“She is not white, she is Latina”: positionality as an asset in cross-cultural ethnographic research with First Nations youth in Australia

This paper examines how my researcher positionality as a female migrant from the Global South became an asset when carrying out a sociolinguistic ethnography with First Nations girls at an Australian boarding school. In other sociolinguistic school ethnographies, most researchers have either worked within their own sociocultural communities, and/or tried to minimise their presence by not disclosing much about themselves. Here, following a culturally safe approach, I interrogate whether traditional approaches are culturally appropriate. I reflect on how I found ways to align with participants beyond shared cultural practices, and encourage other (socio)linguists to engage with reflexivity and positionality in their work to make visible from which standpoint(s) knowledge is being produced.