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In this article, we invite you into conversation about Yarning with Country. We contemplate the question: How do we work within a relational methodology with Country as a primary participant? We are interested in the practice of relating intentionally with Country: the ontological orientation and visceral receptivity which is required. This contemplation includes considering how we exist in relationship with Country, how we learn from and with Country, and how we cultivate respectful, reciprocal, and accountable relationships with Country. We choose to share this process with you as a conversation between people and with Country because that is the way this kind of sharing takes place: in person, in real time, in Place, between beings. Our contention in this article is that human beings would benefit from a more engaged, communicative relationship with Country; we suggest that this requires honing our skills of listening, respecting, sharing, and letting be.

In this article, we open up Yarning as a fundamentally relational methodology. We discuss key relationships involved in Indigenous research, including with participants, Country, Ancestors, data, history, and Knowledge. We argue that the principles and protocols associated with the deepest layers of yarning in an Indigenous Australian context create a protected space which supports the researcher to develop and maintain accountability in each of these research relationships. Protection and relational accountability in turn contribute to research which is trustworthy and has integrity. Woven throughout the article are excerpts of a yarn in which the first author reflects on his personal experience of this research methodology. We hope this device serves to demonstrate the way yarning as a relational process of communication helps to bring out deeper reflection and analysis and invoke accountability in all of our research relationships.

The adverse effects of caregiving provided by family members, partners, and friends for people dying at home from a life-limiting illness have been extensively documented in the palliative care research literature, yet minimal attention has been directed towards the strengths of informal carers and their subsequent growth and development. Using in-depth interviews from a purposive sample of informal carers (n = 28), this paper reports empirical evidence from a subset of data analysed for an Australian qualitative study, illuminating a range of strengths frequently obscured beneath the emotionallabour work of caregiving and further sequestrated by the chaos of grief. A strengths perspective on caregiving at end-of-life is important because it helps to inform a reconstruction of caring and dying to include dimensions that relate to the growth of human potential and capacity, as well as enabling collaborative partnerships between workers and informal carers at the end-of-life.

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