Working Together at the Cultural Interface: Authentic Partnerships in an Australian Remote Aboriginal Community

Abstract

Despite extensive conversations about the need for partnerships and ways to work together, barriers remain to practising it and engaging together at the cultural interface in Australian remote Aboriginal communities. Based on a project that explored building community-based approaches for youth in remote Aboriginal communities and drawing on community-based participatory research and the Indigenous method of Yarning, this article identifies barriers towards engagement at the cultural interface. One of the major barriers is the limited capacity of outside service providers to engage at the cultural interface, in building trusted relationships with community members that recognise, understand and make room for Indigenous worldviews unique to the community. This level of engagement is essential in providing a ‘both ways’ learning model. The recommendations from community members suggest that interactions at the cultural interface can only be achieved when trusted outsiders work flexibly and relationally alongside them. By working in this way, people at all levels of government are essentially getting alongside, supporting, equipping and building community-based solutions.