Ask the Horses: Considerations for Indigenous Animal Methodology

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

This project intends to address a gap in Indigenous methodological literature, that is, the significance of nonhuman animal agents, knowers, and participants in research. The book project confronts anthropocentric and settler colonial foundations and instead centers Indigenous human/nonhuman relations within education and research paradigms. Using Indigenous story work, the text considers concepts of relationality, anthropocentrism, and ethics in research. The author uses her own stories with her horse relations to narrate encounters and tensions with more than human knowers. The text will highlight theoretical considerations relevant for Indigenous research from the fields of equine facilitated learning, multispecies ethnography, and critical animal studies describing some possible futures of Indigenous research that consider human/nonhuman members of Native Nations.

Author

• Kelsey Dayle John, University of Arizona