At the contact zone and the cultural interface: theorising collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in research and contemporary music practices

Abstract

Introduction Lexine stood in the front of the lecture room and tapped her laptop to begin her PowerPoint presentation. She turned to face the class and looked out at the sea of thirty faces. She had sung at many performances, but seemed a little nervous in the university setting. ‘I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today. Thank you Katelyn for inviting me to your class’. We smiled at each other. I was very keen for Lexine to attend this class, which was part of a course I was coordinating on Indigenous Australian music at the University of Queensland. Lexine continued, ‘I’ll start off by telling you a little bit about my experiences, if that’s okay. I identify as a Torres Strait Islander1 and I have been involved in collaborative research with non-Indigenous ethnomusicologists since 2001, when I was invited to tell my Indigenous music life story. I answered questions to an interested researcher who was collecting data about Indigenous female performers in the southeast Queensland region. I enjoyed the research process, but have never witnessed the result’. The next slide was a picture of Lexine and me. ‘Ah, my life with Doctor Katelyn Barney’, she said with a giggle, and I wondered what she would say. ‘The next researcher to come my way was Katelyn Barney, who was working on her PhD in 2004. I again had an opportunity to share my story about my identity, performance and my love of music. I found I had a very strong interest in music research and enquired to Katelyn how I might be able to further collaborate with her. It’s been quite a journey