Journeys Around the Medicine Wheel: A Story of Indigenous Research in a Western University

2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Polly Walker
Keyword(s):  
American Indian ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Knowledge System ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Medicine Wheel ◽  
Research Paradigms

These simple Cherokee words of greeting enfold an American Indian reality and knowledge system based on the interconnectedness of all things. American Indian ontologies and epistemologies are quite different from most Western paradigms. However, rather than being accepted and respected as coevals within Western universities, Indigenous paradigms, when acknowledged at all, is most often considered as data that informs Western research (Cajete, 2000). In this article, I explore some of the ways in which Western Research paradigms suppress the sacred aspects of Indigenous people's epistemologies. I then describe the Medicine Wheel Paradigm upon which I based my PhD research, which incorporates spiritual experience as one of the four key elements of human experience.

scholarly journals What Does Being a Settler Ally in Research Mean? A Graduate Students Experience Learning From and Working Within Indigenous Research Paradigms

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 160940691877048 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy Snow
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Narrative Inquiry ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Research Paradigms ◽  
Social Contracts ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
Institutional Expectations ◽  
Conducting Research

Research with Indigenous peoples is fraught with complexity and misunderstandings. The complexity of negotiating historical and current issues as well as the misunderstandings about what the issues really mean for individuals and communities can cause non-Indigenous researchers to shy away from working with Indigenous groups. In conducting research for my doctoral dissertation, I was a novice researcher faced with negotiating two very different sets of social contracts: the Western Canadian university’s and my Indigenous participants’. Through narrative inquiry of my experience, this article explores issues of ethics, institutional expectations, and community relationships. Guided by Kirkness and Barnhardt’s “Four R’s” framework of respect, relevance, reciprocity, and responsibility, I aimed to meet the needs of both the groups, but it was not without challenges. What do you do when needs collide? This article shares my process of negotiating the research, the decisions made, and how I came to understand my role in the process as a Settler Ally. It closes with some implications for other researchers who are considering their own roles as Settler Allies.

He Āpiti Hono, He Tātai Hono: That Which is Joined Remains an Unbroken Line: Using Whakapapa (Genealogy) as the Basis for an Indigenous Research Framework

2005 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 86-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Graham
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Indigenous Identity ◽  
Research Framework ◽  
Research Paradigms ◽  
Unbroken Line

AbstractThis paper explores the notion of whakapapa as providing a legitimate research framework for engaging in research with Māori communities. By exploring the tradition and meaning of whakapapa, the paper will legitimate how whakapapa and an understanding of whakapapa can be used by Māori researchers working among Māori communities. Therefore, emphasis is placed on a research methodology framed by whakapapa that not only authenticates Māori epistemology in comparison with Western traditions, but that also supports the notion of a whakapapa research methodology being transplanted across the Indigenous world; Indigenous peoples researching among their Indigenous communities. Consequently, Indigenous identity is strengthened as is the contribution of the concept of whakapapa to Indigenous research paradigms worldwide.

The Rediscovery of the Inner Life: From Spinoza to Kant

2005 ◽  
pp. 273-298
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Part ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Apparent Depth ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Historical Tradition

This chapter considers stages of growing intelligence, and even of growing spiritual knowledge, marked by an inevitable and lamentable decline in apparent depth and vitality of spiritual experience. In such stages, the greatest concerns of our lives are somehow for a while hidden, even forgotten. We become more knowing, more clever, more critical, more wary, more skeptical, but we seemingly do not grow more profound or more reverent. Such a stage in human experience is represented, in great part, by the philosophical thinkers who flourished between the time of Spinoza's death, in 1677 and the appearance of Kant's chief philosophical work, “The Critique of Pure Reason” in 1781. It is the period which has been especially associated, in historical tradition, with the eighteenth century.

Grounded in Culture: Reflections on Sitting Outside the Circle in Community-Based Research With Indigenous Men

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (14) ◽  
pp. 2343-2350
Author(s):  
Candice M. Waddell ◽  
Rachel V. Herron ◽  
Jason Gobeil ◽  
Frank Tacan ◽  
Margaret De Jager ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Community Based Participatory Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Community Based Research ◽  
Research Paradigms ◽  
Reflexive Practice

Research continues to be a dirty word for many Indigenous people. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a means to disrupt power dynamics by engaging community members within the research process. However, the majority of relationships between researcher and participants within CBPR are structured within Western research paradigms and they often reproduce imbalances of power. The purpose of this article is to reflect on the process of CBPR within a research project focused on Indigenous men’s masculinity and mental health. In doing so, we aim to contribute to reflexive practice in CBPR and flatten research hierarchies to facilitate more equitable knowledge sharing. Our reflections highlight the importance of prioritizing healing, centering cultural protocols, negotiating language, and creating space for Indigenous research partners to lead. These critical lessons challenge Western researchers to ground their practices in Indigenous culture while they “sit outside the circle” to facilitate more equitable and engaged partnerships.

scholarly journals An Indigenous Research Methodology That Employs Anishinaabek Elders, Language Speakers and Women’s Knowledge for Sustainable Water Governance

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 3058
Author(s):  
Susan Chiblow
Keyword(s):  
Research Methodology ◽  
Water Governance ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Research Paradigms ◽  
Indigenous Worldviews ◽  
Sustainable Water Governance ◽  
Indigenous Policy ◽  
Indigenous Research Methodology ◽  
Indigenous Research Methodologies

Indigenous research paradigms are congruent to Indigenous worldviews and have become more dominant in areas such as Indigenous policy and education. As Indigenous research paradigms continue to gain momentum, the historical legacy of unethical research is addressed as more Indigenous communities and organizations develop their own research protocols. There is a plethora of articles explaining Indigenous research methodologies, but few examine the inclusion of the knowledge from Elders, language speakers, and Indigenous women in sustainable water governance. My Indigenous research methodology draws on the works of Indigenous scholars Shawn Wilson, Linda Smith, and Margaret Kovach, with specific focus on Wendy Geniusz’s Biskaabiiyang. My Indigenous research methodology is specific to the Anishinaabe territory of the Great Lakes region and includes Anishinaabek Elders, Anishinaabemowin (Ojibway language) speakers, and Anishinaabek women. This article seeks to contribute to Indigenous research paradigms and methods by elucidating the importance of engaging Anishinaabek Elders, Anishinaabemowin speakers, and Anishinaabek women in sustainable water governance.

scholarly journals Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing) and Ethical Space: Ways to Disrupt Health Researchers’ Colonial Attraction to a Singular Biomedical Worldview

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-72
Author(s):  
Moneca Sinclaire ◽  
Annette Schultz ◽  
Janice Linton ◽  
Elizabeth McGibbon
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Health Research ◽  
Knowledge System ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Biomedical Knowledge ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Ethical Space

Indigenous research on Turtle Island has existed for millennia, where knowledge(s) to work with the land and its inhabitants are available for next generations. These knowledge systems exist today but are rarely viewed as valid biomedical ‘facts’ and so are silenced. When Indigenous knowledge is solicited within health research, the knowledge system is predominantly an ‘add-on’ or is assimilated into Western understandings. We discuss disrupting this colonial state for nurse researchers. Two concepts rooted in Indigenous teachings and knowledges, Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing) and Ethical Space, shed light on ways to disrupt health researchers’ attraction to a singular worldview which continue to privilege Western perspectives. Knowledge rooted in diverse knowledge systems is required to challenge colonial relations in health research and practice. A synergy between Etuaptmumk and Ethical Space can support working with both Indigenous and biomedical knowledge systems in health research and enhance reconciliation.

scholarly journals Pathways to indigenous identity: one family’s story of colonization and reintegration

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shanna Giroux
Keyword(s):  
Research Method ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Indigenous Identity ◽  
Medicine Wheel ◽  
Sense Of Identity ◽  
Principal Researcher ◽  
Indigenous Heritage

This research study is an examination of one family's journey of finding out about their Indigenous ancestry later in life and how, if at all, it has affected their sense of identity or feelings of interest in engaging with the Indigenous communities of Canada. In cooperation with her father, the principal researcher uses an Indigenous research method of storytelling and a methodology based on medicine wheel teachings to discuss their learning about their Indigenous heritage as adults with little to no connections to their original community. Through storytelling, the research study hopes to reveal the complications of forming an Indigenous identity later in life and after generations of colonization have erased familial traditions and knowledge.

Thesis as kin: living relationality with research

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 163-170
Author(s):  
Lauren Tynan
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Short Form ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Doctoral Studies ◽  
Research Paradigms ◽  
Latin Word ◽  
Asking Questions ◽  
Relational Accountability

As a trawlwulwuy woman of tebrakunna country, Australia, I invite scholars to embrace research and writing as kin, extending an ethic of relational accountability to all relations, including the thesis. “Thesis as kin” derives from an Aboriginal ontological translation of the English (originally Latin) word “thesis,” broken into two parts, “the” “sis”, revealing the short form for sister “sis” as the primary entity. “Thesis as kin” can similarly be translated as “thesis askin,” an agentic provocation that situates knowledge production with the thesis itself and suggests the thesis is askin’ (asking) questions. Not limited to doctoral studies, imagining thesis as kin respectfully and humbly responds to scholars’ calls that Indigenous research paradigms centre relationality. This article advocates for a research practice beyond consumerist reproduction, towards a process of kinship. It is an attempt to caretake all our relations by living the processes of relationality with research.

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