Indigenizing Evidence and Inference in Pursuit of Education for Being

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: Images of Reason and Inference in Qualitative Research: Posthumanist Innovations

Abstract

American Indian People do not content themselves with simple preachments of this truth, but through the sacred power of utterance they seek to shape and mold, to direct and determine, the forces that surround and govern human life and the life of all related things.
Paula Gunn Allen, 1986, p. 55-56

Objectives: This paper is a reflection on the methodological innovation required by a study that sought to identify the preparation teachers needed in order to Indigenize their curriculum and pedagogy. Indigenizing curriculum is a complicated topic (Battiste, 2019; Madden, 2015; Merculieff & Roderick, 2015), but suffice it to say that I defined it as a type of teaching that fosters modes of being that are more than specific types of knowing. These modes of being can be described as relational, reciprocally accountable, respectful, and abundant with possible realities (Wilson, 2008).

An effort to document knowledge that enables teachers to move beyond the practice of simply conveying knowledge involved a performative contradiction. An alternative was needed to a model of research whose sole purpose was representing a phenomenon as a means of guiding others to a desired practice. Something more performative was needed. This paper reports on my effort to find that alternative—to engage in research on Indigenized teaching in a manner that was itself Indigenized.

Theoretical Framework: My work on this project was informed by Bryan Brayboy’s (2005) Tribal Critical Race Theory and its emphasis on stories. Brayboy writes:

Stories are not just separate from theory; they make up theory. As in the opening vignette, stories serve as a way to orient oneself and others toward the world and life… Stories are moral tools with psychological implications, in that they remind individuals of particular ways of being.

According to Brayboy, stories are data, but they are much more than data as those terms are usually understood. Stories have an agency of their own and generate felt relations in those that truly hear them (Garroutte & Westcott, 2013). They invite us to a more wholistic relation with a situation. I was persuaded by Brayboy that this facilitation of felt relation is not only a literary quality, but also a methodological practice that has the capacity to decolonize traditional academic conceptions of reason and authoritative knowledge.

Modes of Inquiry & Data Sources: This paper is primarily conceptual and focuses on methodological considerations encountered in the design of the study on Indigenizing education. That being said, the paper will draw examples and illustrations from the year-long collaborative study undertaken with a group of Indigenous teachers.

Substantiated Conclusions and Scholarly Significance: The paper reports in detail on the collaborative narrative inquiry approach I ultimately employed, the effects on the teachers, and on myself. The paper will not claim that this research practice fully decolonized our research process or that such a thing is even possible. It will however describe an earnest effort to resist the way settler colonial conceptions of reason, rationality, and knowledge can narrow both our research and educational ambitions.

Author

• Jimmy Snyder, University of Oregon