For researchers who want to make a difference in Indigenous communities, uncertainties abound about how to meaningfully and ethically do so. Although the desire to contribute is clear, stepping into the space often raises immediate and often uncomfortable questions: Is this work needed? What does the community want? And what does it mean to enter as an outsider?  

To gain insights on the many nuances working in the space, the Researcher Development Hub is speaking to researchers from both inside community (link to article with Mitch Gibbs) and outsider perspectives, as in this article with Dr Tristen Jones, Academic Fellow in Archaeology in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and Dr Sharanya Napier-Raman, postdoctoral research associate in the School of Public Health the Faculty of Medicine and Health. 

In practice, there are rarely clear answers about what ethical engagement should look like. The realities of community-based research don’t come with a checklist that aligns with institutional timelines, funding structures, or expectations of output. Here, Dr Jones and Dr Napier-Raman explore what it takes to engage with Indigenous communities from an external vantage point, the issues that arise, and how researchers can work through them. 

Indigenous-led research is co-designing from the start 

Dr Jones started working with Indigenous communities when she commenced her postgraduate studies at Australian National University in 2009. Back then, the project involved consultation with the community led by senior academics, who had ARC funded research projects and a long track record of research with Australian Aboriginal remote communities in northern Australia. In 2011, at the request of Senior Traditional Owner Mr Jacob Nayinggul successful funding from the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory Foundation funded an ANU field school and rock art survey as mechanism to lobby governmental stakeholders for financial support in managing both natural and cultural heritage. The community defined the research’s tangible benefit. “Part of Manilakarr  Country is in Kakadu National Park, which is actively managed within a World Heritage Area,” says Dr Jones. “But another area was in the Arnhem Land Aboriginal Reserve, where the Traditional Owners didn’t (in 2011) have a funded ranger program or active management on Country. The Traditional Owners were thinking about how to address that. They saw that engaging with Balanda – the Bininj Kunwok language term for non-Aboriginal people – governmental systems and structures could help. By undertaking the research and demonstrating scientific, archaeological and social significance of the living cultural landscape of Manilakarr Country, they could build a case for the Commonwealth or NT Government to fund management of that place.” 

Their aspiration helped develop and secure funding for the Njanjma Rangers, a ranger program that is still funded today, with Dr Jones continuing to work with the Manilakarr Clan and Njanjma Rangers . In between then and now, she says the research process has shifted towards greater collaboration with community on the research design itself. When I commenced my PhD research in 2011, the process involved identifying knowledge gaps in the research, visiting communities saying, ‘This is my idea. What do you think about me doing a PhD on this topic?’ That is not how it works anymore and would not be considered best practice,” she says. 

“Now, rather than consulting with communities, researchers are working alongside communities with co-design and the community leading and designing the research themselves. This is a model adopted by The ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures. This approach is more about the researcher being invited to the community, listening to community aspirations and being open to providing support with your skill set. These research methods are guided by rights based and ethical research approaches outlined in the AIATSIS Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research.    

Co-design underpinned the project Dr Napier-Raman is working on in the Fitzroy Valley, which began with “Indigenous women in the community approaching researchers because they were concerned about alcohol use during pregnancy and the developmental impacts they were seeing in their grandchildren,” she says. “That work led to research identifying high rates of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). Communities then used the findings either to introduce alcohol restrictions or to support the continuation of restrictions already in place. Since then, the partnership has continued and evolved.” The fact that community members initiated the partnership, she says, has been pivotal to the success of the collaboration. 

Real relationships take time  

To work with community is to navigate the distance between institutional demands and people who require real relationships to engage. As Dr Napier-Raman says, “A lot of it is about sitting back, listening, and spending time in community. Ideally, researchers would spend long periods building relationships, but funding structures don’t always allow for that.”  

Dr Jones says that while research co-design is the right direction, the benefits still have not caught up to Indigenous communities. “Part of that is because there are structural barriers in the way research is done: the way funding applications work, the time limits on funding, and how hard it is to do slow science,” she says. “If you’re doing a co-design process, you might need 12 or 18 months – sometimes longer – just to decide jointly what you’re going to do. People need time to think about it and mull it over. Then you design the project. By that point, if you’re funded by a three-year ARC Discovery Project, the project is half over, and you’re already being asked about deliverables.” 

When asked how to move through that conflict, Dr Jones says open dialogue and building long term relationships built on trust is essential:  

Both Dr Jones and Dr Napier-Raman credit the success of their projects to the long-term relationships set up before their time. “Time and presence are key to establishing trust,” says Dr Napier-Raman. “But also, genuine partnership often including economic partnership. Supporting community organisations in ways they value builds trust. Long-term relationships matter too. In this case, previous research led to tangible outcomes, like parenting programs that communities found useful. That builds credibility.” 

In Dr Jones’ case, she learned how to build those relationships early on. “When I was doing my PhD, my supervisor and mentor had worked in the Northern Territory for about 20 years,” she says. “When I did my training during the first six months of my master’s, I was staying and camping on Country with family groups and communities, doing fieldwork with senior people in my discipline who had done a lot of community-based research. They were the research leaders who had developed the projects, and I was a student volunteer doing practical, on-Country learning. 

“That is the best training you can get as a student. If you’re trying to develop cultural competencies and skills, there’s no better way than learning from people who have been doing this for a long time and already have trust and relationships in the field.” 

Learning to live with the tensions 

The time it takes to establish trust and build relationships is one of many tensions that come up in the space, and answers are rarely straightforward. For such a heavily researched – and extracted – group of people, Dr Napier-Raman says that the first question researchers should ask themselves is what, in fact, they are doing there in the first place. “The starting point is: has this community expressed a need or desire for this work? And are you contributing something meaningful, or just reproducing deficit narratives?” 

When asked about her positionality as a non-Indigenous researcher in this space, Dr Jones says, “I talk about this with my Indigenous friends and colleagues all the time. How do you be a non-Indigenous researcher in this space without taking oxygen, space and opportunity from an Indigenous scholar,” Dr Jones says, “You do that through allyship and by supporting communities in their aspirations for Country and culture, and by trying to decolonise and dismantle colonial structures that underpin our work. This is work that everyone can do.  

“I’ve done fieldwork where there have been tensions. I have encountered people who haven’t warmed to me, particularly in commercial settings where Aboriginal Cultural Heritage is being destroyed through development.. You need to have thick skin sometimes. If someone wants to be upset with me, or direct anger and resentment at me because of the broader context of cultural loss, that’s okay. I can see where that comes from. I don’t take that personally.

As Dr Napier-Raman explains, part of the challenge is the system is itself. “Funding cycles are embedded in broader systems that can reproduce inequality,” she says. “There’s pressure to secure funding and demonstrate outputs in ways that don’t always align with community-led work. Even administratively, there are barriers, like delays in paying community partners due to bureaucratic processes. These create real strain. And community-led research often takes longer and doesn’t produce the same kinds of measurable outputs as clinical trials, so it can be harder to fund.” 

Considerations on reciprocal impact  

To engage meaningfully in Indigenous communities, researchers need to think beyond academic outputs and about what the community needs and wants that your project can deliver. This means letting them answer whether the research should exist at all and also define the benefits of it, including with publishing. 

“It’s important to feed findings back to community, check interpretations, and ask how they want the information used – whether that’s in publications, policy, or elsewhere,” says Dr Napier-Raman.  “It’s about sharing power; having community members involved as researchers, co-authors, and decision-makes, and recognising where your expertise is actually useful versus where it might displace others.” 

Dr Jones shares this sentiment: “For me, I might be really interested in rock art and what it can tell us about how people lived in the past, or the cultural knowledge connected to it. Biologists or environmental scientists might be interested in a species of plant or animal. But what is the relevance of your research to the community? What is the benefit for them in working with you? 

“If the benefit is that ‘we’ – meaning Western science – will know more about a plant species, or have another date for how long people were living in a place, that may not actually be important for the community your working with.. The research has to have relevance to the community you’re working with. It is their cultural knowledge, their Country and their cultural heritage. Saying, ‘I’ll write a couple of papers and give you a community report” is still an extractive research model. It has to have benefit for the community, and that means thinking and working differently.” 

Building cultural competence 

If impact goes beyond the institution, then the researcher must think beyond it as well. From methodology to relationship-building, literally every part of the process involves consideration. “In archaeology, you need to ask yourself: are you, as an individual, happy living out of a tent for extended periods often in remote locations without internet, shops or running showers?” says Dr Jones. “Are you okay with wildlife encounters? Are you okay with uncertainty around what will happen day to day?  

“You might have a plan to do something, but likely  the plan always changes. There’s always a plan A, B, C and D, and maybe none of that happens because you get a flat tyre, or there are family responsibilities, or your research collaborators are  not available. You have to be flexible and be able to adapt. You also need to connect with people and have a genuine interest in developing relationships. It’s not just about doing the work you want to do.” 

Everyone working in community repeats that researchers must be prepared to listen. “One of the Traditional Owners I have worked with a long time said to me once, ‘You have two ears for listening and only one mouth for talking,’”   “Often I spend more time sitting around the campfire, making cups of tea, getting to know people, and understanding my relationality then I do recording heritage places, but it is a vital component of the work: who am I in relation to this project and this place? What is my role here? What should my role be? How does that fit with the aspirations of the community?” 

Cultural competence involves asking yourself the hard questions, not just about what you’re doing there but also about what led you there. “It starts with recognising that you yourself are a cultural product,” says Dr Napier-Raman. “Western systems, like medicine, are shaped by specific cultural values, even though they’re often treated as neutral. Cultural competence isn’t something you complete or tick off. It’s an ongoing process of listening, learning, and questioning your own assumptions.” 

Dr Jones urges fellow researchers to start simply: with training. “The University of Sydney’s Centre for Cultural Competence has online training modules that anyone at the University can do for free,” she says. “Start there. Familiarise yourself with reading around Indigenous research methodologies, co-design research and participatory research practices. Educate yourself around the theory and methods of doing Indigenous or First Nations-focused research. Then seek out people who do good work and see if they can mentor you. Look for opportunities to go on fieldwork or volunteer.” 

Ultimately, cultural competence is less a discrete skill than a way of working: one grounded in curiosity, humility, flexibility and an awareness of the assumptions researchers bring with them. For researchers hoping to create impact beyond the University, that work begins before entering a community and continues long after a project is underway. Training can provide the foundations, while meaningful practice is built through listening, relationships and a willingness to keep learning.

photos from Dr Napier-Raman