Talking Back to the Research: Indigenous Wellbeing and Resilience Narratives from Urban Australia

Resilience is instrumental in understanding the wellbeing of Indigenous peoples in colonised countries. Investigator-driven, quantitative descriptive studies can limit capacity for Indigenous people to “talk back” to the research process with their own perspectives of wellbeing and resilience. A Human Development and Capabilities approach can elicit self-determining definitions of wellbeing. This study presents findings from qualitative life history interviews of the self-defined health trajectories from a group of 11 Indigenous adults living in an Australian urban setting. In contrast to the prevailing deficit discourse, interviewees spoke about their strength and resilience. Common areas of health and wellbeing discussion such as socioeconomic disadvantage, family dysfunction, stress, problematic alcohol use and mental illness became transformed into narratives of never being without, the opportunity for upwards social mobility, the importance of family as positive role models and social support, abstinence, learning from past experiences and coping through challenges. Historical context, intergenerational trauma and racism impact wellbeing, yet are often not measured in large quantitative studies. Findings support affirmative action initiatives to reduce socioeconomic disadvantage to improve wellbeing. Narrative-based capability approaches provide contextualisation to how Indigenous people navigate through significant life events to maintain wellbeing.