Considering Indigenous Research Methodologies: Critical Reflections by an Indigenous Knower

Four Domains for Consideration: A Transcribed Presentation

(This section of the article comprises a transcript of my 2014 presentation. For purposes of illustrating differences in oral and literary practices, I have edited these remarks quite minimally, primarily through condensing material and/or rendering it [in some necessary instances] more comprehensible in written form. Mostly, however, I have sought to preserve its spoken quality, such that resultant shifts in syntax, rhythm, and formality will remain quite noticeable to readers. Note that a video recording is currently available online here. In addition, a complete, unedited transcript is available on request.)

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I’m going to offer several humble reflections, and some anxious misgivings, that I harbor about IRMs, particularly (again) in the context of academic inquiry. How I’m going to do this is in four little parts. The first I’m going to call Ten Postulates of IRMs. My goal in doing that is to try just to unpack in quick, step-by-step format what I understand IRMs to be about. Then I’m going to offer Three Sets of Key Questions for those who are advocating for IRMs. Then I’m going to share Eight Misgivings I have about the project of IRMs. And then I’ll offer Two Take-Away Points that I have in having thought through the things I’m about to share with you . . .

Ten Postulates About IRMs

So, let’s start with the Ten Postulates of IRMs. When I first heard this term, I came to understand IRMs as really just basic academic research wedded to Indigenous community ethics: a concern for Indian well-being, and respecting partnerships and empowerment, and real sensitivity and respect for Indian sensibilities, Indian cultural practices, and so on. And so, you take that, and as long as you have those things and do what would otherwise look like “Western” research, my idea was that that might be what IRMs were about. And I think there are people who talk about it in more-or-less that way. But I think in the way that people like Maggie Kovach (2009) in her book, Shawn Wilson (2008) in his book, and some of these other folks who have written and talked about IRMs, they have something a bit more substantive than just that in mind. And so, what I want to do is just list out for you ten sequenced statements that I think capture what I understand them to be saying when they advocate for IRMs . . . . (Due to limited space, and the straightforward accessibility of the content, much of this section is omitted; the Ten Postulates appear in Table 1).

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Table 1.

Summary Reflections on IRMs.

Ten Postulates About IRMs: 1. IEs existed prior to European contact 2. Europeans brought their epistemologies with them to North America 3. Colonization included suppression, eradication, and displacement of IEs 4. But differentiable and distinctive IEs continue to exist today 5. Universities have been dominated by “Western” epistemologies and associated research practices 6. Indigenous academics are poised to challenge this dominance by incorporating IEs into their research practices 7. Research activities based on IEs require alternative methodologies and methods 8. Such IRMs prescribe distinctive ways of conducting inquiry that will yield novel insights and answers 9. These novel insights and answers are better for improving Indigenous lives than results from “Western” research 10. Academic acceptance and recognition of IEs and IRMs is an important moral, ethical, and political goal Three Sets of Key Questions About IRMs:  1. What is an IE in specific and concrete terms?    ● How comprehensive, coherent, constructive, and consensual must these knowledge practices be?   ● What are the differences between and among various basic terms within this discussion?   ● How distinctive must IEs be from “Western” approaches?   ● How could precontact IEs survive until today?  2. Who is an Indigenous “knower”?   ● What are attributes of Indigenous knowers?   ● What is the relationship between identities and practices relative to IEs?   ● How can academic knowers access IEs?   ● Can non-Natives become indigenous knowers?  3. How should we study, describe, and represent IEs?   ● What qualifies particular Indigenous scholars to access IEs for academic purposes?   ● What is the methodology by which Indigenous scholars should recover IEs?   ● How could IEs be so ready-made for university-based knowledge production?   ● What are the sociopolitical, ethical, and economic implications of studying and writing about IEs?   ● Eight Misgivings About IRMs: 1. Participates in untenable ethnoracial and cultural essentialism? 2. Emphasizes form much more than findings? 3. Promises beyond what it delivers in terms of novel insights and answers? 4. Insulates inquiry from skeptical interrogation? 5. Resituates research as identity expression rather than knowledge contribution? 6. Obscures intellectual debts to “Western” critical theories and approaches? 7. Misdirects attention from material decolonization? 8. Marginalizes existing (but nonacademic) Indigenous knowledges? Two Take-Home Points About IRMs:  1. Unlikely that IEs are very well-suited for university-based knowledge production absent a great deal of repackaging, recasting, or reconstruction of these knowledge traditions   ● Who?   ● How?  2. IRMs adopted by and for Indigenous peoples are best characterized as Métis forms of inquiry   ● Most of what endures as IEs is already mixed   ● Importing IEs into the university further mixes them   ● How would reconceptualizing the IRM project as Métis change this knowledge endeavor?   ● How would relabeling IRMs as Métis change our promotion of them?

Note. IRM = Indigenous Research Methodologies; IE = Indigenous epistemologies.

Advancing the Dialogue: Engaging With Windchief et al

In this 2014 AIRA presentation, I aspired to seriously consider the commitments and claims of my Indigenous academic colleagues who embrace IRMs. To be clear, the substance of these methodologies appears to extend well beyond the now commonplace assertion that Indigenous research ought to be pro-Indigenous. Indeed, although it is possible to debate the manner of application of a pro-Indigenous ethos in specific cases or for particular projects, I know of no Indigenous academics who would dispute the idea that Indigenous research should emerge from and depend on an ethos that aims to respect, value, engage, and serve Indigenous people. The proponents of IRMs go beyond this, however, by positing that the harnessing of Indigenous epistemologies for distinctive and unique processes of inquiry will yield more relevant and useful academic knowledge than is possible by adopting “Western” research strategies. As should be clear from my 2014 remarks, I am intrigued by this claim, and also seek further explication and justification of this endeavor across several domains (as summarized in Table 1). In short, I invited scholarly dialogue on these issues through public critique, on the assumption that such exchanges can yield clarification, refinement, illustration, and (perhaps) application.

Thus, I am appreciative of the responses to these reflections by Windchief et al. (2017), who have so graciously chosen to enter this dialogue with me. It may be beneficial here to briefly acknowledge several background experiences and assumptions that we likely share as we enter this dialogue. I believe that all of us are committed to a pro-Indigenous ethos, although we may diverge in our formulations of this ethos in some ways. I believe that we all admire, respect, and value persistent Indigenous knowledge practices based on their symbolic attestation to the survival of our peoples, their ongoing pragmatic significance for everyday Indigenous community life, and their potential for contributing broadly to human society. I believe that we all recognize and react against the long-standing dismissal and denigration of Indigenous knowledges by a settler society that sought to eradicate these practices through colonization. I believe that we all have encountered academic arrogance and contempt expressed by non-Native scholars in university settings who promote intellectual critique as a sign of respect even when they wield such critique disrespectfully. I believe that we all imagine promising roles for Indigenous knowledges in academic inquiry more generally. Finally, I believe that we all realize that academic knowledge production itself can be fragmented, insular, chauvinistic, and exploitative.

Moreover, with specific reference to their article, I appreciate Windchief et al.’s (2017) definition of Indigenous methodologies as “unique ways researchers use Indigenous positionality and perspective to perform research with and within Indigenous communities . . . [that] center and privilege the Indigenous community’s voice(s) in an effort to contribute to the community” (p. 533). By this definition, it seems that much of my own research qualifies as Indigenous methodology (although I typically attribute my own research methods to familiar university-based research strategies that have been cataloged and described—usually by non-Indigenous academics—in works such as Denzin & Lincoln, 2018). I also value Windchief et al.’s recognition of the diversity of perspectives and voices within Indigenous communities, as there is intellectual hazard associated with any sweeping generalizations across so many persons and communities. I also laud their commitment to “critiquing the academic work and delivery as opposed to critiquing the scholars” who offer these contributions (p. 540), which is a hallmark of fair academic exchange. Finally, I am especially honored to have my ideas engaged by graduate students in this response (and I am pleased that they have since earned their doctorates).

In the spirit of advancing this dialogue, I will now briefly attend to some specific responses offered by Windchief et al. (2017). In my view, many of these reflect the fact that some of my critical reflections were misunderstood, or that we appear to have talked past one another. One chief source of these misalignments is the degree to which we focus on or conceive of methodology per se. In an academic context, I conceive of methodology in fairly narrow terms as some specific logic of inquiry from which follows particular analytical procedures (that can often be described in step-by-step fashion) that transform more basic particulars (e.g., textual material, systematic observations) into some more general and abstract form of understanding that we label as knowledge. (In some academic disciplines, pursuit of this more general and abstract form of understanding is discovery-like in that it seeks to find answers to questions; and in others, it is interpretive in that it seeks to offer fresh readings of enduring texts.) In contrast, Windchief et al.’s definition of Indigenous methodology seems less like a logic of inquiry (with attending analytical procedures) and more like a research approach that is grounded in a pro-Indigenous ethos. That is, as a research approach, their endeavor could incorporate any variety of methodologies and methods. Thus, we appear to draw on differing definitions of methodology, which may be a source of confusion in this dialogue.

So, for example, in Windchief et al. (2017), Polacek (“Author 1”) disputes my concern that IRMs emphasize form much more than findings. Specifically, my concern centered on the practice of, for example, arranging summary statements of otherwise prosaic research findings into a circle or medicine wheel depiction rather than in a “linear” table format. In response, she explains that “the form is integral to the findings,” that “an emphasis on form is an emphasis on findings” (p. 534). From what I can tell, she equates form with method, and (reasonably enough, by this equation) asserts that “form and method in Indigenous research determine the findings” (p. 534). So far as I know, this is true for all research—whether Indigenous or not—namely, that method determines the findings to a substantial degree. Beyond this, though, I understand Polacek to be advocating for research that is situated, meaningful, and contextualized (“what better way to answer real-life questions with real-life answers from people with real lives?” p. 534). Although I do not believe that all research with Indigenous communities must necessarily be situated, meaningful, and contextualized in this manner (e.g., when the National Congress of American Indians commissions a broad academic report that is highly statistical), I concur that in my own discipline of psychology we have too often lost track of meaning and context, a critique that I have routinely offered in my publications (see especially Gone, 2011, 2014).

Munson’s (“Author 2”) contribution to the Windchief et al. (2017) article addresses my third set of key questions (see Table 1) centered on the study, description, and representation of Indigenous epistemologies. She grounds her specific responses in four commitments: to celebrate Indigenous scholars “for the work they do within their fields, centered on the needs of their communities”; to reduce oppression of Indigenous people in academia, which she ties to reverence and respect for Indigenous methodologies and Indigenous scholarship; to eliminate the need for Indigenous scholars to disavow their Indigenous epistemologies in their scholarship (or “to walk within two worlds”); and to improve “the success and leadership of Indigenous youth and scholars” (p. 535). I do not know of any Indigenous academics who would dispute these general ambitions, but what is debatable is whether it is reasonable in academic settings to simply demand reverence and respect for unfamiliar methodologies or scholarship without explaining, justifying, and (especially) illustrating the kinds of new knowledge that these will enable scholars to produce. In other words, I am unclear about the intellectual justification for framing the inclusion of Indigenous epistemologies in academic knowledge production as a “right” for which to fight (p. 535), although it certainly might be a cause to champion through dogged dialogue and debate. Beyond these points, I concur with Munson that the “melding” of epistemologies is the only way forward in this endeavor; indeed, I think they began to meld long ago, which is why I propose relabeling these as mixed or blended forms of inquiry (I aimed for a particular rhetorical effect with a Montana audience by adopting the “Métis” label, but this may not generalize well to other places). I also concur with the community commitments that Munson espouses, which is why I promote participatory research that is accountable to Indigenous community partners (Gone & Calf Looking, 2015; but for complications, see Gone, 2017).

Ulrich’s (“Author 3”) contribution to Windchief et al. (2017) is the most disparaging of these responses, even while being the most removed from questions of (my conception of) research methodology as such. She perceives me as “excluding other sources of knowledge production or ways of knowing” from “the dominant paradigm of Western, progressive, and rational knowledge production.” In actuality, I strive to avoid the Indigenous–Western binary because all of the Indigenous people and communities I know have been deeply entangled in “Western” institutions and practices for a very long time, and, indeed, what is described as “Western” has been forged through long histories of Indigenous contact, exchange, and appropriation (see Weatherford, 2010). Ulrich also surmises that I embrace a “positivist or perhaps postpositivist worldview” (p. 537). In my own discipline, I have consistently advocated for both constructivist and scientific realist perspectives, depending on the research questions (Gone, 2011). Moreover, Ulrich asserts that, “unlike Gone” (p. 537), her commitment to relevant and beneficial research that advances social justice somehow lies beyond my interests. This is all just too dismissive and misreads my skepticism about several postulated aspects of IRMs as either haughty indifference or prejudicial exclusion instead of as an appeal to clarify, justify, and illustrate. After all, even from the perspective of an engaged community member, pursuing the best interests of our peoples would seem to require asking sometimes-challenging questions. Beyond this, Ulrich primarily discusses “the Western model of education” (p. 537), emphasizing the failures of schooling to produce literacy and numeracy for African villagers. I was uncertain whether Ulrich considers the development of literacy and numeracy as too “Western” to justify their promotion in such schools, but what did seem clear was her interest and emphasis on critical pedagogy more so than on research methodology as such.

Cummins’ (“Author 4”) contribution to the Windchief et al. (2017) article similarly expressed reservations about the consequences of my critical reflections, especially for Indigenous students, who he fears will be further harmed by perspectives anchored in “dominant and sometimes oppressive Western thought” that threaten to dismiss them and “their worldviews and knowledge” as untrue (p. 539). I do not hold that any group’s “worldviews and knowledge” are categorically untrue, but rather believe that some (although, importantly, not all) claims merit skeptical scrutiny irrespective of who champions such claims. Cummins supposes my belief that “empirical evidence is more sound than cultural knowledge,” but I do not oppose empiricism and Indigenous traditional culture. Rather, I approvingly cited Brant Castellano (2000) in identifying empirical knowledge as a form of Indigenous traditional knowledge. Cummins questions my presentation as “inappropriate decorum regarding the Indigenous sharing of ideas” because “critiquing the work of others does not fit within an Indigenous framework” (p. 539). Herein lies the most interesting insight in the article, namely, a recognition that standard academic discourse (in which students “are expected to question, argue, challenge, critique,” and “find fault” in ways that “could be considered disrespectful and uncouth” [p. 539]) might run afoul of certain Indigenous communicative norms. I acknowledged as much in my presentation, but then suggested that the consequence of refusal to engage in disputatious discourse in an academic context will be marginality or exclusion. Despite engaging in his own critique through this published dialogue, Cummins is perhaps correct that some Indigenous faculty and students—especially those with academic appointments outside of research-intensive universities—can instead “continue to set the terms of [their] own discourse as Indigenous researchers” (p. 537).

Future Directions

For the hundreds of Indigenous academics who do “publish or perish” at research-intensive universities throughout the nation, what additional orientations might afford further insights into the potential promise of IRMs for academic knowledge production? I will briefly sketch one illuminating possibility here. In 1982, Walter Ong published his influential analysis of orality and literacy. In this work, Ong characterized writing as a technology that has transformed human consciousness. His sweeping claim is that communities that knew no writing (but that instead exhibited “primary orality”) organized their thought and knowledge in certain ways, but that the deep interiorization of alphabetic literacy in modern life has restructured thinking and knowing in transformative fashion. Ong identified many distinctions between these two modes of thought, attributing these differences to the evanescence of sound (through the spoken word) in orality versus the stability of text (through the visualized word) in literacy. Importantly, Ong did not assert that either modality is superior, observing instead that each facilitates and constrains human potential in distinctive ways.

For example, Ong (1986) explained, “one of the most generalizable effects of writing is separation . . . . It divides and distances all sorts of things in all sorts of ways” (p. 36). Writing distances the knower from the known, thereby promoting “objectivity.” It affords a distinction between data and interpretation. It separates sources and receivers (speakers and listeners) across time and space. It distances words from experiences in decontextualist fashion, leading to an enforcement of verbal precision (giving rise to definitional tasks that explain the meanings of words using other words). It distances past from present. It separates the thought structure of discourse (logic) from the embedded social functions of discourse (rhetoric). It separates abstract academic knowledge (book learning) from situated practical knowledge (wisdom). It separates being from time. Because of these attributes, the advent of literacy attenuates the narrativizing of experience in favor of fixed abstractions, literally initiating a reduction in the proportion of verbs in a language relative to the proliferation of nouns such that “becoming becomes being” (p. 44). In doing so, the “quiescent text” displaces the action-related “mobility” of the oral world.

For these reasons, Ong identified alphabetic literacy as the source of a kind of amplified abstraction that undergirds modern philosophy, science, and (presumably) university-based knowledge production more generally. What has any of this to do with IRMs? I propose here that Indigenous scholars who champion Indigenous epistemologies and IRMs may, in fact, be promoting conventions of orality over literacy, which is to say that the qualities of Indigenous traditional knowledge that seem most apparent to us are enduring qualities of oral tradition. In my presentation, I favorably cited Brant Castellano’s (2000) five characteristics of Indigenous traditional knowledge: personal, oral, experiential, holistic, and narratively conveyed. Compare this list with an excerpt from a single paragraph by Ong (1986):

Primary oral culture also keeps its thinking close to the human life world, personalizing things and issues, and storing knowledge in stories. Categories are unstable mnemonically. Stories you can remember. In its typical mindset, the oral sensibility is out to hold things together, to make and retain agglomerates, not to analyze (which means to take things apart). (p. 25, italics added for emphasis)

Decades of subsequent research have illuminated many weaknesses in Ong’s (1982/2002) sweeping assertions, particularly as he imagined a “great divide” between oral and literate societies with respect to abstraction, analysis, and thought. Rather, as Sterponi (2012) has summarized, both orality and literacy can persist in the same community in complex fashion, affording individuals with repertoires of situated and strategic practices that can be deployed in circumscribed domains of activity that draw on their respective logics. This research demonstrates that accurate characterization of oral and literate practices in any given community depends on situated empirical inquiry rather than generalized theoretical convictions. Nevertheless, if I am correct in my contention that proponents of IRMs seek to preserve aspects of oral tradition in otherwise highly literate academic knowledge production, then several implications follow.

First, the terms of the discussion shift away from the difficult-to-defend ethnoracial and cultural essentialism that typically drives the Indigenous–Western binary to ones based on accurate distinctions between actual practices associated with orality and literacy in Indigenous communities. Second, the truly vast body of scholarship associated with language and literacy socialization with respect to thinking and knowing becomes an extant resource for Indigenous scholars who seek to explicate and preserve key facets of oral tradition relative to academic literacy. Third, the opportunity arises to formulate and research intriguing intersections between oral and literate practices for Indigenous communities with respect to enduring knowledge traditions. Fourth, this “middle ground” will benefit from further, nuanced elucidation relative to a host of institutions that shape life in Indigenous communities, including education, law, governance, and policy.

Above all, proponents of IRMs will need to delineate more clearly how to effectively bridge community orality with academic literacy. The dilemmas in doing so seem readily apparent. For example, in preparing this article, I sought to preserve some facets of my conference presentation as an oral–aural event by foregoing much editing. But transcription itself is radically reductive, and despite the academic structure of my presentation (centering on concepts, “postulates,” enumerated statements, and related abstractions) it remains challenging to read in transcribed form. For example, with respect to academic discourse, my spoken presentation was unnecessarily repetitive and verbose, which Ong (1982/2002) linked to the undesirability of hesitation in oral performance. It includes so many “ands” and “sos” that it becomes arbitrary in transcription as to where to divide sentences (which Ong attributed to the additive style associated with orality rather than the subordinative style associated with literacy, which displaces “and” with “then,” “thus,” and “while”). It contains indexical references to the event itself that are not understandable without additional contextualizing information.

Most significantly, this transcript excludes the visual component of my presentation that was expressed by an accompanying PowerPoint slide set. These slides were word-heavy (in literate fashion), but they also included a photograph. This image occasioned controversy (as discussed in Gone, 2017), engendering strong emotional reactions that a reader would never know from simply perusing this published dialogue. In sum, as an Indigenous scholar steeped in literacy (as all Indigenous scholars who earn doctoral degrees must be), it was unsettling for me in producing this article to actively refrain from one benefit of literacy, namely, “backlooping.” Backlooping enables the editing, revising, and streamlining of discourse to render it more clear, precise, distilled, and abstracted from its context of origin for “distanced” publication as a “timeless” text (complete, in this instance, with an “Abstract,” which Ong traced to an original word meaning “distanced” or “drawn away”). In conclusion, for those of us with a stake in understanding and preserving Indigenous traditional knowledges, we may, in fact, need to explore creative alternatives for conveying spoken knowledge beyond written words if we are to remain faithful to such knowledges as they are expressed today in Indigenous communities.

In closing, I again echo the sentiment that I expressed at the outset of this article, namely, that I remain thankful to those who have already engaged and critiqued the ideas shared in this article. Furthermore, I welcome additional and ongoing discussion about these matters as we together envision better futures for Indigenous communities. Let the dialogue continue.