting oral culture processes for print-based learning contexts. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 50, 88–94. https://doi.org/10.1017/jie.2018.24
Image: Barunguba, Yuin Country, taken by one of our team.