Indigenous Pathways in a Doctoral Degree: Creating Lived Methodologies Centered in Community

Session Type: Workshop

Abstract

This was supposed to be an impossible future - to be an Indigenous woman doctoral student. Academia creates competitive and individualistic environments where relationships and community are a means to an end. Our methodologies disrupt these practices. We enact Cherokee, Choctaw, and Diné futurities by engaging with one another through story, kinship, laughter, tears, and writing. In this session, we share how we realize Indigenous futurity by (re)mapping the doctoral process as a collective journey centering community and intertwining knowledge, scholarship, and research that represents our whole selves as Indigenous sister scholars. We will then share our lessons learned about honoring and mapping your academic ancestors, making connections, and defining relationships in scholarship as Indigenous scholars.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Indigenous Peoples of the Americas

Chair

• Ashley Herndon, University of Oklahoma

Papers

• Cherokee Stories and Methodologies in Addressing Historical Trauma in Education - Shelby White, University of Oklahoma

• Developing My Own Place Based Consciousness: Indigenizing Higher Education Through a Doctoral Journey - Tiffani Kelly, University of Oklahoma

• Becoming a Beauty Way Researcher: Living a Methodology of Hózhó - Sarena Gray, University of Oklahoma