The interviews varied in duration from between two and a half to three hours, although many more hours were spent with individuals and the two couples in the indigenous sample. With respect to the field interview with Uncle, recorded data was gathered in segments over a period of two days. Written notes were made during each of three field trips. Interviews were preceded by a preliminary discussion about the nature and purpose of the research. All interviews were audio taped, and transcripts were made from the recorded conversations. Permission to turn on the tape recorder was requested once rapport had been established and discussion was under way.
Although interview guides (provided below) were prepared in advance, written prompts were rarely needed. The informal nature of the interview process had the advantage of allowing the participant and/or the researcher to return to themes introduced early in the interview to clarify or elaborate on the points made then. Many important new themes were introduced by the participants themselves, which highlighted the value of the guided conversational interview as a methodology in exploring questions of subjectivity. At the conclusion of each interview, participants were asked to consider if there was anything else that they thought was significant, but had not been touched on in the interview. They were also invited to contact the researcher by telephone if they thought of something that they wanted to include subsequent to the interview.
6.5.1 Ethics
Ethical guidelines, as set out in the Plain Language Statement for each group (see Appendices A and B), were strictly adhered to, and participants were asked to sign a consent form (Appendix C). The participants who took part in the study were all adults aged over eighteen years. All were informed that they could withdraw their consent at any time, and that all raw data, in the form of audio-tapes, transcripts, consent forms and other material which may identify individuals, would be kept in a locked metal filing cabinet.
6.5.2 Confidentiality
In the report below, all participants have been given a pseudonym to protect their identity. Because confidentiality was a concern for most participants, specific features pertaining to individuals have been kept to a minimum. Place names, clan groups, places of employment and family names have been excluded from the report. Convergent data drawn from indigenous and non-indigenous commentators on the public record has been included to supplement the interview data. Throughout the thesis, public statements made by indigenous and non-indigenous commentators have been attributed to those
individuals by name, since confidentiality was not relevant to previously published data.
6.5.3 The interview setting
The interviews were conducted at a location chosen by the participants, the majority of whom elected to be interviewed in their own home. Two contributors were interviewed at their place of work, one in an outdoor café, and one at the home of the researcher. As
mentioned above, a second interview with Uncle was conducted in a National Park. This followed Uncle’s assertion that, if white people were serious about understanding something about indigenous people, they would need to spend some time “walking through country.” The additional data obtained during this field trip proved to be very valuable on a number of levels. In particular, it led to the subsequent conversation with the white shop-keeper discussed in the case study of Legend Rock. An earlier trip to New South Wales provided the data for the case study of Lake Mungo.
6.5.4 The interview process
Following the model offered by Pollio, Henley and Thompson (1997) and Yin (2003), the interviews took the form of free-flowing dialogues across a variety of topics introduced by both the participant and the researcher. The main topic areas of interest, cultural identity and cultural difference, were presented by the researcher to the participants in the initial telephone conversation and again in the Plain Language Statements for each group. Participants were asked to think about these topics prior to the interview, and were encouraged to contribute any information that they felt was important to the discussion. During the interviews, the researcher performed the role of both prompt and active listener. This form of active listening utilized the same model of “free-floating-attention” used by psychologists within the therapeutic session with clients.
The researcher, through years of training and practice working within a therapeutic “frame”, was well equipped to manage the often difficult task of working within an unstructured interview format. Training in clinical skills also proved useful, since data of
an emotionally sensitive and traumatic nature was not infrequent, especially in the interviews with the indigenous participants. The capacity to hear, empathize, and sit with the more difficult aspects of indigenous experience that were being related was critical to the maintenance of a respectful relationship with the participants. In some cases, a participant asked for the tape recorder to be turned off so that they could speak off the record. Any information provided in such circumstances has been excluded from the report. When emotionally difficult material emerged as part of the interview process, the researcher volunteered to stop recording. Recording recommenced only when the
participant signaled that they were willing to continue.
During the interviews, particular attention was paid to dialogue which touched on the themes around cultural difference presented in Bain’s (1992) research. In most interviews, these themes emerged spontaneously and the contributor was asked for further comment and elaboration. Contradictions to and convergences with Bain’s hypothesized indices of difference were noted. Themes and topics introduced by the participant were also encouraged and discussed, even if they appeared unrelated to the hypothesis of cultural difference. There was only one structured question that was asked of each indigenous participant at the end of each interview (“How do you describe yourself?”) and themes were not introduced in any particular order. If the themes of interest did not emerge without some initial prompting, the indigenous participants were asked directly for comment along the lines outlined below:
o The Aboriginal concepts of kinship (interaction) and their associated obligations, including whether or not these clash with (transactional) work values.
o Discussion around Aboriginal concepts of identity, country, authority, private ownership, time and space.
o The importance of Aboriginal identity to the participant, e.g., “How central is it to a sense of self?”
o It was also of interest to the project to ask Aboriginal participants to outline which differences (if any) between themselves and the mainstream community they found most problematic and/or most likely to be
misinterpreted
o Aborigines were asked to comment about their sense of social inclusion within the mainstream community and compare this to membership within an Aboriginal community
Topic areas presented for comment and elaboration by non-indigenous participants were similar to those discussed with Aboriginal participants, except that they focused on the Aboriginal-white encounter from a white perspective. Particular emphasis was placed on the “pattern matching” model recommended by Yin (2003) for case study research, in terms of data which pertained to Bain’s distinction between interaction and transaction. The focus for the non-indigenous interviews was guided towards:
o Areas of Aboriginal practice that were noticeably different from the participant’s own, at work or at home. In what ways were they different?
o How were the observed differences between Aborigines and whites interpreted by the participant, were they seen as cultural, or as individual traits?
o How were differences dealt with by the participant or others, were they openly spoken about with the Aboriginal person/people involved, or not discussed at all?