Rethinking Collaboration: A Storied Consideration of the Challenges, Joys, and Healing in Relational Scholarship

• In Event: Perspectives, Processes, and Possibilities: Reimagining Co-Authorship for Relational and Anticolonial Futures in Social Studies Scholarship

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this presentation is to—through story—share lessons learned from an ongoing collaboration between an Indigenous secondary educator and a non-Native university researcher. In laying out this methodological case study, this paper offers epistemological critiques to colonial-centric qualitative approaches and proffers concrete ways to engage in collaborative research that centers relationality to facilitate not only research but also researcher introspection, healing, and joy. At the core of this presentation is how these facets of reconfiguring collaborations factor into research processes, including and notions of “authorship.”

Theoretical Framework

Theoretically, this paper is guided by the “Rs”—Responsibility, Relevance, Reciprocity, Representation, Relationality, and Respect—recommended by Indigenous scholars to conduct culturally-appropriate research with Native communities (Windchief & San Pedro, 2019). From this framework, we draw on notions of relationality, which speaks to the inextricable connectedness and interdependence of all relationships (e.g., Elliot-Groves et al., 2020). From this foundation, this paper conceptualizes relational scholarship as an approach that centers relationships as the primary aim of the inquiry.

Modes of Inquiry & Data Sources

The central mode of inquiry is ongoing “Conversation,” which, drawing on Bird-Naytowhow et al. (2019), and as the authors discuss elsewhere (Authors, 2021), is a shift from semi-structured interviewing to engaging in structures of discourse and interaction that are co-created, bi-directional, open to a wide range of topics, and freer flowing. Logistically, Conversation occurs through in-person and video discussions, many of which occur spontaneously or be planned. When in-person, Conversation often occurs alongside trekking in the forest, eating food, or sitting in Author #1’s classroom. Therefore, Conversation is constitutive with place, people, and more-than-human relatives past and present. Thus, Conversation simultaneously functions as a space of data generation, data analysis, reflection, emotionality, relationship building, teaching, and learning.

Results

This paper discusses: 1) “reciprocal mentorship” and 2) “relationship-first” research design. By reciprocal mentorship, we mean a way people within a research team can simultaneously be a mentor and a mentee in relation to each other—that each person has opportunities to contribute, to be both learner and teacher. For this project, we note how critical it was for mentorship to flow from the Indigenous teacher to the non-Native university professor. By relationship-first, we mean the project is emergent from relationships. Such research is evaluated by how well it brings about relationality among participants, the research team, the place, the more-than-human relations, and so on. Relationship-first also prioritizes research processes, which, according to Smith (2012), are “far more important” than research products when it comes to research with Indigenous Peoples” (p. 130).

Significance

This work offers others interested in collaborative work epistemological and concrete suggestions for how to honor values of relationship and reciprocity. Moreover, we see the value of this work as supporting others: a) to make deeper connections to the underlying values of their engagement in scholarship; b) to be in better relationship with the human and more-than-humans who comprise the circles of their scholarship, and c) to live a more fulfilling, free “worklife.”

Authors

• Nicholas Rink, Buffalo Hide Academy

• Robert Petrone, University of Missouri