From sending a message stick to having your message stick: A critical analysis of Indigenous Australian public relations, from the standpoints of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2021
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This thesis highlights the practices of colonization and whiteness within the Australian public relations discipline and the processes of decolonization from the standpoints of Indigenous women working within the profession. Within this thesis, the specialization of Indigenous Australian public relations has been framed as a function that manages relationships between stakeholders, communicates for social change and self-determination, challenges deficit discourses, and is mostly built upon Indigenous cultural protocols and values. The practices within Indigenous Australian public relations have been utilized since time immemorial and are strongly evident within the protesting and campaigning movements that emerged from the invasion of Australia in the late eighteenth-century. Yet, within mainstream public relations there is a lack of acknowledgment of the historical and contemporary roles that Indigenous Australian public relations provides to the profession. Within the specialization of Indigenous Australian public relations itself, Indigenous women’s standpoints and voices are absent within research.
This thesis, therefore, aims to decolonize the practices and paradigms of Eurocentric understandings within the Australian public relations profession. As an interdisciplinary body of work, this thesis is guided by conceptual frameworks of Indigenous and public relations decolonizing theories and intersectional and Indigenous women’s models. Specifically, Indigenous Decolonization theory and Indigenous Women’s Standpoint theory guide the positioning and research approach of an Indigenous storytelling methodology and Indigenous yarning method. Five Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women from public relations and communications provide individual and collective themes and narratives through the Indigenous yarning interview data and thematic analysis.
The resultant findings of this thesis are disseminated within research journal papers and demonstrate theoretical and empirical understandings of the profession of Indigenous Australian public relations. The first paper examines colonization and whiteness in Australian public relations and the influence of Eurocentric narratives and paradigms. The second paper interrogates colonial and white historical public relations narratives and asserts decolonization through the identification of Indigenous public relations practices since time immemorial. The third paper provides insight into the practices of Indigenous Australian public relations and the development of a theoretical framework of this specialization. The fourth paper provides insight into the definition and role of activism practices within the personal lives of Indigenous women. The fifth paper explores Indigenous women’s rationales and motivations of Indigenous Australian public relations as a career. Lastly, the sixth paper examines the positive and negative experiences as Indigenous women working within the profession.
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