Depicting masks: a visual and culturally grounded approach to research with Indigenous peoples

This paper explores group mask-making during a 20-week Art Yarning programme with Indigenous participants on Gunditjmara and Wathawurrung Countries in southwestern Victoria, Australia. Art Yarning integrates art therapy processes with cultural knowledges from Gunditjmara and Wathawurrung Countries, offering an accessible, culturally grounded research method. Through creating self-masks, 21 adult participants engaged in reclaiming arrayed identities and disrupting deficit-based representations shaped by dominant cultural narratives. New Knowledge emerged from a modified thematic approach that integrated interpretive reading of participants’ narratives, self-masks, and their own interpretations. Set within 237 years of historically layered Indigenous–settler relations, the findings critically re-examine the contemporary relevance of Fanon's ‘inferiority complex’ and Bhabha's ‘mimicry’ within an Australian Indigenous context, suggesting participants reject the former and only partly inhabit the latter while asserting a distinctive and healthily ‘messy’ whole self. Findings show that mask-making ethically supports complex identity expression and draws researchers into recognising diverse Indigeneity, fostering more equitable intercultural communication in research and advancing culturally responsive methodologies.