Indigenous Trans-Systemic Research Approach

Indigenous trans-systemic approach is a lifelong unlearning and relearning process, with no endpoint. Indigenous peoples have long called for decolonizing minds so as to support self-determination, challenge colonial practices, and value Indigenous cultural identity and pride in being Indigenous peoples. Indigenous trans-systemic approach is also a political standpoint toward valuing and revitalizing Indigenous knowledge and methodologies while weeding out colonizer biases or assumptions that have impacted Indigenous ways of knowing, doing, and being. Drawing from Indigenous Participatory Action Research (IPAR), I explained how I learned the meanings of trans-systematic knowledge from Indigenous Elders and Knowledge-keepers.

Decolonizing Healing Through Indigenous Ways of Knowing

The field of psychology is embarking on a process to interrupt the historical, colonial cycle of harm and beginning to work with and alongside Indigenous communities to understand the healing journey. From an Indigenous lens, healing incorporates more than the physical recovery; physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual healing exists through learning, which occurs along the healing journey. This healing journey has no definite beginning or end, and as we begin to move away from pathologizing healing to a strength-based healing process, the focus shifts to relationships—relationships with self, community, more-than-human, and the land. This chapter proposes that to decolonize Western healing processes, as a field, we must acknowledge the coexistence of learning during the healing journey. Building healing capacity through learning elucidates the understanding of the past, the needs of the present, and lays foundations for the future to work towards restoring integrity and prompting balanced care.

Local Indigenous ways of knowing and learning in the classroom through Community-engaged learning

This paper reflects on the impact of community-engaged learning (CEL) in post-secondary education, as guided by local Indigenous community members, specifically members of the Anishinaabeg Nation and more specifically Mississauga peoples. This CEL way of educating highlights a fundamental difference between Indigenous axiology, where localized relationships and community contributions are paradigm, with traditional Euro-Western hegemonic pedagogies. Within this framework, we hope to contribute to the larger discourse in revising the axiological foundation applied to knowledge within the Academy, based on authentic expressions of an Indigenous way of knowing and learning. We seek to recapitulate the ways that knowledge in the field of anthropology (and post-secondary education in general) is valued and assessed through the first-hand experiences of two cis male Anishinaabe academics, and one cis female Japanese Canadian academic, involved in the development and delivery of community-engaged learning on Turtle Island.

A personal perspective on pedagogical structures and strategies that uphold Indigenous ways of knowing

This article gives a brief background of where I come from and how my experiences in Africa and North America have framed the ‘philosophy of teaching’ that defines me as a visual art educator. I reflect on the postcolonial concept of ‘decolonization’ as a means to identifying possible pedagogical alternatives of practice. Acknowledging that my knowledge embraces both ‘western’ and ‘Indigenous’ ways of knowing, poses a question for me as an art educator about ways to design and implement pedagogies that embrace contextualized experiences in order to achieve meaningful learning within formal education. I conclude by stating that nothing will effect change within Uganda’s education sector, particularly in reference to visual art education and practice, without educators having a firmer grasp of their scholarly standpoint on knowledge and learning. Development of concrete ways of bringing together diverse ontological, epistemological and axiological positions of western and Indigenous knowledge systems as well as art pedagogies to facilitate learning, will require educators to develop structures and strategies that progress from the bottom up in order to benefit from the values, beliefs and ways of knowing within diverse local communities.

Decolonizing Action Research through Two-Eyed Seeing: The Indigenous Quality Assurance Project

Action Research (AR) has been widely utilized in Indigenous contexts because of its emphasis on social transformation and synergies with Indigenous research approaches. Yet, while AR is seen as an attractive option for working in Indigenous research contexts, additional efforts are needed to ensure that AR adequately interrogates collaborations between Western and Indigenous knowledge systems. The application of the principle of two-eyed seeing (TES), which refers to the process of seeing from the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing with one eye while using the other eye to see with the strengths of Western ways of knowing (Bartlett, Marshall, & Marshall, 2012), can center decolonial goals, addressing the shortcomings of AR. This article describes the operationalization of TES through the Indigenous Quality Assurance Project, focusing on the four key essentials of TES: co-learning, knowledge scrutinization, knowledge validation, and knowledge gardening (Bartlett, 2017).