Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts, Second Edition

I often feel out of my depth talking about Indigenous methodologies. I'm not in the academy, so I don't have the same depth of knowledge as people who have spent a lot of time working inside of the university.  And my vocation is not scholarship. So sometimes when I talk to university based scholars about Indigenous methodology, I get the impression sometimes that I have somehow said something incorrectly but I don't know why. And then I start to doubt myself, and I think maybe I am relying too heavily on my experiences outside of the university, and maybe those experiences don't translate into the university. As a general concept, I feel like I get the broad strokes of Indigenous methodology. Yet, I feel like I am constantly not saying the right thing when I am talking about Indigenous methodology inside of academia, and I am often corrected by others. Many times I have thought to myself, maybe I should leave this discourse to the experts. But at the same time as an Indigenous student pursuing an advanced degree, I do feel a personal responsibility to familiarize myself with Indigenous methodologies. Also, when I finished my masters, I felt like I had only begun learning about Indigenous methodologies, so I was curious about them and wanted to know more. And so, even though I didn't use an Indigenous methodology for my doctoral work, I did take time to read about it. I read both the first and second editions of this book. Well... I actually re-read the first edition because I had read it before. And then I read the second edition. 

Side quest before I get to the book - There are different ways to go about naming things. For example, the United Nations does not have a definition of Indigenous peoples. The United Nations chooses a strategy instead where they "identify, rather than define indigenous peoples." If academia were to take the same approach towards naming Indigenous methodologies, then an Indigenous methodology would be, in the words of Lana Ray, "how Indigenous people approach research." Knowledge is socially constructed and the product of social interactions. In my wildest dreams there is a parallel dimension where this is the pathway taken... where Indigenous scholars created a body of scholarly literature which said "the defining feature of Indigenous methodology is the identity of the researcher." But in this dimension, the one we live in, the socially constructed approach taken in Canadian post-secondary has been to not shy away from creating a definition. The approach taken has been to try to suss out what objective markers define Indigenous methodology, or ought to define Indigenous methodology. What is notable about this approach is that by creating a definition, it now draws a line where some work sits outside of that definition, regardless of the identity of the researcher. If the United Nations approach were taken, Indigenous methodology would be identified rather than defined, and Indigenous methodology would be the ways that Indigenous people approach research. But as definitions now exist outside of Indigenous people, theoretically, now there are two categories of Indigenous researchers: Indigenous researchers who's work is Indigenous methodology and Indigenous researchers who's work is not Indigenous methodology. A definition disembodies Indigenous methodology, it has become reified. It is now a thing that is outside of the Indigenous researcher, and then the researcher, if they choose, strives towards it. And as Indigenous methodology is now disembodied from Indigenous people, it is now also something that the non-Indigenous researcher can strive towards as well. Not one person caused this to happen. It was a movement. And I trust that it was strategically the best direction to take at the time. 

From a critical theory standpoint, I totally understand how and why this happened. As Lana Ray says, it's strategic. In the context of unequal power relations, having a definition is a form of protection. It ensures that Indigenous people are not tokenized, being used to grant legitimacy to projects which do not further the interests of Indigenous people. And it ensures that non-Indigenous people can't just call any random work that they do "Indigenous methodology." It creates a standard for people to live up to. And it professionalizes Indigenous research methodologies. Depending on the definition, it can also be an avenue to ensure that there is broader Indigenous engagement in research projects. And it also legitimizes Indigenous approaches to knowledge, such as dreaming. Within the context of ongoing colonization, this is a strategy for decolonization. And within Eurocentric institutions, this is also a strategy for Indigenization. A number of Indigenous researchers, through their work in the university, have decided that this is strategically the best pathway forward. 

And Margaret Kovach's work, for many, has become the north star of that movement. 

Her work was initially driven by the desire to find a solution to a problem. As a PhD student, she started taking research methodology courses and was "not able to understand why research textbooks do not offer Indigenous frameworks as a methodological option for research." (p.5). Her experience with reflexive and positivist research was that they "are historically embedded within and arise from Western thought and thus cannot help but formulate interpretations through a western gaze or construct." (p.26). She describes her experience: "Of the methodologies available, I initially chose phenomenology as grounded in a constructivist paradigm with its value placed upon an experiential, self-in-relation interpretive tradition. However, phenomenology did not encompass the decolonizing, social justice dimension of my question. After much thought, i turned to a transformative paradigm and a qualitative methodology anchored in critical theory, but I found that the primary focus on power discourses overtook a holistic, experiential approach. And so I tried to employ a constructivist and transformative paradigm in one singular design. Perhaps a combination of the two would work? More headache, something was still missing." (p.50). So she put aside western methodologies, "returned to Indigenous teachings" (p.51) and eventually turned to Shawn Wilson's research as ceremony as well as an abductive approach, including dreams. In one part, she cites Shawn Wilson, who says this about western paradigms: "as Indigenous researchers we need to move beyond these, beyond merely assuming an Indigenous perspective on these non-Indigenous paradigms." (Wilson in Kovach, p.32). 

What came out of this searching was this definition: "For a methodology to be correctly identified as an Indigenous methodology, it must be anchored in Indigenous epistemology, theory, ethics, story, and community." (p.42). She says "Indigenous methodologies are founded upon Indigenous knowledges and guided by Indigenous people." (p.16). I note that "guided by" is a phrase which makes room for the possibility of a non-Indigenous researcher being guided by Indigenous people. With respect to community, she says "As a guard against ethical infringement in Indigenous research, an ethical vetting by Indigenous communities and establishments is recommended as a decolonizing imperative." (p.53). She also says "In theoretical research, there might not be human subject research, but the focus could be on an Indigenous community in some manner. Determining the Indigenous community to engage with will largely depend on the researcher's relationship with community in tandem with the subject and aim of the research project." (p.118). I note, though, that she guards her own ties, as she says "In my research I did not want to exploit community or familial knowledge or have this knowledge subject to dismissal (or appropriation)." so she was selective about what she shared in terms of her own sacred knowledge (p.100). I thought this was interesting. This is  a difficult paradigm that Indigenous researchers face, where sometimes one is working within a cultural or spiritual framework that will never be revealed to the reader. Indigenous people, including Indigenous students, have the right to both freedom of religion and privacy, so it's fair to say "I choose not to share this." But what makes it difficult is if one says "I chose to structure my work in this this way for spiritual reasons, but I will not discuss those spiritual reasons." Going back to the post from yesterday, one of the chapters in Sweeney Windchief and Timothy San Pedro's book briefly touches on this. 

She has a question and answer section. One question is whether or not Indigenous methodologies are really different from western qualitative approaches. She says that "Indigenous methodologies are different from Western methodologies because they are based on Indigenous knowledges and and Indigenous knowledges are different from Western knowledges. Indigenous knowledges require an Indigenous interpretation throughout. Adding an Indigenous 'look' to research that is predominantly Western in its theorizing and methods creates methodological floundering and can lead to tokenism." (p.37). Along the same vein, in a different section she says "We must not totally whitewash Indigenous research by pushing aside Indigenous methodologies or calling research 'Indigenous methodologies' when it is, in actuality, Indigenous research employing a methodology from Western intellectual tradition." (p.113). I actually do have something that I wonder about this. I require an example to articulate this wondering, so I will use Fanon as my example. Fanon drew upon a number of western based methodologies, including psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and existentialism. If one were to create a project which used Fanon's work as the theoretical framework, would it not fit into Kovach's definition? I acknowledge that I'm splitting hairs here. I'm not trying to be contrarian. I ask these types of questions in order to try to clearly understand the parameters of the definition. 

The question and answer section also contains the question of whether or not non-Indigenous researchers or researchers with little community connection can do Indigenous research methodologies, she says "not all research involving Indigenous people requires Indigenous methodologies." (p.38). I note the contrast between this stance, and the stance made by Sweeney Windchief and Timothy San Pedro in the preface to their book, where they say that if you are not using Indigenous methodologies you are perpetuating colonialism and dehumanizing others. Of the two stances, I prefer Kovach's. I'm biased in this because due to the nature of my work over the last ten years or so, I have done inquiries using a variety of methods. In response to the question posed about the identity of the researchers, Kovach also says "it's all about relationships." (p.39). 

I have a lot of notes on this book, but I won't blog all of them. These are the things that caught my attention at this point in time. Likely, I could pick it up five years from now and different things would stand out to me. I might come back to this book at a later time and say more.