Indigenous Studies

Applying Indigenous Research Methods focuses on the question of "How" Indigenous Research Methodologies (IRMs)can be used and taught across Indigenous studies and education. In this collection, Indigenous scholars address the importance of IRMs in their own scholarship, while focusing conversations on the application with others. Each chapter is co-authored to model methods rooted in the sharing of stories to strengthen relationships, such as yarning, storywork, and others. The chapters offer a wealth of specific examples, as told by researchers about their research methods in conversation with other scholars, teachers, and community members. Applying Indigenous Research Methods is an interdisciplinary showcase of the ways IRMs can enhance scholarship in fields including education, Indigenous studies, settler colonial studies, social work, qualitative methodologies, and beyond.

Indigenous methodologies have been silenced and obscured by the Western scientific means of knowledge production. In a challenge to this colonialist rejection of Indigenous knowledge, Anishinaabe researcher Kathleen Absolon examines the academic work of fourteen Indigenous scholars who utilize Indigenous worldviews in their search for knowing. Through an examination not only of their work but also of their experience in producing that work, "Kaandossiwin" describes how Indigenous researchers re-theorize and re-create methodologies. Understanding Indigenous methodologies as guided by Indigenous paradigms, worldviews, principles, processes and contexts, Absolon argues that they are wholistic, relational, inter-relational and interdependent with Indigenous philosophies, beliefs and ways of life. In exploring the ways Indigenous researchers use Indigenous methodologies within mainstream academia, "Kaandossiwin" renders these methods visible and helps to guard other ways of knowing from colonial repression.

Research as Resistance brings together the theory and practice of anti-oppressive approaches to social science research. Emphasizing meaningful involvement of research subjects in the research processes and critical reflexivity, this book describes both theoretical foundations and practical applications of socially just research. The book covers some of the ontological and epistemological considerations involved in such research, including researcher positionality, and offers examples across a range of methodologies, including storytelling and Indigenous research. This is a unique text in that it is firmly anchored in the Canadian context, and the featured researchers occupy marginalized locations.

Responding to increased emphasis in the classroom and the field on exposing students to diverse epistemologies, methods, and methodologies, Bagele Chilisa has written the first textbook that situates research in a larger, historical, cultural, and global context. With case studies from around the world, the book demonstrates the specific methodologies that are commensurate with the transformative paradigm of research and the historical and cultural traditions of third-world and indigenous peoples.

What are Indigenous research methodologies, and how do they unfold? Indigenous methodologies flow from tribal knowledge, and while they are allied with several western qualitative approaches, they remain distinct. These are the focal considerations of Margaret Kovach's study,which offers guidance to those conducting research in the academy using Indigenous methodologies. Kovach includes topics such as Indigenous epistemologies, decolonizing theory, story as method, situating self and culture, Indigenous methods, protocol, meaning-making, and ethics. In exploring these elements, the book interweaves perspectives from six Indigenous researchers who share their stories, and also includes excerpts from the author's own journey into Indigenous methodologies.

Lori Lambert (Mi'kmaq/Abenaki) examines the problems that researchers encounter when adjusting research methodologies in the behavioral sciences to Native values and tribal community life. In addition to surveying the literature with an emphasis on Native authors, she has also interviewed a sampling of indigenous people in Australia, northern Canada, and Montana's Flathead Indian Reservation. Members of four indigenous communities speak about what they expect from researchers who come into their communities. Their voices and stories provide a conceptual framework for non-indigenous researchers who anticipate doing research with indigenous peoples in the social, behavioral, or environmental sciences.

The Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies is the only handbook to make connections regarding many of the perspectives of the "new" critical theorists and emerging indigenous methodologies.Built on the foundation of the landmark SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, the Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies extends beyond the investigation of qualitative inquiry itself to explore the indigenous and nonindigenous voices that inform research, policy, politics, and social justice.

A new generation of indigenous researchers is taking its place in the world of social research in increasing numbers. These scholars provide new insights into communities under the research gaze and offer new ways of knowing to traditional scholarly models. They also move the research community toward more sensitive and collaborative practices. But it comes at a cost. Many in this generation have met with resistance or indifference in their journeys through the academic system and in the halls of power. They also often face ethical quandaries or even strong opposition from their own communities. The life stories in this book present the journeys of over 30 indigenous researchers from six continents and many different disciplines.

In the first book ever published on Indigenous quantitative methodologies, Maggie Walter and Chris Andersen open up a major new approach to research across the disciplines and applied fields. While qualitative methods have been rigorously critiqued and reformulated, the population statistics relied on by virtually all research on Indigenous peoples continue to be taken for granted as straightforward, transparent numbers. This book dismantles that persistent positivism with a forceful critique, then fills the void with a new paradigm for Indigenous quantitative methods, using concrete examples of research projects from First World Indigenous peoples in the United States, Australia, and Canada.