Indigenous People and Qualitative Research - Making It Work

Indigenous people currently comprise 26.8 % of the Northern Territory population. The Federal Government has recently embarked on a closing the gap campaign to improve the lives of Indigenous people and to address the disadvantage that exits in the lives of Indigenous people. This paper is designed to provide Indigenous and nonindigenous people working in research with some practical advice on how to improve the research experience for Indigenous people and how to develop culturally appropriate research methodologies. The paper proposes that qualitative research methods are practical, useful, beneficial and culturally appropriate for research on and with Indigenous people. The paper also provides practical advice on how to ensure that Indigenous people are represented in research to ensure that their voices are clearly heard. It is hoped that this paper creates awareness among researchers so that they can use this awareness in their research on Indigenous people.

The methodology used to write the paper is based on the author's own research experiences as an Indigenous researcher. In the main, the data used in this paper has been gathered from qualitative research textbooks and from personal experiences in research and based on the author's personal experiences of delivering post graduate research courses on Indigenous research issues.

The paper shows that qualitative research methods can be useful, productive and culturally appropriate for Indigenous people and can be used to enrich data and to encourage Indigenous people to participate in research. The paper shows that through qualitative research techniques, Indigenous people are able to express themselves and identify issues themselves, which means that researchers are able to gather more data while at the same time, providing Indigenous research participants with a feeling of cultural safety. This is important for those in the area of Indigenous research as Indigenous people have had a long history of negative research experiences.