Ethical considerations when using visual methods in digital storytelling with Aboriginal young people in Southeast Australia

This chapter discusses a digital storytelling project involving young Aboriginal people from southeast Australia who used the creative capacities of digital technologies to explore subjective experiences of identity. We discuss three key ethical considerations that supported and emerged from working with young Aboriginal people. Decolonization, the participation gap and situated learning were critical factors that were important in developing an ethical framework for engagement in research with Aboriginal young people. The approach sought to address the challenges that Aboriginal youth continue to experience, including marginalization from mainstream society, negative stereotyping and lingering misperceptions of real Aboriginal identities in contemporary urban Australia. The visual content arising from the workshops supported Aboriginal young people to reposition their contemporary visual self-representations as diverse and authentic.