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The Indigenous Resilience Project is a community-based participatory research project conducted in Townsville, Australia, that aims to identify, assess and enhance the blood-borne virus and sexually transmitted infection (BBV/STI) resilience capability of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Health workers from an Aboriginal Community-Controlled Health Service and university researchers worked with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people to develop and conduct a qualitative research project on Indigenous young people’s views of the most common BBV/STIs that affect young people. Together we conducted in-depth interviews with 17 men and 28 women, aged 17 to 26 years. During the interviews, a quarter of our sample spontaneously reported a previous BBV/STI diagnosis and in this chapter we explore how they actively negotiated their experience of infection. Young people often described their diagnosis as a learning opportunity or turning point in their life and presented themselves as competent now at preventing future infection because of these previous experiences. We argue that these accounts, which feature new practices, new insights, and new roles, should be understood as resilience narratives. By providing situated accounts of risk and resilience from the perspective of Indigenous young people we prioritise their subjective understandings and challenge normative and culturally hegemonic definitions of resilience.
The Indigenous Resilience Project is a community-based participatory research project conducted in Townsville, Australia, that aims to identify, assess and enhance the blood-borne virus and sexually transmitted infection (BBV/STI) resilience capability of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Health workers from an Aboriginal Community-Controlled Health Service and university researchers worked with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people to develop and conduct a qualitative research project on Indigenous young people’s views of the most common BBV/STIs that affect young people. Together we conducted in-depth interviews with 17 men and 28 women, aged 17 to 26 years. During the interviews, a quarter of our sample spontaneously reported a previous BBV/STI diagnosis and in this chapter we explore how they actively negotiated their experience of infection. Young people often described their diagnosis as a learning opportunity or turning point in their life and presented themselves as competent now at preventing future infection because of these previous experiences. We argue that these accounts, which feature new practices, new insights, and new roles, should be understood as resilience narratives. By providing situated accounts of risk and resilience from the perspective of Indigenous young people we prioritise their subjective understandings and challenge normative and culturally hegemonic definitions of resilience.