Toward Decolonizing the Research Process: Exposing Tensions Through Critical Autoethnography

• In Event: 53.081 - Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: 53.081-4 - Positionality on Trial: Examining Global Tensions of Privilege While Performing Humanizing Research With Minoritized Populations

Abstract

As Vine Deloria, Jr. (1992) observed, “For most of the five centuries [of U.S. colonization], whites have had unrestricted power to describe Indians in any way they chose” (p. 398). Given the historical trends of dehumanizing research in Native America, the research process is argued to be far more important than the outcome (Smith, 2012). In an effort to address the complexities that underlie research between Non-Natives and Native communities, I examine my own research process integrating into two Indigenous language communities as a Non-Native researcher and as a learner of the Omaha and Ho-Chunk languages.

Researchers working with and for Indigenous peoples should seek “culturally congruent research methodologies” (Chew, et al., 2015); hence, I draw on the five tenets of Critical Indigenous Research Methodologies: relationships, responsibility, respect, reciprocity and accountability (Brayboy, et al., 2012). As Howard (2006) observes, “Whites often speak of ‘giving voice’ to marginalized groups, as if their voice is ours to give” (p. 66, emphasis in the original). For these reasons, a guiding assumption within this manuscript is that I cannot speak for members of these Indigenous language communities. Toyosaki and Pensoneau-Conway (2013) describe the ‘doing’ of autoethnography as the praxis of social justice. Therefore, I conducted a critical autoethnography (Boylorn & Orbe, 2014) over my experience as a researcher in this sociopolitical context, detailing (1) the initial proposed plan to work with middle and high school students as co-researchers in a YPAR project for “sociolinguistic justice” (Bucholtz, et al., 2014) and (2) the process of obtaining ethical clearance. Data were collected in the form of archival materials, self-reflection, coursework, self-analysis, dialogical style interviews, and voice memos.

Stemming from this critical autoethnography, I call for ongoing critical dialogue between tribally affiliated IRBs and the IRBs from larger research institutions, in order to educate one another about culturally congruent research methods. This was particularly relevant to my study, which featured two neighboring groups with two very different research protocols. In addition, ongoing critical dialogue needs to continue surrounding research conducted with and for Indigenous communities. As a system that was originally designed for medical research (Bosk & deVries, 2004; Goode, 2015), ethical procedures to prevent harm to human subjects may be incompatible for certain types of social/behavioral research studies, particularly collaborative research. The difficulty and inefficiency of gaining approval for my own YPAR study provides testament lending to the factors that contribute to why there is such a large gap in the literature. Unmistakably, I support the goals of our institutional ethics committees that are in place to prevent the harmful research done in the past (Goode, 2015). However, if we are to move towards decolonizing the research process, more is necessary. We should strive to ensure that institutional ethics support the kind of “community-driven, capacity-building, empowering research that Indigenous communities, Indigenous scholars, and non-Indigenous scholar allies are demanding becomes the norm” (Steigman & Castledon, 2014, p. 4). Critical dialogue needs to continue in order to enable these transformative research processes in education, not disable them.

Author

• Kristine Sudbeck, Nebraska Indian Community College