Narratives and Social Discourses in Life History

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the interaction of participants’ life stories with “social institutions” and thus on the discursive field in which young Indigenous people at Yarrabah take up the position from which they tell these stories. First, the author is interested in the discursive practices of storytelling. The structure of diverse narratives told to us is analysed, examining how incompatible discourses from different cultural backgrounds encounter a transitional hybrid field in these stories. Second, the author reflected on the role in such narratives of institutions that inevitably both facilitate and limit the social transmission of Indigenous knowledge and ongoing colonial experiences. In this context, this chapter discussed the hierarchical power that marks colonial discourse as well as the marginalised space reserved for Indigenous narratives, through which individuals and groups explore and transmit discourses in the Indigenous world. To this end, this chapter focuses on five institutions in the Yarrabah context: the family, the school, the community, the mass media, and the church. The author considered the specific discourses disseminated through these institutions. This chapter also considered how young Indigenous people at Yarrabah construct and reconstruct their physical, intellectual, and emotional experiences in relation to the influences of diverse social discourses propagated in these institutionalised contexts. Drawing on analyses of these stories is that inconsistent discourses, based on different philosophical backgrounds and value systems, coexist in these life stories, whether in conflict or framed by an “elective affinity” that weaves them together. In addition, it is examined whether discourses related to racism and settler colonialism are influential on young Indigenous people: how these colonial discourses affect young people’s everyday lives at Yarrabah.