Part 2: Leading Article (Trans)Disciplinary Research (Re)Considered (original) (raw)
Related papers
Socialist Studies, 2017
There is conceptual confusion in academic scholarship regarding Indigenous research methodologies and decolonising research methodologies. Scholars view these paradigms as similar yet distinct, but very few seek to define that distinction. In this article, I explore the relationship between these approaches to academic research. Both paradigms emphasise the need to transform the academy because of its tendency to marginalise non-Western epistemologies. Transformation requires the interconnection and coordination of many paradigms including Indigenous, feminist, and antiracist approaches to research. I propose viewing Indigenous and decolonising research methodologies as a relationship, and suggest both are dynamic practices that do not exist outside of the people who use them. What they look like and how they relate to one another will depend upon who uses them, why they are used, and where they are practiced.
Decolonizing both researcher and research and its effectiveness in Indigenous research
How does one decolonize and reclaim the meanings of research and researcher, particularly in the context of Western research? Indigenous communities have long experienced oppression by Western researchers. Is it possible to build a collaborative research knowledge that is culturally appropriate, respectful, honoring, and careful of the Indigenous community? What are the challenges in Western research, researchers, and Western university methodology research training? How have 'studies' – critical anti-racist theory and practice, cross-cultural research methodology, critical perspectives on environmental justice, and land-based education – been incorporated into the university to disallow dissent? What can be done against this disallowance? According to Eve Tuck and K Wayne Yang's (2012) suggestion, this article did not use the concept of decolonization as a substitute for 'human rights' or 'social justice', but as a demand of an Indigenous framework and a centering of Indigenous land, Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous ways of thinking. This article discusses why both research and researcher increasingly require decolonization so that research can create a positive impact on the participants' community, and conduct research ethically. This article is my personal decolonization and reclaiming story from 15 years of teaching, research and service activities with various Indigenous communities in various parts of the world. It presents a number of case studies of an intervention research project to exemplify the challenges in Western research training, and how decolonizing research training attempts to not only reclaim participants' rights in the research but also to empower the researcher. I conclude by arguing that decolonizing research training creates more empathetic educators and researchers,
Research as Vision Quest into Indigenous Epistemology
Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue, 2017
Our interest in asserting the validity of our Indigeneity within academia brought us together at the Annual International Maroon Conference, Jamaica in 2014. Here we recognized our common heritage rooted within the context of colonization and our want to move beyond the borders of geography in breaking down the hegemonic boundaries of Western education imposed upon us. Tirza, a US based Nanny of the Maroons scholar of Jamaican heritage, and Denzel, a First Nation Kamilaroi scholar from Australia, critically interrogated the inadequacy of academia to facilitate our scholarship and efforts to interrogate the dynamics of exclusion and alienation in claiming our rightful place within academia. Meditating on global matters, we explored themes of Indigeneity and resistance, questioning our physical location within respective continents where institutionalized racism maintained the hegemonic system of poverty, inequality and educational apartheid among our people--African Americans and Abo...