Articulations of Allyship in Indigenous Higher Education in a Northern Territory Context: a qualitative exploration on the impact of ally experiences in the in-between spaces

This Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Indigenous Futures, Education, and the Arts, at Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory, will provide the first evidence-based research on articulations of ‘Indigenous allyship’ in a higher education Northern Territory context. This is a qualitative exploration on the impact of ally experiences, in the in-between spaces of teaching and learning, for both Indigenous students and academic educators. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) will bring forward the experiences of the participants and guide data analysis. This data, dovetailed with relevant policy, will be analysed through the social justice and critical race lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT). CRT is the primary epistemological and methodological keystone to decolonise this research process, especially as I am not Indigenous. CRT is deployed to guide the analysis of the participants’ experiences, in a framework of Indigenous Allyship, in the practice of learning by doing. My own story will thread the research, with Auto-Ethnographic Voice (AEV), in the revealing of ally impacts, for positioning and authenticity. CRT will be partnered with a suite of co-developed interrupting tools with the Indigenous student participants (Hall, 2017). The interrupting tools will build on the foundation of CRT, to critically re-frame the participant/researcher relationship, as a stratum defence of decolonial research. The outcome will inform an Indigenous allyship framework of teaching and learning, to reposition the ‘in-between’, as prime real-estate.