Please Knock Before You Enter: Aboriginal Regulation of Outsiders and the Implication for Researchers

By Karen Lillian Martin

Post Pressed, Teneriffe, Qld, 2008

Reviewers: Bronwyn Fredericks and Rodney Stoter

Karen Lillian Martin is a Noonuccal woman from Minjeripah (North Stradbroke Island-south east Queensland) and also has Bidjara ancestry (Central Queensland). Her book Please knock before you enter: Aboriginal regulation of Outsiders and the implications for researchers is based on her PhD thesis which investigated the agency of the Burungu, Kuku-Yalanji: a rainforest Aboriginal community in far north Queensland. She was awarded the James Cook University Medal and the Australian Association of Research in Education Dissertation Award for her thesis. Highly acclaimed scholar Professor Norman Denzin wrote of Karen Martin's thesis work as 'brilliant and stunning...Relatedness theory is a major contribution to this literature'. Knowing all of this, it was with anticipation that we waited for Karen martin's book to be released.

Please Knock Before You Enter details how Burungu, Kuku-Yalanji regulate Outsiders to and within their Country. Outsiders are people who do not belong in their Country and can be both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Within her book, Martin demonstrates the use of an Indigenous research paradigm which is founded on the principles of cultural safety and cultural respect. She additionally centres the work within Aboriginal ontology (being), epistemology (knowing) and axiology (doing) and powerfully claims and asserts as an Aboriginal woman the right to use Aboriginal realities and ways of knowing within the practice and articulation of Indigenous research. martin explains and demonstrates how the intersection between conceptual, cultural and historical spaces needs to interface or come alongside each other based on new relationships to knowledge to research and to self. Furthermore, how utilising research protocols developed with the community, direct culturally safe and respectful researcher behaviour and ensure researcher responsibilities and accountabilities to the people on which the research is based, the research study and the academy.

As two Aboriginal people we found this work extremely powerful. Rodney as a Kuku-Yalanji man found the work highly respectful. He additionally learnt a great deal more about his own people and culture through Matini's transformative way of undertaking research and working within a framework of recognising and incorporating Burungu, Kuku-Yalannji sovereignty. This book is a highly valued reference for anyone involved in research with Indigenous people or anyone working with Indigenous peoples.