• Indigenous rights and self-determination
• Indigenous youth agencies for self-determination
• Indigenous storytelling practices
• Critical Indigenous research methodologies

Dr Elfie Shiosaki is Noongar and Yawuru academic and storyteller from the southwest region of Australia, leading community education about human rights through her award-winning Indigenous storytelling practices. Since completing a PhD in nation-building in 2015, she has consolidated her research into three key areas: histories of advocacy by Indigenous people for rights and self-determination; Indigenous understandings of rights; and the significance of Indigenous storytelling for rights discourses. Engaging with critical Indigenous research methodologies, her contributions to the field have generated new knowledge and decolonial theories about the agencies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to transform discourses of humanity through cultural diplomacy. Her research has social impact for First Nations people by revitalising Indigenous storytelling practices and supporting health and wellbeing through cultural resilience.

Dr Shiosaki held a position as a Senior Lecturer in Indigenous Rights, Policy and Governance at the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia from 2018 to 2022, and she completed an Indigenous Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin Unversity from 2015 to 2018. She served as the inaugural Editor of First Nations Writing at Westerly from 2017 to 2021.

Noongar Futurisms: advancing youth participation in Indigenous nation-building

This project investigates for the first time young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s participation in Indigenous nation-building by conceptualising youth participation as a critical practice of development. Around 60 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia are under the age of 30 (ABS 2023). As the custodians of Indigenous futures, visionary youth are contributing to vital imaginative practices of Indigenous nation-building. Using critical Indigenous research methodologies of storytelling, this project undertakes an unprecedented cultural mapping exercise to determine how Noongar youth are contributing their creativity, knowledge and lived experience to the re-building of the Noongar Nation and the reimagining of Noongar futures.

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Refugia

Refugia (Magabala Books 2024) is a practice of Noongar truth-telling interrogating colonial archives and contesting national narratives about the establishment of the Swan River Colony in 1829. As the bicentennial year of the colony of Western Australia approaches, this collection looks to the stars and back to the earth to make sense of memory and the afterlife of imperial violence.

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Indigenous Governance of Development: Self-Determination and Success

Australian Indigenous Governance Institute Project, 2021 to 2022

First Nations people around the world are re-building their Nations and revitalising models of Indigenous governance to achieve self-determined development outcomes. This national study investigates the governance of development in six diverse case study regions, testing the proposed link between Indigenous Nations exercising culturally-legitimate governance and achieving development outcomes.

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Homecoming

Using Noongar practices of storytelling, Homecoming (Magabala Books 2021) explores the daring agencies of four generations of Noongar women to hold their families together during the Stolen Generations period. Their stories reveal truths about the unending love and care for children within Noongar families. Homecoming was awarded the Premier’s Prize for an Emerging Writer at the 2021 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards

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maar bidi: next generation black writing

maar bidi: next generation black writing (Magabala Books 2020) showcases the storytelling of nine young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students from the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia. The heart of this anthology is its affirmation of the agency of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth to make meaning of their own lived experience, to find their voice and to speak for themselves, instead of being spoken about by others.

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Ancestors’ Words: Noongar writing in WA government archives (1860-1960)

Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP160103084), 2016 to 2018

This study identifies hundreds of letters written by Noongar people in government archives between 1860 and 1960. Using Noongar models of research, it returns these letters to descendants as living cultural heritage. Creative practices empower the Noongar community to release their ancestors' voices and stories from the archive in Noongar storytelling.

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Top ten research outputs

Books

Shiosaki, E 2024, Refugia, Magabala Books, Broome.

Shiosaki, E 2021, Homecoming, Magabala Books, Broome.

Edited collections

Shiosaki, E (ed) 2023, Westerly: djinda, October.

Shiosaki, E (ed) 2021, Cordite Poetry Review, 104: KIN.

Shiosaki, E and Martin, L (eds) 2020, maar bidi: next generation Indigenous story-telling, Magabala Books, Broome.

Scott, K and Shiosaki, E (eds) 2019, Westerly: Ancestors’ Words, December.

Articles

Shiosaki, E, Martin, L and Rhook, N 2021, ‘maar bidi: carving sovereignty and desire in Indigenous youth storytelling’, Cordite Scholarly, np.

Shiosaki, E 2018, ‘Hand on Heart: Humanity and human rights in Noongar letter writing’, Overland, 233.

Shiosaki, E 2018, ‘“They were afraid to speak”: Testimonies of Aboriginal women at the 1934 Moseley Royal Commission’, Coolabah, 24, 159-67.

Shiosaki, E 2017, ‘“We have resisted, now we must build”: Regionalism and nation-building in Timor-Leste’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 48, 1, pp. 53–70.