Theorising from the Land: House or Tipi of IR?

From Where I Write

I am a racialised body in the United States who is both a product of colonial forces and a producer of colonial displacements. My family comes from an Indigenous region of the Philippines and relocated at a specific colonial moment, while in the present day I make my home and build my career on Native territory and at the expense of the continued displacement of both the Ohlone and Pokagon peoples. While trained in IR and publishing and speaking to the subfield, I often do not teach IR, finding myself instead in interdisciplinary and intersectional spaces within departments of Ethnic Studies, Peace Studies, and Critical Theory and Social Justice. From my personal experience of all my formal education, I had never seen my experiences represented within the classroom or within any curriculum. The way I approached scholarship with little separation between theory, action, community, and creativity often put me at odds with graduate advisors and chairs – I was told early that I had to choose between being an academic or activist filmmaker. ¹⁷ My position at the margins of IR, therefore, is the position in which I write. Being located at the margin not only provides a wide perspective to look back at the centre, but it also provides a vantage point to better see beyond, to turn away from the centre and have a better view of the furthest horizons.

The following is not meant to be an authoritative nor comprehensive explication of indigeneity and IR, nor is it meant to represent a pan- (or simplified/unified) understanding of indigeneity or Native experience. It would not be my place to adopt such a scope, but even more than that, it would not be desirable nor even possible. In the US alone, there are some 574 federally recognised Native tribes, with a few hundred more unrecognised tribes. This is in the US only, not to mention the great diversity of Indigenous peoples in Canada and Mexico. It is not possible to have a singular or definitive ‘Indigenous approach’ to IR research. Such a framework would not be desirable, as others have shown authoritative definitions of groups of people can lead to further harm and vulnerabilities. ¹⁸ Accordingly, this article acts as a personal explication of an attempt to weave together Indigenous thought and experiences with the fraught space of IR. ¹⁹

It draws from a North American (and more specifically US and Canadian) vantage point of indigeneity to further efforts of inclusion and to point to new possibilities for IR. What may seem like a centering of US and Canada is in no way meant to be taken as a diminishment of other global Indigenous experiences and thought, nor is it a comment on the importance of Indigenous-oriented work being done throughout Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, and parts of Europe. There are many important centres of Indigenous thought around the world. This focus is, in fact, a reflection of the limitations of the author. My teaching, research, and the communities I think with are all located within the US and Canada. I hope to see increasing numbers of diverse voices within IR pushing the bounds of what the subfield can and should be, including Indigenous navigations and perspectives generated from all around the world.

Section 1: Indigeneity in IR

IR is a political science subfield that has not only had a difficult time coming to terms with race and difference, but has also held animus towards Indigenous peoples. ²⁰ The ways that Indigenous peoples engage and understanding international relations ‘challenge[s] the dominant state-centric system to include their different ways of understanding and structuring relations not just between peoples, but with the natural world and the planet.’ ²¹ They can foreground differing worldviews, ontologies, epistemologies, and axiologies. The following highlights IR contributions that have foregrounded Indigenous experiences and thought and explicitly place their intervention within IR. Identifying three manuscripts that explicitly locate themselves within IR, there is a recognition that many other manuscripts should be in conversation with IR, as well as many others located somewhere near or at the margins of the global politics, international studies, and/or Indigenous studies spaces. ²² Rather than attempting to discern whether certain scholars and scholarship engage IR, I highlight a few manuscripts that shed light on various aspects of the Indigenous research paradigm put forward in this article. The first of the three was written nearly 30 years ago, while the latest five years ago. This also serves as an illustration of how few IR scholars are engaging Indigenous thought and experiences.

In 1993 Frankie Wilmer wrote The Indigenous Voice in World Politics, one of the first IR interventions that foregrounds indigeneity. She showed how a Western-based international system homogenised global culture in the name of modernisation and progress and which led to the ethnocide of Indigenous peoples. Pointing to a shared set of experiences between post-colonial states and Indigenous peoples, Wilmer suggests that both have potential to disrupt and decenter Western political and cultural hegemony. The significant challenge IR faces in her perspective is that the international system is premised on the fraught relationship between Indigenous peoples and national governments. ‘Indigenous activism challenges the normative basis of international politics by asserting that the rights of sovereignty essential in order for a people to control their own political and economic development do not belong exclusively to nation-states emulating the European model,’ explains Wilmer. ²³

Years later, in 2005, J. Marshall Beier published International Relations in Uncommon Places: Indigeneity, Cosmology, and the Limit of International Theory. This work explores how IR has failed to take notice of Indigenous peoples, thus furthering the colonial narratives of North America. Focusing primarily on the Lakota of the Great Plains, Beier focuses on security and cosmology as a way of illustrating the potential of foregrounding Indigenous experiences. Aside from a firm conviction of the recognition of the possibility of (and the need for) learning from the so-called margins, this work is guided by a set of ethical principles that are foregrounded and made clear. Beier asserts,

This is not a call, however, to bring Indigenous people(s)’ voices into International Relations, as this would make the paternalistic mistake of presuming a responsibility for them rather than a responsibility to them. The former stance suggests that we think their knowledges our wards, with little value independent of our own interventions; the latter we think them the equals of our own. Thus, appropriation of Indigenous knowledges in ways that make them fit harmoniously with the dominating society’s predetermined concepts and categories is also an exercise in their devaluation – in fitting in, after all, they will only have confirmed what was already ‘known.’ Such appropriations may thus be counted among the practices of advanced colonialism. ²⁴

Ten years after Beier’s intervention was Sheryl Lightfoot’s Global Indigenous Politics: A Subtle Revolution. ²⁵ Lightfoot, a citizen of the Lake Superior Band of Ojibwe, focuses on the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as a foundational shift in global politics, pointing to a ‘transformational norm vector’ which challenges and erodes the core concepts of the dominant international order. UNDRIP, Lightfoot asserts, ‘Helps points the way toward a new and infinitely more fair, just and hopeful global future.’ ²⁶ The fact that collective rights (of Indigenous peoples) were recognised on such an international institutional scale represents a major shift in asserting Indigenous rights and values on the global arena.

Complementing these book manuscripts are a series of other works focusing on indigeneity in IR and, though they have been located primarily on the margins of IR discourse, they have focused on a variety of central IR themes. Themes such as Indigenous perspectives in IR, IR as a site of Indigenous resistance, Indigenous philosophies, knowledge and pedagogy, Indigenous experiences influencing multi-layered arrangements of sovereignty and political arrangements, Indigenous and postcolonial sovereignties, relational sovereignty and governance, Sami self-determination in Finland and Norway, warfighting and conflict, Indigeneity and democracy, international institutions, International society, Indigenous diplomatic spaces foregrounding women and challenging global politics, diplomacy, activism, and treaty-making, territorial expansion, structure-agent debates, environmental justice, and Indigenous security and securitisation. There is also a significant amount of scholarship on global Indigenous rights, with many of these focused on navigations of the international order by Indigenous peoples. ²⁷

Indigenous Resurgence

There is also, however, a distinct stream of Indigenous thought that actively locates itself outside of the lineage within the dominant theory of the House. Indigenous resurgence, with its intellectual origin in Taiaiake Alfred’s 2009 work Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom and forwarded primarily by scholars located in Canada, has been a robust intellectual paradigm that acts to shift Indigenous consciousness ‘away from reconciliation and towards decolonization.’ ³⁷ To achieve this, resurgence calls for a regeneration of Indigenous spiritual, cultural, and political practices that will provide the individual and collective strength to challenge oppressive (settler) structures. ³⁸

Resurgence as a ‘set of practices through which the regeneration and reestablishment of Indigenous nations could be achieved’ can be seen as a response to Audre Lorde’s well-known assertion, ‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.’ ³⁹ Settler political practices and structures have created the very conditions of inequality in which Indigenous peoples find themselves; thus, merely working towards a politics of recognition would prove to be insufficient in bringing about substantive structural changes. Resurgence emphasises internal revitalisation that is cognizant, but not dependent upon, exogenous conditions. Leanne Simpson explains, ‘In essence, we need to not just figure who we are; we need to re-establish the processes by which we live who we are within the current context we find ourselves. We do not need funding to do this. We do not need opportunity to do this. We need our Elders, our languages, and our lands, along with vision, intent, commitment, community and ultimately, action.’ ⁴⁰ They are positive enactments of ‘another modality of being.’ ⁴¹

Indigenous resurgence as an intellectual paradigm is not dependent on the dominant intellectual traditions of the House; rather, by looking inward it allows for imagining something beyond the dominant Western political practices and conventions. It challenges the framework of the colonial household because, through aschewing the politics of recognition, it looks beyond the House and the very rules it seeks to impose. It calls for not a mere remodelling or interior addition, but rather a remapping of the location of the House in relation to preexisting structures, peoples, and practices.

Indigenous IR Research Paradigm

A paradigm is a ‘set of beliefs about the world and about gaining knowledge that goes together to guide people’s actions as to how they are going to go about doing their research.’ ⁴³ Indigenising a Western concept such as research carries with it many challenges, least of which is adhering to rigid definitional categories and the limitations of translations of concepts and language, not to mention that many Indigenous peoples transmitted Indigenous ways of knowing orally. ⁴⁴ That said, because this article is for IR scholars and not Indigenous communities, the aim here is to provide a space for Indigenous politics to become more intelligible. My understanding of an Indigenous research paradigm for IR is founded upon from the work of Linda Tuhiwai Smith who calls social science researchers to acknowledge and actively resist the racist history of scientific inquiry and Shawn Wilson who emphasises the relational, spiritual, and ceremonial aspects of Indigenous aspects of research. ⁴⁵ This paradigm includes the categories of worldview, ontology, epistemology, methodology, and axiology and, as you will notice, they are not cleanly separable with many overlaps and intertwinings. ⁴⁶

Throughout every element of this proposed framework should be an attentiveness to power dynamics. ‘Indigenizing a Western model of research without critical reflection,’ Margaret Kovach asserts, ‘Can result in the individualistic approach of a principal investigator determining the question, methodology, and methods and asking an Indigenous person to act as the ‘front’.’ ⁴⁷ It is important to remember that research has been considered a ‘bad word’ for many Indigenous and marginalised communities. ⁴⁸ Academic research has been involved in some of the worst excesses of colonialism and this reality must permeate all social science and IR research.

This happens through a practice of critical reflexivity and an openness to generative refusals. Kelsey Wrightson, a non-Indigenous IR scholar reflecting on her work as the Executive Director of Dechinta Center for Research and Learning, explains, ‘I can also tell you that now I spend time working to create and protect the spaces and practices that I have come to know as sovereign – space for young ones to learn, space for Elders to teach. Space to learn the boat trails, set the nets, and speak the language. I’m not often in those spaces because they are not for me. Sometimes I get invited, but sometimes I am not. This is all part of the relational practice of governance – being refused as an enactment of sovereignty does not end the relationship, but creates a new path of action.’ ⁴⁹

Worldview

Worldviews are firmly entrenched set of mental lenses in which we view the world. ⁵⁰ They are affective, cognitive, and empirical maps in which people rely upon to ‘make sense of the social landscape and to find their ways to whatever goals they seek.’ ⁵¹ They are starting points for us to make sense and meaning of our socially constructed world. Often crafted from oral histories, origin stories, lived experience, and socialisation they are typically unconsciously adopted and taken for granted. Worldviews construct how a society comes to understand ‘the way things are,’ or what Mark Rifkin refers to as ‘settler common sense.’ ⁵² Though most societies will have a dominant worldview that is held by a majority of that group, alternative worldviews exist and influence how you and others view the world. Explorations of worldview(s) are not typically where IR methods courses begin and, as a result, there is an unchallenged assumption that there is a shared (most likely Western European) conceptualisation of worldview.

It is important to note that the defining of worldview(s) are also contested, particularly whether they should be about cognitive processes, intuitions, feelings, or discursive structures. ⁵³ Moreover, worldviews are fluid and can transform over the course of time. That said, there are some commonalities that are agreed upon, including the importance of relationality and a relational worldview. ⁵⁴ It is captured in the Lakota principle of Mitakuye Oyasin, or all my relatives, and is founded within the belief that we are all created from the same cosmic substance.

Simpson puts forward seven principles of an Indigenous worldview, including knowledge is cyclical, holistic, and relational to living and non-living beings; there are many truths dependent on lived experience; everything is alive and has a spirit; all things are equal; the land is sacred; there is an important relationship between the spirit world and humans; and that human beings are the least important being in the world. ⁵⁵ McKenzie and Morrissette identify characteristics of Indigenous peoples’ relationship to the land, they are: all things adhere to the principles of survival, survival is built around cycles of the earth, there is a natural energy to life that is part of a grand design, all play a role in the balance and harmony of life, all is an extension of that grand design and are constructed of the same essence or spirit. ⁵⁶

These differences at the level of worldview were reflected in some of the earliest Native intellectual interventions. For instance, one of the first ethnographic accounts by a Native scholar was Ella Cara Deloria’s 1944 work on Dakota kinship pointed to a dramatically different worldview, describing, ‘I can safely say that the ultimate aim of Dakota life, stripped of its accessories, was quite simple: One must obey kinship rules; one must be a good relative. [. . .] every other consideration was secondary – property, personal ambition, glory, good times, life itself.’ ⁵⁷ Ella’s nephew and one of the most prominent Native intellectuals Vine Deloria, Jr. also wrote about the distinctiveness of an Indigenous worldview, asserting, ‘The major difference between American Indian views of the physical world and Western science lies in the premise accepted by Indians and rejected by scientists: the world in which we live is alive.’ ⁵⁸ Viola Cordova, the first Native woman to receive a Ph.D. in philosophy explains, ‘The existence of these two unalike ‘world-pictures’ [Native and Western] is the basis upon which I make my claim that the Native American child confronts not only new physical surroundings when he enters the formal school system but a different philosophical space.’ ⁵⁹

The way Indigenous peoples view the world differs from Western European worldviews. As a result, a research paradigm that foregrounds Indigenous worldviews premised on relationality, balance, spirituality, and connections to nature and land would lead to new questions and theories otherwise overlooked.

Ontology

Ontology is the study of being, as well as what exists in the world. It defines how researchers conceptualise what they study, both scientifically and philosophically. Scientifically, it refers to ‘a catalog of objects, processes, and factors that a given line of scientific research expects to exist,’ and philosophically it refers to our ‘hook-up’ to the world, or the ‘conceptual and philosophical basis on which claims about the world are formulated in the first place.’ ⁶⁰ Scientific ontology acts as a catalogue of what exists for the researcher to study, while philosophical ontology asks how we make claims to understand the world – the former stems from the later. Hart explains, ‘How people see the world will influence their understanding of what exists, and vice-versa.’ ⁶¹ Patrick Thaddeus Jackson makes a distinction between mind-world dualism and mind-world monism, where dualism asserts that the mind and the world can be understood as discreetly separate, whereas monism holds that the environment and the mind cannot be divorced from each other. Jackson explains, ‘If ‘mind’ and ‘world’ are not two separate and distinct things, then it literally makes no sense to speak of the world as independently existing, since mind would always be and already intertwined with the world.’ ⁶²

An Indigenous ontology would see no separation between the mind and the environment, they are co-constitutive. Moreover, spirituality is a significant connector between the mind and the world, infusing all thought and relationships as set of ‘attitudes, beliefs, and practices fine-tuned to harmonize with the lands on which the people live.’ ⁶³ In fact, the Lakota term kapemni that refers to the hourglass-like shape of two triangular cones placed on top of each other represents the concept of mirroring, or a mirroring of what is in the spirit world with what is here on earth. ⁶⁴ Mind, spirit, and environment are all connected.

In approaching research, this means being attentive to the co-constitutive relationship between the mind and the world, as well as recognising that relationship is imbued with a spiritual understanding. One example of this can be found within the Lakota language. The word for mother in Lakota is Ina. In English grammar, every word has a referent – the person, thing, or idea that the word refers to. This is similar in Lakota, but there is a distinct difference, it also provides a spiritual orientation that informs how to approach and be in relationship with that word. Ina is mother, but it literally translates to one who brings breath into the world (de Leon 2021). Illustratively, the word for white man is wasicu, directly translating to ‘one who takes the best part of the meat.’ Language reinforces the co-constitution of the mind, spiritual perception, and the world.

Epistemology

An Indigenous epistemology is quite distinctive from a Western constructed understanding of where knowledge comes from. Instead, it refers to a way of knowing that is both experiential and fluid, having its origins in intergenerational storytelling and taking on the wisdom of each storyteller. ⁶⁵ Story acts as a powerful too, as a way of knowing and is at the centre of Indigenous oral tradition. Story has been relied upon for survival, a way to pass on traditions and to provide the seeds for new cultural and political configurations. ⁶⁶ An Indigenous epistemology would also be attentive to the level of the subconscious, experienced through dreams, prayer, and visions. ⁶⁷ It is premised in relationality, through collectivity and interrelationships with animals, the environment, with spirits, and with other humans. ⁶⁸ An Indigenous epistemology would be developed through and connected to the land, making it practical and life-sustaining. ⁶⁹

There is also a strong inward orientation to knowing, reinforced with visions and dreams. Willie Ermine describes a Cree epistemology as the ‘capacity to tap the creative life forces of the inner space by the use of all the faculties that constitute our being – it is to exercise inwardness.’ ⁷⁰ This inwardness is both quiet and intuitive, forged from hardship and supported through an interconnected set of relationships.

An Indigenous IR research paradigm is influenced by Indigenous epistemology by validating lived experience as a way of knowing, emphasizing the importance of the relationships and reciprocity between ‘researcher’ and ‘subject,’ substantiating knowledge derived from turning inward (through dreams, visions, and spirituality), and recognizing of Indigenous methods (such as storytelling) as an important way to share knowledge.

Axiology

Axiology is the philosophical study of value of things and relates to other intellectual traditions such as philosophy, ethics, and religion. Axiology as a set of values, ethics, and principles that, when in the context of a research paradigm, act as guiding principles that supersede institutional review boards and disciplinary conventions and practices. Marlene Brandt Castellano suggests Indigenous ethics must be connected to deeper reflection of your values and beliefs (i.e. worldviews, ontology, and epistemology), asserting, ‘Ethics, the rules of right behavior, are intimately related to who you are, the deep values you subscribe to, and your understanding of your place in the spiritual order of reality.’ ⁷¹ An Indigenous axiology stems from a critical recognition and response to the pernicious material and cultural history of research and colonisation of Indigenous peoples. The long history of scientific racism, as well as research done to (and not with or by) Indigenous peoples locates Indigenous peoples as ‘powerless and research as disempowering.’ ⁷²

Though conversations about research ethics are becoming increasingly common in IR methodological training spaces, axiology is typically not focused upon in IR methods courses. Axiology can act as a mechanism, however, that ensures greater continuity between each aspect of your research approach, providing a direct link to operationalise worldview, ontological, and epistemic convictions. Linda T. Smith explains, ‘Indigenous methodologies tend to approach cultural protocols, values and behaviours as an integral part of methodology. They are 'factors' to be built into research explicitly, to be thought about reflexively, to be declared openly as part of the research design, to be discussed as part of the final results of a study and to be disseminated back to the people in culturally appropriate ways and in a language that can be understood.’ ⁷³ In this manner, culturally generated ethics and community accountabilities are methodology. ⁷⁴

Understanding ethical convictions can be interpreted in a different manner when taken from Indigenous perspectives. For instance, protections of Western individualism often led to research protocols such as content and confidentiality, while values of collectivism or communitism, which are significant to the wellbeing of Indigenous communities are often overlooked. ⁷⁵ Individualism in the context of communitism would require each person to identify gifts, passions, and unique attributes (whether through schooling, training, ceremony, or prayer) and develop them in ways that benefit the community. Personal freedom was a function of the wellbeing of the community. To act otherwise would, ironically, lead to a direct loss of the self. A loss of community for Indigenous peoples would be ‘paramount to psychic suicide,’ suggests Jace Weaver, ‘It is to lose the self in the dominant mass humanity, either ceasing to be or persisting merely as another ethnic minority, drifting with no place, no relations, no real people.’ ⁷⁶ At first take, this (and other Indigenous concepts) may seem at odds with Western political conceptualisations, including that of personal liberty. Certainly, there are cases where a community’s desire for conformity leads to harm and the lack of individual self-realisation. Accordingly, exploring these principles is not meant to over romanticise or to suggest blind prescriptions; rather, they are put forward to provide tools to evaluate corrosive practices and ways of thinking, as well as to offer possibilities to think anew.

It should come to no surprise then that foregrounding community also plays a significant factor in carrying out research. ‘I could make a value statement and say that whatever I do as an Indigenous researcher must be hooked to the ‘community’ or the Indigenous research has to benefit the community,’ Cora Weber-Pillwax explains, continuing, ‘The research methods must mesh with the community and serve the community. Any research that I do must not destroy or in any way negatively implicate or compromise my own personal integrity as a person, as a human being.’ ⁷⁷ Intimately tied to this notion of community is the value of respect. Wawoohola (in Lakota) a significant virtue necessary for balance and harmony among all living things. In carrying out research, a basic sense of respect would profoundly transform how IR approaches otherwise marginalised thought and experience. ‘Respect for all forms of life, unfortunately, is not a common value in many cultures today,’ Joseph M. Marshall III explains, continuing, ‘It is easier to respect someone stronger, faster, smarter, or richer. Likewise, it is easy to respect someone who is much like us in every way possible. Respecting someone with different beliefs, different dress, or different customs, or something entirely different from us is not easy.’ ⁷⁸ Respect is at the core of a framework of interconnectedness, of community.

Hart puts forward eleven axiological convictions that provide some insight into an axiology for Indigenous IR research. ⁷⁹ Not coincidently, they all touch upon respect and community in some way. They are:

Worldview, ontology, epistemology, and axiology constitute lodge poles or pillars of an Indigenous IR research paradigm. Each of these considerations, when deployed thoughtfully and intentionally, can create a structure that is both inclusive of Indigenous experiences and thought, and responsive to the realities of historical erasure.

Identifying works that engage such a paradigm presents challenges, not only because of the fewness of Indigenous-oriented IR research but also that this approach would call for foregrounding research convictions often unspoken. More specifically, writing about worldview and axiology in constituting one’s research methodology is not a common IR practice. As such, I am hesitant to provide examples, though I think many of the works cited throughout this piece could reasonably fit into this framework. For instance, Wilmer embodies elements of ontology, epistemology, and axiology. ⁸⁰ Foremost, she is arguing that there is more to study than what is defined by Western political convention and thought – it expands what is even possible to study in IR (i.e. scientific ontology). More subtly she motions to Indigenous experiences as a space of knowledge – Indigenous political practices are an important ‘marginal site’ in the changing context of International politics, while self-determination acts as a location in which to contest and reformulate Westphalian conceptions of nation-states. Moreover, Wilmer emphasises the necessarily normative nature of contestations over self-determination, something IR needs to take into account of and be responsive to.

Beier’s recognition of the nuances and subtleness of ‘advanced colonial practice’ shape his axiological convictions, something he makes clear throughout his scholarship. ⁸¹ There is also an underlying thread of knowledge as being derived from interrelatedness (epistemology). In noting the need for IR to be more attentive to Indigenous thought and experiences, he asserts that these efforts should not be ‘advocated in the interest of the Other alone,’ but rather, the development of IR knowledge would be further if it were ‘recovered from colonial practice.’ ⁸² He continues by asserting that not only would this foregrounding contribute to counter-hegemonic theorising, but it would also create a space from which we (as postcolonial subjects) can learn significantly.

Lightfoot also represents elements of an Indigenous research paradigm. ⁸³ For instance, her focus on collectivity and the importance of Indigenous knowledge points to epistemic convictions, while her desire to be useful to Indigenous communities shapes her axiology. Lightfoot states, ‘[I] aim to keep academic research relevant to the lives of Indigenous peoples and communities, following the path set forth by Vine Deloria, who was one of the first to call for academic research in Indigenous contexts to seek not just ‘knowledge for knowledge’s sake’ but rather to produce outcomes that are relevant and useful to Indigenous communities.’ ⁸⁴ Accordingly, Lightfoot holds the position of Canada Research Chair in Global Indigenous Rights and Politics and was recently appointed as Canada’s first Indigenous woman to serve on UN Indigenous rights body. ⁸⁵ An axiological conviction to be useful to Indigenous communities is at the heart of Global Indigenous Studies, as well as Lightfoot’s work at national and international levels. These works adopt an approach that goes beyond the learning about the experiences of Indigenous peoples, rather they learn from Indigenous peoples to motion to revolutions, transformations, and challenges to IR theorising.

Concluding Thoughts – Theorising from the ‘Land’

In the colonial household metaphor Indigenous peoples are outside of the House and connected to the land in meaningful ways – living off and with the land or even buried in the soil under the House. This connection to the land establishes a set of reciprocal obligations, a grounded normativity. This article looks to recast this imagery to foreground an alternative metaphor of a tipi, to decenter the colonial household and to remap the landscape of IR. The lodge poles or worldview, ontology, epistemology, and axiology not only act as a foundation to imagine an Indigenous IR research paradigm, but they also (re)create an entire world, a world based on values of respect, community, interdependence, and spirituality, among other things. Indigenous perspectives and thought act as a microcosm of the historical and emergent struggles faced by a large swath of the planet’s inhabitants and are also located at a unique vantagepoint to both critique what is and provide insight into what can be. ⁸⁶ This ‘in-between space’ between descriptive and normative analysis can be a space for IR to find new modes of practice and theorising. ⁸⁷ It is a transformative space between old paradigms and emergent ones.

So how do we as IR scholars engage such a framework? I think of this in two ways: situating and enactment. To the first, how can we situate this research paradigm within IR in generative ways? Does it speak to preexisting theories and practices, or does it call for an entire rebuilding? How can this paradigm continue to come into being without being prematurely subsumed or dismissed by such a hierarchical ‘house’ formulation of IR, as spoken about throughout this article? Understanding the nuances between plurality versus pluralism in IR becomes quite useful to situate such a research paradigm. Plurality, as Daniel J. Levine and David M. McCourt suggest, is a viewpoint that IR already encompasses a variety of methods, theories, and approaches – characterised most clearly with the debates between various ‘-isms.’ ⁸⁸ This would speak to the house of IR analogy and the insertion of Indigenous IR into this already varied palette of IR theory. From this perspective, acknowledging diverse approaches within IR theory is ‘less a statement of value than a grudging acknowledgement of certain stubborn disciplinary realities: the failure of neo- positivist ‘falsificationism’ to create a uniform, normal social science of IR (or of political science) on the one hand, and IR’s rapid growth and persistent variegation on the other.’ ⁸⁹ Hierarchical distinctions would still define this space, we would simply see an Indigenous IR research paradigm being added and having to continue to struggle for legitimacy and to be taken seriously.

In contrast, and at the heart of the relationality of an Indigenous IR research paradigm, would be an understanding of pluralism that forwards diversity as valuable and essential for the study of international politics. It is a way of thinking that is premised on the recognition that theories and paradigms ‘can never do more than make provisional claims about a world that resists comprehensive organization through any single mode or scheme of explanation, interpretation, or analysis.’ ⁹⁰ ‘Imagine a vigorous, diverse field of International Relations in which different – and mutually exclusive – ontologies, epistemologies, and methods are all constantly narrating and re-narrating events in different ways and by different means,’ assert Levine and McCourt, continuing, ‘Now situate that field in a vigorous, diverse political culture in which one finds different – and mutually exclusive – ways of identifying and conceptualizing problems relevant to it, while also contesting its own limits and nature.’ ⁹¹ Rather than an ‘anything goes’ environment of relativism, each paradigm would be scrutinised and assessed in relation to an internal coherence to an ontological and research framework it defines itself.

Regarding enactment, should this paradigm only be engaged by Indigenous peoples and within communities in which these convictions are generated? Or can non-Indigenous scholars engage in such work, and can it be separated from community? To this, there is no simple answer. Moreover, I’m certainly not one to provide a definitive answer. I will, however, attempt to provide some context to think about how to situate this question. On one hand, recognising the paucity of Indigenous scholars engaging this type of research forwards a mandate in which insisting upon a connection to Indigenous peoples and communities. This, on its own, would serve as an important intervention. On the other hand, this type of approach taken too rigidly would lead the subfield to further racialise and exotify specific types of knowledge and knowledge-production. This would ignore the creative function of the difference of this paradigm, keeping it separate than rather than a living within. Audre Lorde asserts,

‘We must not hide behind the mockeries of separation that have been imposed upon us and which so often we accept as our own. For instance, ‘I can’t possibly teach Black women’s writing – their experience is so different from mine.’ Yet how many years have you spent teaching Plato and Shakespeare and Proust? Or another, ‘She’s a white woman and what could she possibly have to say to me? [. . .] And all the other endless ways in which we rob ourselves of ourselves and each other.’ ⁹²

It should be clear that this is not a call for an appropriation or simply bringing in Indigenous voices into IR, allowing ‘Indigenous knowledges in ways that make them fit harmoniously with the dominating society’s predetermined concepts and categories.’ ⁹³ But it is to assert that Indigenous approaches to understanding and studying the political world have applicability outside of Indigenous bodies and communities. ⁹⁴

Theorising from outside the House, from the land, calls for a research paradigm taken up in a distinct spirit, one that is intentional in approach, ethics, and relationality. A few guiding questions that characterise the Indigenous IR research paradigm put forward are: ⁹⁵

Many of these questions could be answered in a straightforward manner, drawing from the traditions of feminist IR, participatory action, and community-based research. A more challenging set of questions, ones that require exploration of worldview, ontology, epistemology, and axiology, include: Are you contributing to the lives of individuals and communities? What baggage or trauma are you carrying? Do you have a good heart? Is your spirit clear? And, importantly, are you creating or taking space?

An inability to recognise our shared interdependency and future – viewing each other instead as separate and distinct – limits our ability to benefiting from the richness of the human experience. This greatly limits IR’s ability to remain relevant to and reflective of the increasingly empowered, yet otherwise ignored masses. A hesitance to learn from, premised on a value system of pluralism, rather than to learn about difference, threatens to render IR theory as antiquated and, thus, swept away into obsolescence. The structure of a tipi implies respect, community, and interconnectedness. It is a recognition that ‘knowledge and learning does not take place in a vacuum, rather, it comes from our relationships with our communities, family, friends, as well as other scholars and pieces of literature.’ ⁹⁶

Constructing a research paradigm must be contextual, unique to one’s location, community, and experiences with colonial erasures. This should lead to contestations and the pushing of the bounds of what constitutes research and scholarship, but done so in ways that foregrounds relations, respect, and community rather than demarcation and proximity to power. My hope is that you receive this article in the spirit of relationship and, along with it, a dream that we stop robbing ourselves of ourselves.