Topic outline
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Before supervising an Aboriginal HDR candidate, prepare for this role by becoming more culturally aware and understanding Aboriginal viewpoints. This supervisory role will provide many opportunities for you, including working with and ultimately creating benefits for Aboriginal Peoples and communities throughout Australia. The following suggested strategies provide a foundation for engaging with the opportunities and challenges ahead.
Reflection: Consider why you would like to supervise an Aboriginal HDR candidate. How open will you be to accept and support Aboriginal perspectives in both the conduct and interpretation of research?
Suggested strategies
- Reflect on your own viewpoints and privilege in relation to Australian Aboriginal knowledges. Aboriginal knowledge, in the main, has been excluded from University systems which are embedded in Eurocentric notions of knowledge with most researchers operating within this Eurocentric paradigm. Supervisors of Aboriginal candidates need be open to how research practices include Aboriginal knowledges and research systems. To do so, read about Indigenist research methodologies (some resources are listed in Section 6: Indigenist methodologies).
- Become sensitive to and understand racism and institutional racism and their ongoing potential impacts on Aboriginal HDR candidates and research. Australian Aboriginal Peoples who have a history of dispossession can and do experience racism including in higher education institutions. Reflect deeply on the mainstream, dominant Australian culture and Australian history that contributes to academic privilege and power, and white privilege. Often white privilege is invisible because it is the accepted norm of the majority yet results in everyday institutional racism in research and in teaching. Thus, consider how this dominant culture shapes thinking and compare it to Aboriginal ways of thinking and being. Reflect on your cultural framework, and how your orientations to knowledge and research are situated within that framework. Attend the UniSA professional development workshops on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Awareness. These workshops discuss issues associated with all dimensions of racism (Note: these workshops continue to evolve over time).
- Do further reading about various aspects of Aboriginality, for example, the diversity of Aboriginal cultures in Australia, being Aboriginal in Australia throughout history and Aboriginal research outputs (some recommended readings are listed in the section on Further resources).
- Become familiar with research policies related to supervising First Nations candidates, including the following:
- UniSA’s Aboriginal Research Strategy (ARS) and the Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP)
- AIATSIS Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies [AIATSIS]
- NHMRC Ethical conduct in research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and communities: Guidelines for researchers and stakeholders 2018 National Statement of Ethical Conduct in Human Research
- Universities Australia’s Indigenous Strategy 2017–2020 (Universities Australia) which includes embedding research strategies which support research by Aboriginal scholars.
Note: Not all Aboriginal HDR candidates will do research on Aboriginal topics, nor should they be expected or pressured to do so. Nevertheless, supervisors need to appreciate the cultural backgrounds and understandings of any Aboriginal HDR candidate.These and further resources are listed in Section 5: Guidelines and protocols governing Aboriginal research.