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From Clouds to Streams: A Process-Oriented Exploration of Indigenous Research
Get PDFIndigenous research seeks to bring worldview and relationality1 to the forefront of our work. While metaphor and imagery are widely encouraged within Indigenous storytelling,2 the concept is relatively novel within academic circles. This process-oriented presentation draws on a powerful metaphor describing the untold phases of Indigenous research: time spent looking to the clouds, dancing for rain, and wading into streams.
In this offering, we will explore the natural cycle of water and its kinship to an Indigenized research process. Symbolically, water is a central force in Indigenous worldviews and an essential element of life. This symbol translates seamlessly to describe aspects involved in our research processes, including the collective mind and sacred knowledge, the role of water in sharing, cleansing, healing, and sustaining, and its place in renewal, nourishment, growth, and integration.
This exploration provides a strong rationale for the inherent value of attending carefully to the research process as equal to its outcomes. This presentation will also re-assert the crucial inclusion of metaphor and storytelling in Indigenized academic research and their immense potential for knowledge transmission within the academy and the community.
“From Clouds to Streams: A Process-Oriented Exploration of Indigenous Research” lends itself fluidly to each of the proposed symposium themes of Centering Indigenous Paradigms, Knowledges, and Research Practices; Renewing & Reimagining Knowledge Transmission: Past, Present, Future; Nurturing the Relationship between Community and Research; and Embodying & Actioning Interventions through Indigenous Research.
1 Shawn Wilson. Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. (Blackpoint: Fernwood Publishing, 2008), 84-96.
2 Jo-ann et Archibald et al., eds. Decolonizing Research: Indigenous Storywork as Methodology. (London: Zed Books Ltd., 2019), 1-13.
Indigenous Storywork to Witness Indigenous Students’ Experiences with Campus Recovery Support Services
Get PDFGuided by a group-based Indigenous storywork methodology, this study will explore the narratives Indigenous students construct of their experiences accessing and participating in addiction recovery support services on post-secondary campuses. The main objective is to understand what they found helpful and unhelpful in these services and to explore their beliefs and experiences regarding culturally responsive programming. By giving voice to the stories of Indigenous students with lived experiences, this study hopes to develop a set of recommendations that will inform future university policies and practices that will best support Indigenous students in recovery which is imperative to their academic success
Unravelling Métis Theory and Methodology: Embodying Wahkootowin in Indigenous Play
Get PDFKovach4 states “Articulating theory can feel like unravelling a tightly tangled knot” (p. 181). As a beader, I know all too well the experience of untangling knots. Nevertheless, determining Métis theory in the context of my research was one of the toughest knots I have ever tried to unravel. In this presentation, I shared my journey of unravelling, going from a mishmash of Indigenous models and approaches, to sifting through countless readings, to finally recognizing wahkootowin in my urban community and understanding it within the context of play. Wahkootowin is a Cree-based word, long used by Métis people, that can be translated to relationships/relations or kinship, extending to the whole of creation, past, present, and future. Within this concept lie the virtues, values, principles, and laws that guide, strengthen, and foster our relationships. Wahkootowin guides the way we conduct ourselves and treat one another, and therefore can be equated to the laws of relational accountability. Wahkootowin, then, became the methodology and axiology of my thesis work. The theories within guide my research choices, while my research question aims to decolonize spaces in academia and recreation. I believe that decolonizing spaces is one way in which we contribute to the wellbeing of our relations, therefore upholding wahkootowin. In my research I also seek to better understand how colonization has impacted Indigenous peoples’ experiences of play across generations, the play experiences available to us, and how we seek to play today. My research seeks to honor Indigenous ways of knowing and being, and strives to amplify self-determining conceptualizations of “play” in an effort to encourage those that work with Indigenous peoples to make space for Indigenous play.
4 Kovach, M. (2021). Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts (Second ed.). University of Toronto Press
At the Heart of the Stories: A Process of Bringing Forward Indigenous Heart Work/Pedagogies
Get PDFThe pathways to enlightening the heart work of the Indigenous early childhood educators (ECEs) in northern Ontario First Nation communities are connected to their local stories and cultural knowledge and inspired by personal work and relationships, which have been an experiential process(es) with Indigenous ECEs. The work is within the Storywork methodologies of reciprocity, lifelong engagement with knowledges, sharing new knowledges, relationality, and incorporating many stories.7 The presentation’s relevance is connected to the pathways between communities and research on Indigenous people’s lived experiences through the impacts of colonial history in Canada. Shirley (2017) speaks to how “Cultivating the heart through Indigenous epistemological aspects is necessary when educators teach into the risks by exposing the oppressive present-day conditions linked to colonialism” (p. 167).8 Indigenous heart knowing/teaching has been shared through stories and experiences by Elders, educators, children, and families. The work is grounded in critical and Indigenous pedagogies during the presentation with a view of place as “an expression of culture that represents the outcome of human choices and decisions” (Gruenewald, 2003b, p. 627), and that reflects place-conscious educational theory (Gruenewald, 2003b, p. 627), a multidisciplinary and critical pedagogy.9
7 Archibald, J., & Parent, A. (2019). Hands back, hands forward for Indigenous storywork as methodology. In S. Windchief, & T. San Pedro (Eds.), (pp. 3-20) Routledge.
8 Shirley, V. J. (2017). Indigenous Social Justice Pedagogy: Teaching into the Risks and Cultivating the Heart. Critical Questions in Education, 8(2), 163–177.
9 Gruenewald, D.A. (2003a). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Educational Researcher 32(4), 3–12; Gruenewald, D.A. (2003b). Foundations of place: A multidisciplinary framework for place-conscious education. American Educational Research Journal, 40(3), 619–654
Tying the Liis: The Connection of the Haida to Ancestral Belongings in Museums
Get PDFIn Haida culture, we have a concept of an invisible liis (string). It ties us to our mothers and all the mothers before her. It also ties us to Haida Gwaii. I believe there is a liis connecting us to our Ancestors’ 12,000 belongings in museums. My research goal is to strengthen the liis connecting us to our Haida belongings. I aim to tell the story of Haida museology, to support the Haida control and return of Haida belongings; and to show the Haida way of bringing reconciliation to the heritage sector.
I will combine my traditional practice with my academic learning. My research is situated in yahgudang (respect) ḵangang (responsibility) yahk’ii (to tell the truth) and tla yahda (to make things right). I use a blended theoretical and action-based approach, including grounded theory, auto-ethnography, and participatory action, to conduct qualitative community-based interviews, literature review, and archival research in a Haida way.
The Haida community not only guides my research but is actively involved in my research journey. It is important to me that they feel involved and see and hear themselves in my research.
I call upon Jaad ahl K’iiganaa (Story Woman) to bring stories and experiences to life in my dissertation. I aim for my research to be meaningful and accessible for the Haida and Indigenous communities and for academic and museum audiences.
I honour the Haida community and our Kuniisii (Ancestors) by telling our story
