‘Helping and caring, not only our Family’: NT Indigenous perspectives on volunteering
This project was conducted as a partnership between Australian Red Cross and Charles Darwin University, and in close collaboration with Yalu’ Marŋgithinyaraw in 2015.
Voluntary service research with Indigenous researchers from Yalu’ Marŋgithinyaraw, community members and a CDU researcher at Galiwin’ku in 2015
Project Aims:
To explore ways that voluntary service plays a role in community building, and recommend ways in which the Australian Red Cross may work with Indigenous volunteers and research organisations in the future.
Research approach:
- Research was carried out by teams of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers working together to produce and implement a project design
- Where possible discussions were conducted in language, and were later translated
- Work was oriented towards developing better ways for the Australian Red Cross to collaborate with people in communities around voluntary service work.
Insights included:
- Formal volunteering with Australian Red Cross was seen as entirely consistent with the ancestral practices of care and concern which are alive within networks of kin and place.
- It is beneficial for organisations to see each individual in the context of his or her ancestral connections and
individual capabilities. It is damaging to treat people as all the same. - Local Elders are not volunteers; they are senior managers and should be recognised and acknowledged for their knowledge.
Australian Red Cross building in Wurrumiyanga, Tiwi Islands
Indigenous Researchers:
Donna Jackson from Larrakia Nation Aboriginal Corporation
Kellie Pollard from Larrakia Nation Aboriginal Corporation
Joy Bulkanhawuy from Raki Mala Consultancies