Knowing when to step forward,back,or out: An autoethnography of a white researcher in two post-colonial educational contexts

Introduction

In 2002, Greenlandic reform leaders began a process of overhauling the country’s educational system to create cultural compatibility from preschool through post-secondary education (Wyatt, 2011). The reform process began with the K–12 reform, Atuarfitsialak, meaning the “good school,” and later Meeqqervitsialak, the “good daycare” (Kok, 2008). The goal of these reforms was to create new ways of teaching and learning that were in contrast to the Danish/Scandinavian system that had been in Greenland since the 1700s and, by many local accounts, had done little to advance the indigenous people. These national reforms received wide recognition within indigenous communities for their ambitious efforts, particularly in the circumpolar north. They were a feat in cultural compatibility unparalleled in other Native settings (Olsen and Tharp, 2013).

In 2005, three years after its launch, I was invited to work alongside Greenland’s Ministry of Education to assist with the implementation of Atuarfitsialak. Up until this point, the reform had largely been supported by outside consultants who flew into Greenland several times a year to meet with reform leaders. However, the reform was progressing at a slow rate and the leaders were actively searching for someone who would be willing to live and work in Greenland to assist them.

While it is not uncommon for indigenous communities to hire outside researchers to assist with specific projects, critics argue that many researchers have been slow to acknowledge the importance of understanding culture and cultural differences as key to successful research and research practices (Bishop, 2010). Indigenous authors argue that in every culture there are rights and responsibilities, commitments and obligations, and ways of supporting that are fundamental to participating in the larger group (Metge, 1990). Furthermore, these cultural elements must be considered in the research process.

Although qualitative researchers have many of the skills needed to negotiate and recognize what is required to work in indigenous communities (Tuhiwai Smith, 2008), there are still gray zones that exist as a result of long and tangled histories with colonization. Several indigenous researchers have published protocol and recommendations for those who work in these settings (Bishop, 2010; Kaomea, 2009; Tuhiwai Smith, 1999), and non-indigenous researchers have added some of their own (e.g. Hart et al., 2017). However, as a researcher who has moved between indigenous contexts, I have found a thorny issue in my work—namely, the tension between collaboration and leadership.

Methodology

In this evocative autoethnography (Ellis and Bochner, 2000), I examine issues around the tension I experienced as a white researcher conducting research in two post-colonial, indigenous contexts, one of which was my home. I chose to write this autoethnography as a confessional tale (Van Maanen, 1988), an approach that was chosen to help others feel the tension I experienced in these contexts, while adding to the larger body of understanding concerned with the complexity researchers have in working “with, for and among” indigenous groups (Menzies, 2001). I wrote this autoethnography knowing that such an endeavor can sometimes bring a modicum of regret (Dashper, 2015) in that I could easily be criticized for my decision-making and framing of various issues.

However, I feel a deep sense of responsibility to expose the tension I experienced around issues of collaboration and leadership as a unique illustration of how tangled our own histories can be in the work we do as researchers, particularly in post-colonial settings. In my case, while most researchers grapple with issues of when and how to collaborate in Native communities, my struggle has been whether and when to assume leadership positions, knowing that any work I do on behalf of another community speaks to my historical and present-day privilege. I offer my story as a tool for others attempting to work towards equity in both top-down and bottom-up environments in the hope that it provides a framework for thinking about one’s role.

Further, autoethnography was chosen as a method because it aims to connect the personal to the cultural, in which personal experiences are linked to broader cultural and societal issues (Ellis et al., 2011). McIvor (2010) argues that although it is not an indigenous framework, it bears many similarities by focusing on narratives. For a researcher interested in being sensitive to the historical intrusiveness of research practices in these communities (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999), I wanted to be the least intrusive while raising some important issues for other white researchers to consider. Additionally, in this autoethnography, I used Chang’s (2008) theoretical orientation that autoethnography should be ethnographical in its methodological orientation, cultural in its interpretive orientation, and autobiographical in its content orientation. Chang’s (2008) work was chosen in part because journal entries were used as the primary data source, and also because my framing of the issues raised is deeply seated in social and cultural understandings of what it means to be post-colonial. And, in essence, it was my understanding of what it means to be post-colonial that influenced my decision-making.

The analysis for this study consisted of 10 years of field notes that I collected while working to implement the CREDE (Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence) model in Hawaii and Greenland. ² As I analyzed my notes, I used Kaomea’s (2009) questions as a framework to begin understanding my behavior and decision-making. In a reflection on the rights and responsibilities of non-indigenous parents who enroll their children in programs for Native Hawaiians, she urges them to continually ask themselves three questions: “What is my place in this setting? What is my role or kuleana [responsibility] here? Is this the time and place for me to step forward … to step back … or to step out?” (p. 95)

Although Kaomea is addressing parents who occupy highly coveted slots in educational programs designed for Native Hawaiians, these questions can be used as a reflective tool and provide a framework for outsiders to think about their role within specific settings. I used Kaomea’s questions to frame my analysis of my field notes, organizing them into groups that illustrated examples of when I stepped forward, when I stepped back, and when I stepped out of reform efforts. Organizing my notes in this way allowed me to look for themes within each category that described my behavior and decision-making. I then analyzed my categorized notes using the literature on non-indigenous researchers working in post-colonial indigenous contexts, and my personal experiences as an ethnic minority growing up in post-colonial Hawaii. Once the data was analyzed, I then conducted member checks with colleagues in both settings as a way to capture the accuracy of the events from an outside perspective. Emailed copies of earlier drafts of this article were sent to former colleagues in some cases; in others, discussions over email or the phone were used.

My narrative may seem clean at this point, but this is only because I spent 10 years thinking about my role, actively trying to make sense of my discomfort and what advice I can give others out of this experience. The sections below include both my story and analysis of key events as I evolved in my understanding of who I am as a white researcher in post-colonial educational settings. All of the field notes are covered under my home institution’s ethical review board.

Greenland’s Ministry of Education, Nuuk, Greenland

The country of Greenland formally decolonized from the kingdom of Denmark in 1953, and established its Home Rule Government in 1979. Home Rule effectively gave Greenlanders the opportunity to create new legislation around important social and cultural issues, such as education. In 2001, when reform leaders began planning for Atuarfitsialak, the name used to describe Greenland’s K–12 educational reform, the leaders adopted a set of pedagogical strategies developed by the CREDE (Tharp et al., 2000) to promote and implement their educational goals. Several years after Atuarfitsialak began, I was invited to live and work alongside the reform leaders to help them understand the CREDE model. I took the opportunity because, at the time, I was looking to collect data for my dissertation on the ways the CREDE model was implemented in Hawaii. Further, my role in Greenland was to work as a consultant and ensure that a core group of reform leaders understood the CREDE pedagogical strategies well enough to train teachers throughout Greenland’s schools.

Although this was the explicated expectation for bringing me to Greenland, two months into my work, I sensed that the expectation around my role as a consultant began to shift. I began to experience moments where I felt I was being asked to step into a new position that could carry leadership responsibilities, which I was uncomfortable with, given the post-colonial setting. In coming to Greenland, I vowed to be as unobtrusive as possible in terms of both collecting my dissertation research and consulting, but these new expectations were pushing me in new directions. Below, I describe the beginnings of this shift and my reactions over the next few months.

In September, the sun in Greenland shines for approximately 12 hours a day, which is an appropriate amount of time for the sun to be out to someone who grew up close to the equator. I found it a nice break from the 22 hours I experienced over the Greenlandic summer. On this morning, the sun had just peaked and the rays poured through the triple-paned windows that lined one side of the reform leader’s office. The room was bright, yet several candles burned on the table, interspersed with bowls of raisins mixed with salted peanuts.

Nine of us sat at the table—roughly half Danish, the other half Greenlandic. Although Danish was typically spoken within the leadership group, a carry-over from the colonial days, in leadership meetings like the one we were in, English was used for my benefit. I looked forward to these weekly meetings because I used them as a mechanism to better understand the reform leaders’ knowledge of the CREDE model without having to ask. Until this moment, my role in the reform had been to assist the reform leaders in developing their understanding of the CREDE model well enough to implement it on their own. To do this effectively, I found it helpful to hear the leaders talk about the model with colleagues because, at the time, even asking the reform leaders about their thoughts on the CREDE model felt obtrusive.

On this day, the meeting began in its typical format: one person speaking at a time while the others quietly listened. I had grown accustomed to this way of interacting, although it was a departure from the overlapping speech I was used to in the Hawaiian context (Au, 1980). We discussed the plans for the reform, the extent to which it had been implemented, and next steps to take. However, midway through the meeting, one of the leaders said: “Involving Tasha, we have discovered how important it is to train teachers. Her strategies can expand our own understanding. We should use her while she is here.” Until this moment, my name had not been spoken in these meetings. Rather, I worked in the background in support of the reform leaders’ understanding of the CREDE model. However, I had just been named as an underutilized resource, and it startled me. I stiffened while I waited for more details. At the time, nothing more was offered, yet I sensed this was a turning point for my role in this context. I knew that I could no longer quietly collect data in the background while providing the reform leaders with information on how to implement the CREDE model. I sensed that I was going to be asked to exert influence or make decisions.

As non-indigenous researchers working in indigenous settings, we are at best on tricky ground; as outsiders, our roles in these contexts are uncertain as Native groups continue to engage in processes of decolonization (Tuhiwai Smith, 2008). Historically, Native people have experienced decades of research that has been unethical and disrespectful, making “research” one of the dirtiest words spoken in Native communities (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999). As a result, Native authors encourage non-indigenous researchers to collaborate with Native groups to ensure ethical and respectful research (Cram, 1997; Haig-Brown and Archibald, 1996). However, it is less clear when and to what extent outsiders should occupy leadership roles in these communities. Leadership often includes making decisions about the best fit for specific courses of action, forwarding specific agendas, and advancing specific ideas, all of which require that a person intimately know the culture and community’s goals. Bishop (2010) indicates that, in some cases, these roles are available, but researchers must take signals from the group and work in coordination to serve the group’s needs. Other than this general advice, there is very little guidance for white researchers working in indigenous communities to guide their decision-making around stepping into leadership positions.

In my case, I had personal experience with post-colonial issues that complicated the question of when to assume leadership positions and when to remain collaborative. I grew up in Hawaii as a local haole, a white person raised in the islands but whose ethnic roots exist elsewhere (Whittaker, 1986). Although haoles are an ethnic minority in this setting (Hormann, 1982), some argue that they have wielded extraordinary economic and social power in the islands (Rohrer, 2010), occupying numerous social, political, and educational positions. Hawaii’s post-colonial climate has sensitized me to issues related to outsiders occupying leadership positions potentially available to Native Hawaiians and how this is viewed from the Native community’s perspective. I also experienced the broad cultural movement of the 1970s and 1980s known as the Hawaiian Renaissance, an important time in Hawaii as Hawaiians experienced cultural and psychological renewal. Feelings of insecurity and inferiority among the Hawaiian people were being examined and reframed in favor of new explorations of identity and cultural expression (Lewis, 2008).

In looking back at my time in Greenland, my personal experience living with and among Native Hawaiians in a post-colonial context heavily influenced my decision-making around issues of collaboration versus leadership. Although I did not understand what it meant to be “post-colonial” at the time, as a child I remember experiencing a cultural shift as Hawaiians began to push back on their social status and engage in processes of self-determination. Additionally, I watched as Hawaiians increasingly began to occupy educational leadership positions that have brought back the Hawaiian language and culture to the community (Yamauchi et al., 2000). This shift in leadership and power within the Hawaiian community had an impact on me, and I recognized the importance of indigenous people being in positions with decision-making capabilities.

Therefore, in the Greenlandic setting, I found myself trying to step back and giving preference to collaborative relationships until I could eventually step out. In Greenland, my own history constantly reminded me that I was in a privileged position as an outside consultant working on behalf of the reform, and I needed to consider my decisions around leadership very carefully.

I left the leadership meeting with a newly developed sense of uncertainty and uneasiness about my place in supporting the reform leaders to implement Atuarfitsialak. In the next few months, I was offered several positions, each with increasing responsibility. For example, four months later, in January 2006, I was called to a reform leader’s office and asked to create a program of professional development that used instructional coaching as the primary method of implementing the CREDE model. I worked with a Greenlandic friend and colleague to develop a coaching model that was in line with Greenlandic ways of teaching and learning to ensure the program was responsive to teachers’ cultural needs (Wyatt and Lyberth, 2011). Like the nation’s culturally compatible reform, we wanted to ensure that the professional development, not just the CREDE model, was contextualized for the Greenlandic teachers.

Then, in February, I was asked to manage and direct Greenland’s program of teacher professional development. At that point, the reform leaders and teachers across the country had experienced multiple approaches to professional development, yet from the reform leaders’ perspective, none had been successful with the implementation of the CREDE model. This was the way it was explained in another leadership meeting: “There have been several strategies of coaching tried since the reform began. We need to come to some sort of agreement about what we want to do about this aspect of the reform.” In this moment, I learned that the Greenlanders had used various approaches to implement Atuarfitsialak’s goals, and that my work in this setting was the latest of many attempts to ensure that the reform was implemented in the school system. The conversation stirred up feelings of responsibility, and I committed myself to ensuring that the Greenlanders knew the CREDE model by the time my one year was up. I then switched perspectives and listened to the reform leader’s exact words and began to wonder who he was speaking of when he used the term “we.” In previous meetings, I was not completely sure who was being included in these conversations. I had seen how “we” was strategically used to include/exclude, depending on who was talking, who was in the room, and what they were trying to accomplish. In other words, the “we” was often ambiguous.

In some instances, Danish reform leaders were included in conversations about the reform and next steps needed, and in other instances they were excluded, particularly when the speaker was talking about issues of culture, language, and identity development. On occasion, I had talked with Danish reform leaders who felt they were included in the use of “we,” only to hear a different understanding elsewhere. As an outsider to Greenland’s post-colonial setting, it was difficult for me to understand when I was encompassed in the use of “we” or whether decisions were being made for and about me.

The reform leader’s intentions were clarified about a week later when a request was made that I develop a comprehensive and systemic coaching program that could be implemented around the country. This included identifying change agents in each community, training them as instructional CREDE coaches, and guiding each school in developing new CREDE teachers. Realizing that this would position me as a reform leader, rather than a key collaborator, I immediately declined. I did not want a position that another Greenlander could fill, nor was I comfortable taking on a new role that would position me as a leader. But, as I explained why I would not take the new role offered to me, I wondered whether I was jeopardizing the implementation of the reform by not doing as I was asked. I had been recruited to live and work in Greenland, and having accepted this position, I wondered whether it was appropriate to decline any task given to me. Clearly, I did not have an overview of the reform and what was needed to ensure its success in the ways the reform leaders did.

Then, in March 2006, I was again summoned to the reform leader’s office. This time, I was asked to be the director of a department that was not yet in existence. This position would essentially put me on equal footing with the other reform leaders. In this moment, I contemplated whether the expectation in bringing me to Greenland was always for me to assume a leadership position and, furthermore, why I had not considered this possibility before. I wondered if perhaps my perspective on the role outsiders play in Native communities was not shared with the reform leaders, and that my own complicated relationship with post-colonialism was interfering with my understanding of my role in this setting. Conflicted, I was unsure of how to respond. Do I accept this position because I am being asked to by the very people who brought me here because I have the skill set to do so? Or do I decline because I have deep knowledge of the role that white researchers have played in post-colonial settings? In other words, do I answer to the leaders of a community who are asking me to step forward or do I answer to the contentious historical relationship between Native communities and white researchers and step back? As a white researcher invited to work on behalf of the community, I was unsure of my place and how to respond.

I sat in the leader’s office and looked at the snow piled high outside the window. It blocked what little sun came to Greenland during the long winter months, and I could feel the darkness push on me from the inside and out as I contemplated how to move forward. This time it was even harder for me to think through my decision because there was no doubt remaining that I was being asked to join the leadership team. From their perspective, I had the right skill set, knowledge, and ability to ensure the Greenlanders were successful in reaching their goal of culturally compatible education. Yet, I was uncertain about my ethical responsibility and how many other Native people were overlooked in other communities in favor of outsiders just like me—outsiders who may indeed have had the right skill set to move indigenous goals and objectives forward, but nevertheless prevented others from occupying leadership positions.

I contemplated these consequences, realizing that no matter how committed I was to assisting the Greenlandic reform leaders and teachers in reaching their educational and social goals, as an outsider, even with best intentions, I inherently brought ways of thinking and doing that may not always have been appropriate and sensitive to the needs of the Greenlanders. Who is to say that 10 or 20 years from now, my intentions might not be seen in ways similar to the Danish colonizers?

Ultimately, my decision was guided by Kaomea’s (2005) explanation that outsiders, like me, should only be involved in indigenous affairs until the Native group is able to assist themselves. I interpreted this to mean that I should not embed myself in a way that made others depend on me, such that by pulling out, I would jeopardize the reform’s sustainability. And I wondered at the same time whether not fully integrating myself was also a way to jeopardize sustainability. I shifted my thoughts back to the conversation in the room and offered this: “Find me someone to mentor and I pass on my knowledge about CREDE. I will work with them to achieve Atuarfitsialak’s goals.” In effect, I stepped back and chose not to lead, and asked to make the CREDE model accessible to an insider who could adapt and implement the model in the Greenlandic cultural context.

I renewed my visa three more times to work with a former school principal who came to work alongside the reform leaders on Atuarfitsialak. We collaborated from 2006 to 2009, traveling together to assess schools’ commitment to the reform, strategizing on how to sustain reform efforts, and developing programs to ensure that municipalities received the information they needed to implement the CREDE model (Wyatt, 2010). As part of our work, we developed a cadre of Greenlandic teachers who traveled across the country working with individual schools to reach the reform’s goals. During this time, it was clear that my collaborator understood the CREDE model, such that she was able to transform and adapt multiple aspects of it so that it was contextualized to Greenland’s schools, and make it accessible to Greenland’s teachers.

Then, in 2009, after four years of scaling up the CREDE professional development program in Greenland, I stepped out. My initial one-year commitment had become four, and at that point I felt that my work in Greenland was done. I made this decision to leave because the CREDE model was a living, breathing pedagogical frame for Greenland’s classrooms, and at least one reform leader understood the model so intimately that she could easily work with teachers to implement it in their schools. It was at this point that I returned to Hawaii.

The Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence, Honolulu, Hawaii

Hawaii’s post-colonial history differs from Greenland in that it can be organized into waves of various groups who settled in the islands. These waves include Protestant missionaries, cash-crop farmers, and Asian immigrants who came to work in the sugar-cane fields (Fujikane, 2008). By nearly all accounts, the indigenous people have struggled for representation as new groups settled and pushed Native Hawaiians off their land and out of political opportunities. As a white person, a haole, who grew up in the islands, I have always been aware of my place in this setting and felt comfortable knowing that if I overstepped my role, someone would be there to make sure I understood my place.

In 2009, I moved back to Hawaii after being away for four years working on Atuarfitsialak, Greenland’s educational reform. I was eager to apply what I had learned about the flexibility of the CREDE model and engage with new colleagues about how it was implemented in a national reform. Within two weeks, I returned to the CREDE at the University of Hawai‘i–Mānoa, where I had been a graduate student (2001–2005) before I left for Greenland. In my absence, the CREDE program had expanded to include several other programmatic initiatives. One included the modification of the CREDE model for early childhood (Yamauchi et al., 2009), a program in which one year of CREDE professional development was provided to cohorts of teachers with high populations of Native Hawaiian students, alongside supplemental classes for teachers from the US continent in the Teach for America program.

In 2010, after receiving federal funding, we reached out to our partner schools to see if they would be interested in having CREDE professional development for their teachers. After eliciting their interest, we helped teachers develop place-based science curricula using the CREDE model as an implementation tool (Yamauchi, 2011; 2013; 2014). It was at this time that I began experimenting with stepping forward and taking initiative around various projects and testing my role in this new setting. For example, I initiated a revision of our evaluation tool that measures teachers’ levels of CREDE implementation (Luning, Wyatt and Im, 2011). I created a coaching program to train other CREDE coaches (Wyatt et al., 2017) and worked with College of Education faculty and students to move the CREDE pedagogical strategies into pre-service education (Wyatt, 2017). All of these efforts were geared towards scaling up and ensuring sustainability—two concepts that I came to appreciate while working in the Greenlandic setting.

At the same time, I also began working with a highly diverse group of teachers, which allowed me to experiment with my role as a CREDE coach and reflect on my place as a white researcher working in another indigenous setting. For example, at one school, the majority of the teachers were largely from the US continent, yet worked primarily with Native Hawaiians. In these schools, I spent most of my time educating teachers on students’ local culture and how best to bring their experiences into the classroom. I practiced new ways of talking to white teachers about issues of culture, its importance, and ways to include it in the classroom environment. In other schools where the majority of the teachers were from Hawaii, I practiced using our shared background experiences to help deepen the teachers’ understanding of how to integrate culture into classroom activities and conversations, and help students make deep connections to the curriculum.

During this time, I felt myself stepping forward, feeling uncertain about whether it was acceptable to take this kind of initiative, and then stepping back, until eventually I would feel myself stepping forward again, and later stepping back. Being in a familiar post-colonial context, coupled with my experiences in Hawaii’s diverse classrooms, was pushing me to reconsider my thoughts on when to take on leadership roles. At one point, I began to sense that I was seeing the cultural mismatch that Native Hawaiian students experienced when teachers did not share the same cultural background with students. As a CREDE coach, who was in classrooms nearly every day, I was observing teacher–student interactions that were not supportive of Native Hawaiian students’ personal and cultural background, and recognized that this was because the teachers needed different forms of support.

In my evolving understanding of my role, I realized that the question I had grappled with in Greenland—that of whether I should or should not take on leadership roles—was not the right question to ask. Flexible leadership, in which a person takes on a role for a given task and then surrenders it when they are no longer effective or the task is complete, is a Greenlandic way of thinking about leadership (Olsen and Tharp, 2013). In Greenland, I did not adopt this approach because I viewed myself as an outsider and was worried that I would be perceived as trying to usurp opportunities available to others. However, in Hawaii, where the indigenous group had had more time to come to terms with their post-colonial past, I felt confident that someone would put me in my place if I overstepped my bounds. In other words, when a Native Hawaiian used the term “we,” I knew that I was not included. I realized that the issues around the construct of leadership are context-bound and, as a white researcher working in these settings, I need to investigate this aspect of my role in each setting. Therefore, in Hawaii, I stepped forward.

My move into leadership roles manifested most clearly in my work on the pedagogical strategy of contextualization, in which teachers make curricula relevant for students (Tharp et al., 2000). Many of the teachers I coached served large populations of Native Hawaiians in schools where administrators adopted standardized scripted programs as a means for raising high-stakes test scores. Many of the teachers I worked with in Hawaii were non-Hawaiian, yet many of their students were Native Hawaiian, as well as Samoans, Micronesians, Filipinos, Chinese, Japanese, etc. To provide support for these teachers, for the next four years, I focused my research agenda on helping teachers integrate students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds with curricular content (Tharp et al., 2000). I developed a step-by-step process for teachers that explained how to implement the contextualization strategy (Wyatt, 2014a) and described the ways in which well-meaning teachers failed to contextualize (Wyatt, 2016) and how teachers integrated culturally compatible strategies into rigid scripted programs (Wyatt, 2014b). In essence, I realized that each post-colonial setting is asking something different of outsiders and that each moment requires researchers to assess whether they have the skills and ability to assist. In this context, I had the skills and the knowledge of how to approach the task, and therefore I stepped forward without taking steps back. In Hawaii, I accepted my role and responsibility to take on leadership roles when working on behalf of other communities.

At one point, I thought this issue was settled, but a year later, I began to question whether the CREDE model was appropriate for educating Hawaii’s indigenous students. I did not question whether the pedagogical strategies were appropriate; cultural anthropologists had collected data on how children in the Hawaiian community learned in the home and then worked with researchers to create the CREDE model, and it had been tested in multiple indigenous communities across the USA. Rather, I questioned whether any efforts other than Hawaiian language immersion programs were appropriate for Native Hawaiians. Unlike Greenland, Hawaii did not have a governing body that made educational decisions for its Native Hawaiian people, which was a departure from the educational efforts that were underway in Greenland. Rather, every school and/or initiative in Hawaii made their own decisions on how best to reach their educational goals. In effect, the CREDE model ran parallel to several other efforts across the state.

Hawaii’s reform effort contrasted with the context around Greenland’s educational system and left several issues unresolved for me. Atuarfitsialak was born out of national discussions on what the country wanted for its indigenous children. These discussions occurred over years, in which experts from around the world participated in Greenlandic conferences on their ideas for various models to educate Greenland’s children—further evidence that outsiders were welcome to take on leadership positions. As a result, the CREDE model was chosen as a vehicle for the implementation of Atuarfitsialak (Wyatt, 2011). However, in Hawaii, no such event brought together key stakeholders across the state. There were no national or state discussions that resulted in a decision to adopt a specific framework, educational model, or set of guidelines for educating Native Hawaiians, as a specific cultural group, in the public school system. Given the differences in these two educational contexts, I lacked a sense of certainty that I was working on behalf of what the Hawaiian community at large wanted for their children. I consistently asked myself if I was doing the right thing and felt the need for approval from a governing entity.

However, the real turning point for me was when I was exposed to the concept of settler colonization (Veracini, 2011), a term that became frequently used throughout the Pacific to describe those groups who came into indigenous settings after colonizers. In effect, it shifted my view of myself. No longer was I a white researcher working on behalf of the Native Hawaiian community; I was lumped in with every other non-Hawaiian person living in the islands (Fujikane, 2008). Whereas I initially had grown up thinking that my role as a white researcher was a way I could give back to the community that had given me my childhood, this concept of settler colonialism forced me to rethink this basic premise. I was no different than any other white person, despite my interest in being sensitive to many of the post-colonial issues Native people experience. The question was no longer whether I should step forward, step back, or step out; rather, the question became whether I should even step in at all. The combination of Hawaii’s discourse around settler colonialism and my need for approval from a governing committee fed my feelings of uncertainty.

After analyzing 10 years of field notes of my work as a white researcher working in indigenous educational contexts, I have not untangled the thorny issues related to my role and others like me who have dedicated themselves to this work. At this point, all I have done is expand my cognitive framework for thinking about how to work in these communities. Now, as I contemplate an invitation from another community, I ask myself: “What does it mean to be invited to do this work?”

Conclusion

In thinking about my CREDE work for 10 years, I have developed several insights as to why I felt tension around taking on leadership roles. When I lived and worked in Greenland to support Atuarfitsialak, the country had only recently decolonized, and I perceived the Greenlanders as being raw from 200 years of Danish colonial rule. In fact, I have a specific memory (and field-note entry) of a day when the word “colonialism” was used in a public venue, including the hushed silence that followed. Until that moment, I had not heard the word uttered publicly, yet it was starting to be discussed around the country in whispers.

My perception at the time was that Greenland was still in a fragile state, and to take a leadership position felt as if I was taking advantage of the situation. Having grown up in Hawaii, I had a modicum of understanding of the processes of decolonization, and knew that the development towards full independence was going to be at times painful. Additionally, at the time I felt that the process of decolonization produced a political vacuum that was quickly being filled by individuals from Greenland, as well as other countries, such as the USA, Sweden, Canada, and Denmark. When I have asked reform leaders more recently of their perspective, they agree that Greenland was fragile and I was right to be cautious. However, I was also told that I was initially brought to Greenland with the understanding that I would do everything possible to help them succeed. For this reason, I do not know if I made the right decision to collaborate rather than lead.

Working in Hawaii, I felt comfortable knowing that if I crossed boundaries and made decisions that were not within my realm, someone would correct me. This is not to say that indigenous people should correct outsiders, just that if the community invests in and trusts you, they will. The process of decolonization has been underway for much longer than in Greenland, and Polynesian researchers have written extensively on the role of non-indigenous researchers working in indigenous contexts (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999, 2008). They have indicated that, in some cases, these collaborations have been fruitful, whereas, in others, non-indigenous researchers have overstepped their place. Knowing that I was in a community where I felt others were invested in me, and comfortable in their actions around decolonization, brought me freedom to experiment and take on leadership roles in ways I did not feel in the Greenlandic context.

Additionally, my experience growing up in Hawaii as a cultural minority afforded me the ability to see the world from multiple perspectives. At once, I was both a cultural minority, living in a “super-diverse” context, and part of the cultural majority. This unique minority/majority experience allowed me to recognize that the world we live in is socially and culturally constructed, and what is valued in one context may not be in another. For those of us who are positioned to experience being both a minority and part of the majority, I have come to believe that we bring unique experiences and perspectives to the research endeavor that other white researchers may not.

As a researcher, I have thought long and hard about what responsibilities I have and how my responsibilities should influence my work—the Hawaiian value of knowing one’s kuleana or responsibility in a particular setting. In Greenland, I felt that my responsibility was to take my experiences of growing up in post-colonial Hawaii and apply them to Greenland’s circumstances—an awareness I had then and now. I felt that my responsibility was to ensure that the Greenlanders did not rely on outsiders like me, but were given opportunities to ensure that they were capable of supporting themselves. In Hawaii, I felt that my responsibility was to bridge dominant teaching strategies with those that are more effective for Native Hawaiians. My unique social history and cultural position allowed me to see the importance of filling this need and help teachers effectively make this transition.

When I ask myself how well I handled what was asked of me, I rely in part on my interactions with key people with whom I worked at the time. In 2016, I was asked to return to Greenland and assist the reform leaders with preparing teacher educators on the CREDE model—an aspect of the reform that had eluded us when I worked on Atuarfitsialak. I also maintain close ties with those I worked with in Hawaii, who continually contact me for mentoring and collaboration. I feel that I am seen as an extension of the research group that I was once a part of. Given my enduring relationships with leaders in both of these contexts, I cannot help but think I made the right moves more times than not as I struggled to know when to step forward, when to step back, and when to step out.

I cannot say that I do not have regret for not taking more leadership positions in Greenland or a more collaborative role in Hawaii. Yet, the work we do as white researchers in post-colonial settings is extremely political and complex, especially for some of us who have post-colonial ties. My hope in writing my story is to provide others with a framework for thinking about their role in post-colonial educational settings and highlight another area of the complexity in our relationships.