Collaborative Portraits: Extending Indigenous Storytelling Research Practices Beyond Text

• In Event: Centering Relationality & Expanding Knowledge through Artistic Practice: Transdisciplinary Education Research and Arts Methodologies for Change

Abstract

This paper explores the use of a new arts-based research methodology centered on the creation of collaborative portraits that was developed as part of a study on the experiences of Indigenous higher education leaders who lead indigenization efforts at their respective universities. Drawing from Indigenous research methodologies, particularly Indigenous storywork (Archibald, 2008) as well as portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis, 1997) which encourages creativity in research, collaborative portraits are a way to retell the stories that are shared during the research process. Collaborative portraits offer a way for research partners and participants to see themselves reflected in the work beyond the text. It also creates space for participants to have their identities, communities present in the work while preserving anonymity.
The creation of collaborative portraits as a part of the research process for education studies is grounded in Indigenous approaches to research that center on reciprocity, respect and relationality. Indigenous epistemologies are predicated on the idea that knowledge is created and recreated, not predetermined and fixed. This collaborative (re)creation happens in relation: “Indigenous epistemology has systems of knowledge built upon relationships between things, rather than on the thing itself” (S. Wilson, 2008, p. 74). Knowledge is fundamentally relational; it is a project of creation between individuals and communities, human and more than human (Bang & Marin, 2015; Cajete, 2000; Kovach, 2021; Lees & Bang, 2023). Knowledge cannot stand alone from relationships and is created and recreated through intergenerational stories, experiences, and understandings that are shaped by relationships.
The creation of collaborative portraits stemmed from a research project involving nine Indigenous senior leaders in Canadian universities. Since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (2015) final report which included Calls to Action specifically directed to learning institutions, universities have responded by creating Indigenous senior leadership positions. The nine leaders in this project held senior leadership positions relating to indigenization and reconciliation. Indigenization, a process of institutional transformation that seeks to reflect Indigenous ways of being and knowing at every level and in each process of the university is reliant on the knowledge and experiences of Indigenous senior leaders. The collaborative portraits were created in partnership with an Indigenous visual artist named Storm Angeconeb. The nine portraits were created based upon information shared during a series of four storytelling rounds between storyteller and listener. There are many ways to tell a story. Stories surrounding indigenization are complex involving overlapping and interconnected personal and institutional narratives as well as relationships between leaders and Indigenous teachings anchored in relation to land, family and community that inform indigenization practices.This project used collaborative portraits as a way to center relationships that are often excluded from institutional narratives but are essential to the core of indigenization.
As indigenization strategies continue to expand across educational institutions, there is increasing scholarly attention focused on those initiatives. Indigenization requires not only a change in what educational institutions do but how they do it. Collaborative portraiture offers a way to transform how educational research is conducted, analyzed and retold.

Author

• Jarita Greyeyes, McMaster University