Towards an Australian Indigenous Women's Standpoint Theory

AbstractIn this article I outline an Australian Indigenous women's standpoint theory. I argue that an Indigenous women's standpoint generates problematics informed by our knowledges and experiences. Acknowledging that Indigenous women's individual experiences will differ due to intersecting oppressions produced under social, political, historical and material conditions that we share consciously or unconsciously. These conditions and the sets of complex relations that discursively constitute us in the everyday are also complicated by our respective cultural differences and the simultaneity of our compliance and resistance as Indigenous sovereign female subjects. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThis article is the product of more than a decade of work. I would like to thank Professor Barbara Baird and Dr Fiona Nicoll for their critical comments on an earlier draft. I began to articulate an Indigenous women's standpoint in Talkin Up to the White Woman (Citation2000) and published on the topic in Hecate in 2003. Subsequently, I reworked the theory through teaching my Indigenous Research Methodologies Masterclass in 2007 and would like to acknowledge the contribution of students to its improvement. The first public presentation of the paper was made in April 2008 at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Conference in Athens, Georgia. An earlier version of some of this work appears in an online chapter entitled Indigenous Methodologies in Social Research in the book Social Research Methods: an Australian Perspective, Oxford University Press, 2009 edited by Maggie Walter. In that co-authored chapter Indigenous Women's Standpoint is incorrectly described as a methodology. In my single-authored publications I have never defined an Australian Indigenous Women's standpoint as a methodology. My thanks are also extended to the AFS anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.Notes1. I use the verb post-colonising to signify the active, the current and the continuing nature of the colonising relationship that positions us as belonging but not belonging. What I am acknowledging is that colonisation has not ceased but it has changed form since 1788 in the Australian context.2. For further reading on the way in which Indigenous women operationalize ontology within their research I refer you to in the Australian context to Associate Professor Payi Linda Ford's book Aboriginal Knowledge Narratives and Country: Marri Kunimba Putj Putj Marrideyan, 2010, Post Pressed, Brisbane and in the Canadian context Professor Margaret Kovach's book entitled Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations and Contexts, 2009, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.3. Philip Morrissey's provides an astute analysis of the hoax in Stalking Aboriginal Culture: the Wanda Koolmatrie Affair in Australian Feminist Studies Volume 18, Issue 42, 2003.Additional informationNotes on contributorsAileen Moreton-RobinsonAileen Moreton-Robinson (BA (Hons) ANU; PhD Griffith University) is a Goenpul/Nunukul woman Quandamooka First Nation (Moreton Bay) in Queensland, Australia. She is currently Professor of Indigenous Studies at the Queensland University of Technology and Director of the National Indigenous Research and Knowledges Network (NIRAKN). Professor Moreton-Robinson's publications span various disciplines including Law, Sociology, Feminism, Indigenous Studies, Australian Studies, Native American Studies and History. She is on the editorial boards of several journals and is co-editor of the International eJournal of Critical Indigenous Studies. Professor Moreton-Robinson is currently a member of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Higher Education Consortium Executive (NATSIHEC) and is an elected Council member of the United States based Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA).