Indigenous methodology books

 It's hard to believe it's been a month since I last posted. Time flies. During this strange time between submitting my dissertation and waiting for my defense, I have been reconnecting with friends that I have not talked to in a while. This is a strange time. I am no longer writing. But I need to stay in a headspace where I am thinking about my writing. I feel as though I am in a state of suspended animation. 

I relied on books a great deal during my doctoral work. I really like the meatiness of single author scholarly books. And collections created with intention. I like to annotate my books, write ideas in the front pages, add post it notes, and dog ear them. My favourite thing to do, though, is to sort them into piles on the floor. More than once during my doctoral work, I'd start my day by sitting on the floor and sorting and re-sorting my books into little piles, creating a little nest of ideas for myself. Once they are in piles sometimes I sort each pile according to year or according to relevance. It's like a little game. And then, I admire my arrangement. 

I've been slowly emerging from my writing phase. I took the books off the floor. Before they go back onto my bookshelf, I want to blog my favorite piles. When I finished my MA, I recall going through a phase where I wanted to blog books I had read. I wanted to catalogue them for future reference, and I typed out a lot of notes so that I could easily cite them in the future. It was pretty chaotic. It did prove to be a little bit useful when it came time to do my PhD. Not as much as I thought it would be, though. 

This time around, I am not going to blog each book extensively. Instead, I am just going to mention books that made an impact on me with a few notes. 

I thought about summarizing each book. But when I went back and looked at my notes, they didn't really lend themselves to a summary. My notes are related to what caught my attention, and what caught my attention was pretty narrow, because I was looking for connections with Indigenous science fiction and hermeneutics. So my notes don't really support the task of creating a summary, and I don't have the want to undertake the work of summarizing at this time, and so I am not going to provide summaries. 

Also, I want to note that this is not an attempt to be an exhaustive list of Indigenous methodology books. I read Research is Ceremony during my MA, and as I wanted to cover new-to-me ground for my PhD, I didn't re-read it for my PhD, so that is a notable absence. Another notable absence is Peter Cole's book. I have it, I read it, and it made an impression on me. But the little people took it. I trust it will return eventually. I also want to note that there are a lot of Indigenous education books which speak to Indigenous methodology. Even though this collection is on books that are primarily focused on Indigenous methodology, there are a lot of books in Indigenous education which are also helpful in illuminating the idea of Indigenous methodology.

The first book of mention is Jo-Anne Archibald's 2008 Indigenous Storywork. I think that the first time I read this, I was waiting for the stories. But this book is not sharing the research product - the stories gathered in her project. Rather, it is sharing the thought that went into the research process. This book has stood the test of time. In fact, as time goes on, I think it only becomes more impressive because of the fact that people have taken up the ideas of storywork in their own ways over time. The book can be used in two ways. First, some people use the book as a guide for their own work. Second, some people are inspired by the way that Archibald created something which reflects her own orientations to the world, and use it as inspiration to create their own way of engaging in research. I hear so many people talk about how this book inspired them, and so my respect for this work only grows over time. I thought it was interesting on page 36 when she asked herself "Was I doing anything different from earlier 'outsider' academics who created a legacy of mistrust among First Nations concerning academic research?" and when she reflected on the fact that "Even though I am a First Nations person and have some initial understandings about various First Nations cultures, I became like an outsider when I began to use the 'tools' of literacy to record my research observations and reflections about the oral traditions and practices through fieldnotes and now in this book..." Working with her mentors helped her resolve these concerns in part. But she also states on page 42 "I also want to transform my anxiety into positive action and begin to make systemic change so that learning institutions such as schools, colleges, and universities appropriately recognize and provide compensation for he knowledge expertise of Elders and cultural teachers." 

The second book is Margaret Kovach's 2009 Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts. I actually have a more recent version of this, so I'm not going to say much about this edition, except to say that it was the beginning of something bigger. And as this book is epic, I am going to write a separate post about it. 

The next book is John Borrow's 2010 book Drawing Out Law: A Spirit's Guide. What I love most about this book is that it isn't trying to fit into a western or scholarly paradigm. It does not justify itself. It just is. In this book, based on Anishinaabe tradition, he uses his dreams to create ideagrams/scrolls, and meditates on the images. He consults with his family and reflects on his experiences with scholarship, life, and the law. He engages in some imaginative storytelling. And that's the book. As a whole, it is an extremely interesting commentary on politics in Canada. Theoretically someone could recreate his method if they wanted. I haven't seen people try to do so in scholarship. I don't know that I would want to try to recreate his method. But I think that the fact that he took elements of his own Anishinaabe knowledge traditions (dreams, stories, creating these drawing and meditating on their meaning) and created a scholarly work out of those traditions is impressive. I think it's an assertion of intellectual sovereignty to just do what you want to do. 

The next book is Kathleen E. Absolon's 2011 Kaandossiwin: How We Come to Know. In this book, the author studied the methodologies of other Indigenous researchers by examining their work and having conversations with them. Her book is based off of her petal flower, which is her wholistic framework. I think her flower is cool. Overall, I really liked her voice. I felt like she was really accepting of other's work. Early in my doctoral work, someone told me that I had to choose the right methodology, or no one would take me seriously. I found that that advice really constrained my creativity, and led from a place of fear. While I'm sure the comment was meant to be supportive, it actually took me awhile to recover from that comment. This book helped me recover from this comment, because it helped me see that rather than approaching methodology from a place of fear, it is possible for Indigenous researchers to act on their inner knowing of what they think the right way is to proceed, and it affirmed for me that there are many ways to be Indigenous within academia. We don't all have to do things the same way, and there is no "right" methodology. In fact, many Indigenous scholars do not use something that already exists, they create a methodology that is right for them. For me, this book contained courageous role models. It was also cool, reading this book more than ten years after it was published, to see how many of the names in this book are familiar because they have done a lot of great work in academia since this book was published. 

The next book is Linda Tuhiwai Smith's 2012 Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and  Indigenous Peoples, Second Edition. I sometimes catch myself in my mind use the terms "decolonizing methodologies" and "Indigenous methodologies" interchangeably. In the foreword, Smith says "Decolonizing methodologies hinted at the possibility of Indigenous research methodologies but did not fully explore these. In recent years much more is being published that explicitly focuses on indigenous research methodologies, indigenous knowledge and indigenous practices and, increasingly these studies are written by indigenous scholars." (p.xiii). In the introduction, she talks about the complexities of being an indigenous researcher, both in terms of relationship with the academy (which assumes that as one is western educated, they can't speak from a place of authenticity) and with the community (in terms of avoiding replicating the harm of colonial modes of research and also grappling with being an outsider). She concludes the introduction by stating that this book is written specifically with indigenous researchers in mind. I love this because I am so rarely the target audience. The book goes on to document the history of colonial research and then imagine how Indigenous researchers might do research differently. I particularly like the section on twenty five Indigenous projects. In the introduction, she says this should not be read as a how to guide, but rather "a series of accounts and guidelines which map a wide range of research-related issues." (p.9). I think that's important to note, because part of the colonial mode of being is to point to a book as an authority and say "this authoritative person says this is what we ought to do, and so this is what you ought to do." If one were to take her book, and say that all Indigenous people should adhere to it, and turn it into a narrow set of rules, then that would be a re-enactment of colonialism. This is an important point, because the book does come from a very specific academic tradition - critical theory. That is the home that she has found for this work inside of the university, and certainly critical theory has been a good vehicle for bringing  Indigenous thought into the academy. However, each Indigenous scholar ought to have freedom and choice in deciding whether or not they want to be critical theorists, and also in deciding whether or not critical theory is the correct choice for each project. 

The next book is Jo-ann Archibald Q'um Q'um Xiiem, Jenny Bol Jun Lee-Morgan, and Jason De Santolo's 2019 book Decolonizing Research: Indigenous Storywork as Methodology. I think this book is really cool because it brings together Indigenous people from three continents, and they draw on Jo-ann Archibald's storywork as inspiration for their work. It also has a forward written by Linda Tuhiwai Smith. The editors have a foreword, and then the chapters are by various contributors. What is cool is that the first four chapters are Archibald's students who used her work to generate their own research. I think it speaks to the testament of her mentorship that just over ten years after publishing her book, a number of others are publishing research based off of her work. The introduction is interesting. In the 2008 Storywork book, Linda Smith is cited, but critical theorists like Fannon, Friere, and Said are not. The first time that I read the 2008 book, my first impression was not that it sprang out of critical theory. Rather, it felt like it was grounded within community based knowledge, and also informed by the work of other Indigenous people engaging in story. I'm not saying it was incongruent with critical theory, just that it didn't feel like it tightly adhered to critical theory, but not particularly driven by or oriented towards critical theory. And I admire the way that the book emphasizes voices Indigenous to this region. What makes the introduction to this book interesting is that it draws some clear lines to connect Archibald's work with Smith's work. The first part of the introduction summarizes storywork, and the second part summarizes Indigenous research as decolonization. When reading the chapter, I get the impression that the goal of the chapter was not to distinguish Indigenous research from decolonizing research, but rather to place Indigenous research inside of decolonizing research. For example, "Indigenous storywork may be considered a genre of decolonizing methodologies," (p.7). It does draw some very clear lines in the sand with respect to what is and is not Indigenous research. For example, "No matter how much knowledge (or qualification) a person accumulates, if the knowledge, research, or stories do not reach the collective consciousness of the wider group, then the person is failing to act in an Indigenous manner. Decolonizing research is not merely ethical research in terms of the requirements of the academy of institutions' more importantly it meets the criteria set by our own communities, who will often sanction the integrity and credibility of the story using their own measures." (p.7). And "Linda Tuhiwai Smith emphasizes, we can only make meaning within the community and not in the four walls of the tiered lecture theatre," (p.11). Thus, if one were to adhere to the criteria set out in this chapter, participatory action methodologies would be required. This pre-emptively rules out the idea that conceptual work or modes such as literary analysis would meet the definition. If one is to stay true to this concept, Indigenous research involves Indigenous people, plural, not one Indigenous person carrying out an individual inquiry. I'd be interested to see more work developed around what rigor means and how it is documented/demonstrated if one is to adhere to this concept that community members are the ones who determine the credibility of the research. I'd also be curious to know, when people employ this logic within university based research, do they have two stages for the ethics board. The first stage, to engage the community in co-developing the research design, and the second stage to get approval on the co-developed research design? The other question that I have, is whether or not there are ever conflicts where the community wants a specific research design, and the ethics board says no. If so, at that point, does the ethics board become a form of discipline to which communities must adhere to? 

The next book is Robin Starr Minthorn and Heather J. Shotton's 2019 book Reclaiming Indigenous Research in Higher Education. It begins with a foreword by Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, who asks "can a Native person engage in research and still be Native?" Then, he goes on to say "Of course it bears noting that Native people have always been researchers. As such, we have always had ideas about the purposes and role of research." (p.x). This is a notable difference from Smith's framing, where research is something that is done by the academy, and the roots of research lie outside of Indigenous communities. In Smith's framing, research came along with colonialism, as a tool of colonialism, which now must be transformed into something decolonial. Brayboy's framing is that we have always been researchers, and now we bring our modes of researching into the academy. The introduction, written by the editors, explains that a group of colleagues who created their own Indigenous space within a larger academic organization came together to write this book. I think it's cool when people who already have social connections come together with a specific vision for a project. They provide a genealogy of Indigenous methodologies and frameworks (Devon Mihesuah and Shawn Wilson, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, Shawn Wilson, Margaret Kovach, Oliverira and Wright). The introduction chapter is very much focused on the challenges that Indigenous scholars face and how they navigate those challenges. A key point is that "What cannot be overlooked is that Indigenous research methodologies include an ancestry that is embodied within the researcher." (p.15). This is actually a significant statement, because I think that there is not yet consensus on the idea of whether or not non-Indigenous people can do Indigenous research. These editors have taken a position - the Indigenous identity of the researcher is integral to the definition of Indigenous research. The chapters that follow include research by Indigenous researchers on different aspects of post-secondary such as Indigenous student leadership and Indigenous student funding. Overall, the focus is very much inward looking, in that it does not look outwards into Indigenous communities. Rather, it looks inwards towards experiences of Indigenous people within universities, with an eye towards what universities can do differently to support Indigenous students. There is a wide range of methodologies used, including some chapters which focus on statistical analysis. The editors have written an excellent conclusion to end the book. They state "there is not a singular approach to Indigenous Methodologies. As the authors in this book have demonstrated, Indigenous Methodologies provide us the space to approach our research from our own frameworks and to privilege our own Indigenous and tribal epistemologies." (p.208). They also state that "there are different approaches to applying Indigenous Methodologies in higher education research, but they're all distinct and beautiful in their own ways." (p.209). They recommend that both Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars have a responsibility to support future Indigenous scholars, and "to respect the different types of work emerging from our future Indigenous scholars." (p.210). I really like this, because it would be oppressive if we were to say to future generations "there is only one right way to do things, and it is the way that we have done things." Letting future generations play and experiment and try to out new things is important, because maybe they will do cool things that we have never dreamt of. There is something about this book which makes it feel different from the previous books. I'm not sure what it is and its neither good nor bad. I felt supported by this book. 

The next book is Sweeney Windchief and Timothy San Pedro's 2019 Applying Indigenous Research Methods: Storying with Peoples and Communities. It contains a forward by series editors Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. In the preface. According to Tuck and Yang, what makes Indigenous research methods distinct is relational accountability (p.xii). "Creating and maintaining respectful and mutually beneficial relationships between researchers and Indigenous communities (even when the researcher comes from the community) is of utmost importance, in part because Indigenous peoples have sometimes been mistreated and misled by academic researchers, both in the distant and recent past." (p.xii). Again I ponder, does this mean that individual conceptual works or literary analysis projects do not fall under the scope of Indigenous research methods? Tuck and Yang assert that Indigenous Research Methods do not fall under critical race theory, and that Indigenous worldviews and decolonizing theory should be treated as "distinct philosophical traditions." (p.xii). I am not sure how much I agree with this. I think that decolonizing theory is in the same general realm (critical theory) as critical race theory. I think of them as similar but not the same - like broccoli and cauliflower. I'm not sure what that benefit is of making this distinction, other than to try to safeguard decolonizing methodology from the critical race theory backlash. I think Indigenous worldviews are much larger than what exists in scholarship or the academy, let alone any single school of thought, so I have no qualms about saying that it is broader and distinct from critical race theory. The preface of the book is written by the editors. One of the editors is of European and Filipino ancestry but was raised in an Indigenous community who told him that he is FilipIndian. The fact that he is co-editing an Indigenous Research Methods book implicitly answers the question "can non-Indigenous people do Indigenous Research Methods?" The preface says "When Indigenous methodologies are absent in Indigenous research, the results - the interpretation itself and dissemination of that interpretation - serves as a colonial tool of erasure that manifests in dehumanizing ways." (p.xviii). It's worth unpacking a few things here. First, not all Indigenous research uses Indigenous methodologies. Second, according to the authors, if you don't use Indigenous Methodologies (as defined in this book), you are perpetuating colonialism and dehumanizing others. I'm uncomfortable with the forcefulness of that claim. The editors also state that "Indigenous methods call for active participation and contribution to Indigenous community, culture, language, and social practice, through story." (p.xviii). The preface explains that this is a collection of chapters which were written by researchers who were instructed to yarn - that is, to talk together about how they apply Indigenous Research Methods. These conversations between researchers serve to illustrate and explain what Indigenous Research Methods are. Overall, I think the collection is great. My favourite chapter is one which talks about how to do culturally sustaining education in a context where, due to protocols limiting the dissemination of Indigenous knowledge beyond specific people, the educator is not able to culturally infuse all Indigenous knowledge for that community into the curriculum. Overall I thought this was an interesting read. And it is particularly interesting because of the multiple expressions of foundational Indigenous Methodology folks such as Smith, Archibald, Kovach, and Wilson. It demonstrates the dynamic nature of Indigenous methodologies. 

So, that's a quick survey of some of the Indigenous methodology books that I read. As my dissertation did not include working with Indigenous people (it involved me sitting by myself with books) - I actually did not feel comfortable calling my work Indigenous methodology, because according to many of these books, the participation of Indigenous people (plural) is integral to the definition. I recognize that in the context of unequal power relations, it is strategically beneficial to Indigenous people to uphold this definition. And I have no misgivings about saying "this specific project does not adhere to definitions of Indigenous Research Methodology that I have encountered." It is an ethical stance which I choose to take, and just because I didn't use Indigenous Research Methodologies for one project, does not mean that I will never use them. I feel good about my decision. That being said, reading about Indigenous Research Methodologies enhanced how I approached my own conceptual work.