Art Yarning: On an Integrated Social Science Research Method

ABSTRACT This article presents a messy social science research method that integrates art therapy tools and Indigenous yarning – a concept loosely translated as complex conversational storytelling. The method – Art Yarning – is an innovative research tool that mirrors and responds to the complex social and research realities in interactions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and researchers in Australia. Drawing on collaborative research with Indigenous communities on Gunditjmara and Wathaurong Countries in Victoria, I present and discuss Art Yarning as a ‘messy’ method (Law 2004): that is, as shifting, uncertain, slow, modest, and diverse, only capable of delivering situated, incomplete, temporary knowledge – a valuable, humbling position that recognises and respects boundaries around Indigenous knowledges. Art Yarning prioritises Indigenous and visual ways of knowing and challenges the problematic conviction that any social science method can deliver complete, single-source knowledge. Art Yarning enhanced participants’ sense of Indigenous identities, healing, and non-Indigenous participants’ adaptation to aspects of Indigenous ways of knowing-being-doing (Martin 2003). Rich multilayered new knowledge was achieved via processes that reduce power imbalance in research. Critically, the integrated method facilitates learning from, rather than learning about, Indigenous peoples in social science research.