Indigenous Research for DS1 – 07.09.2018

This is a reading and writing response for Monday, July 9, 2018.

Topic: Indigenous Research / Indigenist Theories

“If you live on this land – you are in relationship with us, whether you know it or not. Get to know us, hear our stories, listen to our music.” Dr. Susan Dion (July 9, 2018.)

The connection that binds the readings, discussions and speaker presentation is relationships – to the land, to community, to knowledge, and to sustainable life. In Indigenous theories and research, the purpose of “re-membering” (Absolon & Willett, p. 13) and learning, in the holistic sense, is “to honour and protect the earth and ensure the long-term sustainability of life” (First Nations Holistic Lifelong Learning Model, 2007). Dion (2007) shares how her graduate course for educators provides opportunities to examine fears, disrupt current relationships with Indigenous peoples as a ‘perfect stranger’ (p. 329), and recognize threads of colonialism in teaching practices.  This shifts beyond multicultural awareness, antiracism education, or merely learning about Indigenous histories with colonization, in order to transform personal relationships.

Absolon & Willett (2004) affirm that Indigenous learning is “holistic, circular, and relational”.  The world in which Indigenous learning occurs is not linear or causal but “constantly reforming, multidimensional, interacting cycles” (Absalon & Willett, p. 10). Asbolon & Willett (2004) propose researching within a ‘learning circle’ as a process that generates information sharing, connections, builds capacity and seeks balance and healing” (p. 13). Smith (2005) encourages an emphasis on maintaining relationships between researchers, “the diverse indigenous communities, and the larger political struggle of decolonization” since discontinuing relationships “reinforces the colonial approach to education as divisive and destructive” (p. 88).

Historical and current relationships with/in Indigenous learning and research is problematic. For example, when considering ethics review for Indigenous research, rather than the top down, power positioned approval process of westernized research, Smith (2005) describes a “community-up” approach to establish “ethical behaviours that create opportunities to discuss and negotiate what is meant by the term respect” through “establishing, maintaining, and nurturing reciprocal and respectful relationships” (p. 97). Absalon & Willett (2004) state that Indigenous researchers are breaking free from colonized rules, goals, processes and practices, since Indigenous ways of knowing, communicating, epistemologies, methodologies and ways of researching are oppositional to colonized, westernized research. Absalon & Willett (2004) contend that through understanding differences in defining knowledge and worldviews, who is considered the expert, and how the research is connected to community, Indigenous researchers are building relationship to community.

In direct opposition to promises of relationships shared by Dion (2007), Absalon & Willett (2004) and Smith (2005), Tuck & Yang (2012) contend that Indigenous and colonial relationships are incommensurable since settler colonials’ “disruption of Indigenous relationships to land represents a profound epistemic, ontological, cosmological violence” (p. 5) that is perpetuated by five “settler moves to innocence” (pg.10). Tuck & Yang posit that “an ethic of incommensurability means relinquishing settler futurity, abandoning the hope that settlers may one day be commensurable to Native peoples. It means removing the asterisks, periods, commas, apostrophes, the whereas’s, buts, and conditional clauses that punctuate decolonization and underwrite settler innocence” (p. 36) leaving no room for relationship building.

References

Absolon, K., & Willett, C. (2004). Aboriginal research: Berry picking and hunting in the 21st century. First Peoples Child & Family Review, 1(1), 5-17.

Dion, S. D. (2007). Disrupting molded images: Identities, responsibilities and relationships—teachers and indigenous subject material. Teaching Education, 18(4), 329-342.

Smith, L. T. (2005). On Tricky Ground: Researching the native in the age of uncertainty. In N. K.Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3rd Edition, Chapter 4, 85-108.

Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, education & society, 1(1).

Photo attribution: Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash