Considering Indigenous Research Methodologies: Bicultural Accountability and the Protection of Community Held Knowledge

2021 ◽  
pp. 107780042110218
Author(s):  
Sweeney Windchief ◽  
Jason Cummins
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Indigenous Community ◽  
Background Information ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Research Methodologies ◽  
Keynote Presentation ◽  
Alternative Method ◽  
Knowledge Protection ◽  
Indigenous Research Methodologies ◽  
Epistemological Pluralism

As part of a continuing conversation related to Indigenous methodologies in Western academic contexts, this manuscript includes a summary of the scholarly dialogue by providing background information and situatedness to an exchange that is positioned in the academy and Indigenous community simultaneously. The dialogue thus far includes a keynote presentation and a series of manuscripts that collectively help explain Indigenous research methodologies (IRMs) and delineates important considerations for practitioners and communities who relate to Indigenous research. The authors share where they agree, and where they diverge as well as their rationale for continuing the discourse in an academic forum. The paper concludes with an alternative method for dissemination (a winter count), that reimagines epistemological pluralism and knowledge protection through bicultural accountability. We consider the repatriation of Indigenous knowledge to be paramount in this process.

Indigenous Research Methodologies: X-Marks in the Age of Community Accountability and Protection

2021 ◽  
pp. 107780042110572
Author(s):  
Joseph P. Gone
Keyword(s):  
American Indian ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Research Methodologies ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Indigenous Research Methodologies ◽  
Do So

In an ongoing exchange about the potency and promise of Indigenous Research Methodologies (IRMs) for academic knowledge production, I respond in this article to Windchief and Cummins. I do so by considering a challenging example of Indigenous knowledge production, clarifying additional misunderstandings between us, and complicating persistent oppositions and essentialisms that are neither intellectually defensible nor characteristic of contemporary Indigenous life and experience. Instead, I propose that IRMs are productively conceived as x-marks (or historical American Indian treaty signatures), which encapsulate the paradoxes, contradictions, and predicaments of modern American Indian life in ways that resist clean oppositions and confound rigid binaries. In this respect, the x-mark signifies that which lies between two readily identifiable options, something new and potentially promising despite the indeterminacy and ambivalence it elicits, if only we will face and embrace such ambiguity.

scholarly journals Silent Voices, Absent Bodies, and Quiet Methods: Revisiting the Processes and Outcomes of Personal Knowledge Production Through Body-Mapping Methodologies Among Indigenous Youth

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 160940692098793
Author(s):  
Darrien Morton ◽  
Kelley Bird-Naytowhow ◽  
Andrew R. Hatala
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Personal Knowledge ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Research Methodologies ◽  
Body Mapping ◽  
Indigenous Youth ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Visual Research ◽  
Theater Program ◽  
Indigenous Research Methodologies

At the interface of Western and Indigenous research methodologies, this paper revisits the place of the “personal” and “autobiographical” self in qualitative visual research. We outline a community and partnership-based evaluation of a theater program for Indigenous youth using arts-based body-mapping approaches in Saskatoon, Canada, and explore the methodological limitations of the narrator or artist’s voice and representations to translate personal visual-narratives and personal knowledges they hold. In so doing, we describe how body-mapping methods were adapted and improvised to respond to the silent voices and absent bodies within personal visual-narratives with an epistemological eclecticism handling the limitations of voice and meaningfully engaging the potentiality of quietness. Extending the conceptual and methodological boundaries of the “personal” and “autobiographical” for both narrator and interlocutor, artist and observer, we contribute to debates on the processes and outcomes of personal knowledge production by articulating a generative, ethical, and culturally-grounded project mobilizing body-mapping as a quiet method that pursues self-work—the passionate and emergent practices of working on one’s self and making self appear in non-representational and ceremonial ways.

scholarly journals Considering Indigenous Research Methodologies: Critical Reflections by an Indigenous Knower

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph P. Gone
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Indigenous Studies ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Research Methodologies ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Indigenous Epistemologies ◽  
Indigenous Research Methodologies ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
University Settings

Within the domain of academic inquiry by Indigenous scholars, it is increasingly common to encounter enthusiasm surrounding Indigenous Research Methodologies (IRMs). IRMs are designated approaches and procedures for conducting research that are said to reflect long-subjugated Indigenous epistemologies (or ways of knowing). A common claim within this nascent movement is that IRMs express logics that are unique and distinctive from academic knowledge production in “Western” university settings, and that IRMs can result in innovative contributions to knowledge if and when they are appreciated in their own right and on their own terms. The purpose of this article is to stimulate exchange and dialogue about the present and future prospects of IRMs relative to university-based academic knowledge production. To that end, I enter a critical voice to an ongoing conversation about these matters that is still taking shape within Indigenous studies circles.

scholarly journals Critical Indigenous ways of knowing: Research, narratives, and self-actualisation

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-157
Author(s):  
Estelle Marie Simard
Keyword(s):  
Research Work ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Research Methodologies ◽  
Cultural Worldview ◽  
Construct Development ◽  
Spiritual Awareness ◽  
Cultural Grounding ◽  
Indigenous Research Methodologies ◽  
Cultural Construct

Abstract: The process of Indigenous research methodologies has existed within the Anishinaabe worldview for over a millennium. The Anishinaabe-centric author presents and highlights a pathway of Indigenous research methodologies, and critically analyses research, pedagogy and attachment through an Indigenous research methodology. Indigenous research lives within the Anishinaabe language as a cultural process for understanding purpose, in addition to understanding the specific gifts unknown to the researcher. This article identifies Anishinaabe Gikendaasowin as a manner of centring oneself within one’s cultural worldview. Indigenous research methodologies contain intrinsic processes of critical cultural construct development, critical content analysis,ceremony and cultural attachment. This article further explores colonial worldview impacts on Indigenous peoples and the misapplication of that research and its influence on educational paradigms. Finally, an Anishinaabe scholarly exemplar is presented that provides tangible steps for incorporating spirit knowledge into positive, innovative and pedagogical Indigenous lessons. Indigenous research sovereignty requires consent when researching our Anishinaabe sacred practice-based evidence. As a result, Indigenous research methodologies will often start with the act of cultural grounding. Cultural grounding in research is not a new concept. In the Anishinaabe language, manidoo waabiwin can translate into seeing things in a spiritual way. This spiritual wayis the bridge to understanding, appreciating and attaching to a construct or phenomenon within an Indigenous way of knowing journey. There are many different manners to grounding one’s spiritual research work that range from offering tobacco to the aatsokaanug (inadequately translated as spirits), and to the participation in cultural activities, both of which will often promote spiritual awareness or manido waabiwin. This critical Indigenous research methodologies article highlights Anishinaabe Gikendaasowin, or Anishinaabe knowledge or ways of knowing that centres within Anishinaabe worldview. This article is embedded in Anishinaabe knowledge and can be considered Anishinaabe-centric.  

scholarly journals First Mile Methodologies in Community Informatics Research: Learning from First Nations

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob McMahon ◽  
Arline Chasle ◽  
Tim Whiteduck
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Community Informatics ◽  
Research Partnership ◽  
Research Methodologies ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indigenous Research Methodologies ◽  
Innovative Approaches ◽  
Research Tools

How can Indigenous research methodologies inform Community Informatics? In this paper we reflect on this question by considering the problematic history of researcher-Indigenous relations before exploring some innovative approaches. Applications of these research tools must emerge during the course of a project to ensure they meet the contexts and needs of community and university partners. Examples from an ongoing research partnership, the First Nations Innovation (FNI) project, show how this ‘First Mile’ work can support Community Informatics research more generally.

scholarly journals Indigenous Research Methodologies in Sámi and Global Contexts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen ◽  
Pigga Keskitalo ◽  
Torjer Olsen
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Research Methodologies ◽  
Indigenous Research Methodologies

From Monmouth to Madoc to Māori

2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Wallace Cleaves
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Research Methodologies ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
Traditional Research ◽  
Indigenous Research Methodologies ◽  
Indigenous Memory ◽  
Tribal Nation

Abstract This essay examines how Indigenous research methodologies can be usefully applied to medieval texts. It does this by recounting and engaging with personal experience and by interrogating how research is deployed for colonial purpose. The use of medieval English texts by early modern and later colonial proponents and apologists, particularly John Dee, emphasize the inherent colonial purpose of traditional research methodologies. These processes are contrasted with Indigenous research methodologies, particularly those proposed by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and the author’s own personal experience and that of his tribal nation of how Indigenous memory and inquiry can inform research practices that are relational and not exploitive.

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