Oz continued...

So my initial plan was to volunteer at a salon as a braider, or even as a hairsweeper, but I found that salon owners weren’t really receptive to that idea; instead, they agreed to allow me to visit their salons to conduct interviews with the staff and clientele, observe their hair creations, and photograph the styles, which turned out to be a pretty good arrangement anyway. I frequented three such salons: Ambo Ars Hair Salon, Serengeti Hair Salon, and Afrique Ali’s Hair Salon.

In addition to my salon visits, I would also interview random people that I ran into on the street with braided styles. Initially, I was apprehensive about approaching people to ask them about their hair - I thought they'd think I was crazy - but I found that people actually liked talking about their hair, especially when their style was unique, and I met some really interesting people that way.

Through my salon visits and random street encounters, I was able to speak to members of the White, Asian, and Immigrant Black communities of Sydney. My only regret was not being able to penetrate and learn more about the Indigenous Black community. While writing my Watson proposal, I had speculated that the Aboriginal peoples would have a hair braiding culture because of their hair texture, and I was disappointed when the stylists told me that this was not the case. I was not convinced; and after contacting Aboriginal community organizations as well as Message Stick TV, the Aboriginal TV program, and getting no real leads, I decided to head to the University of Sydney to see if they had any Aboriginal student organizations.

At the Koori Centre at the University, I was introduced to one of the Aboriginal lecturers, Shino Konishi, who is currently working on her doctoral dissertation which happens to be on the topic of Indigenous hairstyles at the time of First Contact with the European settlers - what a coincidence! Shino explained to me that even though the Indigenous people of Australia no longer have a braiding culture (it is believed that they probably did have one before being forced to assimilate after the European settlers arrived), a braiding/locking culture still exists in Tasmania and the Pacific Islands. I was really disappointed to find this out like a week before I was due to head to Japan, but she gave me the contact of another Koori Centre lecturer, Leah Lui-Chivizhe from the Torres Strait Islands, whom she said "had hair like mine."

So I e-mailed Leah and we were able to meet up the next week for coffee. Leah explained to me that women in the Torres Strait Islands do braid their hair but not in a stylized fashion. She shared her hairstory with me and I learned that Indigenous women have the same hang-ups about hair texture that Black women do. Aside from hair, Leah and I had something else in common - Jamaican roots (Jamaicans are everywhere, I tell you)! One of her grandfathers was from Jamaica and had immigrated to the Torres Strait Islands where he met her grandmother - craziness! Anyway, she also told me about how she braids her young daughter's hair, and how those hairstyles elicit mixed reactions from her daughter's classmates and their parents, which brought back memories. Honestly, I think we could've talked for hours but we were forced to end our hair talk because she had to go teach a class. Even though I didn't get a chance to speak with more people from the Pacific Islands, I was glad to at least have the opportunity to get an Aboriginal perspective on hair braiding.