Author Description

"The regulation of Outsiders to Aboriginal Country is theorised by scholars as invasion and contact, race relations, frontiers and acculturation. In these theories Aboriginal People are represented as powerless and hopeless in the face of their inevitable assimilation. Aboriginal regulation of Outsiders is rarely investigated for Aboriginal agency. This research study investigated the agency of a Rainforest Aboriginal Community, the Burungu, Kuku-Yalanji of Far North Queensland, Australia in the regulation of Outsiders to their Country of past, present and future. A major feature of this research study is its development of an Indigenist research paradigm founded on the principles of cultural respect and cultural safety and embedded in Aboriginal ontology, epistemology and axiology. It is through an ontological premise of relatedness and with the use of traditional devices such as First Stories and visual Stories that this Indigenist research paradigm makes transparent the assumptions, theory, methodology and ethics of the research study."--Provided by publisher.