The Researcher as the Research Method: Dialect of Western and Indigenous Ways of Knowing

• In Event: T’aała’i Diidleeł (We Become One): Toward a Collective and Ceremonial Praxis of Indigenous Decolonizing Scholarship

Abstract

(1) The purpose of this paper is to map a researcher’s voyage in locating a research methodology while enrolled in an indigenous research methods graduate course at a Midwest university. The author attempts to reflect on the struggles and transformations resulting from engaging in an indigenous centered learning context. In this respect, the author reflects on limitations of Western research methods and offers personal insights into the healing and regenerative potential of Indigenous research methods. (2) Theoretically the author speaks to the significance of the notion of ‘researcher as the research method’ within an indigenous learning protocol. This involves reflecting on the personal voyage taken through indigenous ways of knowing that resulted in a critical understanding of the colonized self, the role of Western hierarchies in dehumanizing the Self and the potential of indigenous learning approaches in transforming and restoring balance (otherwise known as hózhó). This becomes an important reflective task to undertake for those seeking a decolonizing agenda in the sense that “indigenous peoples become the researchers and not merely the researched”, which in turn transforms the activity of research, by allowing researchers to frame questions in a different manner, call for a reordering (ranking) of priorities, call that researchers examine ‘problems’ under a new light, and more importantly requires that one participate as a researcher on different terms” (Smith, 1999, p.193). ­(4) To illustrate the transformations experienced as a result of engagement within a decolonizing space the author reflects on journal entries and a collage created while a student participant in “Indigenous Learning and Decolonizing Methodologies” (AIS 490) course at a Midwest university. Through an interpretive lens, the author reflects on the merits of indigenous learning approaches to raise critical awareness of the effects of colonization on the indigenous self and contemplates the transformative potential in employing a decolonizing method. The author explains how through the notion of ‘researcher as the method’, he raised consciousness of how colonization ignored and muted aspects of the self that needed to be restored before an indigenous learning protocol grounded in hózhó could be undertaken. (5) This reflection argues that Western methods are limited in their capacity to regenerate Indigenous scholars and that a more humanizing and healthy approach for indigenous students can be forged within a decolonized space for learning. (6) Through the engagement of the dialect between colonization and decolonization, educators, communities and policymakers have the opportunity to gain insight into how oppressive structures suppress important aspects of indigenous students which are central in promoting greater ‘hózhó’ learning outcomes.

Bibliography

Emerson, L. W. (2003). HÓZHÓ NÁHÁZDLÍÍ' : towards a practice of Diné decolonization. Ph.D, Claremont Graduate University and San Diego State University.

Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies : research and indigenous peoples. London ; New York Dunedin New York: Zed Books ; University of Otago Press; distributed in the USA exclusively by St Martin's Press.

Author

• Gerardo Diaz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign