Indigenous Research Methodologies [2 ed.] 1483333477, 9781483333472

Table of contents :
Brief Contents
Detailed Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1 • Situating Knowledge Systems
2 • Research Paradigms
3 • Discovery and Recovery: Reading and Conducting Research Responsibly
4 • Whose Reality Counts? Research Methods in Question
5 • Postcolonial Indigenous Research Paradigms
6 • Decolonizing Evaluation
7 • Decolonizing Mixed Methods Research
8 • Indigenous Mixed Methods in Program Evaluation
9 • Theorizing on Social Science Research Methods: Indigenous Perspectives
10 • Culturally Responsive Indigenous Research Methodologies
11 • Decolonizing the Interview Method
12 • Participatory Research Methods
13 • Postcolonial Indigenous Feminist Research Methodologies
14 • Building Partnerships and Integrating Knowledge Systems
References
Index

Citation preview

Indigenous Research Methodologies Second Edition

Sara Miller McCune founded SAGE Publishing in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE publishes more than 1000 journals and over 600 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. Our growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne

Indigenous Research Methodologies Second Edition

Bagele Chilisa University of Botswana

FOR INFORMATION:

Copyright © 2020 by SAGE Publications, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Chilisa, Bagele, author. Title: Indigenous research methodologies / Bagele Chilisa. Description: Second edition. | Los Angeles : SAGE, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019029457 | ISBN 9781483333472 (paperback) | ISBN 9781483347035 (epub) | ISBN 9781544391496 (epub) | ISBN 9781483347028 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Indigenous peoples—Research— Methodology. | Postcolonialism—Research—Methodology. Classification: LCC GN380.C494 2020 | DDC 305.80072/1— dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029457

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Acquisitions Editor: Leah Fargotstein Editorial Assistant: Claire Laminen Production Editor: Gagan Mahindra Copy Editor: Michelle Ponce Typesetter: Hurix Digital Proofreader: Barbara Coster Indexer: Integra Cover Designer: Candice Harman Marketing Manager: Shari Countryman

19 20 21 22 23 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

BRIEF CONTENTS

Preface xvi Acknowledgments xxii About the Author

xxiii

Chapter 1 •

Situating Knowledge Systems

1

Chapter 2 •

Research Paradigms

18

Chapter 3 •

Discovery and Recovery: Reading and Conducting Research Responsibly

50

Chapter 4 •

Whose Reality Counts? Research Methods in Question

72

Chapter 5 •

Postcolonial Indigenous Research Paradigms

89

Chapter 6 •

Decolonizing Evaluation

114

Chapter 7 •

Decolonizing Mixed Methods Research

147

Chapter 8 •

Indigenous Mixed Methods in Program Evaluation

169

Chapter 9 •

Theorizing on Social Science Research Methods: Indigenous Perspectives

186

Chapter 10 •

Culturally Responsive Indigenous Research Methodologies 208

Chapter 11 •

Decolonizing the Interview Method

248

Chapter 12 •

Participatory Research Methods

267

Chapter 13 •

Postcolonial Indigenous Feminist Research Methodologies 293

Chapter 14 •

Building Partnerships and Integrating Knowledge Systems 318

References 336 Index 353

DETAILED CONTENTS

Preface xvi Acknowledgments xxii About the Author

Chapter 1  •  Situating Knowledge Systems

xxiii

1

Overview 1 Learning Objectives 2 Before You Start 2 Introduction 2 Terminology in Postcolonial Indigenous Research Methodologies 5 Imperialism, Colonialism, and Othering Ideologies Postcolonial Indigenous Research

Decolonization of Western Research Methodologies The Decolonization Process Strategies for Decolonization

6 9

11 12 14

Summary 16 —— ACTIVITY 1.1 —— KEY POINTS —— SUGGESTED READINGS

Chapter 2  •  Research Paradigms Overview Learning Objectives Before You Start Contested Knowledge: Indigenous Perspectives or Paradigm?

16 16 17

18 18 19 19 19

Indigenous Methodologies: Quantitative or Qualitative? 21 Naming 22

A Postcolonial Indigenous Research Paradigm 23 Assumptions About the Nature of Reality, Knowledge, and Values 23 Methodology 25 Decolonization and Indigenization Overview of Methodology Frameworks in the Context of Indigenization and Decolonization

28

—— ACTIVITY 2.1

32

Euro-Western Research Paradigms

26

34

The Positivism/Postpositivism Paradigm Assumptions About the Nature of Reality, Knowledge, and Values

35 36

—— ACTIVITY 2.2

37

The Interpretive Paradigm

38

Assumptions About the Nature of Reality, Knowledge, and Values The Transformative Paradigm Assumptions About the Nature of Reality, Knowledge, and Values

39 41 42

—— ACTIVITY 2.3

43

The Pragmatic Paradigm

44

Summary 45 —— KEY POINTS

48

—— ACTIVITY 2.4

48

—— SUGGESTED READINGS

48

Chapter 3  •  Discovery and Recovery: Reading and Conducting Research Responsibly

50

Overview

50

Learning Objectives

51

Before You Start

51

Introduction 51 Postcolonial and Indigenous Theories

53

Postcolonial Theory Critique

54

Research Aims

54

Researching Back: Methodological Imperialism

55

Resistance to Methodological Imperialism

57

Academic Imperialism

58

Analytical Tool: Blaut’s Theory

Postcolonial Theory and Language

59

60

Indigenous Economic Concepts (T. Tsuruta, 2006)

61

Literature and Deficit Theorizing

61

Resistance to Dominant Literature

62

—— ACTIVITY 3.1

64

Critical Race Theories

66

—— ACTIVITY 3.2

66

Summary 69 —— KEY POINTS

69

—— ACTIVITY 3.3

70

—— SUGGESTED READINGS

70

Chapter 4  •  Whose Reality Counts? Research Methods in Question

72

Overview

72

Learning Objectives

73

Before You Start

73

Colonizer/Colonized Dichotomies and the Ideology of the Other

73

Dismissing Indigenous Ways of Knowing

75

The Journey Into the Empire and Back The Error of Sameness The Exceptionality and Crisis Myth

Research Ethics and the Legitimacy of Knowledge —— ACTIVITY 4.1

75 78 81

82 83

Summary 86 —— KEY POINTS

87

—— ACTIVITY 4.2

87

—— SUGGESTED READINGS

88

Chapter 5  •  Postcolonial Indigenous Research Paradigms

89

Overview

89

Learning Objectives

89

Before You Start

90

Indigenous Knowledge and Research

90

Indigenous Knowledge and Knowledge Production Characteristics of Indigenous Knowledge The Role of Indigenous Knowledge in Research

Indigenizing Research Methodologies —— ACTIVITY 5.1

90 92 92

93 96

Postcolonial Indigenous Research Paradigms

98

Relational Ontology in Context: Perspectives From Africa

98

The I/We Obligation Versus the I/You: An Illustration Relations With the Living and the Nonliving: Implications for Research Spirituality, Love, and Harmony

Relational Ontology: Perspectives From Scholars in Canada and Australia Relations With People Relations With the Environment/Land Relations With the Cosmos: The Role of Spirituality Relations With the Cosmos: An Illustration

99 99 101

102 102 103 103 103

Relational Epistemologies

104

Relational Axiology

105

A Relational Axiology: African Perspectives

Relational Axiology: Perspectives From North America and Canada

106

106

Anonymity, Confidentiality, and Relations With People

107

—— ACTIVITY 5.2

107

Summary 110 —— KEY POINTS

111

—— ACTIVITY 5.3

111

—— SUGGESTED READINGS

112

Chapter 6  •  Decolonizing Evaluation

114

Overview

114

Learning Objectives

115

Before You Start

115

Why Evaluation

115

Evaluation Discourse in a Global Context

118

Postpositivism and the Methods Branch Pragmatism and the Use Branch Constructivism and the Value Branch The Transformative Paradigm and the Social Justice Branch The Postcolonial Indigenous Paradigm and the Needs and Context Branch

Blind Reliance on Eurocentric Tools —— ACTIVITY 6.1

The Shift in Evaluation Practice

119 119 119 119 120

120 121

122

Culture and Context Evaluation Models Context First Approach Perspectives From the American Indian Higher Education Consortium An Indigenous Evaluation Framework Evaluation Perspective from Hawaii and Aotearoa: The Value Added Approach

124

—— ACTIVITY 6.2 Blended Culturally Responsive Indigenous Evaluation Decolonizing Evaluation Through A Paradigmatic Lens: The Eastern Paradigm Nature of Reality Inquirer-Objective Relationship The Nature of Truth Attribution/Explanation of Action The Role of Values in Inquiry

129 129

125 127

129 129 129 130 130 131

The Made in Africa Evaluation Perspective: A Paradigmatic Lens

131

Decolonization Intent

132

Relational Ontology 133 Relational Epistemology 133 Relational Axiology 134 Methodology 134 —— ACTIVITY 6.3

135

Indigenous Multicultural Validity

136

Conducting an Indigenous Evaluation

141

—— ACTIVITY 6.4 —— ACTIVITY 6.5 —— ACTIVITY 6.6

142 143 144

Summary 144 —— KEY POINTS

145

—— SUGGESTED READINGS

145

Chapter 7  •  Decolonizing Mixed Methods Research

147

Overview

147

Learning Objectives

148

Before You Start

148

Toward the Meaning of MMR

149

Paradigms in MMR 154 Postpositivist 154 Constructivist 154 Transformative 155 Pragmatist 155 Indigenous Paradigms 155

Mixed Methods Designs and Rationales —— ACTIVITY 7.1

Indigenous Mixed Methods Approaches Quantitative Western Knowledge, Qualitative Western Knowledge + Indigenous Knowledge Embedded Transformative Emergent Mixed Method Design The Nominal Group and Embedded Traditional Knowledge Conventional Qualitative Research + Qualitative Indigenous Research Quantitative Research + An Indigenous Worldview

156 156

157 157 159 159 159 161

Summary 167 —— KEY POINTS

167

—— ACTIVITY 7.2

168

—— SUGGESTED READINGS

168

Chapter 8  •  Indigenous Mixed Methods in Program Evaluation

169

Overview 

169

Learning Objectives

170

Before You Start

170

The Indigenous Paradigmatic Lens

170

A Relational Epistemology 171 Preparing for the Program: Decolonizing Collaborative Research and Building Relationships171 Interrogating Power in Evaluation 173

Embedding the Study in Global Knowledge

175

Community Participation in Data Analysis

176

—— ACTIVITY 8.1 Creating Indigenous Statistical Constructs Indigenous Qualitative Evaluation Embedded in an Experimental Design Indigenous Conversation Methods The Shield as a Symbol of Protection

177 177 181 182 183

Summary184

—— KEY POINTS

184

—— ACTIVITY 8.2

184

—— SUGGESTED READINGS

185

Chapter 9  •  Theorizing on Social Science Research Methods: Indigenous Perspectives

186

Overview 

187

Learning Objectives

187

Before You Start

187

Introduction187 Methods Based on Ethnophilosophy Language, Metaphorical Sayings, and Proverbs Proverbs and Metaphors as Conceptual Frameworks Using Proverbs to Explore Community-Constructed Ideologies —— ACTIVITY 9.1

Storytelling Methods

188 188 189 190 191

193

Functions of a Story in Research 194 Stories and Relational Accountability 195 Folklores and the Design of Research Interventions: M¯aori Mythos 195 Folktales as Counternarratives: The Batswana Story of Origin 196 Contemporary Stories 197 Self-Praise/Identity Stories 198 Songs198 Stories From Research Interviews 200 Storytelling and Spirituality 201 Stories as Information Dissemination Avenues 201 —— ACTIVITY 9.2

In What Language Is the Story Told? Language Rights and Research

203

204 205

Summary206 —— KEY POINTS

207

—— ACTIVITY 9.3

207

—— SUGGESTED READINGS

207

Chapter 10  •  Culturally Responsive Indigenous Research Methodologies

208

Overview208 Learning Objectives

209

Before You Start

209

Regional, National, and Local Specific Methodologies

209

Paradigm, Methodology, and Methods

210

Validity and Reliability: An Overview

212

Rigor in Qualitative Research213 Credibility213 Triangulation214 Referential Adequacy 215 Reflexivity215 Transferability216 Dependability217 Confirmability218

Validity: A Postcolonial Indigenous Framework

219

Accountability, Respectful Representation, Reciprocity, and Rights and Responsibilities

220

Kaupapa Maori Research Methodology

221

The Process and Methods of the Creative Relationship Framework

Ethical Issues in the Creative Relationship Framework —— ACTIVITY 10.1

223

226 227

Cyclical Postcolonial Indigenous Research Methodologies: The Medicine Wheel

227

Pacific Research Methodologies

229

The Talanoa Faafeletua Interview Methods

231

—— ACTIVITY 10.2

231

The Afrocentric Paradigm

233

Culture and the Afrocentric Methodologies 234 Religiosity234 Ubuntu and Respect for Self and Other Through Consensus Building 234 Ubuntu and the Other: Respect for Particularity, Individuality, and Historicity 235 Self-Determination and Rebirth 235 Responsibilities of Researcher as Transformative Healer 236 Researcher as Colonizer, Researched as Colonized 237 Researcher as Knower/Teacher, Researched as Object/Subject/Known/Pupil238 Researcher as Redeemer, Researched as the Problem 239 Ethics Built on a Deep Respect for Religious Beliefs and the Practices of Others 241

Ethics That Underscore the Importance of Agreement and Consensus, Dialogue, and Particularity —— ACTIVITY 10.3

241 243

Summary245 —— KEY POINTS

246

—— ACTIVITY 10.4

246

—— SUGGESTED READINGS

246

Chapter 11  •  Decolonizing the Interview Method

248

Overview 

248

Learning Objectives

249

Before You Start

249

The Conventional Interview Method: An Overview

249

The Interview Structure and Questions Interview Questions

Postcolonial Indigenous Interview Methods

249 250

251

The Pagtatanung-Tanong Interview Method From Indigenous Filipino Culture A Relational Interview Method: The Diviner/Client Construction of a Story A Relational Interview Method: The Focused Life-Story Interview

252 253

—— ACTIVITY 11.1 Philosophic Sagacity and the Interview Method

253 254

Indigenous Focus Group Interviews Talking Circles Interviews and Data Analysis Interviews and Analysis Based on the Medicine Wheel

Symbols in Postcolonial Indigenous Interview Methods

252

255 256 257 259

260

The Kente and Bogolanfini Legend260

Conducting a Postcolonial Indigenous Interview

262

Summary265 —— KEY POINTS

265

—— ACTIVITY 11.2

265

—— SUGGESTED READINGS

266

Chapter 12  •  Participatory Research Methods

267

Overview 

267

Learning Objectives

268

Before You Start

268

Action Research: An Overview

268

The Action Research Cycle Decolonization of Action Research Participant as Coresearcher Transformative Participatory Action Research

Participatory Rural Appraisal PRA Techniques and the Survey Method Participatory Sampling Methods Village Mapping

269 271 271 275

277 277 278 279

Other Methods

279

—— ACTIVITY 12.1 Appreciative Inquiry and Participatory Action Research Healing Participatory Action Research Methods Anishnaabe Symbol-Based Reflection

280 281 284 284

—— ACTIVITY 12.2

285

The Participatory Action Research Process

286

Preparation287 Launching288 Data Collection 288 Data Analysis 289 Creating a Community Action Plan (CAP) 290 Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation 290

Summary290 —— KEY POINTS

290

—— ACTIVITY 12.3

291

—— SUGGESTED READINGS

292

Chapter 13  •  Postcolonial Indigenous Feminist Research Methodologies

293

Overview293 Learning Objectives

294

Before You Start

294

Introduction295 Postcolonial Indigenous Feminist Theory and Research Methodologies

295

Western Feminisms

300

Liberal (or Bourgeois or Individualistic) Feminism Radical Feminism The Marxist Socialist Feminist Theory Postcolonial Indigenous Feminisms

300 300 301 301

—— ACTIVITY 13.1 Borderland-Mestizaje Feminism Multiple Epistemologies

301 302 303

—— ACTIVITY 13.2

304

African Feminisms and Black Feminisms Healing Methodologies

Indigenous Feminist Participatory Methods in Practice Focus Group and the Use of a Magic Wooden Spoon The Use of a Basket Using Song as a Resistance Voice and a Healing Method

306 309

310 311 311 311

Healing From Patriarchal Oppressive Ideologies: Small-Group Methods 312 Stage 1: Goals, Interventions, and Strategies for the Initial Stage of the Group 313 Stage 2: Makungulupeswa: Riddles 313 Stage 3: Storytelling and Mbizi314 Stage 4: Skill-Building 314 Stage 5: Continuation of Relationships and Beyond 314

Summary315 —— KEY POINTS

315

—— ACTIVITY 13.3

316

—— SUGGESTED READINGS

316

Chapter 14  •  Building Partnerships and Integrating Knowledge Systems

318

Overview 

318

Learning Objectives

319

Before You Start

319

Postcolonial Indigenous and Social Justice Working Relationships

320

Researcher-Researched Relationships Institutional Ethics Protocols and the Researched Overcoming Researcher-Centric Research Projects Roles and Responsibilities of Researchers and Community Partners

Cross-Cultural Partnership Research and Collaboration Between Academics and Donors Partnership of Knowledge Systems

Planning Research From a Postcolonial Indigenous Research Perspective Orienting Decisions Research Design and Methodology Data Analysis Presenting and Reporting Results

320 322 322 323

324 325

326 326 326 327 333

Summary333 —— KEY POINTS

334

—— ACTIVITY 14.1

334

—— SUGGESTED READINGS

335

References336 Index353

PREFACE

T

he community of social science researchers is experiencing a struggle as it comes to terms with social justice issues that arise from the research process itself, as well as from the findings that are produced by their efforts. While more and more non-Western researchers from the third world and from indigenous societies are expressing criticism about what is viewed as colonizing epistemologies and methodologies, we (speaking as one of them) are also cognizant of the need to bring indigenous methodologies into the research arena as a means of addressing the goals of enhanced human rights and social justice. There is an increasing emphasis on the need to sensitize researchers and students to diverse epistemologies, methods, and methodologies, especially those of women, minority groups, former colonized societies, indigenous people, historically oppressed communities, economically oppressed groups, and people with disabilities, who have been excluded from dominant epistemologies. However, there are questions about the nature of these marginalized epistemologies, their philosophical base, the standards by which they are to be validated, and the direction in which they move the scholarship of research methodologies. This book addresses some of these concerns by bringing together postcolonial indigenous epistemologies and methodologies from across the globe and creating a platform to discuss them, along with other emergent methods and methodologies in the social sciences. It is a single-authored research methods book that situates research in a larger historical, cultural, and global context and provides case studies through which students can see for themselves the dominance of Euro-Western research methodologies and hence appreciate the call for decolonizing research methodologies. The major focus of the book is on extending the theoretical and philosophical critique of decolonizing methodologies by making visible specific methodologies that are commensurate with a postcolonial indigenous paradigm. These methodologies are discussed within a postcolonial indigenous paradigm, which puts forward relational ontology, epistemology, and axiology as a philosophical framework to bring together methods, techniques, and methodologies by global postcolonial and indigenous scholars and emergent methods in Euro-Western research.

GOALS OF THE BOOK The goals of the book are to do the following: —— Promote the recovering, valuing, and internationalizing of postcolonial indigenous epistemologies, methodologies, and methods —— Explore and critique some of the dominant paradigms, using arguments based on the philosophies of the researched, as well as their ways of knowing and their experiences with colonization, imperialism, and globalization xvi

Preface  xvii

—— Present a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm as an overarching framework to explore the philosophical assumptions that undergird the use of postcolonial indigenous methodologies —— Theorize postcolonial indigenous ways of doing research, explore the application of these methodologies through case studies, and give illustrative examples —— Foreground interconnectedness and relational epistemologies as a framework within which to discuss postcolonial indigenous methodologies from across the globe —— Illustrate power relations in the research process Since the publication of the book eight years ago, there have been debates on the position of Indigenous Research Methodologies in the paradigm discourse. There are also new developments in indigenous quantitative research framed from indigenous ontological, epistemological, and exological perspectives. The second edition continues the efforts to bring together voices of global postcolonial and indigenous scholars on these debates and new developments. The second edition is also informed by comments, from lecturers and research and evaluation practitioners who have used the book as a research course main text or as a supplementary text, and research and evaluation practitioners who continued to engage with me in workshops and conferences. From the richness of these comments, I have added three new chapters. I have also added various websites and web sources to stimulate discussions and enrich literature on indigenous research methodologies. The first chapter from the 1st edition has been split into two chapters. The new Chapter 1 will focus on indigenous methodologies and the form they take. Chapter 2 introduces the debates on current Euro-Western research paradigms and the philosophical assumptions that inform these methodologies. The main thrust of the chapter is that current dominant academic research traditions are founded on the culture, history, and philosophies of Euro-Western thought and are therefore indigenous to Western societies and their academic institutions. These methodologies exclude from knowledge production the knowledge systems of the researched colonized Other. Three approaches in postcolonial indigenous research methodologies are discussed: (1) decolonization and indigenization of Euro-Western research approaches, (2) research approaches informed by a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm, and (3) third-space methodologies. The new Chapter 3 (previously Chapter 2) presents case studies that demonstrate how colonial research served the interests of the colonizers, how globalization continues to serve the interests of former and present-day colonizers, and how postcolonial theorizing and critical race theory can be used to conduct research. The new Chapter 4 (previously Chapter 3) highlights how mainstream research in postcolonial societies still ignores, marginalizes, and suppresses other knowledge systems and ways of knowing. The chapter demonstrates how HIV/AIDS prevention has been highly compromised by employing language and categories of thinking that are alien to the infected and affected communities. It also shows how a dichotomous hierarchy informed by colonization, imperialism, and globalization privileges the first world position as knower and relegates the third world to the position of an Other who are learners; it also reflects the people’s resistance to imposed frameworks and its consequences. The new Chapter 5 (previously C ­ hapter 4)

xviii   Indigenous Research Methodologies

explores the meaning of postcolonial indigenous research methodologies and the philosophies and worldviews that inform these methodologies. The meaning of indigenous knowledge and its role in research are also discussed. Chapter 6 is a new chapter on decolonizing evaluation methodologies presenting ways in which the formerly colonized of the world including Africans, indigenous people of Canada, Australia, Asia, and North America are exploring ways to decolonize and indigenize evaluation. Chapter 7 is a new chapter on indigenous mixed methods. It argues for indigenous and Western knowledge to be integrated to enhance participation of indigenous peoples as knowers and for the relevance of research to their needs and dissemination of research findings to academic and community settings. Chapter 8 is also a new chapter on mixed methods in evaluation. It demonstrates how relationships are key in indigenous evaluation. The new Chapter 9 (previously Chapter 5) emphasizes the role of language, oral literature, and storytelling as foundations and sources of the literature, philosophies, theories, and methods of data collection, analysis, and interpretation regarding the researched, who constitute a two-thirds majority of the world population. The new Chapter 10 (previously Chapter 6) underscores the relationship between methodology, methods, and philosophical assumptions on the nature of reality, knowledge, and values. The chapter presents examples of culturally responsive indigenous methodologies and discusses how rigor and credibility are addressed in these methodologies. Culturally responsive methodologies of the Pacific Islands are added to the discussion in The new Chapter 11 (­previously ­Chapter 7) which critiques the conventional interview method from a postcolonial indigenous research perspective and offers alternative interview strategies suited to the worldviews of the researched. In the new Chapter 12 (previously Chapter 8) participatory research approaches that enable oppressed and disempowered groups to collectively share and analyze their knowledge, life experiences, and conditions and to use indigenous knowledge as a basis to plan and to act are discussed. Two types of participatory action research are presented, one with an emphasis on participants as coresearchers and another with an emphasis on personal and social transformation. The new Chapter 13 (­previously Chapter 9) highlights attempts to decolonize Euro-Western methodologies from the perspective of non-Western marginalized feminisms. The argument is that women in postcolonial and indigenous societies have been silenced by Western feminist theory, in addition to Western patriarchies, third world patriarchies, colonialism, imperialism, and globalization. The chapter is devoted to defining postcolonial indigenous feminist methodologies and articulating the worldviews, perspectives, and epistemologies that inform these methodologies, as well as research methods that privilege non-Western women. The new Chapter 14 (previously Chapter 10) draws from discussions in the book to synthesize working relations and partnerships between researchers and the researched and between institutions and communities, as well as ways of integrating knowledge systems such that indigenous knowledge, methods, and techniques are integrated into the global knowledge economy. The chapter further outlines a matrix for planning research from a postcolonial indigenous research perspective.

Preface  xix

AUDIENCES FOR THE BOOK Indigenous research methods and decolonizing research are relatively new areas. This book fills a gap in research methods and should find a ready market in the academy as it addresses the rising need to engage students in multiple epistemologies. It also provides the increasing number of transnational and international scholars carrying out research in third and fourth world countries, among indigenous peoples, and among historically oppressed groups with an introduction to methodologies that communicate the experiences of the researched. I would recommend this as a primary textbook for advanced undergraduate, master’s, and beginning doctoral students taking research methods courses in education and the social and behavioral sciences. With the limited number of books that synthesize postcolonial indigenous methodologies, this volume can serve as a research methods book for students enrolled in postcolonial studies and cultural studies programs, indigenous education programs, and international education programs and for students and scholars conducting ethnoscience and ethnomathematics research. There is a growing interest in indigenous knowledge systems and postcolonial studies in general. There is, for instance, a move to create interdisciplinary postcolonial studies in most nation-states and within the United Nations University. A methodology book that focuses on postcolonial indigenous philosophies and methodologies becomes a useful resource for the growing disciplines in indigenous knowledge systems and postcolonial studies. Researchers and evaluators working in culturally complex societies and with postcolonial indigenous societies will find the book useful if they wish to conduct research that brings about positive change to the lives of the researched people. The book is appropriate for international and professional markets because it brings together voices of postcolonial indigenous scholars with specific reference to epistemologies, methodology, and method and creates a common platform through which these are addressed, together with other emergent research methods. Researchers from across disciplines addressing issues of power from the perspective of colonizer/colonized, self/Other, gender, ethnicity, race, and disability will find the book useful.

FEATURES OF THE BOOK —— Provides a comprehensive overview and synthesis of indigenous research methodologies and indigenous feminist methodologies and illustrates their application through a fascinating array of global case studies —— Provides an overview and critique of predominant research paradigms and their methodologies; gives a clear justification for an indigenous paradigm; explores the theoretical and philosophical foundations of indigenous paradigms by clarifying their ontological, epistemological, and axiological assumptions and methodologies; and moves the decolonization of research agenda beyond theory to practice

xx   Indigenous Research Methodologies

—— Demonstrates the application of postcolonial theory, critical race theory, postcolonial indigenous feminist theory, indigenous knowledge, and indigenous theorizing to planning and conducting research by showcasing global examples and case studies illustrating these theories from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Africa, Asia, and the United Kingdom —— Presents conceptual and practical descriptions and suggestions on social justice partnerships and working relationships between the researchers and the researched; between communities and research institutions; between funding agencies, researchers, and communities; between indigenous researchers and international or transnational researchers; and between Western and nonWestern researchers from developed and developing countries —— Offers suggestions on integrating knowledge systems in such a way that indigenous knowledge, philosophies, methodologies, and techniques become integrated in the global knowledge economy —— Begins each chapter with cutting-edge and thought-provoking quotations from eminent international scholars and a “before you start activity”; each chapter includes activities and suggested readings that stimulate critical thinking and a transformation of the mind

MY IDENTITY I am a woman born in a small village in Botswana, a former British colony situated in southern Africa. My parents are subsistence farmers who worked hard to pay my school fees. At the age of 5 years, before I started school, my father taught me the vowels and letters of the alphabet; our classroom was behind the granary that stored all the produce from the fields. By the time I started school, I could count and recite the vowels and letters of the alphabet. As I was growing up, my father introduced me to the concept of decolonization of the mind, even though he never termed it such. At that time, it was common for women and men to apply skin lightening creams to their faces. My father often talked to me and my other siblings at length about why it was important always to be who we are and not to wish to be light in complexion. I was fortunate to pass my primary leaving-school examination and proceed to secondary school. While at school, I decided to convert to Christianity in the Roman Catholic denomination. I was requested to ask my parents to give me an English Christian name. My father made it clear that my name, Bagele, had a meaning to which the family and the community could connect and relate. He could not authorize any new name. He explained that he was called Tabagele and my mother Mmabagele and therefore were known in the community through the names that connected them to their daughter. My change of name would start a chain of other changes of names and would require the community to figure out new relationships with him and with me. This early lesson from my father gave me the courage to explore ways in which indigenous practices and values on connectedness and relational ways of knowing of the colonized Other could be valorized in research.

Preface  xxi

Writing this book has hence been a personal project that has enabled me to draw together my interests and training in research methodology at the University of Pittsburgh in the United States, my 20 years of experience conducting collaborative research in southern and eastern Africa with scholars from the United Kingdom and the United States, and my knowledge of the culture of my people in the village of Nshakashogwe, Botswana. Throughout my research journey, I noticed there were two knowledge systems in operation, one that resonated with the researched and another that was academic and informed by Western disciplines. The survivance of the nonacademic knowledge system of the researched inspired me to write this book.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M

any people contributed to my ability to complete this book, including my family, students, colleagues, and the reviewers of the manuscript. From the University of Botswana, my special thanks to Frank Youngman for his valuable comments and encouragement to finish the book. Many thanks to A. A. Adeyinka, M. Dube, M. Sekgwa, L. Chisiyanwa, M. Sekgwa, D. Pule, and Sukhjinder Kaur for their contributions. I am indebted to Paul Bennel, Mairead Dunne, and Fiona Leach from Sussex University, United Kingdom; Martin Carnoy of Stanford University, United States; and John Jemmott and Loretta Jemmott of University of Pennsylvania, United States; for our research together. My special thanks to Donna Mertens from Gallaudet University, United States, and Michelle Commeyras from the University of Georgia, United States, who gave me important advice and practical support. From Sage, I am indebted to the editors, Lisa Cuevas and Vicki Knight, for their patience, the encouragement to start and finish the book, and their valuable support. To the following reviewers, thanks for the wealth of knowledge in the area and your willingness to share it: Tony E. Adams, Northeastern Illinois University; Alison Jones, University of Auckland, New Zealand; Peter J. Mataira, University of Hawai’i at Manoa; and Wenona Victor, Simon Fraser University. I also wish to thank my parents, Motlalepula and Zwambele Kenosi, and my grandmother, Ponya Kenosi, for the oral literature they passed on to me. To my husband, Ernest, thanks for enduring my long hours of writing. Special thanks to Wanano, Rapelang, Mboki, Kushatha, Simisami, Lynette, Olorato, Mbeu, Wensha, Mmilidzi, Ndiye, Chedu, Nlakidzi, and Allysa for their support. For the second edition, I would like to thank the following reviewers: Biko Agozino, Virginia Tech Donald D. Pepion, New Mexico State University Gary H. Jacobsen, University of Alaska Fairbanks Luis Urrieta, Jr., University of Texas at Austin Nate Wood, North Dakota State University Robert Henry, University of Saskatchewan Sharon M. Ravitch, University of Pennsylvania Valentin Ekiaka Nzai, Texas A&M University–Kingsville

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bagele Chilisa is a professor at the University of Botswana where she teaches research methods and evaluation courses to graduate and undergraduate students. One of her main areas of research is on research methodologies that are relevant, context specific, and appropriate in African contexts; culturally complex communities; and methodologies that make visible voices of those who continue to suffer oppression and discrimination be it because of their sex, race/ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, or social class. These are methods inclusive of other ways of knowing, perceiving reality and value systems and methods that empower communities to produce knowledge that they can own and use to improve their standards of living. She is co-author and co-editor to three books in this area: Educational Research: Towards Sustainable Development, Research Methods for Adult Educators in Africa and Indigenous Pathways into Social Research: Voices of New Generation. Other publications include the following journal articles: “Educational Research Within Postcolonial Africa: A Critique of HIV/AIDS Research in Botswana” (International Journal of Qualitative Studies); “Resisting Dominant Discourses: Implications of Indigenous African Feminist Theory and Methods for Gender and Education Research” (Gender and Education Journal); Decolonising Trans-disciplinary Research: An African Perspective for enhancing knowledge integration in Sustainability Science (“Sustainability Science Journal”); Community Engagement with a post-colonial, African based relational paradigm (“Qualitative Research”) Decolonizing and Indigenizing Evaluation Practice in Africa: Toward African Relational Evaluation Approaches The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation; Mixed Methods in Indigenous Research: Building Relationships for Sustainable Intervention Outcomes,( “Journal of Mixed Methods Research”), and “Mbizi: Empowerment and HIV/AIDS Prevention for Adolescents Girls in Botswana” (The Journal of Specialists in Group Work). In addition, she has also authored the following chapters: “Indigenous Researchers: Contrasting Western and Indigenous Perspectives” (in D. M. Mertens and P. E. Ginsberg, Handbook for Social Research Ethics); “Indigenous Knowledge, HIV and AIDS Education and Research: Implications for Health Educators” (in E. Taylor and P. Cranton, The Handbook of Transformative Learning); and “‘Sex’ Education: Subjugated Voices and Adolescent Voices” (in C. Skelton, B. Francis, and L. Smulyan, Gender and Education). She has received numerous grants to carry out evaluation research on HIV/AIDS, gender, education, sexuality, and assessment from the following international organizations: Department for International Development; Forum for African Women in Education; xxiii

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UNICEF; UNDP; UNESCO; Economic Commission for Africa; World Bank; ILO; the National Institutes of Health (USA), and Spencer Foundation (USA). Most of the research involved partnerships between universities and collaboration with international scholars. She has conducted collaborative research with the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, Harvard School of Public Health, and University of Sussex. She recently won an NIH grant to build research capacity using culturally sensitive methodologies that can inform the design of cultural-specific and age-appropriate interventions that can reduce HIV/AIDS infection in adolescents in Botswana. She has organized sessions in international conferences to advocate for postcolonial indigenous research and evaluation methodologies and African rooted evaluation approaches. She has also made presentations at the meetings of International Sociological Association Research Committee on Logic and Methodology; African Evaluation Association; World Congress of Comparative Education Societies; and the American Psychological Association. She is currently in the the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Evaluation Advisory Panel (EAP) under the Independent Evaluation Office. In the last five years, she has conducted workshops on Culturally and Contextually Responsive Indigenous Evaluation for the International Program Development Evaluation Training (IPDET) and Centre for Learning and Evaluation Results (CLEAR).

1 SITUATING KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS How is it possible to decolonize (social) research in/on the non-Western developing countries to ensure that the people’s human condition is not constructed through Western hegemony and ideology? Patience Elabor-Idemudia (2002, p. 231)

Overview The main thrust of this chapter is that current academic research traditions are founded on the culture, history, and philosophies of Euro-Western thought and are therefore indigenous to the Western academy and its institutions. These methodologies exclude from knowledge production the knowledge systems of formerly colonized, historically marginalized, and oppressed groups, which today are most often represented as Other and fall under broad categories of non-Western, third world, developing, underdeveloped, First Nations, indigenous peoples, third world women, African American women, and so on. The chapter commences with discussion of some of the concepts and terms used in the book and an outline of the process and strategies for decolonizing Western-based research.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Explain the decolonization of the research process and the strategies for decolonization. 2. Appreciate the need for researchers to interrogate the “captive” or “colonized mind” and engage in multiple epistemologies that are inclusive of voices of those who suffered colonization, the disenfranchised, and dispossessed, often represented as the Other, nonWestern, third world, developing, underdeveloped, First Nations, indigenous peoples, third world women, African American women, and historically marginalized groups.

Before You Start Relate your experiences with research either as a research participant, research assistant, or researcher. What did you like most about the experience? What were your challenges, and how did you address them? Reflect on indigenous research topics that you might want to do, and debate if the current social science research methodologies are adequate for conducting research on such topics.

INTRODUCTION There is growing evidence that social science research “needs emancipation from hearing only the voices of Western Europe, emancipation from generations of silence, and emancipation from seeing the world in one color” (Guba & Lincoln, 2005, p. 212). Social science research needs to involve spirituality in research, respecting communal forms of living that are not Western and creating space for inquiries based on relational realities and forms of knowing that are predominant among the non-Western Other/s still being colonized. I have always been disturbed by the way in which the Euro-Western research process disconnects me from the multiple relations that I have with my community, the living and the nonliving. I belong to the Bantu people of Africa, who live a communal life based on a connectedness that stretches from birth to death, continues beyond death, and extends to the living and the nonliving. I am known and communicate in relational terms that connect me to all my relations, living and the nonliving. It is common for people to refer to each other using totems as well as relational terms such as uncle, aunt, brother, and so on. For instance, my totem is a crocodile, and depending on who is talking to me and on what occasion, I can be referred to using my totem. The importance of connectedness and relationships is not unique to the Bantu people of southern Africa. Shawn Wilson (2008) notes that in the speech of the Aboriginal Australians, other indigenous people are referred to as cousin, brother, or auntie. Ideally, the multiple connections that indigenous scholars have with those around them and with the living and the nonliving should form part of their social history and should inform how

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they see the world and how they relate with the researched. Euro-Western hegemonic methodologies, however, continue to dominate how we think and conduct research. Recently, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) approved a proposal from the Centre for Scientific Research, Indigenous and Innovative Knowledge (CESRIK) at the University of Botswana to conduct a survey on indigenous knowledge systems. The CESRIK committee, of which I am a member, met to discuss the approach to the survey. First, there was brainstorming on the different categories of indigenous knowledge. The next step was to discuss the approach that would be used for a survey on a given category of indigenous knowledge. Some suggested that we should conduct a workshop where academic experts on indigenous knowledge systems would give keynote presentations to an audience made up of community elders, experts in indigenous knowledge such as herbalists, members of the association of traditional healers, storytellers, and traditional leaders. Others warned that the process of knowledge production—the naming, concepts, thought analysis, sources of knowledge, and what is accepted as evidence by indigenous knowledge experts—could be different from what academic keynote speakers accept; others pointed out that the translation from English, the official language, to local languages could distort the communication even further. Still, others noted that indigenous experts from the communities could choose not to participate in the discussion unless they were assured of a copyright on the knowledge they brought into the discussions. These discussions point to the operation of two knowledge systems. One is Euro-Western and indigenous to the Western academy and its institutions; the other knowledge is non-Western and peripheral, and it operates with the values and belief systems of the historically colonized. This peripheral knowledge system values relationships and is suspicious of Western academic discourse and its colonizing tendencies. Paddy Ladd (2003) notes that academic discourse systems contain [their] own unspoken rules as to what can or cannot be said and how, when and where. Each therefore, constructs canons of truth around whatever its participants decide is “admissible evidence,” a process that in the case of certain prestigious discourses, such as those found in universities, medical establishments and communication media, can be seen as particularly dangerous when unexamined, for these then come to determine what counts as knowledge. (p. 76) As more and more scholars begin to engage with imperialism and colonialism in research, make choices on what they research, and delve into areas that colonial epistemologies dismissed as sorcery, they are confronted by the real limitations of Western hegemonic research practices, for example, ethical standards such as the principle of informed consent of the researched. Batshi Tshireletso’s study (2001) on the Mazenge cult is an example of challenges that confront researchers. Mazenge is a cult of affliction (hereditary spirits of the bush or spirits). Its membership is entirely women. In this study, Tshireletso wanted to show how the concepts of sacred space in the Mazenge cult are constructed and to establish the meanings of sacredness in the Mazenge cult. In doing this research, he was confronted by several challenges. Talking about the Mazenge cult is a public taboo. The word Mazenge is not supposed to be mentioned in public. Access to the Mazenge spirit medium in connection with the Mazenge cult is impossible when the medium is not in a state of being possessed. As a result, Tshireletso observes, he was unable to interview the Mazenge spirit

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medium. The impression one gets is that he would have talked to the spirit, even if she were possessed. The following are the ethical principles that arise: 1. Is it ethical to seek consent from one who is being possessed? 2. If the principal informant, the Mazenge medium, cannot be interviewed while not possessed, how can data collection about the spirit be validated? 3. Is it ethical to write about the researched on the basis of what others say about them? 4. What is the message behind the community sanction against communication with Mazenge spirit mediums? 5. Is there a possibility that in researching Mazenge, Tshireletso was violating Mazenge community copyrights to their knowledge? Tshireletso’s study shows how mainstream practice and interpretations of informed consent and copyright are not inclusive of the knowledge stored in rituals and practices like Mazenge. Such examples demonstrate the need for the research community to expand the boundaries of knowledge production and research practices in order to stop further abuses of fundamental human rights of the researched in historically colonized societies. These rights should include the opportunity to have a say on whether they can be written about, what can be written about them, and how it can be written and disseminated; they should also have the option of being trained to conduct the research themselves. Currently, scholars debate the following questions: —— Is the knowledge production process espoused by mainstream methodologies respectful and inclusive of all knowledge systems? Are the following inclusive of all knowledge systems? 1. 2. 3. 4.

The philosophies that underpin the research approach Methods of collecting data Sources of evidence The analysis, reporting, and dissemination process

—— Are First Nations peoples, indigenous peoples, peoples of all worlds—that is, first world, second world, third, and fourth world, developed and developing countries, disenfranchised and dispossessed peoples—given equal rights through the research process to know, to name, to talk, and be heard? —— What are the concerns about current research methodologies? —— What challenges arise in using Western-based theory when research is carried out among those who suffered European colonial rule and slavery and are continuously being marginalized by the current research tradition? —— What are the challenges that researchers encounter in the literature that inform research on these communities? —— What do the multiple voices of scholars from across the globe say about EuroWestern research methodologies? —— How can we carry out research so that it is respectful and beneficial to the researched communities?

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Most of the concerns and questions raised above are addressed in this book. It will demonstrate how scholars continue to critique Euro-Western research paradigms and advance ways of transforming them so that they are inclusive of the indigenous knowledge systems and life experiences of the historically colonized, disenfranchised, and dispossessed communities. A postcolonial indigenous research paradigm and its methods and methodologies are discussed.

TERMINOLOGY IN POSTCOLONIAL INDIGENOUS RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES A variety of terms are used in this chapter and throughout the book. Although most of them are commonplace terms, it is important to spell out their precise meaning in this work. Research:   It is systematic, that is, it is the adoption of a strategy or a set of principles to study an issue of interest. The systematic strategy usually starts with the identification of an area of interest to study; a review of the literature to develop further understanding of the issue to be investigated; and choice of a research design or strategy that will inform the way the sampling of respondents is performed, the instruments for data collection, the analysis, interpretation, and reporting of the findings. You should in addition problematize research as a power struggle between researchers and the researched. Michel Foucault (1977), for example, observes that what we know and how we know [are] grounded in shifting and diverse historical human practices, politics, and power. There are in the production of knowledge multiple centres of power in constant struggle; [through] conflict, compromise, and negotiation . . . whichever group is strongest establishes its own rules on what can be known and how it can be known. A non-power related truth game is not possible, thus humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination. (p. 151) The research you do will have the power to label, name, condemn, describe, or prescribe solutions to challenges in former colonized, indigenous peoples and historically oppressed groups. You are encouraged to conduct research without perpetuating self-serving Western research paradigms that construct Western ways of knowing as superior to the Other’s ways of knowing. The book draws your attention to the emphasis on the role of the researcher as a provocateur (Mertens, 2010a) and a transformative healer (Chilisa, 2009; Chilisa & Ntseane 2010; Dillard, 2008; Ramsey, 2006) guided by the four Rs: accountable responsibility, respect, reciprocity, and rights and regulations of the researched (Ellis & Earley, 2006; Louis, 2007; Weber-Pillwax, 2001; Wilson, 2008), as well as roles and responsibilities of researchers as articulated in ethics guidelines and protocols of the former colonized, indigenous peoples and the historically oppressed. The position taken in this book is that postcolonial indigenous research methodologies should stand on an equal footing with Western research paradigms and should be an essential and integral part of any research methodology course.

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You are invited to problematize a “captive or colonized mind” on the entire systematic set of principles to study an issue. The Captive Mind. Partha N. Mukherji (2004) challenges all researchers to debate whether the social science methodologies that originated in the West and are indigenous to the West are necessarily universal for the rest of the world. What is your reaction to the challenge? The Malaysian sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas (2004) developed the concept “the captive mind” to refer to an uncritical imitation of Western research paradigms within scientific intellectual activity. Others (Fanon, 1967; Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 1986a, 1986b) discuss a process they call colonization of the mind. This is a process that involves stripping the formerly colonized and historically marginalized groups of their ancestral culture and replacing it with Euro-Western culture. The process occurs through the education system, where learners are taught in languages of the colonizers to reject their heritage and embrace Euro-Western worldviews and lifestyles as the human norm. The rejection of the historically colonized and marginalized groups’ heritage and the adoption of Euro-Western norms occur throughout all the stages in the research process. For instance, the conceptual framework, development of the research questions, and methods of data collection in most studies emanate from the developed world literature, which is predominantly Euro-Western. In addition, the language in the construction of research instruments and the dissemination of research findings is in most cases that of the colonizers. You are invited to problematize research and doing research “as a significant site of the struggle between the interest and knowing of the West and the interest and knowing of the ‘Other’” (Smith, 1999, p. 2). What follows is a discussion of imperialism and colonialism with special attention to the power imbalance that exists between the Euro-Western research paradigm and non-Western societies that suffered European colonial rule, indigenous peoples, and historically marginalized communities.

Imperialism, Colonialism, and Othering Ideologies One of the shortfalls of Euro-Western research paradigms is that they ignore the role of imperialism, colonization, and globalization in the construction of knowledge. An understanding of the values and assumptions about imperialism, colonization, and globalization that inform Euro-Western research paradigms will enable you to appreciate and understand how Euro-Western methodologies carry with them an imperial power and how they are colonizing. Let us begin with a description of imperialism and the values and assumptions that inform Euro-Western methodologies. Imperialism.  Imperialism, in the more recent sense in which the term is used, refers to the acquisition of an empire of overseas colonies and the Europeanization of the globe (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2000). The term is also used to describe the “practice, theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory” (Said, 1993, p. 8). The theory, practice, and attitudes of the metropolitan created an idea about the West and the Other that explains the dominance of Euro-Western research paradigms and the empire of deficit literature on the formerly colonized and historically oppressed. The term Othering was coined by Gayatri Spivak to denote a process through which Western knowledge creates differences between itself as the norm and other

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knowledge systems as inferior (Ashcroft et al., 2000). Stuart Hall (1992) explains the West as a concept describing a set of ideas, historical events, and social relationships. The concept functions in ways that allow the characterization and classification of societies into binary opposites of colonizer/colonized or first world/third world. The concept also condenses complex descriptions of other societies into a sameness image judged against the West idea. Chapter 3 illustrates how the Othering and sameness ideologies work to marginalize and suppress knowledge systems and ways of knowing of the historically colonized and those disadvantaged on the basis of gender, ethnicity, and social class. Colonization.  Colonization, defined as the subjugation of one group by another (Young, 2001), was a brutal process through which two thirds of the world experienced invasion and loss of territory accompanied by the destruction of political, social, and economic systems, leading to external political control and economic dependence on the West: France, Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia, and the United States. It also involved loss of control and ownership of their knowledge systems, beliefs, and behaviors and subjection to overt racism, resulting in the captive or colonized mind. One can distinguish between different but intertwined types of colonialism—namely, political colonialism, which refers to occupation and external control of the colonies, and scientific colonialism, which refers to the imposition of the colonizers’ ways of knowing—and the control of all knowledge produced in the colonies. In Africa, colonial occupation occurred in 1884 when Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain met at the Berlin Conference and divided Africa among themselves. African states became colonies of European powers and assumed names related to the colonial power and its settlers, explorers, or missionaries. For example, present-day Zimbabwe was named Southern Rhodesia, and Zambia was named Northern Rhodesia after the explorer Cecil John Rhodes. European explorers, travelers, and hunters were notorious for claiming discovery of African lands, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, and many other of Africa’s natural showcases and renaming them. This was a violent way of dismissing the indigenous people’s knowledge as irrelevant and a way of disconnecting them from what they knew and how they knew it (Chilisa & Preece, 2005). Scientific colonialism speaks directly to the production of knowledge and ethics in social science research and has been described as the imposition of the positivist paradigm approach to research on the colonies and other historical oppressed groups. Under the guise of scientific colonialism, researchers travelled to distant colonized lands, where they turned the resident people into objects of research. The ideology of scientific colonization carried with it the belief that the researchers had unlimited rights of access to any data source and information belonging to the population and the right to export data from the colonies for purposes of processing into books and articles (Cram, 2004a, 2004b). With these unlimited powers, researchers went out to collect data and write about the one reality that they understood. In the disciplines of psychology, anthropology, and history, operating on the positivist assumption of generating and discovering laws and theories that are generalizable, researchers mapped theories, formulae, and practices that continue to dictate how former colonized societies can be studied and written about. Psychology, for instance, developed standard conceptions and formulations by which all people of the world are to be understood; today, researchers molded to accept oppressive perspectives as the norm find it difficult to operate differently (Ramsey, 2006).

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Scientific colonization has implications for the decolonization process. Reading and conducting research responsibly should involve reflecting on the following questions: 1. Does the research approach have a clear stance against scientific colonization? 2. Is the research approach of travelers moving to distant lands to acquire data to process them into books and journal articles ethical? 3. Where is the center of knowledge and information about a people or community located? Globalization.  Globalization is an extension of colonization. Spivak (1988) analyzes the contemporary relationship between colonial societies and the former colonizers and notes that we are witnessing a distinct phase in the way the world is ordered. She notes that, in the current phase of globalization, a mere extension of colonization, the contemporary international division of labor is a displacement of the field of nineteenth-century territorial imperialism. Put simply, a group of countries, generally first world, are in the position of investing capital; another group, generally third world, provide[s] the fields for investment both through the comprador indigenous capitalists and through their ill-protected and shifting labor force. (p. 287) Current attempts by researchers to find the cure for HIV and AIDS are an example of how people in former colonized societies provide the fields as objects/subjects for research by multinational corporations. Recently, there has been conflict over a trial of the drug Tenofovir, which researchers allege may eventually serve as an effective chemical vaccine against the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS. In Cambodia, efforts to test the drug among prostitutes were unsuccessful. The sex workers wanted more pay, more information, and a promise of health insurance for 40 years. Although the researchers agreed to provide more information for the sex workers, they said they could not promise long-term insurance; it was not something that is typically provided in studies and would be prohibitively expensive, they argued (Cha, 2006). The question one asks is what research benefits can accrue to poor countries, where the drug may not be affordable to the HIV and AIDS at-risk groups like sex workers? The conflict between the researchers and sex workers arose when the sex workers demanded the right to define the benefits they wanted as research subjects. The conflict between the researchers and the researched, and the determination of the researched to speak out about their rights, are indicative of local resistance against colonization and its new form, globalization. Elsewhere, Bagele Chilisa and Julia Preece (2005) noted how the stealing of African indigenous knowledge of local resources such as plants and herbs by Western-trained researchers and Western companies is a contemporary instance of how African indigenous knowledge systems continue to be marginalized. The authors give an example of the San and their knowledge of the hoodia cactus plant, which grows in the Kalahari Desert. The original home of the San, it is a vast area of land that cuts across Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. Through observation and experiments, the San discovered that the hoodia cactus has medicinal properties that stave off hunger. Members of generation

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after generation of the San have thus chewed the plant on long hunting trips. According to Pusch Commey (2003), Phytopharm, a United Kingdom-based company working with the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, isolated the active ingredients in the cactus that makes this possible. The company has renamed this property, long known by the San, P57, and it has been manufactured into a diet pill that fetches large amounts of money for pharmaceutical companies. The San had to fight to reclaim their intellectual property of the qualities of the hoodia cactus plant.

Postcolonial Indigenous Research Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies must be informed by the resistance to Euro-Western thought and the further appropriation of their knowledge. Postcolonial.  The word postcolonial is highly contested and at the same time popular (Mutua & Swadener, 2004; Swadener & Mutua, 2008). The bone of contention is that some can read the post to mean that colonialism has ended, while others can interpret postcolonialism to include people with diverse and qualitatively different experiences with colonialism. For instance, the United States began as a British colony, but the white settlers ended up imposing colonization on Native Americans. The word postcolonial is used in the research context to denote the continuous struggle of non-Western societies that suffered European colonization, indigenous peoples, and historically marginalized groups to resist suppression of their ways of knowing and the globalization of knowledge, reaffirming that Western knowledge is the only legitimate knowledge. Part of the project in this book is to envisage a space where those who suffered European colonial rule and slavery, the disenfranchised and dispossessed, can reclaim their languages, cultures, and “see with their own eyes” the history of colonization, imperialism, and their new form, globalization, and, with that gaze, create new research methodologies that take into account the past and the present as a continuum of the future. This is the in-between space where Euro-Western research methodologies steeped in the culture, histories, philosophies, and the social condition of the Westerners can collaborate with the non-Western colonized’s lived experiences and indigenous knowledge to produce research indigenous to their communities and cultural, integrative research frameworks with balanced lending and borrowing from the West. Throughout the book, I will use the term colonized Other to refer to those who suffered European colonization, the disenfranchised and dispossessed, often represented as the non-Western Other. These people live in what has been labelled the third world, developing countries, or underdeveloped countries. Included among the colonized Other are indigenous populations in countries such as Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. Ethno-specific groups who have lived in some Western countries, such as African Americans in the United States and Caribbean-born people in the United ­K ingdom, also fall under the category of Other. Immigrants, refugees fleeing wartorn countries, and the poor are also being colonized and marginalized by Eurocentric research paradigms and thus fall under the category of the Other referred to in this book. The term colonized Other emphasizes the fact that the communities described still suffer scientific colonization as well as colonization of the mind. Part of the project in this book is to show how the colonized Other resists scientific colonization and colonization of the

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mind. The book illustrates some of the methodologies informed by the worldviews and ways of knowing of the colonized Other. Indigenous.  The term indigenous has been used in different ways in third world, fourth world, and marginalized people’s struggles against invasion, political domination, and oppression. In this book, the focus is on a cultural group’s ways of perceiving reality, ways of knowing, and the value systems that inform research processes. Euro-Western research paradigms are, for instance, indigenous to Euro-Western societies. This is not to say that the other has not shaped the development of these methods. The questions we ask are, what is indigenous to the other two-thirds majority of people colonized and marginalized by Eurocentric research paradigms? What is real to the diverse cultural groups of the twothirds majority? How can this reality be studied? How would those colonized in the third world, indigenous peoples, women, and marginalized communities define their reality and ways of knowing? Their ways of seeing reality, ways of knowing, and values systems are informed by their indigenous knowledge systems and shaped by the struggle to resist and survive the assault on their culture. That is what makes the methodologies indigenous. Indigenous research has four dimensions: (1) It targets a local phenomenon instead of using extant theory from the West to identify and define a research issue; (2) it is context-sensitive and creates locally relevant constructs, methods, and theories derived from local experiences and indigenous knowledge; (3) it can be integrative, that is, combining Western and indigenous theories; and (4) in its most advanced form, its assumptions about what counts as reality, knowledge, and values in research are informed by an indigenous research paradigm. The assumptions in an indigenous paradigm guide the research process. The book also makes reference to indigenous peoples. Linda T. Smith (1999, p. 7) says indigenous peoples is a relatively recent term that emerged in the 1970s out of the struggles of the American Indian Movement and the Canadian Brotherhood Movement; it is used to internationalize the experiences and struggles of some of the world’s colonized peoples. Relationality.  The principle of relationality pushes to the center of every research encounter the importance of building relationships with the communities, all ­stakeholders, and partners and honoring the relationship that people have with the land, the living, and nonliving. In Chapter 7, in a study on “enveloping quantitative research,” Blackstock (2009) relates how the spiritual is honored by employing symbolic art, poetry, legends, and teaching to substantiate the findings. The physical is also brought into the research by printing the report in an ecological friendly ink. In the next chapter, a relational postcolonial indigenous paradigm is discussed. Responsibility.  It is about the role of a researcher in pursuing social justice, resisting dominant ideologies that silence indigenous communities and contributing to the recovery, healing, unity, and harmony in the community. The responsibilities of researchers are discussed in Chapter 10. In Chapter 10, researchers are asked to reflect on their roles when they engage with communities. Reverence.  Indigenous research recognizes spirituality and values it as an important ­contribution to ways of knowing. Ignoring spirituality can cause tensions between researchers with a Western research orientation and communities (Johnston-Goodstar, 2012).

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Imagine, for example, carrying out an evaluation research of a health facility that is ignored by the community. The evaluator bent on deficit theorizing about the “other” will label poor use of the health facility as backwardness, while a respectful and responsible evaluator will consider as knowledge that the facility was built on sacred ground and needs to relocate if the community is to use it. Respect.  In this book, the concept of respectful representation and respectful relations is discussed. Respect requires that the research process from the research questions asked, the methodology, the data collection procedure, down to reporting and dissemination of the report is guided by the community and that the community has ownership of data collected. Relevant programs, relevant research that benefits communities, is the hallmark of respectful relations and respectful research. Reflexivity.  The principle of responsibility is tied to reflexivity. Researchers continuously reflect on their position within existing powers. They also reflect on the methodology and the methods and imagine other ways of doing research that emanate from indigenous knowledge systems. In Chapter 7, Botha (2011) demonstrates the application of this concept.

DECOLONIZATION OF WESTERN RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES A number of scholars (Bishop, 2008a, 2008b; Chilisa, 2005; Chilisa & Ntseane 2010; Cram, 2009; Liamputtong, 2010; Mutua & Swadener, 2004; Smith, 1999, 2008; Swadener & Mutua 2008; Wilson, 2008) articulate resistance to Euro-Western research methodologies by discussing a process called decolonization and strategies for decolonization. Decolonization is a process of centering the concerns and worldviews of the colonized Other so that they understand themselves through their own assumptions and perspectives. It is an event and a process that involves the following: 1. Creating and consciously using various strategies to liberate the “captive mind” from oppressive conditions that continue to silence and marginalize the voices of subordinated, colonized, non-Western societies that encountered European colonization 2. The restoration and development of cultural practices, thinking patterns, beliefs, and values that were suppressed but are still relevant and necessary to the survival and birth of new ideas, thinking, techniques, and lifestyles that contribute to the advancement and empowerment of the historically oppressed and former colonized non-Western societies (Smith, 1999, 2008) Decolonization is thus a process of conducting research in such a way that the worldviews of those who have suffered a long history of oppression and marginalization are given space to communicate from their frames of reference. It is a process that involves “researching back” to question how the disciplines—psychology, education, history,

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anthropology, sociology, or science—through an ideology of Othering have described and theorized about the colonized Other and refused to let the colonized Other name and know from their frame of reference. It includes a critical analysis of dominant literatures written by historians, psychologists, anthropologists, and social science researchers in general, aimed at exposing the problematic influence of the Western eyes (Mohanty, 1991) and how they legitimize “the positional superiority of Western knowledge” (Said, 1993). Vine Deloria (1988), reflecting on the role of anthropologist researchers, notes, An anthropologist comes out to the Indian reservation to make OBSERVATIONS. During the winter period, these observations will become books by which future anthropologists will be trained, so that they can come out to reservations years from now and verify the observations they have studied. (cited in Louis, 2007, p. 132) This quotation is important in showing how knowledge about the formerly colonized and historically oppressed communities is constructed and how this knowledge accumulates into a body of literature that informs future research activities. There is also the disturbing role of theory in framing research objectives and research questions. David W. Gegeo and Karen A. Watson-Gegeo (2001) note, Anthropologists’ accounts of other people’s cultures are not indigenous accounts of those cultures, even though they may be based on interviews with and observations of indigenous community’s individuals and societies. All of the foregoing activities, while they draw on indigenous cultural knowledge, are imagined, conceptualized, and carried out within the theoretical and methodological frameworks of Anglo-European forms of research, reasoning and interpreting. (p. 58) In Aoteroa/New Zealand, Russell Bishop (2008b) notes how the colonizers, using colonial paradigms, have developed a social pathology approach that dominates research on Maori. These observations about the role of literature and theory in the design of research studies remind us that we have to be critical readers of the research studies from which we draw and design future studies.

The Decolonization Process Poka Laenui (2000) suggests five phases in the process of decolonization: (1) rediscovery and recovery, (2) mourning, (3) dreaming, (4) commitment, and (5) action. Rediscovery and Recovery.  This refers to the process where the colonized Other rediscover and recover their own history, culture, language, and identity. It involves a process of interrogating the captive mind so that the colonized Other and the historically oppressed—for instance, women, the deaf, the disabled, children, and the elderly—can come to define in their own terms what is real to them. They can also define their own rules on what can be known and what can be spoken, written about, how, when, and where.

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Mourning.  This refers to the process of lamenting the continued assault on the historically oppressed and former colonized Other’s identities and social realities. Mourning forms an important part of healing and moving to dreaming. As a researcher educated in the United States, my initial research uncritically used the dominant research methodologies. With time, I began to ask myself why the research was not making a difference in the lives of the people. I started asking myself if I could recognize myself in the people and communities described in the studies I and other scholars conducted. Imagine reading some of the research that distorts the life experiences of the peoples and communities you know. The first reaction to reading such texts would most likely be frustration and mourning. In Chapter 3, I relate my journey to the United States and back to conduct research in my country, Botswana. Decolonization requires going further than mourning to dreaming. Dreaming.  During this phase, the colonized Other explore their cultures and invoke their histories, worldviews, and indigenous knowledge systems to theorize and imagine other possibilities. My journey to learn methodologies indigenous to the Western culture and going back to my country, a former British colony experiencing a plethora of research-driven interventions to address social problems such as poverty and HIV/AIDS infections, took me to a phase beyond frustration and mourning to that of dreaming and imagining other ways of doing research. You are invited throughout this book to dream and imagine other ways of conducting research, employing methodologies that are indigenous to the communities you study. Imagine, for example, that there are other literatures indigenous to the communities you study that have not found their way into the global communities of knowledge and practice. Imagine that in the lived experiences, oral traditions, language, metaphorical sayings, and proverbs of the communities that you research are concepts and theoretical frameworks that can inform the research process. Imagine that in the communities where you conduct research there are researchers and that they, too, can theorize and conduct research and that they, too, have the right to ownership of the knowledge they produce. Imagine the research questions, methods, literature reviewed, ways of disseminating data, and the language used if research was by the formerly colonized and historically silenced. To dream is to invoke indigenous knowledge systems, literatures, languages, worldviews, and collective experiences of the colonized Other to theorize and facilitate a research process that gives voice and is indigenous to the communities you research. Commitment.  Dreaming is followed by commitment where researchers, for example, define the role of research in community development and their roles and responsibilities to the communities and scholarship of research. Researchers become political activists demonstrating commitment to addressing the challenge of including the voices of the colonized Other in all the stages of the research process and conducting research that translates into changes in the material conditions of the local peoples as well as their control over produced knowledge. There is a growing concern, for instance, that researchers feel compelled for career reasons to conduct research that they are ill equipped to carry out and that their passive dissemination of research findings through professional journals hardly results in meaningful changes in the lives of the researched. The third world mourns, for example, that the “massive landing of experts, each in charge of

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investigating, measuring, and theorizing about this or that little aspect of Third World Societies” (Escobar, 1995, p. 45) has resulted in a situation where “our own history, culture and practices, good or bad, are rediscovered and translated into the journals of the North and come back to us re-conceptualized, couched in languages and paradigms which make it all sound new and novel” (Namuddu, 1989, p. 28). Action.  The last phase is action, when dreams and commitment translate into strategies for social transformation. Researchers at this phase embrace participatory research methods that give voice to the colonized Other and promote empowerment, inclusivity, and respect for all involved in the research process. The key aspect of participatory research is that the researched are actively involved in analyzing their situations, finding solutions, and taking action to address their concerns and to work for the betterment of their communities. The researcher has a moral responsibility to support the colonized Other in their belief that their collective experiences, indigenous knowledge, and history are valuable. The moral stance of the researcher as an activist committed to social transformation, indigenizing mainstream research methodologies to include other knowledge systems, is necessary to address concerns about the captive mind and the undervaluing, belittling, and marginalization of the practices, values, and worldviews of the colonized Other.

Strategies for Decolonization Linda Smith (1999) has identified strategies for decolonization as follows: Deconstruction and Reconstruction.  This refers to destroying what has wrongly been written—for instance, interrogating distortions of people’s life experiences, negative labeling, deficit theorizing, genetically deficient or culturally deficient models that pathologized the colonized Other—and retelling the stories of the past and envisioning the future. These strategies facilitate the process of recovery and discovery. Self-Determination and Social Justice.  For scholars, academics, and the overresearched former colonized and historically oppressed peoples disempowered by Western research hegemony, issues in research should be addressed within the wider framework of self-determination and social justice. Self-determination in research refers to the struggle by those marginalized by Western research hegemony to seek legitimacy for methodologies embedded in the histories, experiences, ways of perceiving realities, and value systems. Social justice in research is achieved when research gives voice to the researched and moves from a deficit-based orientation, where research was based on perceived deficits in the researched, to reinforcing practices that have sustained the lives of the researched. Social justice is addressed by ensuring that those historically oppressed groups; marginalized and labeled; former colonies; descendants of slaves; indigenous peoples; those people in the third world, fourth world and developing countries; or those pushed to the margins on the basis of their gender, race/ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic status, age, religion, or sexual orientation; and immigrants and refugees are given space to decenter dominant Western research paradigms and

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to place at the center of analysis the realities, knowledges, values, and methodologies that give meaning to their life experiences. Chapter 8 discusses research strategies that counter deficit-based research and reveal the researcher’s positive aspects, resilience, and acts of resistance to Western research hegemony, which is needed for social change. Ethics.  There is a need to recognize—and where none exists, formulate, legislate, disseminate, and make known and understood internationally—ethical issues and legislation that protect indigenous knowledge systems and ways of knowing of the colonized Other. The international community of researchers is increasingly aware of the researcher’s responsibility. The American Psychological Association (2002) describes the researcher’s ethical responsibilities working with Asian American/Pacific Islander populations, people of African descent, Hispanics, and American Indians: As an agent of prosocial change, the culturally competent psychologist carries the responsibility of combating the damaging effects of racism, prejudice, bias and oppression in all their forms, including all of the methods we use to understand the population we serve. . . . A consistent theme . . . relates to the interpretation and dissemination of research findings that are meaningful and relevant to each of the four populations. (p. 1) Developing countries and indigenous communities have come up with their own ethics review boards and ethical guidelines. The Maori of New Zealand, for instance, have Guidelines for Research and Evaluation with Maori (Ministry of Social Development, 2004); in Australia, the Aborigines have the Mi’kinaw Research Principles and Protocols (Aboriginal Research Centre, 2005). Elsewhere, Chilisa (2009) notes how the plethora of ethics review boards, each operating with its own ethics guidelines, has given rise to conflict over which ethics guidelines should be used, especially where there is partnership or collaborative research between researchers from developed countries and those from former colonized societies. Some researchers from developed countries, still operating with colonial tools of manipulation and power to access, control, and own all types of data from the former colonies, invoke contract agreements to rewrite, write over, erase, and relegate to marginal and irrelevant the ethical guidelines from former colonized societies. Still others are compelled by research funding agencies, many of them international corporations based in developed countries, to enter into contract agreements that privilege Euro-Western ethical frameworks. (See Chapter 3 for these malpractices.) Committed researchers define their responsibilities and are consistently engaged in self-reflection and self-questioning that promotes and privileges the right of the disempowered to be heard. Language.  Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1986a, 1986b, 1993) and Ali Mazrui (1990) advocate for writing in indigenous languages as part and parcel of the anti-imperialist struggle. Chapter 3 discusses how language mediates the research process, recovering and revitalizing, validating indigenous knowledge and cultures of the historically marginalized, and thus creating space to decenter hegemonic Western research paradigms.

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Internationalization of Indigenous Experiences.  Indigenous scholars internationalize the experiences, issues, and struggles of the colonized people by coming together in global and local spaces to plan, organize, and struggle collectively for self-determination. History.  People must study the past to recover their history, culture, and language to enable a reconstruction of what was lost that is useful to inform the present. Critique.  There is a need to critique the imperial model of research, which continues to deny the colonized and historically marginalized Others space to communicate from their own frames of reference.

SUMMARY The chapter presents an argument for the need to interrogate Euro-Western research paradigms, decolonize the mind, and problematize research and conducting research as a power struggle between the interest and ways of knowing of the West and that of the “Other.” Key terminologies, concepts, and principles that set apart indigenous research as an emerging distinct methodology are presented. The claim is made that relationships, connectedness, and spirituality are common features among indigenous people. Five phases in the decolonization process and strategies for decolonization are discussed.

ACTIVITY 1.1 1. Search the database for this article: Held, M. B. E. (2019). Decolonizing research paradigms in the context of settler colonialism: An unsettling, mutual and

collaborative effort. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 18, 1–16. 2. Discuss Held’s view on how decolonization should proceed.

Key Points ——

Euro-Western paradigms should interrogate the role of imperialism, colonization, and globalization in the construction of knowledge.

——

Relationality, the multiple connections that indigenous peoples have with those around

them and with the living and the nonliving, should form part of their social history and how indigenous research is conducted. ——

Indigenous research has a decolonization intent.

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Suggested Readings Alatas, S. H. (2004). The captive mind and creative development. In P. N. Mukheriji & C. Sengupta (Eds.), Indigeneity and universality in social science: A South African response. New Delhi, India: Sage. Berger-Gonzalez, M., Stauffacher, M., Zinsstag, J., Edwards, P., & Krutli, P. (2016). Trans-disciplinary research on cancer-healing systems between biomedicine and the Maya of Guatemala: A tool for reciprocal reflexivity in a multi-epistemological setting. Qualitative Health Research, 26(1), 77–91. Deloria, V. (1969). Custer died for your sins: An Indian manifesto. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Fixico, D. L. (Ed.). (2003). The American Indian mind in a linear world: American Indian studies and traditional knowledge. New York, NY: Routledge. Levac, L., McMurtry, L., Stienstra, D., Baikie, G., Hanson, C., & Mucina, D. (2018). Learning across indigenous and Western knowledge systems and intersectionality: Reconciling social research approaches. [Technical Report.] Guelph, Canada: University of Guelph, Social and Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

2 RESEARCH PARADIGMS Our current range of research epistemologies—positivism to ­postmodernisms, poststructuralisms—arise out of the social history and culture of the dominant race. . . . These epistemologies reflect and reinforce that social history and that social group and this has negative results for the people of color in general and scholars of color in particular. James J. Scheurich (1997, p. 141)

Overview I argue for the space for indigenous research paradigms in the typology of paradigms and discuss a postcolonial indigenous paradigm and three approaches in postcolonial indigenous research methodologies—(1) decolonization and indigenization of dominant research approaches and (2) research approaches informed by a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm, along with third space methodologies and a radical decolonization paradigmatic space (Held, 2019). In addition, Western research paradigms, the positivist/postpositivist, interpretive, transformative, and the pragmatic are discussed. The chapter will demonstrate that a paradigm implies a methodological approach with a philosophical base that informs assumptions about perceptions of reality, what counts as knowledge and ways of knowing and values. The researcher’s perceptions of reality, what counts as knowledge and values, have an impact on the way research questions are conceived, research approaches, data-gathering instruments, analysis, and interpretation and dissemination of research findings. The dominant Western research paradigms are critiqued from a postcolonial indigenous research perspective. A case study that shows how methodologies can silence and exclude the views of non-Western, formerly colonized societies is presented, as well 18

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as a case study that shows an approach based on decolonization and indigenization of Euro-Western methodologies.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this chapter you should be able to do the following: 1. Critically appreciate the influence of Euro-Western history, culture, philosophy, and theoretical perspectives on research. 2. Compare and contrast postcolonial indigenous paradigms and Euro-Western paradigm assumptions about the nature of reality, what counts as knowledge and ways of knowing, and value systems in research. 3. Debate whether an indigenous methodology can be used under a Euro-Western paradigm or Western methodology employed under an indigenous paradigm.

Before You Start Read the introductory quotations. Make a list of studies that have been conducted in your communities by yourself or other scholars. List and discuss the research approaches, methods of collecting data and methods of analysis, and dissemination of research findings in these studies, as well as their impact on policy, practice, development change, and the standard of living of the people in these communities in general.

CONTESTED KNOWLEDGE: INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVES OR PARADIGM? An evolving discourse on indigenous research and indigenous research methodologies (Chilisa, 2017; Chilisa, Major, & Khudu-Petersen, 2017; Held, 2019; Muwanga-Zake, 2009; Nabudere, 2011; Romm, 2015; Ping Li, 2011; Russon, 2008; Smith, 1999; ­Wilson, 2008) is calling for a fifth paradigm to add to the typology of current paradigms, namely the postpositivist, the constructivist, the transformative, and the pragmatic paradigms. Indigenous research embraces culturally specific discourses that root research methodologies in the indigenous knowledge, cultural practices, worldviews, values, and practices of the formerly colonized societies whose knowledge has been excluded from discourses on knowledge production (Kovach, 2009; Smith, 1999; Walter & Anderson, 2013; ­Wilson, 2008). The discourses critique mainstream methodologies and disrupt the colonial logic that underlies researchers’ perspectives and practices and call for the decolonization of the academy and its disciplines and research methodologies.

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There is, however, disagreement over whether the culturally specific perspective deserves a space as a distinct paradigm. Mertens and Cram (2016) argue that the indigenous research and indigenous research perspectives should work toward a coalition with the transformative paradigm. Mertens and Cram (2016) argue that the transformative paradigm advocates for socially relevant research and prioritizes cultural understanding and respect and thus makes it a safe home for indigenous research methodologies. Kovach (2009) argues that indigenous methodologies can find allies not only in the transformative but also in the constructivist paradigm and expresses reservations against aligning the indigenous paradigms too closely with current views of the transformative paradigm (Romm, 2018). Mertens (2020), in her table of paradigms, lists only “the big four,” subsuming indigenous paradigms under the transformative paradigm. In contrast, Wilson (2008) maintains that inserting an indigenous perspective into one of the major paradigms may not be effective because it is hard to remove the underlying epistemology and ontology on which the paradigms are built. Arguing for an indigenous paradigm, Wilson notes that we have tried to adapt dominant systems research tools by including our perspective into their views. We have tried to include our cultures, traditional protocols and practices into the research process through adopting suitable methods. The problem with that is that we can never really remove the tools from their underlying beliefs. (p. 41) Romm (2015) concurs that it is possible to appreciate an indigenous paradigm without subsuming it under the “big four” mainly because of its focus on value systems that emphasize connections with place, people, past, present, future, the living, and the nonliving. She includes indigenous paradigm in the table of paradigms, noting, “I include a heading of indigenous paradigmatic research to point to certain distinct ways of speaking that can serve to shift somewhat the language associated with the four paradigms.” She concludes, thus, “it is important to include Indigenous paradigms in paradigm typologies in order to create a space for further conversation between the (Euro-Western) “big four” and more indigenous-oriented pathways” (p. 29). Held (2019) contends that while Western and indigenous methodologies may both be transformative and participatory, there are major differences if not irreconcilabilities in the approaches. Held advances the following reasons against the merging or coalition of the transformative and the indigenous paradigms: 1. The two are based on different assumptions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and values. 2. Indigenous paradigms are universally characterized by axioms that are all relational. 3. The transformative paradigm is based on a Western worldview, while the indigenous paradigm is rooted in a holistic localized worldview. 4. The transformative paradigm emerged as a Western research pathway making it unsuitable for radical decolonization.

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He includes the indigenous paradigm in the table of the “big four,” arguing that the inclusion of the indigenous paradigm under the transformative umbrella can only lead to a superficial decolonization of Western research. He proposes a radical decolonization of research that enables the cocreation of a multiparadigmatic space from which both indigenous and nonindigenous researchers can undertake research at the intersection of indigenous and nonindigenous ways of knowing that is not only emancipatory and culturally adequate but supports the radical change that is needed to advance true decolonization.

Indigenous Methodologies: Quantitative or Qualitative? Indigenous methodologies draw from the narrative methods in the constructivist paradigm but are more “than just qualitative” Kovach (2009), employing indigenous languages, metaphors, spirituality, and relations with the cosmos, symbolism, and art as in dance, song, poetry, and artifacts. Research questions asked are guided by indigenous worldviews. See Chapter 10 for indigenous qualitative research guided by indigenous worldviews. Similarly, indigenous methodologies are quantitative and more than just quantitative. Walter and Andersen (2013) discuss indigenous quantitative methodologies as a distinctive paradigm. Walter (2005) notes that indigenous scholars writing on indigenous quantitative methodologies are few and calls for the framing, development, and practice of quantitative research from an indigenous perspective. They argue that current statistics regarding indigenous populations operate in ways that entrench political, cultural, and social marginalization of indigenous communities. They define indigenous quantitative methodologies as a practice where the research process from the conceptualization of the problem to the dissemination of the research findings is informed by the indigenous epistemology, axiology, and ontology, and an indigenous social position. An indigenous standpoint influences the theoretical framework, the statistical constructs, and therefore the analysis. From these perspectives on indigenous and quantitative research, scholars writing from an indigenous frame of reference (Botha, 2011; ­Hutchinson et al., 2014) challenge definitions of mixed methods research that emphasize mixing as combining quantitative and qualitative data only, to also define methods as the integration of Western and indigenous knowledge. See Chapter 7. I use the metaphor of dance song in Botswana culture which says, Pina ga ena morogano, pina ga ena bosekelo (A song cannot be insulting or can one be taken to court because of what is said in the song), to position the indigenous paradigms in a dance with other paradigms. In the dance song, the indigenous paradigms are allowed to dance their own steps for as long as they do so with a rhythm compatible with the song. Thus, indigenous paradigms may be on the dance floor with the constructivist, for example (Berger-Gonzalez, Stauffacher, Zinsstag, Edwards, & Krutli, 2016). Reflect on the study, and note the different understandings that are a result of the different worldviews on the Berger-Gonzalez et al. (2016) study. On the dance floor, paradigms may dance with rhythm, different steps to the same song. Throughout this book you will see examples of how an indigenous paradigm takes to the dance floor with other paradigms. The point is that it is possible for researchers to conduct research using different paradigms simultaneously, a stance that Johnson and Stefurak (2013) call dialectical pluralism. Figure 2.1 illustrates the five paradigms invited to an open dance floor.

22   Indigenous Research Methodologies FIGURE 2.1  ■  Paradigms in Concert

Indigenous Paradigms

Transformative

PostPositivism

DANCE FLOOR

Constructivists

Pragmatic

Naming Elsewhere (Chilisa, 2017; Chilisa et al., 2017; Chilisa, Moletsane, & Simms, 2014), we interrogate the debate on whether one can name any type of research, methodology, or paradigm indigenous. There is an argument that it is a false idea to use a specific name to characterize research by the formerly colonized societies. It is argued that instead of the naming, the focus should be on how the research was contextualized to respond to the needs of the local communities (Yantio, 2013). Scholars expressing this view convey the fear that indigenous perspectives may be defined in terms of the exotic, not taken up seriously, and suffer marginalization from the international knowledge production discourse (Chilisa et al., 2017). Kovach (2009) makes it clear, however, that this fear could also partly be a reflection of colonized minds that have internalized a unidirectional borrowing of knowledge from the West and a “captive mind” (­A latas, 2004) that is prone to uncritical imitation of Western research paradigms. Others (Buntu, 2013; ­Makgoba, Shope, & Mazwai, 1999; Nyasini, 1997) maintain that, in Africa, the argument epitomizes African “intellectuals’ cultural betrayal, self-dehumanization and inferiority complex.” The counterargument to the faceless and nameless approach is that when the word indigenous is applied to research, scholars seek to understand a cultural group’s ways of knowing, ways of perceiving reality, and the philosophies and value systems that inform their ways of life (Mertens, Cram, & Chilisa, 2013). Used in this context, it can be argued that the Euro-Western paradigms are indigenous to Euro-Western societies. Indigenous research that draws from indigenous knowledge goes beyond contextualization to bring to the center philosophical

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foundations of research methodologies at the center of indigenous research paradigms (Kovach, 2009). Thus, scholars have discussed an indigenous research paradigm ­(Wilson, 2008), a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm, and an Eastern paradigm of evaluation (Russon, 2008).

A POSTCOLONIAL INDIGENOUS RESEARCH PARADIGM In this book, I discuss a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm as a framework of belief systems that emanate from the lived experiences, values, and history of those belittled and marginalized by Euro-Western research paradigms. The term paradigm was first used by Thomas Kuhn (1962) to represent a particular way of thinking and seeing the world that is shared by a community of scholars, researchers, or scientists and also one that is used to represent commitments, worldviews, beliefs, values, methods, and approaches that are shared across a discipline. A research paradigm is a way of describing a worldview that is informed by philosophical assumptions about the nature of social reality (ontology), ways of knowing (epistemology), and ethics and value systems (axiology). A paradigm also has theoretical assumptions about the research process and the appropriate approach to systematic inquiry (methodology). A postcolonial indigenous research paradigm articulates the shared aspects of ontology, epistemology, axiology, and research methodologies of the colonized Other discussed by scholars who conduct research in former colonized societies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; among indigenous peoples in Australia, Canada, the United States, and other parts of the world; and among the disempowered, historically marginalized social groups that encounter the colonizing effect of Eurocentric research paradigms. The main argument is that ethics and value beliefs that define relations and responsibilities of researchers to the researched should be addressed before ontological and epistemological questions and should drive the research process from formulation of a research proposal to dissemination of findings. A common thread that cuts across the beliefs of the colonized Other is that people are spiritual beings with multiple relationships that should be nurtured throughout the research process. A postcolonial indigenous research paradigm is thus informed by relational ontologies, relational epistemologies, and relational axiology. In his book Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods, ­Wilson (2008) describes a research paradigm shared by indigenous scholars in Canada and Australia as a paradigm informed by relational ontologies, relational epistemologies, and relational accountability. Philosophical assumptions on the nature of reality, knowledge, and values guide research in a postcolonial indigenous paradigm.

ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE NATURE OF REALITY, KNOWLEDGE, AND VALUES Ontology.  Ontology is the body of knowledge that deals with the essential ­characteristics of what it means to exist. In a relational ontology, the social reality that is investigated can be understood in relation to the connections that human beings have with the

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l­iving and the nonliving. The thrust of the discussion is that among indigenous people, in the colonized and former colonized societies, people are beings with many relations and many connections. They have connections with the living and the nonliving, with land, with the earth, with animals, and with other beings. There is an emphasis on an I/we relationship as opposed to the Western I/you relationship with its emphasis on the individual. Among the Bantu people of southern Africa, this principle is captured under the philosophy of Ubuntu, in which one view of being is the conception that nthu, nthu ne banwe (Ikalanaga/Shona version). An English translation that comes close to the principle is “I am we; I am because we are; we are because I am” or “A person is because of others” (Goduka, 2000). Communality, collectivity, social justice, human unity, and pluralism are implicit in this principle. Reality implies a set of relationships. Ubuntu is further elaborated in Chapter 6. Epistemology.  Epistemology inquires into the nature of knowledge and truth. It asks the following questions: What are the sources of knowledge? How reliable are these sources? What can one know? How does one know if something is true? For instance, some people think that the notion that witches exist is just a belief. Epistemology asks further questions: Is a belief true knowledge? Or is knowledge only that which can be proven using concrete data? If we say witches exist, what is the source of evidence? What methods can we use to find out about their existence? A relational epistemology is all the “systems of knowledge built on relationships” (Wilson, 2008, p. 74). Wilson explains the difference between an indigenous and a dominant research paradigm: The major difference between those dominant paradigms and an indigenous paradigm is that those dominant paradigms are built on the fundamental belief that knowledge is an individual entity: the researcher is an individual in search of knowledge, knowledge is something that is gained and therefore knowledge may be owned by an individual. An indigenous paradigm comes from the fundamental belief that knowledge is relational. Knowledge is shared with all of creation. It is not just interpersonal relationships, or just with the research subjects I may be working with, but it is a relationship with all of creation. It is with the cosmos; it is with the animals, with plants, with the earth that we share this knowledge. It goes beyond the individual’s knowledge to the concept of relational knowledge. . . . You are answerable to all your relations when you are doing research. (p. 56) Axiology.  Axiology refers to the analysis of values to better understand their meanings, characteristics, their origins, their purpose, their acceptance as true knowledge, and their influence on people’s daily experiences. It is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of ethics, aesthetics, and religion, where religion encompasses spirituality (Guba & Lincoln, 2005), and their role in the construction of knowledge. A relational axiology is built on the concept of relational accountability. The four Rs—relational accountability, respectful representation, reciprocal appropriation, and rights and regulations during the research process (Louis, 2007)—embrace a relational axiology. Relational accountability refers to the fact that all parts of the research process are related, and that the researcher is accountable to all relations. Respectful representation is about how the researcher listens,

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pays attention, acknowledges, and creates space for the voices and knowledge systems of the Other. Reciprocal appropriation refers to the fact that all research is appropriation and should thus be conducted so that benefits accrue to both the communities researched and the researcher. Rights and regulations refer to the need for ethical protocols that accord the colonized and the marginalized ownership of the research process and the knowledge produced. The Ubuntu worldview, “I am because we are,” is an example of a framework that calls on the researcher to see “self” as a reflection of the researched Other, to honor and respect the researched as one would wish for self, and to feel a belongingness to the researched community without feeling threatened or diminished. Ubuntu “is the very essence of being human,” according to Desmond Tutu (1999): It is not, “I think therefore I am.” It says rather: “I am human therefore I belong. I participate, I share.” A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he [or] she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than they are. (p. 33) In the book In the Spirit of Ubuntu: Stories of Teaching and Research (Caracciolo & ­ ungai, 2009), the authors illustrate the application of Ubuntu as both an ethical frameM work and a way of knowing in research. Swanson (2009) notes that Ubuntu offered her ways to resist normalized positions of dominance and damage-focused and deficit discourses; it contributed to decolonizing hegemonic meanings. Ubuntu offers guidance with regard to the researcher’s responsibilities and obligations to the researched and promotes community, belongingness, togetherness, and well-being. In a study about the role of teachers in interpreting Malawi’s political and social history and Malawi’s contemporary problems of structural violence, Steve Sharra (2009) used Ubuntu as an African-centered theoretical framework. Sharra notes that the lesson learned was how to shift from the preoccupation with a gloomy analysis of how bad things are in Africa to asking how to use Africa’s heritage and diverse knowledge to create new social, cultural, economic, and educational programs informed by Ubuntu as an ethical framework and also as a way of knowing and perceiving reality. Ubuntu offers an example of how the researcher’s ethical and moral obligation foregrounds and is intertwined with perceptions of reality and ways of knowing. This also underscores the connectedness and relatedness in the I/we relationship, where hierarchy is discouraged.

METHODOLOGY A postcolonial indigenous paradigm is driven by decolonizing methodologies as well as third-space methodologies. The quotes at the beginning of the chapter illustrate a critique of Euro-Western research paradigms from different theoretical perspectives. bell hooks (1990) speaks to representation and voice of the researched. The questions raised on voice, representation, and rights and ownership in the knowledge production process compel researchers to engage directly with the debates on how the colonized and historically silenced researched are represented in the texts that we write. Fine (1994) reminds us, for instance, that

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traditional social sciences have stubbornly refused to interrogate how we as researchers create our texts. . . . That we are human inventors of some questions and repressors of others, shapers of the very contexts we study, co-participants in our interviews, interpreters of others’ stories and narrators of our own, are sometimes rendered irrelevant to the texts we publish. (p. 14) Postcolonial indigenous research techniques include a process of decolonizing the conventional interview technique, using indigenous interview methods such as talking circles and invoking indigenous knowledge to inform alternative research methods compatible with the worldviews of the colonized Other. Chapter 6 presents culturally responsive indigenous research methodologies. The quote by Elabor-Idemudia (2002) at the beginning of Chapter 1 reminds us that the social sciences are founded on the culture, history, and philosophies of Euro-Western thought and are either antagonistic to the history and cultures of non-Western societies or have no strategy to give voice to their cultures (Smith, 1999, 2008). Scheurich (1997) describes social science research methodologies as racially biased. In Chapter 2, you will learn about how critical theory—more specifically, postcolonial theory, critical indigenous theory, and critical race theory—informs approaches and research practices of discovering and recovering voices of the oppressed. In this chapter, it is important to underscore decolonizing research approaches, indigenization, and third-space methodologies as essential aspects of a postcolonial indigenous paradigm.

Decolonization and Indigenization A decolonization research approach has been described. It is important to add to the d­ iscussion possibilities of integration of knowledge systems and indigenization. While scholars critique the dominance of Euro-Western paradigms over the rest of the world, you should take note that they also value the integration of knowledge systems. Syed H. Alatas (1974), while critical of the captive mind, also asserts that “no society can develop by inventing everything on its own. When something is found effective and useful, it is desirable that it should be adapted and assimilated, whether it be an artifact or an attitude of mind” (p. 692). Writing about third world feminism in the book Methodology of the Oppressed, Chela Sandoval (2000) articulates what she calls a coalitional consciousness as an approach to bringing subjugated peoples who suffered colonial rule or slavery together with all the peoples of the world to work together toward social change. She calls for a mixture in the appropriation of ideas, knowledge, and theories, arguing that the mixing reflects the necessary reality of surviving as a minority or Other, which entails using every and any aspect of dominant power. Mixing is the methodology of survival for the oppressed. Decolonization and indigenization of dominant research approaches entail attempts to resist universalized knowledge, critique Euro-Western research approaches, and invoke indigenous knowledge systems of the colonized Other to inform research methodologies that are inclusive of all knowledge systems and respectful of the researched. Complementing the coalition strategy, Beth Swadener and Kagendo Mutua (2008) call for the forging of cultural partnerships “with, between and among Indigenous researchers and allied ‘others.’” These partnerships should create space for working collaboratively on common goals and engaging in a multidirectional lending and borrowing from diverse

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cultures. It is only when researchers from multiple cultures work collaboratively to acknowledge and interrogate the theories, the literature, the methodologies, and the embedded ethical and moral issues that decolonization and indigenization can become a reality. Berger-Gonzalez et al. (2016) describe a multi-epistemological research partnership where indigenous Mayan medical specialists from Guatemala worked with Western biomedical physicians to study cancer healing systems. The Bidirectional Emic-Etic tool (BEE) tool was developed to promote reflexivity, reduce power differential between knowledge systems, and promote knowledge integration. The BEE procedure is anchored on the assumption that Mayan indigenous healers’ knowledge and that of the Western physicians is the product of rational processes of hypothesis testing and therefore valid. The BEE tool consists of five steps. Step 1 is the emic of self where each cultural group reflects on the variability of its knowledge and approaches to gain a clear understanding of the essential features of the knowledge system that guides the study. The second step is the ethics of the other where the two groups try to understand each other’s knowledge system. In Step 3, each group presents its understanding of each other’s knowledge system and highlights areas where integration of knowledge seems possible and where there is divergence. The fourth step is etic of self where groups explore possible contradictions between mental constructions and actual practice. The last step is joint ethics where both groups come up with an integrated research protocol to address the object of study. Berger-Gonzalez et al. (2016, p. 86) report that some of the Mayan criticism of the Western physician knowledge was the logic of biomedicine in “treating the disease instead of the whole patient with his or her social support system” and “the inhumane way in which the hospitals treat patients independently of their family support system” while the Westerners questioned the accuracy of Mayan diagnostic tools for disease affecting internal organs. There is a view that where the subject of inquiry is a local or indigenous phenomenon, methodologies derived from local indigenous epistemologies and worldviews should be used (Nare, Pienaar, & Mphuthi, 2018). The starting point for this view is that indigenous knowledge (IK) should not be mainstreamed into conventional knowledge but should be allowed to coexist with Western sciences because they are two distinctly different systems. In such cases, IK research should be informed by worldviews that emanate from knowledge holders and indigenous communities’ assumptions about the nature of knowledge, reality, and values. Augmenting this view, the Seboka researchers in South Africa (Chilisa & Tsheko, 2014) argue that the health system in South Africa operates two parallel systems: a Western system and an indigenous system where 70% of the plants are used for psycho-spiritual purposes. It is estimated that about 82% of indigenous people still prefer the indigenous health managed system and community-based care (Nare et al., 2018). Thus, it is essential that indigenous primary health systems are revitalized, and that respect is cultivated for both indigenous community and mainstream primary health care systems. In Africa, Carrol (2008) suggests a methodological framework that could drive a predominantly indigenous framework that is guided by the following research questions: How does the research inquiry reflect the interdependent and interconnected nature of the universe? How does the research inquiry compensate for the spiritual and material nature of reality?

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How does the research inquiry reflect the communal nature of African people? How does the research inquiry access the nonmaterial reality? How does the research inquiry reflect the both/and logic? How does the research inquiry advance the interests of the African community? How does the research inquiry contribute to the liberation of the African people? These research questions are derived from African worldviews and philosophies that value spirituality, connectedness, collectivity, and communality. They reflect an embeddedness in the African renaissance and the search for African identity and renewal. The questions challenge researchers, the academy, and its institution to decolonize Euro-Western research practices, reframe, reclaim indigenous practices, and name other ways of doing research embedded in African worldviews.

Overview of Methodology Frameworks in the Context of Indigenization and Decolonization Relational indigenous methodologies advance collaborative research that is inclusive of communities’ voices, revitalizes and restores lost identities and value systems, and legitimizes indigenous knowledge as content and as a body of thinking. A relational indigenous methodology is driven by decolonization and indigenization intent and a reflection on the philosophies and worldviews that inform the research process. Indigenous and nonindigenous researchers can reflect on their work and place themselves along an indigenous research continuum scale that ranges from least indigenized methodologies to geocentric or third space methodologies. Researchers can place themselves along the indigenous research continuum scale by reflecting on the following questions: 1. Does the research have social relevance, and is it transformative and participatory? 2. Is the decolonization and indigenization intent explicit? 3. Does the research take a stance against political, academic, and methodological imperialism of its time? 4. Does the research highlight potential areas of Western research incompatibility with local and indigenous epistemologies as well as areas of convergence? 5. Is there any concept or variable that is unique to the local phenomenon of study? 6. Does the unique concept or variable contribute to building a new theory or modifying existing ones? 7. Is there a local perspective or indigenous conceptual or theoretical framework that is used to inform a reflection on the specific context? 8. Are there unique ontological, epistemological, cultural, and value assumptions that inform the study that are unique and different from the globally generic or other cultural approaches?

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9. What are the local or indigenous methods that are in contrast to globally applicable methods that are generic? 10. What are the locally relevant constructs that are in contrast to globally applicable approaches that are generic? 11. Does the research contribute toward a new research approach that develops from an indigenous conceptual or theoretical perspective? 12. Does the research contribute toward the documentation and restoration of historical marginalized indigenous knowledge, cultures, and values? 13. Will the research use an indigenous paradigm and other paradigms? Attempts to indigenize methodologies can thus be viewed along a spiral continuum scale that ranges from the least indigenized to third-space methodologies (Moquin, 2007) or “geo-centric approaches” (Ping Li, 2011). A discussion of the methodological frameworks follows. Least Indigenous Approach. The contention in this approach is that research is research, and methodologies are universal. There is limited attention to decolonizing relationships between knowledge systems and to reflecting on the diversity of indigenous ways of knowing and how they are aligned to the choice of research design, data collection methods, and reporting of findings. The South African National Research Foundation (NRF) IKS program, is an example of research driven by the least indigenized approaches. While its intentions are to promote locally relevant research to eradicate poverty and to revitalize, restore, and develop IK epistemologies, the research practice lacks a reflection on the philosophies and values that drive the research practice. Most of the research conducted fails to apply indigenous methodologies to explore locally derived research agendas to build unique and novel constructs and local theories (Ping Li, 2011), applying instead, universalized Euro-Western research standards across diverse contexts. Researchers fulfil the requirements in standard research methods books and International Review Board (IRB) requirements such as making back-to-back translation of research instruments into local languages. In bio-medical research, there is a concern that, for example, once an indigenous plant is in the laboratory, it loses its indigenous name, its history, and its benefits to the community. In evaluation research, the least indigenized approach is dominated by Western evaluation theory and practice. There is, for instance, emphasis on translating evaluation instruments to local languages and indigenizing techniques of gathering data without addressing fundamental questions on worldviews that can inform evaluation theory and practice coming from the formerly colonized. Critiquing these approaches, Chilisa and Malunga (2012) assert that the approaches are mere modifications of Northern-rooted and -driven practices that do not go deep enough to qualify as decolonized evaluation approaches. The critique raises the question of how much is sufficient indigenization? What are the standards for a sufficiently decolonized and indigenized research and evaluation practice? Indeed, some indigenized evaluation approaches add no value to the quality of the practice and may even bring harm to programs and recipients. A study by Aliu Mohammed Nurudeen (2012) to examine various participatory tools and methods of development evaluation used by the Centre for Development of People (CEDEP) in

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Northern Ghana to outline the extent to which CEDEP ensures beneficiaries and stakeholders involvement in development evaluation revealed cosmetic contextualization that failed to make the evaluation of outcomes relevant to the beneficiaries. The indigenization entailed factoring the beneficiaries’ views on sacred issues such as sacred grooves, gods, and taboos into the program. Participatory research tools including dream mapping and community meetings were used to create a picture of the type of development intervention the communities required. The evaluation of the intervention was, however, done by external agencies contracted by the donors to evaluate predetermined objectives using a predetermined standard for the measure of success and failure and requiring all stakeholders to adhere to that standard. This is clearly an example of the least indigenized evaluation approach The Mokgola community in Zeerust, South Africa, illustrates the negative consequences of this approach. Early in 2000, the community collected leaves from a tree which elderly community members had used for medicinal purposes and for making tea and presented it to the Department of Science and Technology (DST) to find out if there was any commercial benefit to be derived. . . . The community agreed that everyone should benefit from the project and they formed a steering committee to protect their interests. After several meetings they signed an agreement with Medical Research Council (MRC) (Cape Town) and provided them with trees to use in the research. The Medical Research Council’s (MRC) focus changed to whether or not the trees can survive in other climates. . . . The Medical Research Council (MRC) researchers also conducted interviews with elderly community members about the best time to harvest the leaves and traditional healers were later involved in the project. They agreed to share basic knowledge. The Medical Research Council (MRC) asked the community to identify land where trees could be planted that had access to water, which they did. (Chilisa 2017:822) The Department of Science and Technology (DST) researchers came up with a scientific name for the plant, and, to date, the research findings although published have not been shared with the community (Chilisa et al., 2014, p. 16). Integrative/Adaptation Approach.  The second methodology along the indigenization continuum scale is the integrative approach. In this approach, the decolonization intent is explicit. Researchers draw from the relational, ontological, epistemological, and axiological assumptions to build and sustain relations and connections between knowledge systems, between academics and sages, researchers and the researched, and between people and ecological systems. Indigenous-centered conceptual frameworks serve as critical tools to provide insights into a researcher’s beliefs about the research process, the research goals, its methodology, and interpretation of its findings. It is an approach that assumes a mixed methods research approach where there is integration of knowledge coming from a Western perspective and an indigenous perspective (Chilisa & Tsheko, 2014). Berger-Gonzalez et al.’s (2016) transdisciplinary study discussed earlier is an example of an integrative research process where Western academic researchers and Mayan indigenous knowledge holders separately developed and articulated their interest and the goals of the study and the research protocols. These were merged together to create a research framework that accommodated the two knowledge systems.

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The Predominantly Indigenous Researchers’ Framework.  There is a view that where the subject of inquiry is a local or indigenous phenomenon, methodologies derived from indigenous epistemologies and worldviews should be used. The starting point for this view is that IK should not be mainstreamed into conventional knowledge but should be allowed to coexist with Western sciences, because they are two distinctly different systems. In such cases, IK research should be informed by worldviews that emanate from knowledge holders and indigenous communities’ assumptions about the nature of knowledge, reality, and values. Vukic, Gregory, Martin-Misener, and Etowa’s (2016) study to engage a rural Mi’kmaw community in a collaborative partnership to explore understanding of Mi’kmaw youth mental health and identify plans for action to promote the mental health of Mi’kmaw youth living in a rural Mi’kmaw community is an example of a research framework that is predominantly indigenous. The two-eyed seeing and ethical space were the indigenous frameworks that guided the study. There are possibilities of emerging research frameworks informed by radical decolonization that are the product of collaboration between indigenous and nonindigenous scholars and are malparadigmatic. Researchers work in colonized spaces, and decolonization should address social justice issues that include the role of the academy and its curriculum in the decolonization process, ethics review boards, research resources, and the inequalities that leave the poor poorer, voiceless, and powerless. Figure 2.2 illustrates the research frameworks in the context of attempts to indigenize and decolonize methodologies. FIGURE 2.2 1. Least indigenized majority of research in low and middle income countries are in this category 4. Predominantly indigenous methodologies largely centered on indigenous paradigms

2. Integrative/adaptive attempts of combining methodology from Western paradigm with those from indigenous paradigms

3. Third-space methodologies silent on paradigms

5. Radical decolonization research frameworks jointly produced by indigenous and nonindigenous schools, multiparadigmatic

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Third-Space Methodologies. When one discusses Euro-Western paradigms and postcolonial indigenous paradigms, these paradigms become essentialized, compelling thought along binary opposites of either/or. There is also the danger of conceptualizing indigenousness as a fixed and unchanging indigenous identity (Kincheloe & Steinberg, 2008). Homi Bhabha’s (1994) concept of “the space in between” has led some researchers to speak of a “third space” (Moquin, 2007). In this space, Western research paradigms are contested and declared invalid because they are based on a culture that has been made static and essentialized. There is also a recognition that essentialized views of indigenous cultures inform indigenous research paradigms and methodologies, which must be interrogated and opened up to include the voices and knowledge systems of the subgroups within indigenous essentialized cultures potentially excluded within the already marginalized indigenous cultures and research paradigms. Thus, in the third space, indigenousness is interrogated to include the voices of those disadvantaged on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, ableness, health, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, age, and so on. In the space in between, “all cultural statements and systems are constructed, therefore all hierarchical claims to the inherent originality or ‘purity’ of cultures are untenable” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 54). The space in between involves a culture-integrative research framework. This is a tapestry, a mosaic of balanced borrowing of less hegemonic Euro-Western knowledge and its democratic and social justice elements and combining it with the best of the democratic, liberatory, and social justice essentialized indigenous knowledge and subgroups’ knowledges. Postcolonial indigenous feminist methodologies present some of the examples in this category of postcolonial indigenous research methodologies. (See Chapter 9.) Glasson, Mhango, Phiri, & Lanier (2010) discuss a study based on a third space methodology. In this study, U.S. science educators and Malawian science educators explored the potential of including indigenous ways of living with nature in the school science curriculum. They investigated the agricultural practices of elders that contribute to the sustainability of the environment and how the elders negotiate their traditional practices within discourses of a third space that is influenced by Western agricultural methods. The conclusion drawn from the study is that as farmers continue to interact in the global economy, and are exposed to Western agricultural methods, hybridized practices and knowledge continue to emerge. In addition, farmers had conserved indigenous ways of living with nature and understanding of the environment as demonstrated by their practices. The study demonstrates how integration of Eurocentric science with indigenous knowledge took place in a third space.

ACTIVITY 2.1 Read the extract below from the article: Vukic, A., Gregory, D., Martin-Misener, R., & Etowa, J. (2016). Perspectives for conducting indigenous

qualitative research from a project exploring Mi’kmaw youth mental health. Journal of Ethnographic and Qualitative Research, 10, 209–229.

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1. Discuss features that make the approach a predominantly indigenous research framework. 2. What indigenous theoretical constructs did the study adopt, and how were they applied to the study? 3. Discuss the indigenous values used in the study that make it a qualitative indigenous methodology study. 4. How are the study findings presented, and in what ways do they reflect a relational way of knowing? Purpose: To engage a rural Mi’kmaw community in a collaborative partnership to explore an understanding of Mi’kmaw youth mental health and identify plans for action to promote the mental health of Mi’kmaw youth living in a rural Mi’kmaw community Rationale: Aboriginal youth mental health is a major health priority in Canada. In Nova Scotia, research with Mi’kmaw communities supports the need for culturally relevant services and culturally competent tools for assessment. Musquash and Bova (2007) claim that most tools used to measure mental health distress are not culturally relevant. An indigenous qualitative research offers an approach for creating spaces for understanding Mi’kmaw youth mental health by stretching the boundaries of traditional research methodologies.

Theoretical Framework In this Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) study, we employed the theoretical constructs of two-eyed seeing and ethical space. Two eyed seeing developed by Albert Marshall, a Mi’kmaw elder, presents a model to view the world through the lens of Western and indigenous knowledge systems. Two-eyed seeing is learning to see with the strength of indigenous and Western ways of knowing for the benefit of all, whereas ethical space is about creating space for dialogue and discussion between different worldviews. Ethical space requires a dialogue about intentions, values, and assumptions throughout the

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research process (Canadian Institute of Health Research, 2008). Two-eyed seeing and ethical space as a framework creates a fluid and dynamic process as participants and researchers engage in dialogue centered on the research question and purpose of the study; however, imposing the researcher’s world in the research is insidious and can go unrecognized. An indigenous framework is broader than incorporating methods such as storytelling and talking circles. Mapping out an indigenous framework requires consideration of how to conduct the research in a way that is inclusive of indigenous epistemologies and is decolonizing. Including indigenous knowledge was possible in this research as the approach was CBPR. CBPR is based on respectful partnerships between community and researcher. Such partnerships are strengthened through mutual agreement concerning the research question, design, implementation, analysis, and dissemination of research specific to understanding Mi’kmaw youth mental health. A CAC was established with the help of the local health director at the beginning phase of the partnership to enact principles of the CBPR within the constructs of two-eyed seeing and ethical space.

Data Collection We incorporated data collection methods of ­storytelling, talking circles, an open community forum, file notes, and participant observation. The story telling sessions focused on individual community members’ understanding about Mi’kmaw youth mental health and priorities for promoting Mi’kmaw youth mental health in the community. An open community forum was organized after the talking circles to provide community members with an opportunity to share their perspectives on findings. Participant observation included being present in the community.

Results The Mi’kmaw youths’ understanding of their mental health is revealed in two major themes and subthemes. The complexity and fluid nature of youths’ understanding prompted the first (Continued)

34   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) author to sketch a figure to represent Mi’kmaw youths’ understanding. The figure resists the research imperative to reduce such organic understanding to themes and subthemes. The tree represents Msit no’kmaq (all my relations). The branches represent families in the community, and the leaves, individual members. The tree reinforces the understanding that we are all related. The strands extending from the tree depict the journey conveyed by the youth in the study. The strands are wavy and do not follow a linear progression, as youth communicated the arduous journey of navigating and negotiating their own individual paths of creating a sense of self in the context of their lives within Mimikej. Each strand is a different color and represents a

subtheme of the major theme identified as “living my life well”: msit no’kmaq. The subthemes included (a) self-reflecting, knowing more about oneself and taking action; (b) bad feelings, letting go, and moving on: and (c) integrating physical and mental health. A holistic and relational approach to respond to rural Mi’kmaw youth mental health is consistent with the findings of the study. By employing a CBPR method with the theoretical constructs of two-eyed seeing and ethical space, the authors were able to extend the understanding of Mi’kmaw youth mental health beyond a biomedical model of mental health and convey a more strength–based indigenous meaning of Mi’kmaw mental health.

EURO-WESTERN RESEARCH PARADIGMS Knowledge of the dominant Euro-Western research paradigms is necessary to enable you to contextualize a critique of these research methodologies as well as appreciate the decolonization and indigenization of these research approaches. What follows is a brief description of each dominant research paradigm in terms of the philosophies that inform its approaches and the way questions on reality, knowledge, and values are understood, explained, and incorporated in the research processes and procedures. A description of these dominant paradigms will also enable you to draw a distinction between the philosophies and histories that distinguish postcolonial indigenous research methodologies from the dominant Euro-Western methodologies and those that do not. Most Euro-Western research books classify research methodologies into three paradigms: positivist-postpositivist, interpretive, and transformative. Philosophical assumptions and a long history of application and practice in each of these categories inform the methodology, data-gathering techniques, analysis approaches, and reporting and dissemination of the findings. The differences in these paradigms can be understood by looking at the following: —— The philosophies and theories that inform the approach —— How each approach perceives or explains the nature of reality (ontology), knowledge (epistemology), and values (axiology) —— The methodology used in the research

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The Positivism/Postpositivism Paradigm Positivism is a position or approach that holds that the scientific method is the only way to establish truth and objective reality. Can you imagine using scientific methods to carry out research on witches? The positivists would conclude that witches do not exist because the scientific method does not yield any tangible results on the nature of witches. Positivism is based on the view that natural science is the only foundation for true knowledge. It holds that the methods, techniques, and procedures used in natural science offer the best framework for investigating the social world (Hitchcock & Hughes, 1995). Many Western philosophers, among them Aristotle (383–348 BCE), Francis Bacon (1561–1626), and John Locke (1632–1704), contributed to what we know as positivism today. Aristotle believed that the world operates on fixed natural laws that can be discovered through observation and reason. He also believed that these fixed laws can be tested and measured quantitatively, with the results verified. He is considered a realist, and his thinking typifies the philosophy of realism. Realism takes the stand that reality is viewed in material terms. Realism assumes an external reality that can be objectively investigated. The basic tenet of this philosophy is that if something exists, it exists in a quantity, and we can measure it. The realist maintains that truth exists in nature, that is, the physical world, and it is discoverable by people through the use of scientific method. Knowing begins with sensory intake, which is then ordered and organized by means of intellect. Francis Bacon and John Locke also added to our understanding of positivism as we know it today. Their thinking has been labeled empiricism. Empiricists believe that the senses and empirical data are the most important sources of knowledge. According to the empiricists, we know from seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and observing. The empiricist uses deductive methods to generate generalizations from specific sensory data. Augustine Comte (1798–1857), a 19th-century French ­philosopher, summed up these related ideas by different philosophers as positivism. Like the empiricists and realists, he believed that genuine knowledge is based on sense experience and can be advanced only by means of observation and measurement. The middle part of the 20th century saw a shift from positivism to postpositivism. It is influenced by a philosophy called critical realism. The postpositivists, like the positivists, believe that there is a reality independent of our thinking that can be studied through the scientific method. They recognize, however, that all observation is fallible and has error and that all theory is revisable. Reality cannot be known with certainty. Observations are theory laden and influenced by the researcher’s biases and worldviews. Objectivity can nevertheless be achieved by using multiple measures and observations and triangulating the data to get closer to what is happening in reality. It is important to note that the postpositivists share a lot in common with positivists. Most of the research approaches and practices in social science today would fit better into the postpositivist category. The two will therefore be treated as belonging to the same family. It is important to note that a number of philosophers working over a long period of time contributed toward the thinking and the body of knowledge and worldviews embodied in each paradigm.

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Assumptions About the Nature of Reality, Knowledge, and Values Let us look closely at the positivist/postpositivist assumptions about the nature of reality (ontology), knowledge (epistemology), and values (axiology). Ontology.  On the question of what is the nature of reality, the positivists hold that there is a single, tangible reality that is relatively constant across time and setting. Part of the researcher’s duty is to discover this reality. Reality is objective and is independent of the researcher’s interest in it. It is measurable and can be broken into variables. Postpositivists concur that reality exists but argue that it can be known only imperfectly because of the researcher’s human limitations. The researcher can discover reality within a certain realm of probability (Mertens, 2010a). Epistemology.  For the positivist, the nature of knowledge is inherent in the natural science paradigm. Knowledge is those statements of belief or fact that can be tested empirically, confirmed or verified, or disconfirmed; they are stable and can be generalized (Eichelberger, 1989). Knowledge constitutes hard data, is objective, and therefore is independent of the values, interests, and feelings of the researcher. Researchers need only the right data-gathering instruments or tools to produce absolute truth for a given inquiry. The research designs are quantitative and include experimental, quasi-experimental, correlational, causal, comparative, and survey designs. The techniques of gathering data are mainly questionnaires, observations, tests, and experiments. Within this context, the purpose of research is to discover laws and principles that govern the universe and to predict behaviors and situations. Postpositivists believe that perfect objectivity cannot be achieved but is approachable. Axiology.  For the positivist, all inquiries should be value free. Researchers should use scientific methods of gathering data to achieve objectivity and neutrality during the inquiry process. Postpositivists modified the belief that the researcher and the subject of study were independent by recognizing that the investigator’s theories, hypothesis, and background knowledge can strongly influence what is observed, how it is observed, and the outcome of what is observed. Methodology.  In positivism and postpositivism, the purpose of research is to predict, test a theory, and find the strength of relationships between variables or a cause-effect relationship. Quantitative researchers begin with ideas, theories, or concepts that are operationally defined to point to the variables in the study. The problem statement at minimum specifies variables to be studied and the relationship among them. Variables are operationally defined to enable replication, verification, and confirmation by different researchers. Operationally defining a variable means that the trait to be measured is defined according to the way it is used, measured, or observed in the study. In Activity 2.2, a sample survey design was adopted, and variables, for instance, literacy and ability, were operationally defined. Research questions, research objectives, and hypotheses were constructed to further clarify the research problem. The researcher, independent of the participants, constructed these. The variables are therefore

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predetermined and fixed. Research objectives and procedures were built around the definition of literacy used by UNESCO. Tests were used to measure reading and numeracy. Skills measured in numeracy and reading are clearly delineated and are again limited by the definition of literacy. How relevant do you think the study’s definition of life is to the life experiences of people? Do you think the researched people would have a similar meaning of what it is to be literate? In most cases, research within the positivist/postpositivist paradigm is more about what researchers want to know and what knowledge and what theory they want to legitimize. For instance, the researchers in the literacy study noted, “The narrow definition of literacy currently held by the Botswana National Literacy Programme may, to some extent, have influenced the development of tests for this survey. . . . Advanced functional literacy skills were not tested” (Central Statistics Office, 1997, p. 9).

ACTIVITY 2.2 Read the study extract included here and answer the following questions: 1. Discuss how the methodological features of this study reflect positivist or postpositivist ontology, epistemology, and axiology. 2. Refer back to the concept of the “captive mind.” In what ways are the researchers captives of the dominant literature on literacy and methodologies in the postpositivist research paradigm? Source: Adapted from Central Statistics Office. (1997). Literacy survey report. Gaborone, Botswana: Government Printer.

Statement of the Problem The survey was designed to measure the country’s literacy not only by the number of years spent at school (formal school) but also through the testing of objective literacy skills. In this survey, objective literacy was defined as the ability to read and write in Setswana, English, or both and the ability to carry out simple mathematical computations. Ability was ascertained through results of literacy tests in Setswana, English, and mathematics.

The following were the specific objectives: To assess gender and age literacy differentials To assess factors influencing school attendance To assess the impact of literacy programs and factors relating to accessibility of educational facilities To identify the most pressing needs in terms of educational policies and provision in order that the priorities can be set for the future direction of adult literacy programs in Botswana To assess socioeconomic and cultural factors that may be associated with literacy problems in the adult population

Sampling Procedures Enumeration areas (EA) were identified. These are small geographic areas, which represent an average workload for an enumerator. The average EA was 120 to 150 dwellings. EAs were subdivided into blocks. An average block was 50 households. Blocks were organized according to type of area. Urban blocks were grouped into a stratum of their own. Rural areas were organized into the following (Continued)

38   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) strata: villages, lands, cattle posts, and freehold farms. Probability sampling was carried out at block level, type of dwelling, and household and individual levels. Total sample size was 46,129 households.

Instruments and Procedure Questionnaires and tests were used. An individual questionnaire was administered only to Botswana citizens in the age group 12 to 65 with an educational attainment of Standard 4 or lower and not currently attending school. In this study, the process of decoding was assessed through tasks that required respondents to read orally some words and sentences and those that required them to identify and match words with pictures, in both Setswana and English. The process of writing was assessed through tasks that required respondents to write down dictated sentences in both languages. The numeracy tests covered the skill of number naming, in which the respondents were required to read given numbers aloud; number writing, in which respondents were required to write down dictated numbers; and solution of written arithmetic problems. In the latter task, respondents were given written problems to read and solve. The problems involved addition of a number of cattle to that of donkeys; the numbers were embedded in the prose text. Other numeracy skills tested in this study included the ability to solve arithmetic equations involving the concepts of addition and subtraction (50 – 20 =; 10 + 40 =) and that of reading time. The survey came up with a pass mark of 50% to determine the literate and illiterate, based on a 2-point scale of correct and incorrect answers to test items.

Results The survey found out that 68.9% of adults are literate in either Setswana or English. Females

had a higher literacy rate: 70.3% compared to males, 66.9%. Also, 193,662 persons aged 12 years and over never attended formal school. Commeyras and Chilisa (2001) have questioned the value of this research in providing information on the development of literacy in Botswana. They argue that the survey results reveal very little about the actual literacy of Botswana’s people and the variety of literacies that exist. William L. Neuman (2010) notes that researchers in the positivist-postpositivist research paradigm adopt a technocratic approach where they ignore questions on relevancy, ethics, and morality to follow orders and thus satisfy a sponsor or a government. The paradigm is thus generally viewed as a “legitimating ideology of dominant groups” (Neuman, 1997, p. 45). Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies challenge the ideologies embedded in these methods and propose ways of decolonizing and indigenizing the research methods so that the methods are inclusive of local and indigenous knowledges that are relevant and responsive to the experiences and needs of researched communities. How can one, for instance, carry out a literacy survey that uses local and indigenous knowledge on literacy as a conceptual or theoretical framework to inform the variables in the study? Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies propose ways in which researchers can invoke indigenous knowledge systems to decolonize dominant research methodologies and offer complementary new methods and approaches that are informed by postcolonial indigenous philosophies, histories, and indigenous knowledge systems. Indigenous Beliefs and Attitudes to AIDS Precautions in a Rural South African Community: An Empirical Study (Liddell, Barrett, & Bydawell, 2006) demonstrates ways in which researchers indigenize quantitative research methodologies. (See Chapter 3.)

The Interpretive Paradigm The interpretivists differ with the positivists on assumptions about the nature of reality, what counts as knowledge and its sources, and the values they hold and their role in the research process. The interpretive approach can be traced back to Edmund Husserl’s philosophy of phenomenology and to the German philosopher Wilhelm

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Dilthey’s philosophy of hermeneutics (Eichelberger, 1989; Neuman, 2010). Let us examine each one of these. We will also examine assumptions on ontology, epistemology, axiology, and methodologies used in the interpretive paradigm. Phenomenology. Phenomenologists use human thinking, perceiving, and other mental or physiological acts and spirituality to describe and understand human experience. From the phenomenologist’s perspective, truth lies within the human experience and is therefore multiple and bound by time, space, and context. Under these assumptions, a belief or claim coming from a culture one does not understand is consistent and correct. In contrast to the positivist/postpositivist paradigm, phenomenologists or interpretivists believe that research should produce individualized conceptions of social phenomena and personal assertions rather than generalizations and verifications. Hermeneutics.  The term comes from the name Hermes, a god in Greek mythology who had the power to communicate the desires of the gods to mortals (Neuman, 2010). Hermeneutics involves a reading and an interpretation of some kind of human text. The text of our social world is complex. Hermeneutics is therefore the process whereby we come to an understanding of a given social text and choose between two or more competing interpretations of the same text. In reading and interpreting the text, we look at the relation of parts to the whole, and we do it in a dynamic and interactive way that will lead us to a fuller and newer understanding of the actual life situation (Eichelberger, 1989). Interpretations occur within a tradition, space, time, and a situation. They are also dependent on the identity of the researcher, that is, gender, age, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic background. Phenomenology and hermeneutics, thus, largely inform assumptions on the nature of reality, knowledge, and values in the interpretive paradigm: Let us examine these assumptions. Assumptions About the Nature of Reality, Knowledge, and Values Ontology.  On the question of what is reality, the interpretivists believe that it is socially constructed (Creswell, 2009; Creswell & Clark, 2011; Mertens, 2010a) and that there are as many intangible realities as there are people constructing them. Reality is therefore mind-dependent and a personal or social construct. Do you believe, for instance, that witches exist? If you do, it is your personal reality, a way in which you try to make sense of the world around you. Reality is, in this sense, limited to context, space, time, and individuals or groups in a given situation and cannot be generalized into one common reality. These assumptions are a direct challenge to the positivist’s assumption about the existence of a tangible external reality. The assumptions legitimize conceptions of realities from all cultures. The question, however, is how many of the realities as viewed by formerly colonized, historically marginalized groups have been considered valid in the academic construction of knowledge. In Botswana, for example, the understanding of reality in most communities is influenced by their connectedness to earth (lefatshe) and the spirits (Badimo) (Chilisa, 2005). There are individual realities as well as group-shared realities. Of interest is how these assumptions about the nature of reality are built into the research process. In Chapter 4, I will explore possible ways in which assumptions about the nature of reality in postcolonial indigenous contexts can be built into the research process.

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Epistemology.  Interpretivists believe that knowledge is subjective because it is socially constructed and mind-dependent. Truth lies within the human experience. Statements on what is true and false are therefore culture bound and historically and context dependent, although some may be universal. Within this context, communities’ stories, belief systems, and claims of spiritual and earth connections should find space as legitimate knowledge. Often, however, even interpretivist research operates within the mode of a Western historical and cultural-bound research framework and treats indigenous ways of knowing as “barriers to research or exotic customs with which researchers need to be familiar in order to carry out their work without causing offence” (Smith, 1999, p. 15). Axiology.  Interpretivists assert that since reality is mind constructed, mind dependent, and knowledge subjective, social inquiry is in turn value bound and value laden. The researcher is inevitably influenced by the investigator’s values, which inform the paradigm chosen for inquiry, the choice of issue, methods chosen to collect and analyze data, interpretation of the findings, and the way the findings are reported. The researcher, therefore, admits the value-laden nature of the study and reports values and biases. Methodology.  The purpose of interpretive research is to understand people’s experiences. The research takes place in a natural setting where the participants make their living. The purpose of study expresses the assumptions of the interpretivist to understand human experiences. Assumptions on the multiplicity of realities also inform the research process. For instance, the research questions cannot be established before the study begins but rather evolve as the study progresses (Mertens, 2010a). The research questions are generally open-ended, descriptive, and nondirectional (Creswell, 2009). A model of a grand tour question followed by a small number of subquestions are used. The grand tour question is a statement of the problem that is examined in the study in its broadest form, posed as a general issue not to limit the inquiry (Creswell, 2009). The researcher gathers most of the data. In recognition of the assumption about the subjective nature of research, researchers describe themselves, their values, ideological biases, relationship to the participants, and closeness to the research topic. Access and entry to the study site are important, and sensitive issues need to be addressed. Researchers have to establish trust, rapport, and authentic communication patterns with the participants so that they can capture the subtle differences and meanings from their voices (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). Ethics is an important issue that the researcher addresses throughout the study whenever it arises. Common designs include ethnography, phenomenology, biography, case study, and grounded theory (Creswell, 2009). Data-gathering techniques are selected depending on the choice of design, the nature of the respondents, and the research problem. They include interviews, observations, visual aids, personal and official documents, photographs, drawings, informal conversations, and artifacts.

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Imagine that you are carrying out research with and on colonized Others. What are some of the issues that might limit the inquiry process? Colonial rule created a dichotomy of the colonizer as knower and colonized as ignorant. It also created a midway space of the educated as better than those who did not go to school, although still lesser than the colonizers. Within this context, the position of the researcher as more educated than the majority of the researched still limits the inquiry process, as the researched are most likely to suppress indigenous knowledge in favor of knowledge acquired from the media and Euro-Western paradigms. Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies challenge the interpretivists to interrogate power relations between Western-educated researchers, as colonizers using dominant methodologies that legitimize ideologies of dominant groups, and the researched, as colonized and relegated to the position of an ignorant subject. Postcolonial indigenous methodologies propose ethics protocols that are informed by the value systems of the researched. These are value systems that promote, in the research process, the incorporation of spirituality, respect for the researched, cooperation between researchers and the researched, and a holistic approach to problem solving. The main argument from a postcolonial indigenous perspective is that knowledge production from the interpretive paradigm has been socially constructed using Euro-Western philosophies, cultures, and a long history of an application and practice of knowledge production that exclude the worldviews and practices of former colonized societies. The Four Seasons of Ethnography: A Creation-Centered Ontology for Ethnography (Gonzalez, 2000) illustrates ways of indigenizing ethnography. (See Chapter 4.)

The Transformative Paradigm There are scholars who criticize both the positivist/postpositivist and the interpretive paradigms. Some scholars, for example, Carol Gilligan (1982), argue that most research studies that inform sociological and psychological theories were developed by white male intellectuals on the basis of studying male subjects. In the United States, for example, African Americans argue that research-driven policies and projects have not benefited them because they were racially biased (Mertens 2010a). In Africa, scholars, for example Robert Chambers (1997) and Arturo Escobar (1995), argue that the dominant research paradigms have marginalized African communities’ ways of knowing and have thus led to the design of research-driven development projects that are irrelevant to the needs of the people. A third paradigm, labeled critical social science research (Neuman, 2010), action participatory and feminist designs (Merriam & Simpson, 2000), research with the aim to emancipate (Lather, 1991), or transformative paradigm (Mertens, 2010a) has emerged. The term transformative paradigm is adopted in this book to denote a family of research designs influenced by various philosophies and theories with a common theme of emancipating and transforming communities through group action (Mertens, 2010a). One of the influential theories is Marxism, originated by the German philosopher, Karl Marx. He believed that those

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who controlled the means of production, that is, the ruling class, also controlled the mental production of knowledge and ideas. Inevitably, the knowledge produced perpetuates the domination of other social classes by the ruling class, he said. The theory also helps to explain the dominance of Western-based research paradigms and the marginalization of knowledge produced in other cultures. Other theories include critical theory, feminist theories, Freirian theory, critical race theories, and postcolonial and indigenous theories. Assumptions About the Nature of Reality, Knowledge, and Values Ontology.  The transformative paradigm adopts the stance that social reality is historically bound and is constantly changing depending on social, political, cultural, and power-based factors (Neuman, 2010). Scholars within this paradigm adopt the stance that reality is constructed based on social location and that different versions of reality are privileged over others (Mertens, 2009). Reality has multiple layers: the surface reality and the deep structures that are unobservable. Theories and a historical orientation help to unmask the deep structures. Epistemology.  On the question of what is truth, the researchers within this paradigm maintain that knowledge is true if it can be turned into practice that empowers and transforms the lives of the people. Theory is the basic tool that helps the researcher to find new facts. The facts are built into theory that is consistently improved by relating it to practice (Neuman, 2010). True knowledge in this context lies in the collective meaning making by the people that can inform individual and group action that improves the lives of the people. Knowledge is constructed from the participants’ frame of reference. The relationship between the researcher and the researched is not based on a power hierarchy, as in the interpretive paradigm, but involves a transformation and emancipation of both the participant and the researcher. Axiology.  Researchers who adopt the transformative paradigm view research as a moral and political activity that requires them to choose and commit themselves to the values of social justice, furthering human rights, and respect of cultural norms. Researchers achieve objectivity by reflecting and examining their values to ensure that they are appropriate for carrying out the research study. Whereas in the interpretive paradigm, in which every viewpoint is correct, some views will facilitate an increase in social justice while others will sustain oppressive systems (Mertens, 2009). Methodology. In the transformative paradigm, the purpose of research is to destroy myths, illusions, and false knowledge and therefore empower people to act to transform society. Quantitative as well as qualitative methods are used in the research process. Techniques of collecting data and sampling procedures suitable to quantitative and qualitative studies are used. Participants are involved in identifying and defining the problem, collecting and analyzing the data, disseminating the findings, and using the findings to inform practice. Common designs are the participatory rural appraisal approach and action research. See Chapter 8.

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In the study by Omolewa, Adeola, Adekanmbi, Avoseh, and Braimoh (1998), survey methods were used along with oral texts, focus group interviews, and individual interviews. The meaning of literacy evolved from the people’s experiences and eventually informed the changes in the literacy program.

ACTIVITY 2.3 Read the study extract included here, and answer the following questions:

Provide a solution to the intractable problem of nongrowth

1. Discuss how the methodological features of the study reflect the transformative research paradigm ontology, epistemology, and axiology.

Improve the replicability of literacy programs

2. Discuss the concept of integration of knowledge systems and give your own evaluation of its application in the study.

Promote learner empowerment as literacy’s ultimate goal

Source: Omolewa, M., Adeola, O. A., Adekanmbi, G. A., Avoseh., M. B. M., & Braimoh, D. (1998). Literacy, tradition, and progress: Enrolment and retention in an African rural literacy programme. Hamburg, Germany: UNESCO Institute for Education.

Research Problem While there has been an increasing involvement of government in literacy promotion activities, it is observed that literacy has been constrained by the problem of nongrowth, which includes an inability to replicate activities, an increasing pattern of wastage, the problem of learner reluctance and rejection, and the neglect of the ultimate objective of asking learners to take over the literacy venture. All the agencies involved in literacy promotion have had their share of these problems, thus making necessary the search for an alternative.

Research Objectives Identify alternative strategies for the promotion of literacy in Nigeria, especially in rural settings

Reduce the pattern of wastage and learner apathy

Method Using elements of both qualitative and quantitative research designs, combining a survey of the village with a historical analysis and a qualitative approach.

Instruments and Procedures Questionnaires; oral texts such as stories, language, proverbs, and sayings; interviews

Results During the research, it was established that the indigenous apprenticeship system offered an attractive, alternative training program. First, the system demanded that people should begin to serve as guides (teachers) soon after a smattering of skill had been acquired. The guides, however, continue to serve under others who themselves continue their own learning. There is a need to use aspects of the indigenous culture and practices to attract learners and to consolidate their interest. It is not enough (Continued)

44   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) to attract learners; it is even more important to retain learners in the program and to use them to publicize the value of the program to the hitherto unreached. Tradition encourages the cultivation of the virtues of tact, sympathy, understanding, courtesy, patience, punctuality, doing by example, and practicability, all of which seek to enhance adult learners’ commitment.

Discussion The learners have cultivated an attitude that restores learning to its status in precolonial times, when education was continuing and lifelong and promoted even beyond death in stories and songs. The suspicion of learning, resulting from intervention of Islamic traders and Christian teachers, has given place to a revival of learning for learning’s sake. Thus, the participants in our project contend that learning is by no means a once-and-for-all affair, found only in pages of books and ending with the award of certificates. Rather, they contend that even the songs of birds teach lessons, and the color of the sky conveys a message to one who is eager to learn. The pride in learning is thus a return to the roots of the indigenous society, which took pride in the art of learning. It is also a rejection of the wrong ideas about Western education. For in the West, one is told, even in a village school, the truly educated person knows how little he or she knows and understands that there is no end to learning.

The postcolonial indigenous research methodologies have assumptions similar to those in the transformative paradigm. Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies adopting a decolonization and indigenization approach, however, emphasize how indigenous knowledges can be used to transform conventional ways of producing knowledge so that colonial and imperial impositions are eliminated, and knowledge production is inclusive of multiple knowledge systems. Decolonization and indigenization research methodological approaches require, for instance, that theory does not necessarily come out of written texts but can be inferred by the researcher from oral traditions, stories, legends, language, and artifacts. In postcolonial indigenous methodologies, the researcher has a duty to retrieve from the oral texts perspectives, concepts, and theories that form conceptual and theoretical frameworks for research studies, rationale, and justification for selected data-gathering techniques, data analysis, and research finding dissemination strategies. In the study on literacy in Nigeria by Omolewa et al. (1998), the researchers relinquish conventional concepts of literacy for those based on the indigenous knowledge systems. The participants undergo a transformation and are empowered through a realization of their potential as teachers, as well as renewed confidence in their culture, its values, and what they already know. Knowledge is built through practice as it unfolds in the practice of the people and the researchers.

The Pragmatic Paradigm It is a philosophy that is associated with William James, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, and Arthur F. Bentley (Mertens, 2020). In this chapter, I adopt John Dewey’s version of pragmatism as applied to education and research. A lot of John Dewey’s work in education emphasized learning by doing, a hands-on approach, or learning through experience. From that perspective, the pragmatic paradigm refers to a world-view that focuses on what works rather than what might be considered absolutely true or real. It guides research design when a combination of different approaches may be considered philosophically inconsistent. According to Morgan (2014b), it serves as a philosophical program for social research regardless of whether the research uses qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods, thus deviating from the philosophy of knowledge approach where social science research is understood in

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terms of ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions. It also recognizes other paradigms as legitimate “research communities” that add to our choices to conduct research inquiry (Morgan, 2014b). Ontology.  On the nature of reality, according to the pragmatist, “the mandate of research is not to find out truth about reality, but to facilitate human problem solving” (Powell, 2001, p. 884). Reality is seen as constantly negotiated, debated, interpreted, and therefore intersubjective and dialogical. Epistemology.  On the epistemological question of how reality can be known, the pragmatist believes that the best methodology is that which solves the problem. There is emphasis on the research questions asked. Hesse-Biber (2015), however, observes that this approach is limiting and does not address fundamental questions on the role of participants in defining the research questions and who decides on the methodology to define that what works (Romm, 2018). Morgan (2014b) posits that recent versions of pragmatism have developed a strong bond to a social justice agenda. From this perspective, can the new version of pragmatism ask for a dance with indigenous paradigms? Axiology.  Values play an important role in the interpretation of the research results, requiring the researcher to adopt both objective and subjective interpretations. The ethical goal of research is to gain knowledge that results in the desired ends; thus what is worth valuing is a function of the desired end (Mertens, 2020). Methodology.  The pragmatist adopts a mixed method approach. Chapter 7 discusses mixed methods research and attempts at decolonizing mixed methods research.

SUMMARY Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies consist of approaches to decolonize and indigenize dominant research methodologies. They include the articulation of a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm informed by a relational ontology, epistemology, and axiology. The framework adopted in this chapter and throughout the book is that current dominant methodologies should be decolonized to legitimize and enable the inclusion of knowledge production processes that accommodate shared knowledge and wisdom of those suffering from the oppressive colonial research tradition. There is also recognition that integrating indigenous perspectives in dominant research paradigms may not be the most effective strategy to legitimize the histories, worldviews, ways of knowing, and experiences of the colonized and historically oppressed. A postcolonial indigenous research paradigm is discussed as an alternative to indigenizing approaches and Western research paradigms. As a researcher, you can make a choice of the paradigm or approach that will inform your research, taking into consideration the nature of the problem you are investigating and your worldview. You will have a responsibility to critically assess the research process and procedures to see if they allow the researched to communicate their experiences from their frames of reference. Chapters 3 and 4 will illustrate further some of the ways that research can be carried out in ways that privilege the colonized’s ways of knowing. For a summary of the characteristics of each paradigm, refer to Table 2.1.

Multiple socially constructed realities

Values are an integral part of social life; no group’s values are wrong, only different.

One reality, knowable within probability

Ontological assumptions

Place of values Science is value in the research free, and values process have no place except when choosing a topic.

Informed by hermeneutics and phenomenology

Informed mainly by realism, idealism, and critical realism

Philosophical underpinnings

To understand and describe human nature

To discover laws that are generalizable and govern the universe

Interpretive Paradigm

Reason for doing the research

Positivist Paradigm

Researchers prioritize the value of furthering social justice and human rights.

Multiple realities shaped by human rights values; democratic and social justice values; and political, cultural, economic, race, ethnic, gender, and disability values

Informed by critical theory, postcolonial discourses, feminist theories, racespecific theories, and neoMarxist theories

To destroy myths and empower people to change society radically

Transformative Paradigm

TABLE 2.1  ■  Beliefs Associated With the Four Paradigms

Researchers’ values matter, and knowledge is valuable only if it has positive consequences.

The practical effects of ideas

Largely informed by the pragmatist philosophy of John Dewey

To solve problems and develop interventions

Pragmatist Paradigm

All research must be guided by a relational accountability that promotes respectful representation, reciprocity, and rights of the researched. The ethics theory is informed by appreciative inquiry and desire-based perspectives social justice

Socially constructed multiple realities shaped by the set of multiple connections that human beings have with the environment, the cosmos, the living, and the nonliving

Informed by indigenous knowledge systems, critical theory, postcolonial discourses, feminist theories, critical race-specific theories, and neo-Marxist theories

To challenge deficit thinking and pathological descriptions of the formerly colonized and reconstruct a body of knowledge that carries hope and promotes transformation and social change among the historically oppressed

Indigenous Research Paradigm

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Knowledge is objective.

Truth is based on precise observation and measurement that is verifiable.

Quantitative, correlational, quasi-experimental, experimental, causal comparative, survey

Mainly questionnaires, observations, tests, and experiments

Nature of knowledge

What counts as truth

Methodology

Techniques of gathering data

Mainly interviews, participant observation, pictures, photographs, diaries, and documents

Qualitative, phenomenology, ethnographic, symbolic interaction, naturalistic

Truth is context dependent.

Knowledge is subjective and idiographic.

Culturally responsive techniques of data collection

Combination of quantitative and qualitative action research; participatory research

Truth is informed by a theory that unveils illusions.

Knowledge is dialectical understanding aimed at a critical praxis.

Qualitative and quantitative methods

Mixed methods research; the research questions or objectives should determine the methodology.

Any knowledge that leads to pragmatic solutions is useful. The mandate of science is not to find truth but facilitate human problem solving.

Knowledge should be viewed in terms of its practical use.

Techniques based on philosophic sagacity, ethnophilosophy, language frameworks, indigenous knowledge systems, talk stories, and talk circles; adapted techniques from the other three paradigms indigenous qualitative and quantitative methods

Participatory, liberatory, and transformative decolonizing research approaches and methodologies that draw from indigenous knowledge systems and indigenous mixed methods

Truth is informed by the set of multiple relations that one has with the universe.

Knowledge is relational, as are all the indigenous knowledge systems built on relations.

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Key Points ——

Research methods are dominated by Western modes of thinking.

——

Research is value laden, and the choice of a methodology used in a study implies a worldview or way of thinking about the topic of research, the community researched, the data collection procedures, analysis, and reporting.

——

The range of research approaches and designs, from surveys to ethnography, should open space for the inclusion of indigenous knowledge systems.

——

Postcolonial indigenous methodologies interrogate imperial and colonial power in research and invoke indigenous knowledge systems to envision other ways of doing research that are informed by the worldviews of the colonized and historically marginalized groups.

——

Indigenous methodologies are qualitative and more than just qualitative, quantitative and more than just quantitative.

ACTIVITY 2.4 1. Debate the main points from this chapter, and use research studies to support your views. 2. Select a journal in your discipline, and analyze studies done within a 5-year period

for visibility of the colonized and historically marginalized groups’ worldviews, ways of knowing, and indigenous knowledge.

Suggested Readings Kovach, M. (2009). Indigenous methodologies:

Mertens, D. M., & Cram, F. (2016). Negotiating

Characteristics, conversations and contexts.

solidarity between indigenous and

Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

transformative paradigms in evaluation.

Lambert, L. (2014). Research for indigenous survival: Indigenous research methodologies in behavioral sciences. Pablo, MT: Salish Kootenai College Press. Liamputtong, P. (2010). Qualitative cross-cultural

Evaluation Matters, 2, 162–189. Nabudere, N. (2011). Afrikology, philosophy and wholeness: An epistemology. Cape Town, South Africa: Cape Town African Books Collective. Nyasini, J. (2016). The ontological significance of “I” and “We” in African philosophy. Retrieved

research. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

from http://www.galerie-inter.de/kimmerle/

University Press.

frameText8.htm.

Chapter 2

Ping Li. (2011). Toward an integrative framework of indigenous research: The geocentric implications of Ying-Yang balance. Asian Pacific Journal of Management, 29, 849–872. Romm, N. R. A. (2015). Reviewing the transformative paradigm: A critical systemic and relational (indigenous) lens. Systematic Practice and Action Research, 28, 411–427. Russon, C. (2008). An Eastern paradigm of evaluation. Journal of Multidisciplinary Evaluation, 5(10), 1–7. Scheurich, J. J., & Young, M. D. (1997). Coloring epistemologies: Are our research epistemologies racially biased? Educational Researcher, 26(4), 4–16.

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Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London, UK: Zed Books. Vukic, A., Gregory, D., Martin-Misener, R., & Etowa, J. (2016). Perspectives for conducting indigenous qualitative research from a project exploring Mi’kmaw youth mental health. Journal of Ethnographic and Qualitative Research, (10), 209–229. Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Manitoba, Canada: Fernwood.

3 DISCOVERY AND RECOVERY Reading and Conducting Research Responsibly When any group within a large, complex civilisation significantly dominates other groups for hundreds of years, the ways of the dominant group (its epistemologies, ontologies and axiologies), not only become the dominant ways of that civilisation, but also these ways become so deeply embedded that they typically are seen as “natural” or appropriate norms rather than as historically evolved social constructions. James J. Scheurich and Michelle D. Young (1997, p. 7)

The range of contemporary critical theories suggests that it is from those who have suffered the sentence of history-subjugation, domination, diaspora, displacement that we learn our most enduring lessons for living and thinking. Homi Bhabha (1994, p. 172)

Overview This chapter extends the discussion on paradigms to show the relationship between methodology, methods, and philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality, knowledge and values, and theory. Postcolonial indigenous theory and critical race theory are discussed as potential decolonizing tools that rupture the hegemonic Euro-Western methods that see “the world in one color” (Guba & Lincoln, 2005, p. 212). This chapter presents case studies that will enable you to understand how colonial research served the interests of the colonizers and how critical theoretical frameworks are used to inform the design, analysis, and reporting in a study with a postcolonial indigenous research perspective. 50

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Discuss the role of postcolonial indigenous theory and critical race theory in indigenous research. 2. Critique the universal application of mainstream research methods from the perspective of postcolonial indigenous theory and critical race theory. 3. Understand the resistance of the researched communities to imposed knowledge systems and the implications of that resistance for research. 4. Acquire skills that will enable you to be a critical reader of research studies.

Before You Start Discuss the quotations at the start of this chapter in relation to the experiences of the colonized and those historically marginalized by the colonizing ­Western-based research tradition. Do you think there are any suppressed knowledge or value systems belonging to the colonized that could inform the construction of research knowledge? Think of the colonized as all those hurt by the colonizing Euro-­Western research tradition, for instance, the formerly colonized, indigenous peoples, the deaf, the immigrants, women, and girls in these societies.

INTRODUCTION An anticolonial critique framework, using critical theory, postcolonial discourses, and critical race-based theories, is challenging every discipline to assess how knowledge production and theories of the past and the present have been shaped by ideas and power relations of imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, globalization, and racism. Postcolonial studies have shown that no subject area or theory, be it biology, physics, language, mathematics, Marxism, or feminism, has escaped Eurocentric colonialism and modern imperialism or globalization (Said, 1993). In Chapter 1, you learned that scholars are expressing their criticism about what they view as the dominance of Euro-Western methodologies, which marginalize indigenous knowledge of the colonized and historically oppressed. Evidence is mounting about the failures of research-driven interventions that draw from mainstream research epistemologies. Arturo Escobar (1995), in Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, documents the failures of research-driven development projects in the third world, while Robert Chambers (1997), in Whose Reality Counts: Putting the First Last, documents the errors

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in research-driven development projects that arise when mainstream research methodologies are used among communities in developing countries. Aaron M. Pallas (2001, p. 7), in a discussion of educational research, proposes that to prevent a recurring pattern of “epistemological single-mindedness, educational researchers should engage with multiple epistemologies” that include beliefs about what counts as knowledge. Lauren J. Young (2001), Pallas (2001), Reba N. Page (2001), and Mary Haywood Metz (2001) argue that novice researchers and graduate students should be prepared to deal with epistemological diversity. It is important to give space and listen to the voices from these historically silenced groups and those who sympathize with them to learn about other epistemologies and other ways of knowing. For many reasons, this is a noble undertaking at this point in time. —— Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge have become important in the emerging global economy, with observers noting that “the basic component of any country’s knowledge system is its indigenous knowledge” (Economic and Social Development Department, 2006, p. 9). —— An increased volume of research on the colonized Other is funded by international organizations, amid a growing realization that Euro-Western-based research methodologies fail to capture the experiences of these colonized Others (Chambers, 1997; Chilisa, 2005; Chilisa & Ntseane 2010; Escobar, 1995; Nitza, Chilisa, & Makwinja-Morara, 2010). —— An increased number of international and transnational researchers are committed to writing on methodologies and carrying out research that promotes social justice, human rights, and democracy (Mertens, 2009, 2010a, 2010b). —— The emerging trend where “the knowledge paradigms of the future are beginning to develop by reaching out to those excluded to move together towards a new synthesis” (Fatnowna & Pickett, 2002, p. 260) shows the growing need to hear from multiple voices, including those who critique mainstream research and those who write on postcolonial/indigenous epistemologies. —— Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge systems are already part of the global dialogue with regard to ethics, copyrights, and the production of knowledge, increasing the need to internationalize postcolonial indigenous research epistemologies and methodologies. In Chapter 1, you learned about the following strategies for decolonization: —— Deconstruction and reconstruction as strategies for discovering and recovering the past to inform the present and future —— Self-determination and social justice in research —— Implementation of ethical frameworks that promote rights and ownership to knowledge produced

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—— Implementation of research using indigenous languages —— Excavation of the past to know our history and thus promote self-determination and social justice in research —— Mobilization of communities to internationalize indigenous knowledge systems —— Critique —— Paradigms and their philosophical and theoretical underpinnings, methodologies, and techniques of gathering data In this chapter, I expand the discussion on decolonization as a process that engages with imperialism, colonialism, and globalization to understand the assumptions and values that continue to inform research practices that privilege Western thought and the resistance of the majority two thirds of the world’s population to this privileged knowledge. Postcolonial theories and critical race feminist theories provide a framework with which we can discuss imperialism, colonialism, and globalization as processes with assumptions and values that legitimized Euro-Western methodologies and further build deficit literatures communicated in dominant languages, such as English, about the colonized Other. The contribution of feminist theory to indigenous research is discussed in Chapter 13. Let us commence with a discussion of postcolonial theories.

POSTCOLONIAL AND INDIGENOUS THEORIES Postcolonial theories discuss the role of imperialism, colonization, and globalization and their literature and language in the construction of knowledge and people’s resistance to imposed frameworks of knowing. It takes a poststructural view of the world with the aim of deconstructing truths, beliefs, values, and norms that are presented as normal and natural and presenting them as politically and socially constructed. Postcolonial theory engages with issues of power. In the context of research, it enables scholars to interrogate power relations that arise between researchers and the researched, for example, when choices are made about the literature to be reviewed, the theoretical frameworks, research questions, or techniques of gathering data (for example, tests). These power relations come with “Othering” ideologies, which see the world in binary opposites of colonizer/colonized Other, first world/third and fourth world. Postcolonial theory pays attention to how race and ethnicity interact with class, gender, age, and ableness in interlocking forms of oppression. (Chapter 13 discusses postcolonial indigenous feminist theories and methodologies.) In addition, it exposes how academic discourse uses Othering ideologies to make sense of the world along binary opposites, which devalue indigenous knowledge and marginalize the voices of the colonized Other. Postcolonial discourses also look at the resistance to the colonizing methodologies by researchers who chart other ways of doing research that are culturally sensitive to those colonized by the Euro-Western research tradition. Postcolonial theorizing is useful in

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indicating a general process of colonization and counterattempts by the colonized Other to disengage from the colonial syndrome. The resistance is a challenge to Western-­ educated indigenous researchers, demanding that they begin to interrogate their multiple identities as colonizers participating in the Othering of their people through the use of Western research methodologies and as peripheral Others marginalized by the global network of first world research elites and by global markets that continue to define and determine knowledge discourses on the basis of global market prices. It is in this context that a relational ethical framework in indigenous research is essential.

Postcolonial Theory Critique Indigenous scholars (Grande, 2000; Smith, 2000) have argued that postcolonial theory can easily become a strategy for Western researchers to perpetuate control over research related to indigenous peoples and the colonized Other in general, while at the same time ignoring their concerns and ways of knowing. The argument is that postcolonial theory is a version of critical theory and thus born of a Western tradition that emphasizes individuality, secularization, and mind-body duality (Grande, 2000). Values of the colonized Other, such as concepts of family, spirituality, humility, and sovereignty, are most likely to be missed in a postcolonial research approach that draws from critical theory. Gerald Vizenor (1994) calls for the inclusion of survivance in postcolonial theory. The concept of survivance goes beyond survival, endurance, and resistance to colonial domination, calling for the colonizers and the colonized to learn from each other. The postcolonial indigenous theory envisioned in this book includes the concept of survivance and the recognition of indigenous knowledge as a rich source from which to theorize postcolonial indigenous research methodologies. Augmenting the debate, Eve Tuck (2009, p. 413) notes that research based on postcolonial theory has a tendency to look to historical exploitation, domination, and colonization to explain contemporary brokenness, such as poverty, poor health, and so on. This is a pathologizing view that focuses on damage, ignoring the wisdom and hope of the researched. The alternative, she proposes, is a desire-based research framework, where desire “is about longing for a present that is enriched by both the past and the future” (Tuck, 2009, p. 417). Here, Tuck invokes the space in between, also termed the “third space” in postcolonial theory, to explain desire-based research frameworks. I have used the term postcolonial indigenous theory to emphasize indigenous theorizing and indigenous knowledge as essential ingredients in postcolonial theory. Postcolonial indigenous theory thus gives researchers the tools to theorize indigenous research, indigenous research paradigms, and culturally integrative research approaches. What follows are aims of research informed by postcolonial indigenous theory.

Research Aims Catriona Macleod and Sunil Bhatia (2008) have identified three aims of research informed by postcolonial theory: 1. Researching back. This process examines our history, deconstructing how postcolonial subjects have been theorized, produced, and reproduced and

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recon­structing the present and the future, which carries some hope for the oppressed. Researching back involves interrogating colonial discourses, imploding their political partisanship by introducing in strategic points of their critiques subaltern texts that see the colonial moment differently, that use other knowledges—as distinct from Western—to articulate another view of the self, of history, of knowledge–power formations, resisting in the process the burden of colonialist epistemology and in fact mounting a counterassault by enabling previously disabled languages, histories, [and] modes of seeing the world (Mishra, 2000, p. 1086). 2. Theory-driven research. The second aim is conducting contextually relevant and theory-driven studies that emphasize how the oppressed, in the struggle against the assault on their identities by Western methodologies, borrow theories from across cultures and academic disciplines and adopt a mixed method research approach. The mixed method research approach can range from a design that imposes indigenous worldviews on a predominantly Euro-Western paradigm or a design that uses a postcolonial indigenous paradigm but borrows some EuroWestern methods to a culturally integrative approach with a balanced borrowing from Euro-Western paradigms and postcolonial indigenous paradigms. 3. Liberatory and transformative intent. The third aim is to produce knowledge that has a liberatory and transformative intention. In Chapter 12, you will learn how the development of action research impacted research methodologies, leading to indigenous struggles for voice, representation, and the transformative intent of research with the historically oppressed. Chapter 12 discusses changefocused research based on appreciative inquiry (Ludema, Cooperrider, & Barrett, 2006) and desire (Tuck, 2009). You will learn about contemporary research practices that place greater importance on people’s existential realities, lived experiences, discursive practices, emotions, and cultural sensitivities and examine how these elements can contribute to community development and ongoing community action. In what follows, I go back to history to interrogate and question the Euro-Western archives of methods to enable an appreciation and revaluing of the indigenous knowledge, languages, and ways of knowing devalued in Euro-Western research tradition. I will present the Porteus Maze tests as an example of methodological imperialism in colonial research, showing how methods were manipulated to create binaries of the knowers and the ignorant.

RESEARCHING BACK: METHODOLOGICAL IMPERIALISM There is a debate over whether methods and their rules are sometimes allowed to claim methodological hegemony, so that methods tell researchers how they must see and what they must do when they investigate. The rules imposed on the researchers, it is argued,

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carry with them “a set of contingent and historically specific Euro-American assumptions” (Law, 2004, p. 5). Colonial research, it is argued, contains incontestable evidence of the manipulative ability of research to prove and perpetuate the dominance of one race over another (Ramsey, 2006). A case study that shows the use of a test as a method of collecting data is presented to illustrate methodological imperialism. As a researcher, you can revisit some of the research studies carried out in former colonies to review the use of research techniques in those studies. The assumption is that when we know about the past, we can deconstruct it and rupture the myth of the superiority of data-gathering techniques such as tests, questionnaires, and observation as neutral instruments in the construction of general knowledge and theories on formerly colonized societies. One of the main techniques of gathering data during the colonial period was observation. So powerful was the sense of seeing that, for those who could not be there to see, ethnography became a discipline of “culture collecting” (Smith, 1999, p. 61), displaying collections of both human remains and animals. The Other was seen as an object of study through observation and public display. Thus, Richard A. Oliver (1934), writing on the mentality of the African, observed, The main method up until now has necessarily been observation—observation of the behaviour of Africans in natural, everyday situations; and the result of this method has been the description of such behaviour. To this method, we owe almost all our present knowledge of the mentality of the African; and it seems likely that this must for a long time remain the chief source of knowledge. (p. 41) Using the observation method, anthropologists in Africa transformed descriptions of daily life of Africans into theories about the mental ability of Africans, about the childlike race, the impulsive Africans, and the passive onlookers (Blaut, 1993; Schumaker, 2001). In such cases, the colonizers, through their research, established themselves as the authorities on African cultures. Africans were not consulted on the researchers’ interpretation of the observed data. Consequently, Africans are always shocked to read these anthropological collections, which depict their cultures as barbaric or inhuman. Obviously, such research was a powerful instrument for legitimizing colonialism since it justified the agenda of the colonizer, whose mission was defined as the duty to civilize. Researchers need to be familiar with these debates on methods and techniques, as well as the evidence of how methods and techniques were manipulated to perpetuate the dominance of one race over the other. The Porteus Maze, which was used as a test of intelligence among Africans in the 20th century, is an example of how techniques could be manipulated to privilege the dominance of one race over another, or the colonizer over the colonized. Following is Oliver’s (1934) description of the Porteus Maze.

The Porteous Maze Tests as Tests of Intelligence In these tests, the subject is presented with printed plan of a maze, and he has to trace with a pencil the path he would follow in getting to the center of the maze. If he enters blind alleys,

he fails. The mazes form a series, graded in difficulty, and constituting an age scale of intelligence. A European child, when he reaches a maze beyond his mental age, tends to enter a

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blind alley and explore it to the end and then to retrace his path to the entrance of the blind alley and go on again. He penetrates the center of the maze quickly enough but with many errors. The typical procedure of the African tested was different. The subject would study the maze for many minutes without making a move, then he would trace his path to the center without hesitation or error. The test had to be abandoned as a test of intelligence, for even the most difficult mazes in the series were solved in this way by too many of the subjects. But this experience made me wonder about the African’s alleged impulsiveness (Oliver, 1934, p. 44). In the above tests, the results were at odds with colonial ideology that labelled Africans as ignorant and Europeans as intelligent, hence the tests were abandoned. The colonial research practice was dualistic, hierarchical, and dependent on maintaining patterns that always privileged one race. Researchers observed, saw, and then named. All other research approaches sought to reproduce the “Other from a Euro-Western eye.” The

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questionnaires, interviews, and tests sought to create the Euro-Western white male as the norm against which the Other was judged. When attributes allocated to the Euro-Western white male appeared more frequently in the Other who was judged primitive, then the instruments were declared unreliable and lacking validity. This was methodological imperialism—a strategy to build a collection of methods, techniques, and rules calculated to market only that knowledge that promoted and profited Eurocentrism. The following are the questions we ask: 1. What is our role as researchers when we come across such literature on techniques? 2. Have research methods changed, or have they maintained Euro-Western perspective? 3. How can we as researchers use the Porteus Maze test to reconstruct the past and modify the body of literature on the tests on intelligence for example?

Resistance to Methodological Imperialism Methodological imperialism, it should be noted, was not without resistance. There are many ways in which the researched in former colonized societies continue to resist imposed knowledge production frameworks. Chapter 3 presents case studies of former colonized societies’ resistance to imposed Western-informed ways of knowing. In Africanizing Anthropology, Schumaker (2001) shows how local research assistants in today’s Zimbabwe mediated the anthropologist’s initial exposure to the societies they studied, through their translation work, introductions to potential informants, smoothing of the way for the researcher’s questions, and general management of the researcher’s interactions with local people. She argues that research assistants interpreted for the researchers, who did not speak the local languages, while at the same time protecting the local society and the interests of some of its members. In addition, local interpreters came to the anthropologist through local channels of power rather than through the researcher’s choosing. African royals or educated elites controlled the researcher through handpicked interpreters of their choice. The researched could, when they wanted to protect themselves, give unreliable data to the researchers. In one instance, a researcher noted, for instance, that in a village where she had collected demographic data, the researched confessed how they had lied, making the figures collected unreliable. Schumaker (2001) notes, “In all cases, the relationship between the researcher, the assistants, and the informants had to some degree, an antagonistic character” (p. 94).

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In some parts of Africa, entry into a research site, for instance, a village, is sanctioned by the chief. The researcher first obtains consent to do research from the chief, who then informs the people about the research. The relationship between the researcher and the research assistants, where the researcher might not know the local language and the researched, still remains a matter of concern and raises many questions about validity and reliability of research findings in former colonies. The relationship is also a reminder that research is not always an initiative of the researched and that it is at times regarded as an intrusion into their lives. Indigenous research methodologies, therefore, explore ways of making research a partnership between the researcher and the researched.

Academic Imperialism The current global political economy still features overt domination over who can know, who can create knowledge, and whose knowledge can be bought. The term academic imperialism refers to the unjustified and ultimately counterproductive tendency in intellectual and scholarly circles to denigrate, dismiss, and attempt to quash alternative theories, perspectives, or methodologies. Lee Jussim (2002) notes that within American psychology, behaviorism in the period 1920 to the 1960s is one of the best examples of intellectual imperialism. Behaviorists, he notes, often characterized researchers taking nonbehaviorist approaches to psychology as nonscientific. For colonized, historically oppressed, and marginalized groups, intellectual imperialism speaks to the tendency to exclude and dismiss as irrelevant knowledge embedded in the cultural experiences of the people and the tendency to appropriate indigenous knowledge systems in these societies without acknowledging copyrights of the producers of this knowledge. Most colonized societies were thought of as primitive, barbaric, and incapable of producing useful knowledge. In Africa, for example, Levy Buhl denied Africans south of the Sahara “properties of ratiocination and its cognates” (Kaphagawani, 2000, p. 86). The consequence of Buhl’s theses was to deny that there could be an African philosophy or African philosophers and to claim that philosophy is Greek or European (Oruka, 1998). Those dismissing the existence of African philosophy claim that philosophy must be a written enterprise, and accordingly, a tradition without writing is incapable of generating philosophy. This denial of the existence of other knowledge systems is not unique to philosophy. It is still current practice in academic debates to invoke Euro-Western belief systems and methodologies to dismiss as irrelevant knowledge from former colonized societies, indigenous peoples, and historically oppressed groups. Susan Easterbrooks, Brenda Stephenson, and Donna Mertens (2006) note, for instance, that research in the field of deaf people focuses on the abilities that the deaf people lack rather than the abilities they have; viewing deafness as a deficiency is a way for the people in power to keep control of academic knowledge and power in their hands. In some cases, the conflict is with publishers, reviewers of manuscripts, and other gatekeepers of knowledge over what can be said. My experience as a writer theorizing on postcolonial indigenous methodologies is another testimony to monopolies on knowledge production. In a book project, one of the reviewers of my manuscript had difficulties in opening space for research methodologies informed by African worldviews. The reviewer noted,

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There are difficulties in getting Africans involved in the theorising and building of knowledge on ways of conducting research. You have to address questions such as how do you test the validity of your findings . . . by African or Western standards. What language do you use to build a research community and how do you research, store, and transmit the accumulated knowledge? Arguably, the whole idea of research belongs to the north/western paradigm, so probably some Africanness will have to be sacrificed in the process. The argument in this book is that the colonized should be the center for the production and storage of information and knowledge produced about its people. The indigenous knowledge systems of these communities should provide answers on how knowledge is validated, sources of evidence and credibility of interpretation of research findings, and methods of dissemination of the research results. Postcolonial indigenous theories and critical indigenous theories offer tools to expand the borders and boundaries of Euro-Western methodologies to include subjugated knowledges and to empower the colonized majority.

Analytical Tool: Blaut’s Theory James M. Blaut’s theory on the colonizer’s model of the world offers a useful analytical tool that researchers can use to expose misconceptions, prejudices, racism, and stereotypes in the review of literature. In The Colonizer’s Model of the World, Blaut (1993) reveals the role of European diffusionism ideology in constructing dichotomies of colonizer/colonized. He defines diffusionism as the claim that the rise of Europe to modernity and world dominance is due to some unique European quality of race, environment, culture, mind, or spirit. Blaut (1993) distinguishes two historical epochs in his theorization of diffusionism and the rise of Europe to dominance. The first period was marked by an inside/outside relationship constructed on the basis of a world with a permanent center from which all ideas and technology tended to originate and a periphery that must borrow from the center for change and development to occur. The inside/outside relationship begins with colonization, when Westerners propagated the myth that those living in the colonies-to-be lacked intellectual creativity, spiritual values, and rationality, thus justifying the displacement of natives from their lands. The diffusionism ideology enabled the division of the world into binary opposites of inside/outside, center/periphery, colonizer/colonized, and first world/third world. The colonizer/colonized binary had evolved over time, and at each historical point, it scripts the social license by which its ideas gain currency and hegemony. Table 3.1 captures Blaut’s binary opposites on Western/European and non-European/Other. Blaut’s construction of the colonizer’s model of the world can be used as an analytical tool to interrogate the literature we read and the way we conduct research. The researcher can use these binary opposites to identify deficit theorizing, damage-focused assumptions, prejudices and stereotypes in the literature reviewed, the methodology, the analysis, and interpretation in a study.

60   Indigenous Research Methodologies TABLE 3.1  ■  Binary Opposites on Western/European and Non-European/ Other Characteristics of Western/European

Characteristics of non-European/Other

Inventiveness

Imitativeness

Rationality, intellect

Irrationality, emotion, instinct

Abstract thought

Concrete thought

Theoretical reasoning

Empirical, practical reasoning

Mind

Body matter

Discipline

Spontaneity

Adulthood

Childhood

Sanity

Insanity

Science

Sorcery

Progress

Stagnation

Source: Blaut, J. M. (1993). The colonizer’s model of the world: Geographical diffusionism and Eurocentric history. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Used by permission.

POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND LANGUAGE Postcolonial theories critique the dominance of Euro-Western languages in the construction of knowledge and argue that indigenous languages can play a significant role in contributing to the advancement of new knowledge; new concepts; new theories; and new rules, methods, and techniques in research that are rooted in former colonized societies’ ways of knowing and perceiving reality. Language plays an important role in the research process (1) as a medium of communication; (2) as a vehicle through which indigenous knowledge can be preserved during fieldwork; and (3) as a symbol of objects, events, and experiences a community considers worth naming. It is widely accepted that communities use language to develop conceptual frameworks and ways of thinking about their lived realities and everyday lives (Hoppers, 2002; Mazrui, 1990). Language holds people captive, and their way of talking reflects their thinking and who they are. Despite its important role in knowledge construction, research knowledge continues to be produced, communicated, and disseminated in dominant languages. In his book Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1986a, pp. 1–30) discusses language as a colonizing instrument. Recalling his own educational formation, how English-language use was enforced, and how African literature in English continues the legacy of colonization, he shows that the content and the arrangement of English literature in many African universities privileges the Western canons and, more fundamentally, alienates students from their culture, worldview, environment, and continent. Ngugi wa Thiong’o discusses at length

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how the postcolonial intellectuals of Africa have now become the promoters of English language, hence, systematically annihilating indigenous languages and continuing the legacy of colonialism. The biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism against that collective defiance is the cultural bomb. The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environments, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and . . . it even plants serious doubts about the moral righteousness of the struggle. (p. 3) The critique on language is an attempt to sensitize researchers to the role of language in the production of knowledge and to further challenge researchers to explore the use of the historically oppressed groups’ languages in the construction of new theories, concepts, techniques, methodologies, and analysis procedures across disciplines. Easterbrooks et al. (2006) argue, for instance, that research for the deaf with the deaf has to explore the use of deaf language because dominant hegemonic methods have a tendency “to filter out any potentially deaf-centric stance” (quoted in Lane, 1999, p. 71). The following abstract shows current attempts in research to construct new concepts derived from the use of indigenous languages of the oppressed.

Indigenous Economic Concepts (T. Tsuruta, 2006) Examining four well-known Swahili words, utani, chama, ujamaa, and ujanja, Tsuruta offers some tentative and exploratory comments on “indigenous” moral-­ economic concepts in Tanzania. These terms convey not only notions about social relations but also relations which one could consider economic, along with unique cultural connotations. Various things Westerners consider separate are impossible to disentangle in these concepts; joking and mutual aid, dance and politics, wit and cunning, all related to people’s subsistence economy. These phenomena cannot easily be put into prearranged Western categories nor should they be disregarded from a modernist perspective because these concepts and practices reflect a rich tradition of self-help solutions in Africa, thereby serving as a source of imagination for alternative visions of economic development (Tsuruta, 2006).

Literature and Deficit Theorizing Colonialism—in the form of the universal application of Western-based research methodologies and techniques of gathering data across cultures—and the subjectivity of researchers are among the factors that have created a body of literature that disseminates theories and knowledge unfavorable to the colonized Other. This body of literature threatens to perpetuate research that constructs the researched colonized Other as the problem. The challenge for researchers is how to manage the literature that informs our research studies, where the literature that is available on the colonized Other is written by outsiders and the literature by the colonized Other is predominantly oral.

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In research, the literature review plays an important role in conceptualizing research topics, choosing the research designs for the study, and analyzing and interpreting the results. The golden rule for novice researchers is that they should always read the literature to help them choose a researchable topic, focus the research questions, provide a theoretical basis for analyzing findings, legitimize their own assumptions, and give credit to and acknowledge the strength of previous findings. One major limitation of this approach is that the concepts, the theories, and the research studies conducted and the literature on former colonized societies have been written by missionaries, travelers, navigators, historians, anthropologists, and so on, who in most cases looked on the researched as objects with no voice in how they were described and discussed. This literature and body of knowledge continues to inform our research practices. The theories and literature have not been favorable to historically oppressed and former colonized societies. Noting these assaults by the literature and the theories, Linda T. Smith (1999) observes, Indigenous people have been in many ways oppressed by theory. Any considerations of the ways our origins have been examined, our histories recounted, our arts analyzed, our cultures dissected, measured, torn apart and distorted back to us will suggest that theories have not looked ethically at us. (p. 38) Western-educated scholars need to investigate the psychological harm, humiliation, embarrassment, and other losses that these theories and body of knowledge caused to the researched colonized Other. They also need to use the body of indigenous knowledge about the researched to counter theories and other misinformation that may cause communities humiliation and embarrassment.

Resistance to Dominant Literature Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies provide an important framework through which Western-educated researchers can explore the possible biases in the literature we read, identify the knowledge gaps that have been created because of the unidirectional borrowing of Euro-Western literature, and bring to a halt the continuing marginalization of other knowledge systems that occurs because of the dominant Euro-Western research paradigms and their discourses on what can be researched and how it can be researched. Applying indigenous research methodologies to research with and about the colonized Other should involve going back and forth to retrieve marginalized and suppressed literatures to review, analyze, and challenge colonizing and deficit theorizing and interpretation, to create counternarratives that see the past differently, and to envision a transformative agenda with the researched. It also involves defining what literature and theorizing in the context of former colonized societies is. Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies perceive literature as language, cultural artifacts, legends, stories, practices, songs, rituals, poems, dances, tattoos, lived experiences such as the people’s fight against HIV/AIDS, personal stories, and community stories told during weddings, funerals, celebrations, and wars. When I speak about

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songs as literature, this song by O. Mutukudzi always comes to my mind because, in my view, it captures the realities of HIV/AIDS beyond what the academic discourse can manage: Senzeni What shall we do? Ooooh toddii? What shall we do? Senzi njani X3 Verse 2 How painful it is to nurse death in the/your hands! What shall we do? How. . . What shall we do . . .? (Verse 1 repeat) Source: Excerpt from Mutukudzi, O., Greatest Hits: The Tuku Years 1998–2002. Harare: Frontline Promotions.

In the song, the artist resists cooption into the dominant discourse on HIV and AIDS that insists on using a standardized science laboratory language that is constructed on the basis of a cause-effect relationship to describe people’s experiences. The artist does not mention the term HIV/AIDS. He sings about the realities seen through another lens, and we know it is about what has been named by the Westerners HIV/AIDS. Mainstream discourse about HIV/AIDS usually involves statistics on infection and the number of condoms sold, a Western measure of profits made in Western capital markets masquerading as genuine concern for the spread of HIV/AIDS and the problem with the historical colonized Africans. In the song, the pain of nursing death resonates with people’s experiences. People in Africa have come up with many labels and names that describe their daily experiences with HIV/AIDS. These have been invariably labeled irrelevance, ignorance, beliefs in sorcery, barbaric cultural beliefs, simplistic and uncivilized thinking, belief in witchcraft, and so on. Such songs and the daily descriptions of people’s experiences of what happens in their families and communities provide arguments to discursive regimes of representations that seek to construct Africans as the problem. What seems to be the problem is an attempt to standardize the language that describes people’s experiences with HIV/AIDS and to insist on communicating in a science laboratory language that is constructed on the basis of a cause-effect relationship. Consequently, former colonies continue to operate two knowledge systems on HIV/AIDS, a global knowledge system marketed by the West and a knowledge system that is built on the experiences of the people and the values that inform the practices. The resilience of the people’s knowledge challenges the

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s­ingle-mindedness of Western-driven interventions directed toward halting the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa and in the third and fourth world in general. This makes urgent an expansion of the boundary of what it means to review literature from the perspective of the historically colonized, the marginalized, and the oppressed. Researchers should not delude themselves that literature constitutes only the written text. Rather, they should ask how each society produces and stores knowledge. In most indigenous societies, knowledge is stored in songs, sayings, rituals, jokes, and stories surrounding an issue of community concern.

ACTIVITY 3.1 Read the study extract included here and answer the following questions: 1. Discuss the features of a study that reflect a postcolonial framework. 2. What reasons does the researcher give for using an eclectic theoretical framework as well as eclectic interpretive methods? 3. List the data sources and the methods used in the study and their appropriateness in achieving the aims of research with a postcolonial framework. Source: Kaomea, J. (2003). Reading erasures and making the familiar strange: Defamiliarizing methods for research in formerly colonized and historically oppressed communities. Educational Researcher, 32(2), 14–25. Used by permission.

Background to Study Since the first pilot kupuna program in 1980– 1981, Native Hawai’ian elders have become a pivotal part of the Hawai’ian studies curriculum. According to students, teachers, principals, and district specialists who speak highly of the program, the kupuna are “invaluable resources” in the teaching of the Hawai’ian culture and language and also bring a special feeling of “warmth and aloha” to the elementary school classrooms. The kupuna epitomize Hawai’ian cultural values and the aloha spirit and provide positive intergenerational exchanges for those children who do not have grandparents of their own (Afaga & Lai, 1994).

On the surface, it looks and sounds like a wonderfully conceived program, one whose virtues are acknowledged by teachers, children, and administrators alike. Personally, as a Native Hawai’ian who has been raised to honor the wisdom of my elders, it initially brought me great joy to see Hawai’ian kupuna resuming a larger role in the cultural education of Hawai’i’s youth. However, as my more extensive investigations into this program later revealed, there is much more (and less) going on with this kupuna program than initially appears.

Methodology To delve beyond surface appearances, I used classroom observations and interviews with kupuna in eight elementary schools across Hawai’i, along with reviews of related program documents, to develop a critical analysis of this long-cherished program. Beginning with a look at students’ artwork and written reflections on the kupuna’s classroom visits, I employed various defamiliarizing interpretive techniques to look beyond the initial and overwhelmingly positive impressions of the familiar, manifest text. I also examined the subtext, or that which has been put under erasure. Through the persistent uncovering of silences and erasures in this program, I defamiliarized taken-for-granted perspectives on this much-applauded curriculum and rendered this familiar program “strange.” This defamiliarizing inquiry into the Hawai’ian studies kupuna program serves as a reply to contemporary calls for antioppressive (Kumashiro,

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2000, 2001) and decolonizing (Smith, 1999) research methodologies that look beyond familiar, dominant narratives and give voice to the previously marginalized or voiceless. In response to these requests, this study employs a variety of defamiliarizing techniques drawn from literary and critical theory, in concert with Native Hawai’ian cultural traditions, to force readers into dramatic awareness of previously silenced perspectives on the lesser known aspects of this highly praised curriculum. Through a careful analysis of the kupuna program’s many silences, absences, and erasures, this defamiliarizing study reveals the various ways in which numerous Hawai’ian kupuna are systematically misused and abused in Hawai’i’s public elementary schools.

Theoretical Framework Consistent with the logic of postcolonialism and its suspicion of grand theories and narratives (Bhaba, 1994; Said, 1978; Spivak, 1987), my theoretical framework and interpretive methods are intentionally eclectic, mingling, combining, and synthesizing theories and techniques from disparate disciplines and paradigms. Writing as a Native Hawai’ian in the middle of the Pacific, far removed from the academic center of the metropolis, I do not have the luxury of attaching myself to any one theoretical perspective but instead “make do” (de Certeau, 1984) as an interpretive handyman or bricoleur (Levi-Strauss, 1966; see also Denzin & Lincoln, 1998). Throughout this study, I draw widely from an assortment of structuralist and poststructuralist theorists, moving within and between sometimes competing or seemingly incompatible interpretive perspectives and paradigms. Consequently, this study has both a deconstructive playfulness as well as a Marxist earnestness. It engages with Jacques Derrida’s (1976) notions of deconstruction and erasures as well as Karl Marx’s (1886/1977) concern with deep structures and material effects. At the same time, it consciously and unapologetically privileges Native Hawai’ian philosophies and concerns. Although I do not deny the possible

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contradictions between these various theoretical perspectives, I believe that postcolonial studies require such theoretical innovation and flexibility. If we are to meet the demands of postcolonial studies for both a revision of the past and an analysis of our everchanging present, we cannot work within closed paradigms (Loomba, 1998).

Discussion and Conclusion I do not doubt that the Hawai’ian studies kupuna program was well intended at its inception, and I have seen—and reported on elsewhere (Kaomea-Thirugnanam, 1999)—a few situations in which Hawai’ian studies kupuna have effectively contested or resisted the restrictions of this state-mandated curriculum and used their positions to function as positive agents for social change or “cultural production” (Levinson & Holland, 1996). However, after uncovering the many ways in which numerous other kupuna have been disempowered and disembodied in Hawai’i’s schools, I am made aware of the many challenges of implementing a progressive, liberating Hawai’ian curriculum within a system whose goals may, in many respects, be incompatible with—or even hostile to—Hawai’ian self-­ determination and empowerment. For in every instance when Hawai’ian kupuna are incorporated into the school system as handmaidens of the larger state apparatus, the Hawai’ian studies kupuna program is effectively turned on its head and is ultimately made to serve ends inimical to its original, progressive intentions. With the aid of these defamiliarizing tools, anti-oppressive researchers working in historically marginalized communities can begin to ask very different kinds of questions that will enable us to excavate layers of silences and erasures and peel back familiar hegemonic maskings. Building upon Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1881/1964) “insidious questions,” we can begin to ask, What does this textbook passage, classroom dialogue, interview transcript, or curricular artifact intend to show? What does it intend to draw our attention from or conceal? What does it seek to erase?

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CRITICAL RACE THEORIES In addition to postcolonial theory, critical race theory interrogates Euro-Western methodology, using race as its tool of analysis. Critical race theory reveals how race functions to construct rules, norms, standards, and assumptions that appear neutral but that systematically disadvantage or subordinate racial minorities (Vargas, 2003, p. 1). It has its roots in law and gained visibility in the 1970s and popular currency in the 1980s and early 1990s (Vargas, 2003). Critical race theory takes a transformative approach, asserting that through knowledge and critique of how race operates “to mediate and color the work we do,” researchers can reconsider the practices, methods, approaches, tools of data collection, and modes of analysis and dissemination of results so that research promotes justice and is respectful and beneficial to racial minorities. Out of this critique has emerged what is termed race-based methodologies (Pillow, 2003), which insist that current Euro-Western methodologies are based on white-race colonizing ideologies. Race-based methodologies are adopted by scholars writing from the vantage of the colonized Other. The characteristics of critical race-based research methodologies include the following: 1. A challenge to dominant ideologies 2. Importance of interdisciplinary approaches 3. Emphasis on experiential knowledge 4. The centrality of race and racism and their intersectionality with other forms of subordination and commitment to social justice 5. History as the foundation of knowledge, the body of experience, and voice from which to work 6. Rethinking language as the source of knowledge

ACTIVITY 3.2 Read the study extract included here, and answer the following questions: 1. Discuss the features of a study that reflect a decolonization of mainstream methodologies. 2. Discuss the role of storytelling and counterstorytelling in privileging voices of those at the margins.

Source: Solórzano, D. G., & Yosso, T. J. (2001). Critical race and LatCrit theory and method: Counter-storytelling, Chicana and Chicano graduate school experiences. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 14(4), 471–495. Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Group, http:// www. informaworld. com).

Purpose of Study This article is an attempt to inject into the race discourse the multiple forms of racism in

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graduate education for Chicana and Chicano students and to answer the following questions: How do the structures, processes, and discourses of graduate education and the professorate reinforce racial, gender, and class inequality? How do Chicana/o graduate students and professors respond to race, gender, and class inequality?

Methodology In order to integrate critical race theory with the experiences of Chicanas and Chicanos in graduate education, we use a technique that has a tradition in the social sciences, humanities, and the law—storytelling. Delgado (1989) uses a method called counter storytelling and argues that it is both a method of telling the story of those experiences that are not often told (i.e., those on the margins of society) and a tool for analyzing and challenging the stories of those in power and whose story is a natural part of the dominant discourse—the majoritarian story (Delgado, 1993). For instance, while a narrative can support the majoritarian story, a counternarrative or counterstory, by its very nature, challenges the majoritarian story or that “bundle of presuppositions, perceived wisdoms, and shared cultural understandings persons in the dominant race bring to the discussion of race” (Delgado & Stefancic, 1993, p. 462). These counter stories can serve at least four theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical functions: (1) they can build community among those at the margins of society by putting a human and familiar face to educational theory and practice; (2) they can challenge the perceived wisdom of those at society’s center by providing a context to understand and transform established belief systems; (3) they can open new windows into the reality of those at the margins of society by showing the possibilities beyond the ones they live and demonstrating that they are not alone in their position; and (4) they can teach others that by combining elements from both the story and the current reality, one can construct another

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world that is richer than either the story or the reality alone (Delgado, 1989; Lawson, 1995). Storytelling has a rich and continuing tradition in African-American (Berkeley Art Center, 1982; Bell, 1987, 1992, 1996; Lawrence, 1992), Chicana/o (Paredes, 1977; Delgado, 1989, 1955a, 1966; Olivas, 1990) and Native American cultures (Deloria, 1969; Williams, 1977; Delgado, 1989, 1995a, 1996). Delgado (1989) has stated, “oppressed groups have known instinctively that stories are an essential tool to their own survival and liberation” (p. 2436). We want to add to the tradition of counterstorytelling by illuminating the lives of Chicana and Chicano graduate students, who are often at the margins of graduate education. As a way of raising various issues in critical race theory and method, we offer the following counterstory about two composite characters engaged in a dialogue. One is Professor Leticia Garcia, a junior sociology professor at a Western University (UC-Oceanview). The other is Esperanza Gonzalez, a third-year graduate student at the same university in the education department. Using our definition of critical race theory and its five elements, we ask you to suspend judgment, listen for the story’s points, test them against your own version of reality (however conceived), and use the counterstory as a theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and pedagogical case study (see Barnes et al., 1994).

Discussion Indeed, critical race and LatCrit methodology challenges traditional methodologies, because it requires us to develop “theories of social transformation, wherein ­ knowledge is ­ generated specifically for the purpose of addressing and ameliorating conditions of oppression, poverty, or deprivation” ­(Lincoln, 1993, p. 33). Counternarrative-as-­ qualitative method, exemplified in this article as a conversation between two Chicana ­ academics, allows us to explore the breadth of what (Continued)

68   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) happens through the structures, processes, and discourses of higher education, as well as the depth of how and in what ways Chicanans/ os respond. We concur with Denzin & Lincoln (1994) as they describe that, “the multiple methodologies of qualitative research . . . within a single study may be viewed as a bricologe, and the research as bricoleur. . . . The combination of multiple methods . . . within a single study is best understood, then, as strategy that adds rigor, breadth, and depth to any investigation” (p. 2). This strategy has allowed us to look to the experiential and other forms of knowledge from people of color and subordinated peoples,

whose knowledge has often been excluded as an official part of the academy. We believe strength of critical race and LatCrit theory and methodology is the validation and combination of the theoretical, empirical, and experiential knowledge. Through our counternarrative, we delve into lives of human characters who experience daily the interactions of racism, sexism, and classism. We look to continue this methodological, theoretical, conceptual, and pedagogical journey as we also express our deep gratitude and dedicate this work to those both inside and outside the academy who share their stories with us.

Postcolonial theory and critical race theory share the same aim of critiquing Euro-Western methodologies and seeking to promote methodologies that privilege the disenfranchized, dispossessed, and marginalized colonized Other in the third and fourth worlds. Both have a liberatory and transformative intent, and research using these frameworks thus shares the same investigative practices and methods. Catriona Macleod and Sunil Bhatia (2008) give examples of qualitative studies using a postcolonial framework and the methods they employ. The latter include colonial discourse analysis, narrative analysis, historiography, genealogy, organizational analysis, case study, ethnography, comparative research, participatory action research, deconstruction, and visual analysis. See Table 3.2. TABLE 3.2  ■  Examples of Qualitative Research in Postcolonialism Methods Used

Data Source

Brief Explanation

Colonial discourse

Mostly written texts and archives

Analysis of discourse (often but not always Foucauldian) highlighting (neo)colonial construction of the other

Narrative analysis

Interviews, autobiographies

Exploring the conditions of possibility in which the colonized and colonizing subjects emerge

Histography

Archives, texts

Reading against the grain to uncover blind spots and recuperate evidence of subaltern agency

Genealogy

Texts, archives

Using Foucauldian notion of descent to trace the emergence of colonial subjects and objects

Organizational analysis

Texts, organizational records and arrangements, interviews, training videos, observation

Analysis of (neo)colonial institutional practices and power relations

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Case study

Interviews, participant observation, records

In-depth study of specific case (group, organization, or individual) in which (neo)colonial power relations are manifested

Ethnography

Interviews, archives, texts, observations

A decent practice that overcomes its colonial history by examining the subject position of the ethnographer, collapsing the us and them assumption and privileging local knowledge

Comparative research

Interviews, archives, texts, observations

Contextual analyses of systems (often educational) or texts in ways that undermine the West as the given

Participatory action research

Participation in individual and group dialogue and action

Accountable research that is driven by participants and focuses on change within a given (neo)colonial setting

Deconstruction

Texts, interviews

Employment of Derridean concepts such as différance to expose exclusions and absent traces in (neo)colonial discourse

Visual analysis

Images (e.g., art, films, landscapes, drawing)

Analysis of images as signifiers of (neo)colonialism

Source: Macleod, C., & Bhatia, S. (2007). Postcolonialism and psychology. In C. Willig & W. Stainton-Rogers (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research in psychology. London, UK: Sage. Used by permission.

SUMMARY This chapter has discussed postcolonial theory and critical race theories as important analytical tools to use to interrogate the universal application of Euro-Western methodologies across cultures. Using these theories as analytical tools reveals the biases, distortions, and misconceptions about the colonized Other that are legitimized by the accumulated body of literature and the use of dominant languages in research. The chapter proposes that the researched communities’ language, cultural artifacts, legends, stories, songs, rituals, poems, and dances are important sources of literature that should inform problem identification and formulation, research theoretical frameworks, and meaning making, as well as legitimizing research findings. Chapter 9 discusses the place of language in research, while Chapters 10 and 12 discuss community-centered methods of knowledge production.

Key Points ——

Research ignores the history of colonization and imperialism and its impact on the colonized Other.

—— There is a need to critique mainstream history, colonialism, imperialism, and

globalization in research methods courses so that methodologies, theories, and literatures are understood as practices seeking to see and know realities in diverse historical moments bound with politics and power.

70   Indigenous Research Methodologies

——

Scholars are engaged in an ongoing attempt to decolonize research methodologies.

——

In postcolonial indigenous research, it is important to avoid damage-focused

research and employ desire-based research frameworks and frameworks that include research as survivance.

ACTIVITY 3.3 1. Discuss the terms imperialism, colonization, and globalization. Explain how you can apply each of these terms to a critical review of the following: a. Methodological approaches and techniques of gathering data as neutral and applicable to people across cultures b. Literature as a building block for formulation of research proposals and frameworks for discussing research findings c. The role of language in research

2. Through a search of literature, identify a research study, and, using Blaut’s construction of the colonizer’s model of the world, review the study for assumptions, prejudices, and stereotypes, if any, that informed the choice of study, its formulation, reviewed literature, and discussion of the findings. 3. Discuss literature from the perspective of indigenous research methodologies. 4. Discuss the role of language in research.

Suggested Readings Blaut, J. M. (1993). The colonizer’s model of the world: Geographical diffusionism and Eurocentric history. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Deloria, V. (1995). Red earth, white lies: Native Americans and the myth of scientific fact. New York, NY: Scribner. Getty, G. A. (2010). The journey between Western and indigenous research paradigms. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 21(1), 5–14. Grande, S. (2000). American Indian identity and intellectualism: The quest for a new red pedagogy. Qualitative Studies in Education, 13, 343–359. Henderson, J. S. Y. (2000). Ayukpachi: Empowering aboriginal thought. In M. Batiste (Ed.), Reclaiming indigenous voice and vision

(pp. 248–278). Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press. Kaomea, J. (2003). Reading erasures and making the familiar strange: Defamiliarizing methods for research in formerly colonized and historically oppressed communities. Educational Researcher, 32(2), 14–25. Law, J. (2004). After method: Mess in social science research. London, UK: Routledge. Ngugi wa Thiong’o. (1986). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. London, UK: James Currey. Pillow, W. (2003). Race-based methodologies: Multicultural methods or epistemological shifts? In G. R. Lopez & L. Parker (Eds.), Interrogating

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racism in qualitative research methodology (pp. 181–202). New York, NY: Peter Lang. Said, E. W. (1993). Culture and imperialism. London, UK: Vintage. Smith, G. H. (2000). Protecting and respecting indigenous knowledge. In M. Batiste (Ed.), Reclaiming indigenous voice and vision (pp. 207– 224). Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press. Solórzano, D. G., & Yosso, T. J. (2001). Critical race and LatCrit theory and method:

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Counter-storytelling, Chicana and Chicano graduate school experiences. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 14(4), 471–495. Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak. In N. Cary & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409–427.

4 WHOSE REALITY COUNTS? Research Methods in Question Research institutions and practitioners are called upon to commit themselves to undertaking research that is relevant, participatory; based on indigenous culture and language of the people and that would serve the needs of the local communities. UNESCO (1996)

Overview In Chapter 3, you looked at a critique of dominant research paradigms from two perspectives: a postcolonial indigenous theoretical framework and a critical race-based theoretical framework. Using excerpts from studies on HIV/AIDS, this chapter highlights how mainstream research in postcolonial societies still ignores, marginalizes, and suppresses other knowledge systems and ways of knowing. The chapter demonstrates how HIV/AIDS prevention has been highly compromised by employing language and categories of thinking that are alien to the infected and affected communities; how a dichotomous hierarchy informed by colonization, imperialism, and globalization privileges the first world position as knower and relegates the third world to the position of Other who is a learner; and how peoples’ resistance to imposed frameworks has consequences.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this chapter you should be able to do the following: 1. Use HIV/AIDS research as an example to critically discuss how current knowledge production in postcolonial indigenous societies is still being shaped by ideas and power relations of modern imperialism. 2. Illustrate how conventional research methodologies marginalize and suppress other knowledge systems and ways of knowing. 3. Understand the sameness error ideology and the exceptionality myths and how they marginalize certain research agendas and promote others. 4. Debate the ethics that inform research approaches in former colonized societies.

Before You Start Think of all stakeholders in the research conducted in the communities where you live. These could be funders, policymakers, or researchers themselves, some of them from within the communities where the research takes place and others from foreign countries. Discuss the different interests that the different stakeholders bring to the research agenda. Whose voice is most likely to be heard, and why? What are some of the ways in which the voices of the researched communities can be heard?

COLONIZER/COLONIZED DICHOTOMIES AND THE IDEOLOGY OF THE OTHER While contemporary Western theories have dramatically changed in the last 30 years, the universalized research methods of the so-called first world, using self-valorization and hegemonic powers, continue to construct the world along binary opposites of self/Other, colonizer/colonized, center/periphery, developed/developing, North/South, first world/third world. These constructions privilege the first world and subjugate the various knowledge formations originating in former colonies. Although these categories are useful, they are broad and run the risk of being labeled essentialist or universalistic and of homogenizing the differences among members of the category (Dube, 2002). Gillan (1993) argues that these broad categories are at times necessary as they enable a discussion that connects the “local to the national and international.” For this discussion, I explain the center/periphery, self/Other dichotomies. The main actors at the center are the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, China, and Japan. These world powers work through multiple global networks that include transnational corporations, research institutions, international research funding agencies, and donor agencies to penetrate all cultural, political, and economic structures of

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nation-states. It is, however, not the masses in these countries that form the center but the ruling class—a male bourgeoisie minority “predominantly Eurocentric and making up one percent or two percent of the world’s population” (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000, p. 393). This male bourgeoisie at the center constructs the periphery Other. Frantz Fanon (1967), one of the earliest postcolonial theorists, discusses the binary opposites of self and Other in the image of a Whiteman and a Blackman. His argument is that in postindependence Africa, the ruling black male inherited and worked with the hegemonic structures created by the colonizers during colonial rule. Consequently, the ruling class became alienated from the peripheral masses, their cultures, and the value systems that inform their daily activities and experiences. This argument has been picked up by other postcolonial writers, such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1986a) and Ali Mazrui (1990). In the current phase of global capitalism, the periphery ruling class Blackman/Other struggles to represent the nation-state and the local communities as an equal partner in international relations dominated by global capitalism. For instance, in the emerging global economy, sub-Saharan Africa is included in the category of a “fourth world” where the majority in “the region’s population has shifted from a structural position of exploitation to a structural position of irrelevance” (Castells, 1993, p. 37). That is, in the context of HIV/AIDS, for instance, local knowledge, languages, cultures, and value systems cannot be converted into a capital value in the global market and are thus excluded from the knowledge and information that circulate globally to make profits. Worse still, the image of a Whiteman/first world/center and a Blackman/fourth world/ periphery blurs all other social hierarchies that exist. The woman’s image, for example, is irrelevant and subsumed under that of man. This is despite the fact that patriarchal ideologies in all worlds continue to oppress women, placing them last in the social hierarchy and constructing their experiences and bodies as handicaps or making them invisible except as sites for investment. Indeed, in her article “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gaytri Spivak (1988) underlines that “the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow” or “muted,” (p. 83) and she can only speak through self-erasure (pp. 101–103). This is vividly demonstrated in the HIV/AIDS zones, where women are at the center of the storm. The globally marketed knowledge on HIV/AIDS shows that the hegemonic research language on HIV/ AIDS constructs women as fields of investment for research experiments on toxic drugs in Botswana. In short, the subjugation of knowledge formations from the position of the Other is further entrenched along the lines of race, ethnicity, social class, age, and gender. To take the example of HIV/AIDS, the colonized Other particularly in sub-Saharan Africa fail to participate as equal partners in the search for solutions to the HIV/AIDS pandemic because donor agencies and research funding institutions define global research agendas, preferring to pay attention to common problems that can be addressed through uniform research methodologies. In Botswana, it is clear that the hegemony of Western knowledge entrenched in its research methodologies, systems of thought, and analysis marginalize and make irrelevant knowledge on HIV/AIDS from the perspective of the majority of the people who live there. Most Batswana (meaning the people in Botswana) cannot participate in setting the HIV/AIDS national research agenda. They also become irrelevant because what falls outside the language of HIV/AIDS research is stigmatized, made invisible, and labeled false, of less value, or a handicap to addressing the spread of HIV/ AIDS. The end result is that national research agendas are decided elsewhere, and the government’s efforts to respond to local communities’ needs are frustrated. Local research conducted by students and independent scholars from tertiary institutions are also constrained

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by the hegemony of Western-informed research methodologies and fail to create space for community knowledge systems. The colonized, however, continue to resist this subjugation of their knowledge and use their experiences to build new ­knowledge formations.

DISMISSING INDIGENOUS WAYS OF KNOWING Global research on HIV/AIDS and its language are shaped by the concerns, relevancies, and norms of the first world/center operating through the United Nations family, for example, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS); international agencies, for example, the Department for International Development (DFID); and Western medical research institutes, for example, the Harvard Institute of Research. In fact, the almost universal usage of the name HIV/AIDS at a global level speaks for itself. It indicates that many cultures were not allowed to name the disease from their own cultural perspectives and languages. Thus, language and topics of research on HIV/AIDS, based on Western perceptions of reality, continue to exclude and marginalize the third world’s own perceptions of reality and what counts as knowledge in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Botswana has been conducting annual sentinel surveillance on HIV/AIDS since 1992. The research follows standardized procedures determined and closely supervised by the UNAIDS/WHO working group on global HIV/AIDS and STD surveillance. The main areas of concern recommended by this group are HIV/AIDS prevalence rates, prevention indicators, and knowledge of HIV/AIDS and sexual behavior. The UNAIDS (2000) epidemiological sheet, for instance, contained statistical language on the following: prevalence rates by age and sex, AIDS cases by mode of transmission, access to health services, condom availability and knowledge, and behavior. These areas of concern and these statistics are used by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, for instance, to create league tables that compare HIV/AIDS prevalence and mortality rates in the world. It is a naming game where those countries with the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates, like Botswana, increasingly come under pressure to embrace Western-prescribed norms, buy the circulating knowledge and technology on HIV/AIDS, and sacrifice the vulnerable sick to research experiments and drug trials. The research on HIV/AIDS simply works within the colonially established framework of homogeneity in the search for answers and solutions to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This leaves out the voices of the researched colonized Other.

The Journey Into the Empire and Back Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (1989) have named their book The Empire Writes Back: Theories and Practice in Postcolonial Literature, capturing the literary resistance of postcolonial subjects and the formerly colonized masses. Edward Said (1993), on the other hand, speaks of the colonized populations that have taken a voyage “to the metropolitan centres of their former colonizers” (p. 244). I invoke these titles and phrases to describe my journey into the empire and back as one who has studied in the Western centers. Returning back to my own communities, cultures, and languages brings me to realize the gap between my training and my culture. I therefore wish to reflect and narrate

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on the lessons I learned as an indigenous Western-educated intellectual co-opted into the dominant first world epistemologies on HIV/AIDS and participating in the naming and description of the Other. The discussion is based on a critique of research studies that I conducted, along with researchers from the so-called first world. I found myself troubled by the standard topics and language in the research on HIV/AIDS because they trivialized the core values that define my identity, such as the totem and taboos that I continue to practice without question. Worse still, the language and topics are in most cases further entrenched through data-gathering instruments such as the questionnaire survey that make it impossible to escape from Eurocentric perceptions on HIV/AIDS. The questionnaire survey is a top-down method of collecting data that mirrors the world-view of the researchers or their perception of the topic to be covered (Mukherjee, 1997), blocking any continuity with the researched people’s worldview. The questionnaire serves the dominant statistical language and is conceived within the positivist paradigm with its claim of rationality, objectivity, and knowledge as absolute truth. In a study that others and I conducted (Bennell et al., 2001) and in other studies on HIV/AIDS (Jack et al., 1999; Ramasilabele, 1999), questionnaire surveys were used. Of interest in these studies are the controlled meaning of HIV/AIDS and the modes of transmission when respondents were requested to answer questions that are indicative of their knowledge on HIV/AIDS. Table 4.1 shows questionnaire items on HIV/AIDS knowledge used in a study on knowledge, attitudes, and behavioral aspects of HIV/AIDS among students at the University of Botswana. The items are limited to a Euro-scientific definition of the virus and the dominant modes of transmission as perceived in the first world and leaves out Botswana understanding of the disease. The consequence of such an instrument is that respondents play a passive role because knowledge on HIV/AIDS and its modes of transmission resides outside their realm. What are the implications of using first-world epistemologies in such life and death matters? When people give their meanings of HIV/AIDS based on their life experiences and perceptions of reality, Western-trained researchers, often operating within the dominant HIV/AIDS language, label them as misconceptions or cultural ignorance. For example, during a study on the impact of HIV/AIDS (Bennell et al., 2001), I and two other independent consultants from the first world dismissed the indigenous people’s definition of what HIV/AIDS is. The meanings given differed depending on the context of illness. If it was the middle aged and elderly who were sick, HIV/AIDS was called Boswagadi. In Tswana culture, anyone who sleeps with a widow or widower is afflicted by a disease called Boswagadi. For the majority of the young, AIDS is Molelo wa Badimo (fire caused by the ancestral spirits), and for others, AIDS is Boloi (witchcraft). For Christians, AIDS is the Fire that is described in the Bible chapter of Revelations; nobody can stop it. The people’s naming is embedded in their perception of reality. In their world of reality, things don’t just happen. There is always a cause. The cause may be traced back to the supernatural as, for example, the ancestral spirits or experience. This cause-effect relationship is informed by careful observation, as illustrated in the Setswana saying, Mafoko a mathong, literally meaning “words are from what you observe.” From the people’s observation, those who died from HIV/AIDS had relationships with widows or widowers; thus, the name Boswagadi. For the young, a distinct observation was the appearance of herpes or Molelo wa Badimo (fire caused by the ancestral spirits) because herpes does look like a burn. Closely connected to this meaning making is also the people’s perception of health. For the Botswana and people in most African societies, illness is associated with unhealthy relations with the family, the wider community, the land, or the ancestral

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TABLE 4.1  ■  HIV/AIDS Knowledge Questionnaire Items Instructions: Circle/tick the correct response in 201–203, and all that apply in 204. 201. What is the difference between HIV and AIDS?

1. There is no difference. 2. HIV is a disease while AIDS is a virus. 3. HIV is a virus while AIDS is a disease. 4. AIDS can occur without HIV, but HIV cannot occur without AIDS.

202. Is there a vaccine for HIV infection, or a cure for AIDS?

1. ................Yes

203. Can preventing the spread of HIV virus prevent AIDS?

1. ................Yes

204. How can HIV/AIDS be transmitted? (Tick all applicable)

1. ..............Air or insects

2. ................No

2. ................No

2. ..............Sharing needles and syringes 3. ..............Blood transfusions 4. ..............Heterosexual activity 5. ..............Contact such as handshakes and hugging 6. ..............Homosexual activity 7. ..............Mother to child at birth 8. ..............Sharing food and utensils 9. ..............Body fluid such as saliva and sweat 10. ..............Sharing toilets and bathrooms

Source: Jack et al. (1999). A study of knowledge, attitude and behavioral aspects of HIV/AIDS among students of the University of Botswana. Gaborone: University of Botswana, Botswana Ministry of Health, and World Health Organization. Used by permission.

spirits (Dube, 2001). To us Western-trained researchers, these constructions were dismissed as a reflection of illiteracy. But suppose we pause a little on the assertion that HIV/ AIDS is caused by bad social relations. Such an assertion is not radically different from saying that HIV/AIDS is caused by poverty, disempowerment of women and children, and unfaithfulness. Nonetheless, failure to work with the framework and language of the researched means that life and death matters are either not understood or take a long time before they are understood. Similarly, modes of transmission of HIV/AIDS derive from social relations aimed at, among other things, maintaining healthy relations with the family, the community, the ancestral spirits, and the environment in general. A study on the impact of HIV/ AIDS on the University of Botswana (Chilisa, Bennell, & Hyde, 2001) included focus group interviews with students, who identified the following as modes of spreading the HIV/AIDS virus: (1) caregiver practices, (2) the practice of seya ntlong (wife inheritance), (3) unequal power relations between men and women, and (4) religion, for

78   Indigenous Research Methodologies

example, in terms of church attitudes toward the use of condoms, which give power to men to insist on unprotected sex. Ideally, these ways of knowing should form the basis for understanding peoples’ perceptions of realities and informing education, communication, and information strategies on the prevention of HIV/AIDS. For us, the researchers, these were treated as separate from the universal definition and modes of HIV/AIDS transmission that are perceived as the sole indicators of what counts as knowledge about HIV/AIDS. As Western-educated people who use Western-defined categories of analysis, we were not in a position to acknowledge the explanations of other realities. Noting a similar trend, Smith (1999) observes that some methodologies do not treat values and belief systems of communities as an integral part of research but as “barriers to research or exotic customs with which researchers need to be familiar in order to carry out their work without causing offence” (p. 15). Dismissing these perceived realities has resulted in a dichotomy of knowledge, where the researched refer to “their knowledge” (belonging to the researchers, mainly from the first world or educated in the Western ways) and “our knowledge,” the researched people’s knowledge. This is illustrated in Table 4.2. The researched use their knowledge to inform daily life practices, ignoring researcher-based knowledge aimed at combating the spread of HIV/AIDS. This competition between the two knowledge systems in part delays progress in combating the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The Error of Sameness In this discussion, I show how the global network of international organizations that fund research work within the long-established categories of the colonized and the colonizer (although, of course, today they would identify themselves with different titles of first and third world or developed and developing) to produce a sameness error by presenting research methodologies that blur any differences in the researched Other. Colonization can be described as an attempt by the Western world to order the whole world according to Western standards of culture, politics, economic structures, and policies. It is an attempt to fashion the diversities of the earth community into the same, into its own image. The error of sameness or universalism is that it can proceed only by the massive domination and silencing of the less powerful. I, therefore, argue that the progress in combating the spread of HIV/AIDS is tragically delayed by prescribing research methodologies that blur any demographic differences in the research and in the process committing a sameness error. I use the Botswana Annual Sentinel Surveillance Reports 1992 to 2000 to illustrate how the positional superiority of first world knowledge systems and perceptions of reality has created a dichotomy where the remaining world is perceived as opposite and therefore the same. Africa and its inhabitants, for instance, are seen as one mass, exhibiting the same characteristics and same behavior, irrespective of geographical boundaries, diverse languages, ethnicity, and particular institutional practices (Teunis, 2001). Thus, even though context is an important factor in postpositivist research, it is context in the mirror of Eurocentric Western epistemologies and realities. Often, context is limited to those factors that can be contrasted with the standard first-world experiences and expectations of what is worth studying. Very often, however, context is ignored in a preference for describing the generic Other that is the same. The sameness error is characteristic of embedded errors about the third world, which as Chambers (1997) notes, “go

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TABLE 4.2  ■  Ways of Knowing

Naming illness

Western First World Knowledge

Indigenous Knowledge in Botswana

HIV/AIDS

Boswagadi

Virus

Molelo wa Badimo (herpes) Boloi (witchcraft) Bolwetse Jwa Makgoa (Westerner’s disease for which Westerners know the name but do not know the cure) Bolwetse jwa radio (The disease described in the radio)

Means of transmission

Blood transfusion Needle and syringes

Unequal power relations between men and women

Heterosexual sex

Caregiver practices

Mother-to-child transmission

Wife inheritance Religious and diviner practices

Source: Chilisa, B. (2005). Educational research within postcolonial Africa: A critique of HIV/AIDS research in Botswana. International Journal of Qualitative Studies, 18(6), 659–684. Used by permission from Taylor and Francis (http://www. informaworld. com).

deeper, last longer, and do more damage. Often, they reflect widely held views, and are generalized. Often they fit what powerful people want to believe. They tend to spread, to be self-perpetuating, and to dig themselves in” (p. 15). The damage, resilience, and permutation of the sameness error are reproduced by transnational companies and international organizations that prescribe research methodologies that ignore contextual differences. Botswana carries out annual national sentinel surveys of pregnant women attending clinics. The purpose of the Botswana Annual Sentinel Surveillance Reports is to monitor the impact of the prevention interventions in place, determine the status and trend of HIV/AIDS, and direct further strategies of action. Noting the link between research and intervention, HIV Sentinel Surveillance in Botswana (Ministry of Health, 2000) asserts that “data must therefore be used to direct strategies of action and distribution of resources for the survey to be meaningful” (p. ii). Despite claims that information contributes to the distribution of resources in a country marked by diverse cultures and disparities of income (Botswana Institute for Development Policy and Analysis [BIDPA], 2000), the Botswana Annual Sentinel Surveillance Reports also treat the researched as a homogenous universal mass where occupation, education, and social class do not matter. Context-specific differential analysis is ignored, and only detailed age-specific prevalence and mortality rates are given. (Refer to Table 4.3 for age-specific prevalence rates.) Kenneth Bailey (1994) notes that it is unethical to provide partial information, present facts out of context, or provide misleading information. Augmenting this ethical perspective, Jay O’Brien (2006) contends that researchers have

80   Indigenous Research Methodologies TABLE 4.3  ■  Age-Specific Prevalence Rates Among Pregnant Women (percentages) Age Span Year

15–19

20–24

25–29

30–34

35–39

40–44

1992

16. 4

20. 5

19. 4

16. 5

13. 5

9. 3

1993

21. 8

27. 1

24. 2

16. 8

13. 3

9. 4

1994

20. 7

31. 5

30. 2

18

11. 8

8

1995

32. 4

34. 8

32. 6

33. 5

11. 1

15

1996

27. 2

40. 9

34

32

25

20

1997

28

41. 4

41

33. 3

39

23. 1

1998

28. 6

42. 8

45. 2

38. 2

33. 3

23. 9

1999

21. 5

38. 7

43. 3

42

33. 3

25. 5

2000

25. 3

41. 0

52. 6

49. 6

41. 9

34. 9

Source: STD/AIDS Unit, Ministry of Health, HIV/AIDS Sentinel Surveillance Surveys, 1992–2000.

to ensure that “the quality of the data forecloses the possibility of it bringing harm through good efforts by planners or others who use the information” (p. 4). In the research on HIV/AIDS in Botswana, partial information is given by blocking local views on HIV/AIDS and its modes of transmission and by ignoring context and basic demographic variables such as occupation, education, and social class that count even in mainstream research. The end result is that research fails to give substantive information that can assist in addressing national concerns of equitable distribution of resources. The Botswana Annual Sentinel Surveillance Reports (Ministry of Health, 1992– 2000) correspond with the nature of information, education, and communication materials, which are mostly aimed at preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS and are insensitive to context and culture. The materials do not target the vulnerable groups and are mostly written in English. There is an assumption that everybody is middle class and can therefore read English. Yet, because the reports meet the validity and reliability criteria from the Western-based research perspective, they form part of the archival knowledge that informs policy, practice, and perceptions about the Other. This point is illustrated by the relationship between the data collection methods in the Sentinel Surveillance Reports, the reports that solicit people’s knowledge on HIV/ AIDS (Jack et al., 1999), and cartoons used in educational campaigns. In Table 4.2, I demonstrated that mother-to-child transmission is an important mode of transmission in the Western mode of knowing. The Sentinel Surveillance Reports use data from pregnant women as the most reliable source of information on HIV/AIDS. Similarly, some intervention programs target women, ignoring the complex networks that contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS. Mother-to-child transmission is an important mode of transmission. The cartoon shown here focuses on women like those in the Sentinel Surveillance Reports. Because of the sameness error, it assumes that men and women have equal power to negotiate for sex. The message communicated by the cartoon is that most women can choose when to have children. However, research shows that women in some cultures in

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Botswana do not have reproductive rights (Tlou, 2001). Furthermore, such pictures or cartoons endorse existing gender stereotypes, which have come to associate illness with women, for they seem to suggest that if a woman knows her status, the child will not contract HIV/AIDS. The picture thus ignores the fact that it might be the partner who is HIV-positive or that the partner might contract HIV/AIDS and infect the woman during pregnancy. This illustrates Spivak’s argument that within the postcolonial context, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow that is muted. The emphasis here is that women are further distanced from the male ruling elite periphery/Other by the male ruling elite center/first world that frames problems and solutions from the vantage of men. Furthermore, some billboards are written from a colonizing perspective that equates the Other with lack of intelligence. Take for example, the billboards that read “Don’t Be Stupid, Condomise” or “Are you careless, ignorant, and stupid?” The messages are offensive, degrading, and written from the perspective of a superior observer who casts the recipients of the message as ignorant. The billboards also seem to suggest that condoms are the major solutions to the spread of HIV/AIDS. Such hegemonizing content does not leave space for the marginalized majority people to name other multiple solutions from their perspectives. The methodologies on HIV/AIDS further entrench the marketing of condoms. The epidemiological fact sheet on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS, 2000), along with researchers (e.g., Bennell et al., 2001; Chilisa et al., 2001), measures change in sexual behavior by the number of condoms that are used. Government, para-state, and private institutions deposit condoms in strategic places at the workplace. Sexually active primary and secondary school students are encouraged to obtain condoms from hospitals and clinics, while in tertiary institutions, condom bins are located in numerous points. Thus, condom sales become tied up with HIV/AIDS research and education, and a country’s effort to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS is measured by condoms per capita (UNAIDS, 2000). It is a sad story of the price that the third world has to pay as knowledge becomes more and more an important profit-making mechanism in the global capitalist economy; as it clearly shows, the first world must devalue knowledge from the peripheral Other to expand its markets. The Exceptionality and Crisis Myth Research on HIV/AIDS informed by colonially established Otherness ideology is sustained by development narratives, which are simply legitimized stories that explain events (Sutton, 1999). The policies have created the “Except Africa” and “Crisis” myths (Roe, 1995). The exceptionality notion is that things will happen everywhere else except in Africa. Reports in South Africa (Coombe, 2000) warn that unless preventive measures are taken, school effectiveness will decline to a point where 30% to 40% of teachers, officials, and children are ill, lacking morale, and unable to concentrate on

82   Indigenous Research Methodologies TABLE 4.4  ■  Mortality Rates for Selected Groups 2000 (deaths/1,000) Female

Male

Primary teachers

7. 2

7. 7

7. 4

Junior secondary teachers

3. 5

5. 3

4. 4

Senior secondary teachers

2. 3

5. 1

3. 7

University lecturers

All

2. 0

University of Botswana junior support staff

17. 0

University industrial class staff

18. 0

University students Adult population

1. 8 20. 0

Source: Chilisa, B., Bennell, P. S., & Hyde, K. (2001). The impact of HIV/AIDS on the University of Botswana: Developing a strategic response. London, UK: Department for International Development.

teaching and learning. In Botswana, it is predicted that up to 50% of all students will become infected during or after their education (Abt Associates, 2001, p. 4). Narratives have circulated on how teachers in Africa have the highest HIV/AIDS infection and death rates despite their higher education and greater access to information relative to other social groups. One report (Abt Associates, 2001) sums it up as follows: It is generally acknowledged that the teaching service in many African countries has been severely affected by AIDS. Death rates in excess of 3% per year have been recorded in at least two countries and some prevalence surveys indicate teachers have higher infection rates than other adults. (p. 9) The effect of these narratives is to legitimize certain research agendas and marginalize others. Donors, for example, are quick to fund research on HIV/AIDS and teachers, schools, and universities. But these priorities are simply based on myths. Research (Chilisa et al., 2001) shows that HIV/AIDS in Botswana has a poverty dimension: The less privileged, the less educated, and poorly paid women and girls are experiencing high mortality rates. The industrial class workers of the University of Botswana, for example, who earn the lowest wages and have the lowest education in comparison to other cash income groups, had the highest mortality rates. Primary school teachers also had high mortality rates in comparison to secondary teachers and university lecturers, who earned higher wages and had higher education. Table 4.4 shows mortality rates per 1,000 for selected occupational groups.

RESEARCH ETHICS AND THE LEGITIMACY OF KNOWLEDGE The colonially established superiority of Western epistemologies is privileged and reproduced through the research regimes of acceptable practice and conduct in research or simply research ethics. The simple definition of ethics is that it refers to regulations of conduct

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of a given profession or group. The questions to ask are, Can there be universal research ethics? Can they be value free and inclusive of all knowledge systems? Ethical issues in research include codes of conduct that are concerned with protection of the researched from physical, mental, or psychological harm. Here, the assumption is that the researched might disclose information exposing them to psychological and physical harm, including discrimination by the community or the employer. The codes of conduct to protect the researched include ensuring anonymity of the researched and confidentiality of the responses. This dimension of the ethical codes emphasizes the individual at the expense of the communities and society to which findings from the study can be generalized or extrapolated. Paradoxically, while in quantitative research one of the major aims is to generate laws and principles that govern the universe, the universe is not protected against harmful information about the sample researched. The assumption made is that quantitative research procedures that include sampling, validity, and reliability eliminate any respondent and researcher biases from the findings.

ACTIVITY 4.1 Read the excerpts of the study below, and do the following: 1. Discuss lessons that you can draw from the study. 2. Based on the reading of this study, describe the indigenous belief in your community that you might explore to study HIV/AIDS and precautionary behavior or any other topic of interest. 3. Discuss other ways of giving voice to indigenous communities not employed in this study. Source: Drawn from Liddell, C., Barrett, L., & Bydawell, M. (2006). Indigenous beliefs and attitudes to AIDS precautions in a rural South African community: An empirical study. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 23(3), 218–225. Used with kind permission from Springer Science+Business Media.

Introduction Indigenous knowledge and beliefs take shape around a culture’s unique understandings of the social and physical world. They are based on generations of folk wisdom and experience and help explain past events and predict future

ones. Indigenous belief systems are based on one of a variety of different worldviews, from the rational to the animistic. Whatever their foundation, they shape a culture’s folklore, cosmology, rituals, childbearing practices, and patterns of social exchange between adults; for these reasons, they are thought to be deeply embedded. The study presented here explores two aspects of indigenous thought, namely, beliefs about ancestral protection from misfortune, and traditional beliefs about illness. It examines whether the people’s endorsement of these beliefs is related to their attitudes to AIDS precautions. The study draws on theoretical insights from a variety of disciplines, including indigenous psychology, health psychology, and medical anthropology. Indigenous psychologists believe that behavior is best understood when studied in local or emic settings. They take issue with the view that health beliefs that diverge from Western biomedical hegemony are primitive or irrational. If afforded scrutiny in local sociohistorical contexts, such beliefs can often be construed as highly adaptive or at least benign. In the light of this, indigenous psychologists argue that health promotion campaigns that blend biomedical and indigenous (Continued)

84   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) messages are likely to have better outcomes than campaigns that ignore or deny the legitimacy of lay representation.

Method It was hypothesized that indigenous systems might have a bearing on attitudes toward HIV/ AIDS prevention in southern Africa. Participants (N = 407) lived in a remote rural area of Kwazulu Natal, South Africa, and were divided into younger (18–24 years) and older (35–45 years) cohorts. All participants completed a questionnaire measuring attitudes to AIDS precautions, indigenous knowledge, indigenous beliefs about ancestral protection, and indigenous belief about illness.

Results Indigenous beliefs pertaining to health behavior emerged as multidimensional in both

structure and effect. Among older participants, there were significant associations between indigenous belief measures and attitudes to AIDS precautions. In this group, a strong belief in ancestral protection was associated with more negative attitudes to AIDS precautions, whereas a strong belief in traditional explanations was associated with more positive attitudes to AIDS precautions. The indigenous beliefs measures were not associated with attitudes toward AIDS precautions among younger participants.

Conclusion The data lends modest support to the hypothesis that indigenous beliefs have a measurable association with attitudes to AIDS prevention, although these associations may be diminishing across generations.

While generalization of findings is clearly an essential ethical issue to consider, disrespect and psychological harm to communities, societies, and nations to which research findings are generalized or extrapolated is another important dimension. Research knowledge authorizes views and perceptions about the researched. An accumulated body of knowledge about the researched becomes the point of reference for legitimizing new knowledge. The problem of giving legitimacy to research knowledge is that most of the accessible research was not carried out by the researched. Even in cases where there is collaborative research between first world researchers and third world researchers, the first world researcher’s voice is dominant and imposes foreign categories of research, hence, determining what type of knowledge can be produced. Here, I will consider the power struggles that arise between first world researchers and third world researchers in collaborative research and the power of written sources. First world researchers get research funds from international donors under the pretext that they are building research capacity in the third world. One proposal for research funds, for instance, read as follows: In both countries and at all stages of the research process, in-country researchers will play an integral part. They will also be provided with important research training opportunities, especially in the use of qualitative and ethnographic data collection tools, with which researchers in developing countries are often unfamiliar. (Department for International Development, 2001, p. 5) Collaborative research between first and third world researchers invariably begins with a contract that positions each researcher within a hierarchical structure. Notably, the first world researcher has nothing to learn! Rather, first world researchers are invariably referred to

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as team leaders, lead researchers, or research coordinators. They bring certain methods to be learned and applied by the third world. As leaders, they are also assigned the responsibility of producing the final document. The assumption is that they are better researchers in comparison to the Other because their educational background is superior in comparison to the Other and also because research is communicated in their language, at which they are masters— although the Other should become masters. The framework has roots in colonial times, when the colonized were regarded as empty vessels to be filled. But it also indicates the colonial ideology that seeks to fashion the world into sameness. The draft of the contract agreement between the first world researchers and the third world researchers was clear on who was producing and controlling knowledge. The contract read, “Any and all intellectual property including copyright in the final and other reports arising from the work under this agreement will be property of the University of X” (Department for International Development, 2001). This quote speaks for itself. The third world still gets exploited for the good of the West! Accordingly, my experience on collaborative research about the impact of HIV/ AIDS on education in primary and secondary schools (Bennell et al., 2001) demonstrated these underlying notions of the Other that researchers carry into the field. The research design was quantitative but used qualitative techniques to complement the quantitative and mainly focused on teachers and students. We agreed that there should be document reviews to expand on the quantitative data. The lead researchers were responsible for producing drafts. Statements in the first draft read as follows: A high acceptance of multiple sexual partners both before marriage and after marriage is a feature of Botswana society. Given the high priority and status given to sexual pleasure and fathering children, condoms are not popular, especially with regular partners. These sentences conflicted with what I considered to be the valued norms of the society. I was told that these statements were informed by a review of the literature. The first world researchers argued they would simply quote statements from the literature to show that they were not making any value judgments about the society. But this begged the question of which literature, generated by which researchers, and using which research frameworks? Answers to these questions point to the vicious circle of power in the process of knowledge production. The following statements were quoted from a situational analysis of HIV/AIDS in the Kweneng West Sub-District in Botswana (Hope and Gaborone, 1999): —— “Sex for drink” is common. —— Botswana society is too “permissive and bordering on lawlessness.” —— Sex tends to be an “important activity” for the unemployed and the poor. —— “Failure to please one’s partner can lead to abandonment and loss of income (however meagre).” But what if the researched do not own a description of the self that they are supposed to have constructed? From my perspective, the quoted statements were a Western interpretation of the Other, perfectly feeding into and relying on colonial stereotypes about African sexuality. They were selected from a variety of information because they were perceived as

86   Indigenous Research Methodologies

important in weaving a story about the Other. Becker (quoted in Denzin, 1992) notes that interpretation is always “incomplete and unfinished.” Peshkin (2000) notes, “It is the work of others to reject, modify and recount the researcher’s selection of fact, and the order and relationships that form the basis of interpretation and its conclusion” (p. 9). The question, however, is the number of the researched Others who can engage in this debate and be heard. This is precisely where Spivak’s (1988) question, “Can the Subaltern Speak,” remains legitimate. First world researchers have enjoyed the privilege of the written word and have used the written text as the forum for debate and legitimizing knowledge. Unfortunately, the majority of the researched—two thirds of the world population—are left out of the debate and do not therefore participate in legitimizing the very knowledge they are supposed to produce. The end result has been that ethics protocols of individual consent and notions of confidentiality have been misused to disrespect and make value judgments that are psychologically damaging to communities and nations at large. Above all, the production of knowledge continues to work within the framework of colonizer/colonized. The colonizer still strives to provide ways of knowing and insists that others use these paradigms, too. Marilee J. Bresciani (2008) reports similar colonizing tendencies in a collaborative research involving principal investigators (PIs) from the United States and Mexico. The starting point for U.S. PIs was that Mexican PIs were disadvantaged by the quality of research equipment. The U.S. PIs ignored Mexican PIs’ efforts to persuade them that they could be equal intellectual partners. In some instances, it is clearly a case of the “captive mind,” where non-Westerners feel they do not have the research skills and knowledge to collaborate with Westerners as equal partners. Another research group (Pryor, Kuupole, Kutor, Dunne, & Adu-Yeboah, 2009, p. 779) reports that in a collaborative project between U.K. and Ghananian researchers in Africa, G ­ hananian researchers looked to their U.K.-based counterparts to impart “relevant knowledge and research skills,” which in most cases refer to banked knowledge on research methodologies. In postcolonial indigenous research methodologies, non-Westerners are called on to invoke community oral literature and indigenous knowledge to inform what is relevant methodology from the perspectives of the colonized. Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies move beyond knowledge construction by the Western first world as the knower. Resistance to this domination is attested by emerging theorizing on decolonizing research methodologies (Bishop, 2008a, 2008b; Chilisa & Ntseane, 2010; Denzin, Lincoln, & Smith, 2008; Lester-Irabinna, 1997; Liamputtong, 2010; Mutua & Swadener, 2004; Porsanger, 2004; Smith, 1999, 2008). Chapter 4 explores current theorizing on methodologies that are inclusive of postcolonial indigenous knowledge systems.

SUMMARY This chapter illustrated ways in which research on former colonized societies continues to create stereotypes about the researched and accumulates volumes of literature that speak only of deficits and deviance in the behaviors and cultures of former colonized societies. The chapter proposed addressing ethics from a postcolonial indigenous perspective as one of the many ways of addressing social justice in research. Chapters 10 and 14 look at ethics from a postcolonial indigenous research perspective.

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Whose Reality Counts?  87

Key Points ——

——

——

Research still ignores, marginalizes, and suppresses the colonized Other’s knowledge systems and ways of knowing.

individual at the expense of the community and continue to privilege the colonizer as the knower. ——

The resistance of researched communities

Research produces deficit theorizing that casts the Other as a peripheral homogenous group in crisis and needing help from an outsider.

to imposed knowledge frameworks should

Current research ethics protocols value the

interventions.

be recognized, along with the implications of this resistance for building research-based

ACTIVITY 4.2 The following extract is from an ongoing study on designing risk reduction interventions for adolescents funded by the National Institute of Health (United States). This study shows efforts by some sponsors to support culturally relevant research. Read, and do as follows: 1. Discuss the methods used to create locally relevant constructs. 2. Discuss ways in which Western theories can be integrated with indigenous knowledge and how quantitative and qualitative methods can complement each other. Source: Chilisa, B., Malinga, T., & Mmonadibe, P. (2009). Predictors of abstinence among 10–18 year adolescents in Botswana: Application of the theory of planned behaviour. Paper presented at the AIDS Impact Conference, 22–25 September 2009, Gaborone, Botswana.

Introduction There is a growing need to carry out research to inform the development of culturally, gender, and age sensitive interventions to help curb the spread of HIV/AIDS. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is a theoretical framework for understanding the predictors of individual behavior that has been frequently applied to understanding health behaviors. The TPB incorporates a structured data-collection approach that utilizes specific, direct questions to assess

behavioral, normative, and control beliefs about the behaviors of interest (in this case, abstinence, condom use, and multiple partners). However, the use of this structured format may overlook the contextual information necessary to understand responses to these questions within specific cultural contexts. In predominantly oral societies, cultural knowledge, beliefs, and values are expressed and transmitted through language, stories, songs, myths, and proverbs. These modes of communicating are an important means of understanding the cultural context of behavior. The study explored the contextual and theory-based factors that explain 14- to 17-year-old adolescents’ intentions to engage in sexually risky behaviors. Method A: Stories and Myths: Eleven adolescents (five boys and six girls) aged 14 to 17 years, selected from two randomly sampled junior secondary schools in the city of Gaborone, were provided with verbal and written instructions asking them to write down stories, myths, sayings, and proverbs that they had heard regarding the following four behaviors: abstinence, virginity, using condoms, and having multiple partners. In addition, eleven focus group interviews (five in semi-urban and six in urban schools) were held. Each focus group had 10 to 12 participants. A total of 104 students participated in the focus group interviews. (Continued)

88   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) Method B: Structured Interviews Based on TPB: Twenty-four adolescents between the ages of 14 and 17 years, of which 12 were female and 12 were male, were recruited from four junior secondary schools in the urban area of Gaborone and the semi-urban area of Molepolole. Method B followed the TPB approach to data collection. The 24 participants were interviewed individually and asked to respond verbally to questions assessing behavioral, normative, and control beliefs related to condom use, abstinence, and having one partner. See Chapter10 on structured TPB questions.

Those who stay virgins for a long time will be struck by the “virgin disease.” Sexual organs might become dysfunctional due to lack of sexual intercourse. If a guy does not have sex regularly, he will go crazy. If one abstains from sex, he or she will not be healthy and fit. Breaking virginity when one is older causes a lot of pain. Beliefs in the multiple-partner included the following:

category

Conclusion

A man must be shared.

Analysis of data revealed patterns of hedonistic, prevention, and partner reaction beliefs on abstinence, condom use, and limiting the number of partners. These views are similar to what is found in the literature. There was, however, an additional subcategory that we have called “adolescents’ local-behavioral beliefs” that emerged from the data. These local behavioral beliefs were mainly on the consequences of prolonged abstinence and multiple partners. Examples were as follows:

If I have multiple partners, I will be respected.

If girls stay virgins for a long time, they will not bear children.

When a man or woman sticks to one partner, it is a sign that he or she is bewitched. The adolescents’ local behavioral beliefs emerged as an important subscale under abstinence and multiple partners. In the second phase of the study, a quantitative survey will be conducted to find out if these beliefs will predict adolescents’ intentions to abstain and to be monogamous. The qualitative data will also provide cultural relevant materials to use in the design of the risk reduction intervention.

Suggested Readings Bresciani, M. (2008). Exploring misunderstanding in collaborative research between a world power and a developing country. Research and Assessment, 2(1), 1–11. Castells, M. (1993). Economy and the new international division of labor. In M. Carnoy, M. Castells, S. S. Cohen, & H. Cordons (Eds.), The new global economy in the information age. London, UK: Macmillan. Chambers, R. (1997). Whose reality counts? London, UK: Practical Action Publishing. Mutua, K., & Swadener, B. (2004). Decolonizing research in cross-cultural

contexts. Albany: State University of New York Press. Peshkin, A. (2000). The nature of interpretation in qualitative research. Educational Researcher, 30(9), 5–9. Pryor, J., Kuupole, A., Kutor, N., Dunne, M., & Adu-Yeboah, C. (2009). Exploring the fault lines of cross-cultural collaborative research. Compare, 39(6), 769–782. Roe, E. (1995). Development narratives or making the best of blueprint development. World Development Narratives, 19(6), 1065–1070.

5 POSTCOLONIAL INDIGENOUS RESEARCH PARADIGMS Oral forms of knowledge, such as ritualistic chants, riddles, songs, folktales, and parables, not only articulate a distinct cultural identity but also give voice to a range of cultural, social and political, aesthetic, and linguistic systems—long muted by centuries of colonialism and cultural imperialism. Patience Elabor-Idemudia (2002, p. 103)

Overview This chapter explores the meaning of postcolonial indigenous research methodologies and philosophies, as well as the worldviews that inform these methodologies. The meaning of indigenous knowledge and its role in research is also discussed. Two postcolonial indigenous research approaches are also discussed: (1) the indigenization of conventional research and (2) a relational indigenous research paradigm.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this chapter you should be able to do the following: 1. Discuss the meaning of indigenous knowledge and its implications for research. 2. Distinguish between the two postcolonial indigenous research approaches. 3. Discuss the features of a relational indigenous paradigm. 4. Explain an indigenization research approach and its application. 5. Understand and apply postcolonial indigenous methodologies to research.

89

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Before You Start Conduct a literature search for studies that have used indigenous knowledge to inform their research framework. Reflect on the features of indigenous research, and classify the studies as either predominantly quantitative, qualitative, or a mix of both quantitative and qualitative methods. Discuss how indigenous knowledge was used and the value it added to the study.

INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND RESEARCH What is meant by indigenous knowledge, and how does it inform the construction of other forms of methodologies not common in conventional research methodologies? The idea of indigenous knowledge is a relatively recent phenomenon, gaining conceptual and discursive currency in the 1970s (Smith, 1999). Indigenous knowledge can be specific to locations, regions, and groups of peoples, for instance, indigenous knowledge for women, the deaf community, the poor, and so on. Just as Euro-­Western research methodologies are indigenous to the Western academy, its institutions, and the dominant group, postcolonial indigenous knowledge is connected with the colonized and the historically oppressed. Indigenous knowledges, therefore, differ from conventional knowledges in their absence of colonial and imperial power. These indigenous knowledges are also postcolonial since they arise from people who have lived colonial history and have learned to value justice through collectively fighting for their liberation. Indigenous knowledge is used synonymously with traditional and local knowledge to differentiate the knowledge developed by a given social group or community from the knowledge generated by the Western academy and its ­i nstitutions (Grenier, 1998). In reference to Africa, George J. Sefa Dei (2002) notes that indigenousness may be defined as knowledge consciousness arising locally and in association with longterm occupancy of a place. Indigenousness refers to the traditional norms, social values, and mental constructs that guide, organize, and regulate African ways of living in making sense of the world. Different forms of knowledge (e.g., knowledge as superstition, knowledge as a belief in the invisible order of things, and knowledge as “science”) all build on one another to provide interpretations and understanding of society. Thus, different knowledges represent ways that people perceive the world and act on it (Sefa Dei, 2002).

Indigenous Knowledge and Knowledge Production It is now recognized that indigenous knowledge (IK) offers sustainable solutions to the eradication of poverty and to development in general. This recognition has created opportunities for scholars to engage in a discourse on indigenous knowledge, not only as content, but as a science that frames indigenous thought and philosophy (Briggs, 2013). According to the World Bank (2008), IK represents an underused resource that is the

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foundation for problem-solving strategies for local communities. Investigating first what communities know and have can improve understanding of local conditions and provide a productive context for research activities designed to help the communities. Discussing local knowledge without first recognizing indigenous ontologies and epistemologies on which the people’s articulation of their experiences is anchored amounts to a serious decontextualization and flaw in understanding people’s contribution to problem solving in their contexts. A claim for an indigenous research and indigenous research paradigm is now an important step in moving from discussing IK as content to discussing it as a science and a body of thought (Briggs, 2013) and how this body of thought can inform scientific inquiry that links social and ecological systems, is inclusive of the “other” perspectives, and contributes to sustainable development. Academic researchers are increasingly called upon to collaborate with IK holders and indigenous communities to codesign and coframe research problems, co-create a methodological framework that supports the integration of knowledge systems, and jointly co-create solution-oriented knowledge and apply it to address complex problems (Chilisa, 2017). In South Africa, for example, the National Research Foundation (NRF) manages an IK research program that seeks to contribute toward the knowledge economy, to develop new technologies in line with national priorities, to promote and protect IK and indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), and to create skills and build human capacity (NRF, 2013). One of the requirements in the IK research program is that there should be joint, active participation and equal ownership of the research project by academic scientists and IK holders, indigenous practitioners, and community members. IK holders are expected to either participate as principal investigators or coinvestigators. A review of funded projects between 2009 and 2014 (Chilisa, Moletsane, & Simms, 2014) revealed that there was no evidence of a funded project where IK holders, practitioners, or community members were principal investigators in a joint project with academics. The perception of the community members and IK holders is that the IK research model is a mirror of Euro-Western research approaches. These approaches are reinforced through an assessment scoreboard and ethics guidelines that have normalized academic science practices as the universal, natural norms that should guide research practice. The process that drives the research application, the research process, and the dissemination is thus inhibiting to IK holders, practitioners, and community members, in most cases reducing them to data sources. Their knowledge is not interfaced into the research process as researchers pursuing their own research questions that are informed by their own worldviews. Consequently, IK holders generally are not coauthors and seldom are they acknowledged in publications arising from their collaborative research efforts with academics. Worse still, they generally lack access to the knowledge produced because it is packaged in forms and language that they cannot comprehend or that is not useful for their community needs (Chilisa et al., 2014). The argument in this book is that part of the solution to current challenges in social inquiry lies in the recognition of postcolonial indigenous epistemologies and methodologies and an engagement in discourses on the philosophical base that inform these methodologies and the direction in which they move the scholarship in research methodology.

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Characteristics of Indigenous Knowledge According to Adrian Grenier (1998), characteristics of IK can be summarized as follows: 1. Indigenous knowledge is accumulative and represents generations of experiences, careful observations, and trial and error experiments. 2. It is dynamic, with new knowledge continuously added and external knowledge adapted to suit local situations. 3. All members of the community, that is, elders, women, men, and children, have indigenous knowledge. 4. The quantity and quality of indigenous knowledge that an individual possesses will vary according to age, gender, socioeconomic status, daily experiences, roles and responsibilities in the home and the community, and so on. 5. Indigenous knowledge is stored in people’s memories and activities and is expressed in stories, songs, folklore, proverbs, dances, myths, cultural values, beliefs, rituals, cultural community, laws, local language, artifacts, forms of communication, and organization. 6. Indigenous knowledge is shared and communicated orally and by specific example and through cultural practices such as dance and rituals.

The Role of Indigenous Knowledge in Research Indigenous knowledge plays an important role in the articulation of indigenous research methodologies. Indigenous knowledge’s role in framing postcolonial indigenous research methodologies can be summarized as follows: 1. Indigenous knowledge is embodied in languages, legends, folktales, stories, and cultural experiences of the formerly colonized and historically oppressed; it is symbolized in cultural artifacts such as sculpture, weaving, and painting and embodied in music, dance, rituals, and ceremonies such as weddings and worshipping. It is the source of literature to draw from to challenge stereotypes of postcolonial societies. Instead of relying on written literature, which is often written from the Euro-American perspective, the above sources assist in giving voice to postcolonial indigenous communities. 2. Postcolonial indigenous knowledge systems can enable the researcher to use new topics, themes, processes, categories of analysis, and modes of reporting and dissemination of information not easily obtainable through conventional research methods. 3. Postcolonial indigenous knowledges enable researchers to unveil knowledge that was previously ignored, enabling the researcher to close the knowledge gap that resulted from imperialism, colonization, and the subjugation of indigenous knowledges. In Chapter 3, you saw how the use of local language enabled the researcher to bring into the development discourse other theoretical perspectives not common in the literature.

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4. Researchers can draw from indigenous knowledge systems to theorize about methods and research processes from the perspective of the cultures and values of the colonized Other and those historically marginalized, either because of their race, ethnicity, age, gender, ableness, or religion. Maori culture and values have, for instance, been used to craft Kaupapa Maori and the whanaungata methodological frameworks (Bishop, 2008a, 2008b; Smith, 1999), while the African adage “I am because we are” has added to theorizing on relational ontologies, epistemologies, and axiologies. 5. Indigenous knowledge-driven research methodologies can enable reclamation of cultural or traditional heritage; a decolonization of the captive and colonized mind and thought; protection against further colonization, exploitation, and appropriation of indigenous knowledge; and a validation of indigenous practices and worldviews. 6. The colonized Other can become the source of solutions to the challenges they face. 7. Indigenous knowledge-driven research methodologies can enable research to be carried out in respectful, ethical ways, which are useful and beneficial to the people. 8. The methodologies open space for collaboration between researchers and the researched as well as community participation during all the stages of the research process. What follows is a discussion of how to draw from indigenous knowledge systems to indigenize conventional research methodologies.

INDIGENIZING RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES A large body of postcolonial indigenous research advocates for a process of decolonizing and indigenizing Euro-Western research methodologies. Indigenization is a process that involves a critique and resistance to Euro-Western methodological imperialism and hegemony as well as a call for the adapting of conventional methodologies by including perspectives and methods that draw from indigenous knowledges, languages, metaphors, worldviews, experiences, and philosophies of former colonized, historically oppressed, and marginalized social groups. It is a process that is informed by modern critical theory, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, feminist theory, and notions of decolonization, resistance, struggle, and emancipation (Battiste, 2000; Porsanger, 2004; Rigney, 1999; Smith, 1999). An indigenization process challenges researchers to invoke indigenous knowledge to inform ways in which concepts and new theoretical frameworks for research studies are defined, new tools of collecting data developed, and the literature base broadened, so that we depend not only on written texts but also on the largely unwritten texts of the formerly colonized and historically oppressed peoples. Chapter 3 illustrated how academic imperialism, scientific colonialism, methodological imperialism, and Western literature marginalize worldviews and ways of knowing of the colonized Other. It also showed the use of postcolonial theory and critical race theory as theoretical frameworks to frame a decolonization of Euro-Western research

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methodologies. The emphasis was that researchers with an indigenization focus could combine theoretical approaches and methodologies borrowed from the literature and knowledge archives of the West with indigenous perspectives. The process requires sensitivity to the culture of the researched and promotion of their participation and ownership of the research process. Carole Sutton (1999) underscores the process of indigenization by giving an example of indigenizing local music through combining elements of one or more indigenous traditional music styles with elements of Western-style pop. For example, in Botswana, we hear folk genre music sung in vernacular languages mixed with pop, reggae, rap, gospel, disco, and other genres that use traditional instruments to make the music attractive to people of different cultures. Indigenization of conventional research methodologies can be viewed as the “blending of an imported discipline with the generation of new concepts and approaches from within that culture” (Adair et al., 1993, p. 152). In the indigenization of conventional research methodologies, the focus is on the degree to which approaches, methods, measures, the literature, and the language of the research are embedded in the culture of the researched societies. Adair et al. (1993) have listed the following as measures of indigenization of research. Cultural reference. It refers to the extent to which the research emanates from the culture in which it is conducted and is measured by mention of “country, its customs, norms, or behaviors not found in the West” (Adair et al., 1993, p. 152). Culture-based justification. The rationale and justification of the research should arise from the needs and unique relevance of the research to the indigenous societies. Conceptual bases for research. It is measured by the extent to which the conceptual framework for the study emanates from the religion, cultural traditions, norms, language, metaphors, indigenous knowledge systems, community stories, legends and folklores, social problems, rapid social change, or public policies, as opposed to conceptual frameworks from some universalistic or Western literature. In this context, specific hypotheses tested will reflect the culture-­ specific variables. Methodology. An indigenized methodology refers to the extent to which the research methods and measures are tailored to the culture of the researched. Methodological indigenization can be reflected in the extent to which the local language is used in the construction of research instruments, for example, questionnaires, tests, interviews, and the research process in general, and the use of methods, concepts, and variables emanating from indigenous knowledge systems. From Adair et al.’s (1993) criteria of indigenous research, it is clear that one can place indigenous research studies along a continuum scale that varies depending on the degree of theory, conceptual framework, values, methods, and variables emanating from the indigenous knowledge and experiences explicated from the perspective of a postcolonial indigenous framework. In its simplest form, indigenous research can entail an exploratory study that necessitates the discovery of a local phenomenon that challenges Euro-­Western theories using predominantly Euro-Western methodologies and ideologies. Timothy Church and Marcia Katigbak (2002), in their conceptualization of indigenization, have called this type of model the encounter stage. In this stage, researchers acknowledge the

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limitation of applying Western theories, categories of analysis, findings, and modes of reporting, and they attempt to address the challenge through a limited degree of adaptation of these imported concepts, models, and measures with the hope of gaining better understanding of local circumstances. Kagendo Manuelito’s (2004) study on an indigenous perspective on self-determination illustrates one of the models in this category. ­Manuelito, a Navajo who grew up around Navajo communities in New Mexico, conducted a qualitative study in which she wanted to find out the Ramah Navajo community’s understanding of the concept of self-determination. Manuelito explains that the data collection methods included participant observation, document analysis, and interviews. Throughout the study, Manuelito observes that Navajo values and respect, known as “K” in the Navajo language, were maintained and that Navajo protocol was upheld at all times. The important contribution of this study to postcolonial indigenous knowledge production was in the operationalization of self-determination from a Navajo community perspective. Manuelito went on to note that during the study, “I was continuously aware of the context of the study, which was constructed around Navajo framework and explicated in Euro-Western ideology” (p. 241). Manuelito’s observation highlights the fact that a lot could still be done in the study to embrace a context-specific and context-sensitive approach with locally relevant constructs, theories, and methods of data collection. Another level of decolonization and indigenization of research may involve cross-­ context comparative research in which the aim is to identify constructs, conceptual frameworks, measures, and categories of analysis unique to a local community so as to modify or revise Euro-Western theories and research practices. Many studies with a postcolonial indigenous approach are committed to developing tests and measures that are culturally sensitive and context specific. A study based in Harare, Zimbabwe, in Africa serves as an example (Patel, Simunyu, Gwazura, Lewis, & Mann, 1997). The objective of the study was to develop an indigenous measure of common mental disorders (CMD) in a primary care setting and to examine the psychometric properties of the measure. The study was conducted out of a growing concern that the Euro-American instruments that detect and measure CMD were not adequately validated for use in diverse settings in Africa. There were several stages in the design of the study. In the first stage, a qualitative approach was adopted, and focus group interviews were held with primary caregivers to generate concepts of mental illness. Qualitative interviews were also held with patients with conspicuous psychiatric morbidity, selected on the basis of clinical assessment and screening criteria. The interviews elicited idioms of distress of mental disorder. In the next stage, the Shona idioms were collated and classified into broad domains of similar phenomena. The idioms were formed on the basis of 47 questionnaire items with forced categorical responses of yes or no. The Shona Symptom Questionnaire is the first indigenous measure of mental disorder developed in sub-Saharan Africa. What is important to note is that the study involved a qualitative measure at the beginning, complemented by a quantitative approach that involved the development of a questionnaire and a description of its psychometric properties. A more advanced level in the conceptualization of indigenization in psychology is what Church and Katigbak (2002) have called the immersion-emersion stage. This stage is characterized by the rejection of Western research paradigms in favor of efforts to develop indigenous research paradigms. Church and Katigbak note that the rejection can at times be intense, leading to uncritical rejection of applicable Western ideas simply because

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they originate in the West or acceptance of potentially ill-judged ideas just because they were developed from within an indigenous community. In the next section, an indigenous research paradigm based on relations is presented. A relational indigenous paradigm begins with relations, love, harmony, and social justice as important aspects of a research framework and employs an inclusive approach rather than rejection. The goal of theorizing on indigenous research paradigms is to augment the academic discourse on research methods as well as to challenge academics in all cultures and the Western academy to reevaluate and enrich their perspectives so that research can best serve the interests of the researched.

ACTIVITY 5.1 Read the study extract included here, and do the following: 1. Discuss research principles that are indigenous in the extract. 2. List the methods of collecting data in the study, and categorize them into indigenous and conventional methods. 3. Discuss the extent to which the ethical procedures in the study are informed by a relational accountability, respectful representation, reciprocal appropriation, and rights and regulations. 4. Answer the question, What does the author say is the limitation of research that attempts to conflate Western and indigenous approaches? Source: Lippie, C. (2007). Learning from the grandmothers: Incorporating indigenous principles into qualitative research. Qualitative Health Research, 17(2), 276–284. Used by permission.

Purpose of Study The purpose of the study on which this article is based was to explore the perceptions (physical, psychological, emotional, social, and spiritual) of midlife health, with particular emphasis on the menopausal transition, among midlife Mi’kmaq women in Nova Scotia.

Research Design The emergent nature of both indigenous knowledge (Castellano, 2000) and qualitative inquiry

(Guba & Lincoln, 1989) necessitated the development of a research design that accommodated the multiple realities and unpredictable interactions between research partners. The flexibility of my design was evident in its emergence through collaboration and consensus building with participating communities and participants. The overall design represented an amalgamation of the principles of indigenous and Western methodological traditions (i.e., ethnography, participatory research, and feminism).

Indigenous Principles In designing this study, I positioned myself within a prevalent indigenous epistemology by acknowledging the wisdom of elder women and inviting their partnership in storytelling as a vehicle of teaching, learning, and sharing (Battiste, 2000; Castellano, 2000). Not surprisingly, the participants of this study favored group discussions as a means of sharing their experiences and engaging in reciprocal learning and healing. My learning also came from listening to, observing, and interacting with the women who partnered in this research and not necessarily from the literature that had previously shaped my perspective, nor from Eurocentric methods that assume the inferiority of experiential pedagogy (Henderson, 2000; Posey, 2004; Smith, 2000). Many indigenous principles foreground the interconnectedness of that which Western science often seeks to separate. For example, rather than a linear process whereby each discrete step of the research process is followed by another discrete

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step, indigenous methods generally emphasize the ways in which interrelated constituents flow together to facilitate the goals of the research as well as the relationship between research partners and the potential service of the research process and products (Henderson, 2000; Smith, 2005). In this case, the decision to use group discussions to gather data emerged from the opportunities afforded by this method to engage in reciprocal learning and sharing of stories. Similarly, the engagement of intuition in the analysis process arose from the grandmothers’ accentuation of holistic learning, which involves all of the senses not just those related to cognition. Submission of this article for academic publication represents its potential to act as a conduit through which other researchers may learn from this process and conduct future research that is respectful of and beneficial to Aboriginal peoples.

Participatory Practice Through the engagement of participatory principles, the community partners and I designed this study to reflect a deep respect for the intellectual and intuitive capacities of Aboriginal women. Full and active participation by Aboriginal women in the development of the research project, recruitment of participants, and modification of the discussion guide, as well as collection and analysis of data ensured a participatory approach of mutual benefit. Indeed, through this collaborative mode of research, I attempted to honor our diverse knowledge and expertise as well as “distribute power more equitably among the various” research partners, thereby creating harmony within the group (Glesne & Peshkin, 1991, p. 100). Nevertheless, each woman was free to choose the extent to which she participated in various components of the project. For instance, some chose to sit in on discussion groups, whereas others engaged more fully in reflecting on and interpreting the data. In this research design, I incorporated feminist traditions within the context of indigenous principles of holism by focusing on the entirety

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of women’s realities (Lather, 1991). I emphasized relationality by rejecting the separation of subject and object. Rather, data collection represented an equal two-way exchange of information. I promoted balance and harmony by continuously and reflexively considering the significance of culture and gender as well as attending to ethical concerns related to respectful and reciprocal research with Aboriginal people. Finally, I emphasized personalism and the empowerment of women by integrating participation and consciousness raising into the research process (Bowles & DuelliKlein, 1983; Cook & Fonow, 1991; Kirby & McKenna, 1989).

Forming Circles In an effort to respect various levels of literacy, I also reviewed the introduction letter and the consent form aloud. Participants were given the option of providing either written or oral consent. Finally, for those women who might not feel comfortable discussing menopause in a group setting, I offered the opportunity to participate in a one-on-one interview. Social activities were incorporated into every group meeting. This cultural custom of including opportunities to socialize provided an opportunity for me to get to know the women and for them to become more comfortable with me.

Gathering Grandmothers’ Stories First Nations people are very respectful of others’ opinions (Wadsworth, 2000). So, these women did not query one another during discussions, making conflict within the context of group discussions rare. Some researchers might view this practice as a potential limitation of group discussions. However, many Aboriginal peoples simply express their perceptions through other more diplomatic means (Brant, 1990). . . . In these groups, a simple yet poignant story or wellplaced comment later in yet another poignant story or well-placed comment in the discussion clearly conveyed a contrary opinion without overtly disrespecting another’s point of view. (Continued)

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Learning My Lessons In an attempt to honor Western methods, during my initial analysis, I followed a modified grounded theory approach (open, axial, and selectivity coding) in which I derived themes inductively and deductively (Patton, 1990). A summary of my initial analysis was sent to community partners for review and discussion

The most obvious tension in research that attempts to conflate Western and indigenous approaches of inquiry begins with paradigmatic, ontological, and epistemological differences that have been discussed extensively by other authors (Battiste, 2000; McIsaac, 2000; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996; Simpson, 2000).

POSTCOLONIAL INDIGENOUS RESEARCH PARADIGMS Shawn Wilson (2008) argues that inserting an indigenous perspective into one of the major paradigms may not be effective because it is hard to remove the underlying epistemology and ontology on which the paradigms are built. Researchers and scholars researching with and on the colonized Other are challenged to articulate their own research paradigms, their own approaches to research, and their own data collection methods. Wilson (2008), arguing for an indigenous research paradigm, notes, We have tried to adapt dominant system research tools by including our perspective into their views. We have tried to include our cultures, traditional protocols and practices into the research process through adapting and adopting suitable methods. The problem with that is that we can never really remove the tools from their underlying beliefs. (p. 41) In Chapter 2, you learned that philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality (ontology), knowledge (epistemology), and values (axiology) informed the research approaches, techniques for collecting data, analysis, report writing, and dissemination of findings. What follows is a discussion of African perspectives on relational indigenous methodologies (Goduka, 2000; Kaphagawani & Malherbe, 2000) and perspectives from indigenous peoples of Canada and Australia as articulated by Shawn Wilson (2008) in the book, Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods.

RELATIONAL ONTOLOGY IN CONTEXT: PERSPECTIVES FROM AFRICA I am we; I am because we are; we are because I am, I am in you, you are in me. Relational ontology addresses the nature of being and how worldviews on being are implicated in the social construction of realities. In Chapter 2, you saw that among the Africans in southern Africa, the Ubuntu world sums up this conception of reality.

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The Ubuntu worldview expresses an ontology that addresses relations among people, relations with the living and the nonliving, and a spiritual existence that promotes love and harmony among peoples and communities. Ubuntu and the African adage, “I am we; I am because we are; we are because I am,” explains the web of connection of people with each other and with the living and the nonliving (Goduka, 2000). The principle is in direct contrast to the Eurocentric view of humanity, “I think, therefore, I am,” which was expressed by René Descartes. The latter, Ivy Goduka (2000) observes, expresses a concept of self that is individually defined and “is in tune with a monolithic and one-dimensional construction of humanity” (p. 29). In the principle of “I am because we are,” “the group has priority over the individual without crushing the individual, but allowing the individual to blossom as a person” (Senghor, 1966, p. 5). Existence-in-­ relation and being-for-self-and-others sum up the African conception of life and reality (Onyewumi, 1998).

The I/We Obligation Versus the I/You: An Illustration How do we construct reality in such a way that the I does not overshadow the other and the community or the we does not overshadow the I? How is reality defined from an I/we relationship, and how can indigenous knowledge shed light on how to capture and interpret this reality? How can we, for example, conceptualize an HIV/AIDS testing policy that is informed by an I/we relationship? Kipton Jensen (2007) has argued that workers in education, development, policy making, and research have at times adopted the individualistic approach to the construction of knowledge and its application. In Botswana, the UNAIDS/WHO Policy Statement on HIV Testing (World Health Organization, 2004) is an example of a unidimensional construction of humanity where the rights of the individual take precedence over those of the community (Jensen, 2007). According to the policy, the conditions under which people undergo HIV testing must be anchored in a human rights approach, which protects their human rights and pays due respect to ethical principles. In practice, this has meant that the HIV-testing results can be disclosed to a second party only with the permission and consent of the person affected, except in a case where the tested individual is a minor. It has also meant that testing is voluntary; no one can be forced to go. Although this policy, in Botswana and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, underlines individual rights and privacy, community rights and many African cultural perspectives are silenced. African communities are robbed of the ability to creatively inform the HIV prevention strategies designed for them. With HIV reaching epidemic proportions in sub-Saharan Africa, an I/we-based obligation with emphasis on the well-being of the community would promote a policy that requires all members to get tested.

Relations With the Living and the Nonliving: Implications for Research How do we capture and interpret a reality that takes into account our “being” relations with the earth, the living, and the nonliving; and how can indigenous knowledge shed light on this reality? Laara Fitznor (1998), articulating the interdependence and interconnectedness among humans living and nonliving, observes,

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Mother earth and her inhabitants, plants, animals, minerals, rocks, insects etc., are all viewed in an interactive way—they are viewed as alive, as having a spirit, as conscious and as capable of responding to people. They are our “relatives.” In ceremonies and teaching circles, each of these relatives is discussed in relation to its connection and contribution to healing, wisdom, power, and teachings. (cited in Goduka, 2000, p. 69) FIGURE 5.1  ■  Totems of the Bakalanga People in Botswana

Source: Mukani Action Campaign. (2002). Francistown, Botswana. Used by permission.

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For example, the Bakalanga of Botswana are connected to the living and the nonliving and to each other through the sharing of totems. These totems are symbolically represented through nonliving things, for example, a heart, or through living things and animals such as elephants and lions. Figure 5.1 shows 18 totems marking the identities of the Bakalanga people. Men and women are addressed by their totems as a sign of respect for their identity. They, in turn, have an obligation to respect the living and nonliving that represent their totems. People sharing the same totem have values that they share that are celebrated through rituals. They could, for instance, observe the same rituals marking birth, passage to manhood or womanhood, and burial. The emphasis in this chapter is that researchers can draw from indigenous knowledge systems to create methodological frameworks that capture the voices of communities who value and practice an ontology of connectedness. The ontology of connectedness poses the following challenges for indigenous research methodologies: How can the web of connectedness inform researchers who do research among the Bakalanga community? What are the metaphors to be drawn from these networks to inform intervention research? Indigenous research methodologies should make use of social networks in designing studies. There is an emphasis on moving from a focus on the I of the individual to a collective we with multiple connections. What community-based intervention research would a network such as that of the Bakalanga serve?

Spirituality, Love, and Harmony The I/we connection is a relational existence that is spiritual and promotes love and harmony. Desmond Tutu, the archbishop emeritus of the Anglican Church in South Africa, explains the I/we relationship as an organic relationship between people such that when we see one another, we should recognize ourselves and God, in whose image all people are made. We are so connected with one another that if you are in pain, so am I. It is a relationship that is guided by agape, a Greek principle for unselfish and altruistic love (Goduka, 2000). King (1958) explained agape as disinterested love. It is love in which the individual seeks not his/her own good, but the good of his/her neighbour. Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. . . . It springs from the need of the other person. . . . It is love in action. It is love seeking to preserve and create community. It is insistent on community even when one seeks to break. It is a willingness to sacrifice in the interest of mutuality and a willingness to go to any length to restore community. (p. 87) Chela Sandoval (2000), in her book Methodology of the Oppressed about third world feminism, proposes love as a method made up of a set of practices that can mobilize all people regardless of race and class to work together toward meaningful change.

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How do we capture and interpret a reality that is spiritual and promotes love and harmony? How can indigenous knowledge shed light on how this reality is captured and interpreted? Folktales and stories can, for example, serve as valuable tools for raising awareness of values that promote love, harmony, social justice, solidarity, and human rights. For example, here is a well-known African story about the youth and the elderly: The story goes that the youth of a certain village arrived at a conclusion that old people who were past their prime economically should be stoned to death because they were an intolerable burden. Each person in the village proceeded to kill their parents. After several years of living in plenty because there were fewer mouths to feed, one of the younger men was attacked by a python. The python had wound itself around the young man with coils that only tightened with every attempt to help him. There seemed to be no way of killing the python without endangering the young man. Eventually, a mysterious old man appeared from nowhere and helped free the young man. The old man who saved the young man turned out to be one of the fathers, who was hid in a cave by his children who did not want to kill him. The old man was rehabilitated into the village, and the village has ever since retained a wholesale veneration of all human life, even those that seem to present an intolerable economic burden to the community. (Author unknown) The story teaches against discrimination. In the context of capturing a reality based on love and harmony, the story makes the researcher aware of the need to capture the data in such a way that our samples are inclusive of all social groups, for example, by gender, race/ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic status, age, religion, and sexual orientation. Every segment of the community has a place and a value in the community, and the omission of the voices of any one of these segments in the research process is not in the interest of the values of the community from which the story comes; it has potential to harm the welfare of that community.

RELATIONAL ONTOLOGY: PERSPECTIVES FROM SCHOLARS IN CANADA AND AUSTRALIA According to Wilson (2008), indigenous peoples in Australia and Canada articulate a relational ontology that emphasizes relations with people, with the environment/land, with the cosmos, and with ideas. Each of these relationships has implications for how research is conducted.

Relations With People Relation building is an essential aspect of everyday life experience for indigenous communities in Australia and Canada. To illustrate the importance of this relation building, Wilson (2008) notes that greetings among indigenous people include

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asking acquaintances about their hometowns, their relatives, and so forth. These people are inevitably placed in relationship, through mutual friends or through knowledge, with certain landmarks and events. The researcher becomes part of circles of relations that are connected to one another and to which the researcher is also accountable. The implication for research is that participants in a research study are able to make connections with each other when this greeting ritual is respected. Greeting becomes a way of building relationships and rapport among participants and researchers.

Relations With the Environment/Land Indigenous people recognize a spiritual connection with the environment/land. Their relationship with the environment/land has implications for the way research is conducted. The construction of knowledge has to be done in a manner that builds and sustains relationships with the land/environment and is respectful of the environment. In this context, knowledge is held in connection with the land and the environment. When interviews are used as a technique of gathering data, it is best to conduct them in a setting familiar to the researched and relevant to the topic of research; this enables the researched to make connections with the environment and the space where the construction of knowledge takes place.

Relations With the Cosmos: The Role of Spirituality Spirituality is “one’s internal sense of connection to the universe,” which may include one’s personal connection to a higher being, or humanity, or the environment (­Wilson, 2008, p. 91). Spirituality can be viewed as a connection to the cosmos so that any exercise that increases connection or builds relationships is spiritual and ceremonial in nature. A recognition of spirituality allows researchers to explore the interconnections between the researched’s experience of the sacred and the practical aspects of research. Understanding comes through factual and oral history that connects the researched to the ancestral spirits. Knowledge is also regarded as a sacred object, and seeking knowledge is a spiritual quest that may begin with a prayer or a ceremony. Knowing can thus come through prayer as a way people connect themselves with those around them, the living, the nonliving, and the ancestral spirits. In this way, the mind, the body, and the spirit are regarded as legitimate ways of gathering information and coming to know (Pelletier, 2003).

Relations With the Cosmos: An Illustration Jason Brent Ellis and Mark A. Earley (2006) give an example from their fieldwork of how the researched’s relation with the cosmos became part of the research process that informed the construction of knowledge. The Anishambe, one of the indigenous people of North America, use aseema (tobacco) as a cultural symbol for thanking people, asking for help, praying for information, and sharing stories. According to Edward Benton-­ Banai (1988), tobacco sharing comes from the legend about Waynaboozhoo.

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Waynaboozhoo showed the people how to smoke tobacco in the Pipe and in so doing seal peace, brotherhood and sisterhood among bands, tribes, and nations. Waynaboozhoo told the people that the smoke that came from the Pipe would carry their thoughts and prayers to the Creator just as their Tobacco offerings in the fire would. (cited in Ellis & Earley, 2006, p. 80) Doing research on how indigenous spiritual traditions affected the process of grieving after the death of a loved one among the Anishambe, Ellis and Earley (2006) had challenges gaining entry to the setting and conducting interviews. They got advice from one of the Anishambe people: Go to a corner store and buy a package of pipe tobacco, take about the size of a large gum ball and place it in the middle of the broadcloth you ripped then tie it tight with one of the strips. When you go to speak with someone and ask them to do your interview, you need to reach out with the asemaa in your hand. If you don’t do it they won’t talk to you. (p. 7) Third and fourth world communities have resisted intrusion into their lives since the colonial period. The resistance has been largely ignored because, in essence, it questions the validity of the colonial research-built theories. Once they brought tobacco, Ellis and Earley (2006) report, key informants responded positively to the request for the interview, saying, “You have shown respect for our ways by offering tobacco and smudging, your intentions seem to be good ones, let’s see how we can help you” (p. 8). The lesson learned is that without offering culturally sensitive means of building reciprocity, researchers end up with empty findings. It follows that stereotyped findings also reflect resistance from the colonized because the researcher is unable to access the realities of the communities’ experiences. In most postcolonial indigenous societies, building reciprocity and rapport requires a process that connects the researcher to the researched through sharing of values or through practices that recognize that both the researcher and the researched are connected to the living and the nonliving; knowledge is constructed with recognition that the living and the nonliving play a part in the outcome of the process of building it. The tobacco smudging practice places at the center stage people as spiritual beings.

RELATIONAL EPISTEMOLOGIES A relational epistemology draws our attention to relational forms of knowing as opposed to individual descriptions of knowing, which, according to Barbara Thayer-Bacon (2003), have dominated Euro-Western theories on ways of knowing for a long time. In this context, our understanding of reality should begin with questions of the way we are in the world (being or ontology). Whereas traditional epistemologies focus on the objects of knowledge, relational epistemologies focus on subjects or communities as knowers (Thayer-Bacon, 2003). In relational epistemology, knowledge is viewed as something people develop as they have experiences with each other and the world around them. People improve on the ideas that have been developed and passed

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to them by others. They do so by further developing their own understandings and enlarging their perspectives. With enlarged perspectives, they create new meanings from their experience. (Thayer-Bacon, 2003, p. 9) Knowing is something that is socially constructed by people who have relationships and connections with each other, the living and the nonliving, and the environment. Knowers are seen as beings with connections to other beings, the spirits of the ancestors, and the world around them that inform what they know and how they can know it. African perspectives view relational epistemology as knowledge that has a connection with the knowers. It is the well-established general beliefs, concepts, and theories of any particular people, which are stored in their language, practices, rituals, proverbs, revered traditions, myths, and folktales. This knowledge is practiced in various fields such as medical science, religion, childcare, agriculture, psychology, and education. This relational epistemology has favorite ways, usually institutionalized in the society, of acquiring new knowledge and evaluating accepted fact; it has accepted authorities (whether people, institutions, or texts) in matters of knowledge and beliefs (Kaphagawani & Malherbe, 2000). Perspectives on relational epistemology from A ­ ustralia and Canada focus on the researched as knowers with a web of connections that inform what they know and how it can be known. Explaining knowing informed by the multiple connections of knowers with other beings and the environment, Deloria (1995) observes, for instance, that indigenous communities gain knowledge and understanding of the world by participating in events and observing nature such as the birds, animals, rivers, and mountains. Wilson (2008) and Getty (2010) add that knowledge comes from the people’s histories, stories, observation of the environment, visions, and spiritual insights. A common thread in postcolonial indigenous relational epistemologies is that knowledge arises out of the people’s relationships and interactions with their particular environments. This view underscores the right of the formerly colonized and indigenous peoples to construct knowledge in accordance with the self-determined definitions of what they want to know and how they want to know it.

RELATIONAL AXIOLOGY In Chapter 2, you learned about the basic tenets of a relational axiology. In this chapter, the discussion is expanded to include how a research with a relational axiology is carried out. The following questions are what we need to ask: From a relational axiology perspective, how is ethical theory and practice in research defined? How can indigenous knowledge shed light on this ethical theory and practice? In Chapter 3, we noted the following limitations of dominant research methodologies: —— The tendency to ignore the role of imperialism, colonization, and globalization in the construction of knowledge —— Academic imperialism—the tendency to denigrate, dismiss, and attempt to quash alternative theories, perspectives, or methodologies

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—— Methodological imperialism—a tendency to build a collection of methods, techniques, and rules that valorize the dominant culture —— The dominance of Euro-Western languages in the construction of knowledge —— The archives of literature that disseminate theories and knowledge that are unfavorable to former colonized societies and historically oppressed groups How does a relational axiology—that is, research guided by the principles of accountable responsibility, respectful representation, reciprocal appropriation, and rights and regulations—address some of the concerns raised in the literature on research on the colonized Other?

A Relational Axiology: African Perspectives The Bantu in southern Africa discuss a relational axiology that is embedded in the Ubuntu relational ontology principles of (1) I am we, I am because we are; (2) relations of people with the living and the nonliving; and (3) spirituality, love, harmony, and community building. From these principles, an ethical framework emerges that emphasizes accountable responsibilities of researchers and respectful relationships between the researchers and the researched and that takes into account the researched web of relationships with the living and the nonliving. Chapter 10 addresses this ethical framework in detail.

RELATIONAL AXIOLOGY: PERSPECTIVES FROM NORTH AMERICA AND CANADA Wilson (2008) and Cora Weber-Pillwax (2001) discuss a relational ontology informed by four principles of accountable responsibility, respectful representation, reciprocal appropriation, and rights and regulations. These principles were defined in Chapter 2 and will be further illustrated in Chapter 10. Weber-Pillwax (2001) suggests that researchers should interrogate their relations with the researched, paying attention to the following: —— The manner in which methods help to build respectful relationships between the topic of study and the researcher —— Ways in which methods help to build respectful relationships between the researcher and the research participants —— Ways in which a researcher can relate respectfully with participants involved in the research so that together they can form strong relationships —— The role and responsibilities of the researcher in the relationship —— The extent to which researchers are being responsible in fulfilling their role and obligations to the participants, to the topic, and to all of the indigenous relations —— The extent to which the researcher is contributing or giving back to the relationship and the extent to which the sharing, growth, and learning that are taking place are reciprocal

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Linda T. Smith (1999), writing on rights, regulations, and relations with the Maori people in New Zealand, proposes that the researcher using an indigenous framework needs to interrogate questions on ownership of research, the interests it serves, the benefits to the researched, and the role of the researched in framing the research, designing the research questions, carrying out the work, writing up the research findings, and disseminating the results. The emphasis is on respectfully involving the researched as coparticipants throughout the research process. To be respectful is to build relationships with the researched. In the Maori culture, respect requires the researchers to begin the research by explaining who they are, where they are from, the purpose of the research, and their interest in the research (Bishop, 2008a, 2008b; Smith, 1999, 2008). Such an approach enables the researcher and the researched to recognize, build, and celebrate respectful relationships and connections that they have with each other. To be respectful also involves developing long-term relationships with the researched (Lavallée, 2009; Moseley, 2007).

Anonymity, Confidentiality, and Relations With People A relational ethical framework moves away from the concept of the researched as participants to the researched as coresearchers. The principle of relations with people also requires that the coresearchers are trained and empowered to participate in the study with the required skills to execute the study efficiently. Rather than keep coresearchers anonymous, there is emphasis on revealing their names so that the knowledge in the study can be traced to its originators. From a relations with people perspective, the information imparted, or story offered, would lose its power without knowledge of the teller; and thus, the reason why the researched do not want to be anonymous.

ACTIVITY 5.2 Read the study extract included here, and answer the following questions:

5. Discuss limitations, if any, in the approaches that Wilson used in the study.

1. Discuss ways in which the research conducted in the context of an indigenous paradigm differs from that conducted within the context of dominant research paradigms.

Source: Drawing from Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Manitoba, Canada: Fernwood. Used by permission.

2. What are the features of storytelling that inform an indigenous research paradigm? 3. How are these features used in the study? 4. What are the ethical principles in an indigenous research paradigm that differ from those from dominant research paradigms?

Purpose of Study There are two goals: (1) to examine how an indigenous paradigm can lead to a better understanding of and provision for the needs of indigenous people and (2) to document the differences indigenous people have in terms of their ontology, methodology, and axiology and how these can lead to research methods that (Continued)

108   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) are more fully integrated with an indigenous worldview. Wilson (2008) notes “I am going to write about an indigenous research paradigm: What it is, why it is important and what it means to me” (p. 13).

Research Questions 1. What are the shared aspects of the ontology, epistemology, axiology, and methodology of research conducted by indigenous scholars in Australia? 2. How can these aspects of an indigenous research paradigm be put into practice to support other indigenous people in their own research?

Literature Review Wilson (2008) notes, “Critiquing others’ work does not fit well within my cultural framework because it does not follow the indigenous axiology of relational accountability. Critiquing or judging would imply that I know more about someone else’s work and the relationships that went into it than they do themselves” (p. 43).

Research Strategy Wilson (2008) observes that the use of an indigenous research paradigm requires the holistic use and transmission of information. Wilson clarifies that the researcher takes the role of storyteller rather than researcher/ author. In storytelling, the storyteller has a relationship with the listener. Wilson notes, “Instead of writing directly to readers, which is difficult without knowing their culture, and context, I choose to write to my children” (p. 9). The text is written in the first and second person, as a reflection of the storytelling tradition. The writing follows a cyclical pattern that introduces ideas or themes, then returns to them at intervals with different levels of understanding as is traditional in a worldview that recognizes the interconnectedness of all things living and nonliving.

Data-Gathering Instruments A combination of methods, including participant observation, interviews with individual participants, and focus group discussions, were used. Talking circles were used as a form of focus group discussions, as well as seminar-style conversations.

Participants Indigenous scholars and the elders are coresearchers. Wilson (2008) describes the relationship that he had with the coresearchers and their relationship to the ideas they shared with him. “Cultural practices include the proper protocol for building of healthy relationships. One important indigenous research practice is the use of family, relations, or friends as intermediaries in order to garner contact with participants. This use of intermediaries has practical uses in establishing rapport with research participants and placing the researcher within a circle of relations. This in turn enforces the accountability of the researcher, as they are responsible not only to themselves but also to the circle of relations. In addition to being a culturally appropriate way of approaching potential participants, the use of an intermediary gives the participant an opportunity to ask candid questions about the nature of the research and the motives behind it” (p. 129).

Ethics On ethics, Wilson (2008) explains, “The ethics involved in an Indigenous research paradigm sometimes differs from the dominant academic way of doing things. I would like to use the real names of everyone I worked with on this research, so that you will know exactly who I am talking about. This goes against the rules of most university ethical research policies. However, how can I be held accountable to the relationships I have with the people if I don’t name them? How can they be held accountable to their own teachers if their words and relationships are deprived of names? What I will do is write

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using the real names of everyone who has given me explicit permission to do so. I will use pseudonyms for anyone who I couldn’t get in touch with to talk about it or who had any misgivings about the use of names” (p. 63). Wilson further clarifies that “participants did not want anonymity because they understood that the information imparted, or story offered, would lose its power without knowledge of the teller. The entire notion of relational accountability would have been lost had I not honored the co-researchers by using their names” (p. 130).

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Analysis Wilson (2008) describes the analysis as collaboration between him and the coresearchers. It was also an ongoing process. Ideas were shared in indigenous research methods seminars and conferences where work on the project was presented. Indigenous protocols in each location where the research was conducted were observed. For instance, permission was requested to conduct the study and to write up the results.

TABLE 5.1  ■ Basic Principles Associated With a Relational Indigenous Research Paradigm How do we capture and interpret a reality that takes into account relations among people, the people’s relation with the living and the nonliving, the cosmos, and a spiritual existence that promotes love and harmony? How can indigenous knowledge shed light on how this reality is captured and interpreted?

1. Reality is collectively constructed, taking into account the web of connection that the people have with the living and the nonliving. 2. Reality should be subjected to a critical analysis that interrogates colonizer/ colonized, researcher/researched relationships. 3. Space for the construction of knowledge (i.e., interviews) is significant in coming to know the reality that is investigated. 4. Indigenous knowledge informs the reality that is known.

How do we capture knowledge that focuses on the formerly colonized and historically oppressed as the knower? How can indigenous knowledge shed light on how this knowledge can be captured and interpreted?

1. Elders are as important as libraries in providing knowledge about a phenomenon. Consultation of elders is vital. 2. Indigenous knowledge plays a vital role in informing theoretical frameworks, research questions, methods of data collection, and ethical protocols. 3. A cyclical approach as opposed to a linear approach to the research process is preferred. (Continued)

110   Indigenous Research Methodologies TABLE 5.1  ■ (Continued) How is ethical theory and practice in research defined? How can indigenous knowledge and the history of colonialism shed light on how this ethical theory and practice are defined?

1. Ethical theory and practice should address the role and responsibilities of the researcher in questioning the hegemonic role of colonialism and imperialism in the construction of knowledge. 2. The research process should be guided by accountable responsibility, respectful representation, reciprocal appropriation, and rights and regulations. 3. The ethical principle of consent should accommodate individual consent, community consent, group consent, and collective consent. 4. The principle of maintaining relations with the knower should be upheld by revealing research participants’ names when they give approval.

In summary, postcolonial indigenous research methodologies include a discussion of ways to 1. Decolonize and indigenize universalized research methodologies so that they are inclusive of indigenous knowledge, languages, worldviews, and philosophies and are respectful of the cultures of the colonized Other 2. Critique and resist colonizing hegemonies and promote liberating research approaches 3. Create new methodologies and methods based on the indigenous knowledge systems, languages, realities, ways of knowing, and value systems of the colonized Other 4. Situate the researcher and involve the researched in the research process so that indigenous voices can be privileged, and research benefits the researched societies

SUMMARY The main emphasis is that postcolonial indigenous research methodologies challenge conventional research methodologies and contribute to alternative methods of doing research that draw from indigenous knowledge systems and the philosophies and worldviews of colonized and historically oppressed societies. Perspectives from Africa and from the indigenous people in Canada and Australia share a common understanding of an indigenous research paradigm informed by a relational ontology, epistemology, and axiology.

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The perspectives recognize a relational existence that promotes relations among people, the living and the nonliving, the environment/land, and the cosmos. Indigenous epistemology is viewed as knowledge that has a relationship with the people and has a place in the culture and the daily life experiences of the people. All perspectives agree to ethical principles that nurture harmony among people and to a relational accountability that emphasizes responsibility of the researchers and the participants to each other and the rest of the community, reciprocity, and rights of the researched to knowledge produced. Table 5.1 shows basic beliefs associated with a relational indigenous research paradigm.

Key Points ——

——

Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies challenge Euro-Western methodologies and contribute to the body of new methods informed by the worldviews and philosophies of the colonized Other. Indigenous knowledges provide the base

from which new concepts, new theories, new forms of analysis, and new forms of methods are envisioned and practiced. ——

Researchers discuss an indigenous research paradigm based on a relational ontology, epistemology, and axiology.

ACTIVITY 5.3 Read the study extract included here, and do the following: 1. From your reading so far and your own understanding of indigenous knowledge, make a list of the different forms of indigenous knowledge and how you would use them in designing a study. 2. Design a study that uses a postcolonial indigenous research methodology framework. 3. Define the term indigenization, and use Adair et al.’s (1993) measure of indigenization to assess indigenization of research in the extract below. Source: Grills, C., & Longshore, D. (1996). Africentrism: Psychometric analysis of a self-report measure. Journal of Black Psychology, 22, 86–106. Used by permission from the Association of Black Psychologists.

Purpose This article describes the development of a self-report measure of Africentrism, defined here as the degree to which a person adheres to the Nguzo Saba (Seven Principles) in African and African American culture. Beginning with a pool of the 25 Likert-type items, the authors tested the two alternative forms of Africentrism measures in a series of studies. The reliability (internal consistency) of the measure was found to be well above the minimum criterion for the purpose of group comparisons. Indicators of construct validity and known groups validity were also favorable. The authors recommend a 15-item version of the measure for future testing and conclude with hypotheses regarding the importance of Africentrism in assessing ­African-centered interventions. (Continued)

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Background Efforts to assess the effectiveness of culture-based services will require tools by which the cultural characteristics of groups and individuals can be measured. If practitioners know the status of their clients on cultural characteristics considered relevant to effectiveness, culture-based services can be targeted more wisely. If individual-level variability in cultural characteristics can be measured, researchers will be able to conduct more sensitive tests of culture-based services by treating these characteristics as blocking variables or covariates in outcome analyses. This article describes our progress in developing a self-report measure of Africentrism, defined as the degree to which a person adheres to the Nguzo Saba (Seven Principles) in African and African American culture. In a series of four studies involving African Americans and whites, we evaluated the reliability and validity of two alternate forms of our Africentrism measure and concluded that a 15-item form is optimal for future testing.

Method Our purpose, then, was to create a measure that would be broadly Africentric in its content and readily understandable by persons with a wide range of educational experience. In addition, we wanted the Africentrism measure to be brief so it could be added to existing protocols for client assessment or research without creating an undue time burden. We also wanted the measure to be easy to administer. If completed by staff, it should require no special training. Ideally, however, clients should be able to complete

it on their own. This section describes the initial development of items to be included in the measure and the criteria we used to assess its psychometric properties. Because the Nguzo Saba represent a simple but comprehensive statement of Africentrism, they served as our guidelines for item development. Working from various statements of the Nguzo Saba (Karenga 1988a; Madhubuti, 1972; Perkins, 1992) and related constructs such as African-centered cultural precepts (Nobles & ­Goddard, 1993), we created a pool of 25 Likert type items—one or more meant to represent each principle in the Nguzo Saba. Response options were 1 (Strongly disagree), 2 (Disagree), 3 (Agree), and 4 (Strongly agree). To minimize the possibility of a response set, we worded some items positively so that agreement indicated views inconsistent with Africentrism.

Conclusion Form A and Form B appear reliable for the purpose of measuring differences in Africentrism between groups of African Americans. Both forms were readily understood by respondents and can be administered by interviews or self-administered within three to four minutes. Findings on validity also seem favorable to justify further work with this measure. Although Form C was not tested in the field, we believe it should be the focus of further psychometric testing. It is a minor revision of Form A, which was field-tested in three studies. Also, because the 15 items on Form C were drawn from Form A, not Form B, Form C retains specific relevance to African Americans.

Suggested Readings Battiste, M. (2000). Reclaiming indigenous voice and vision. Vancouver, Canada: UBC Press. Caballero, B. (2007). Ethical issues for collaborative research in developing countries. Retrieved from at http://www. ajcn.Org.

Chilisa, B. (2009). Indigenous African-centered ethics: Contesting and complementing dominant models. In D. M. Mertens & P. E. Ginsberg (Eds.), The handbook of social science research ethics. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Chilisa, B., & Preece, J. (2005). Research methods for adult educators in Africa. Cape Town, South Africa: Pearson. Ellis, J. B., & Earley, M. A. (2006). Reciprocity and constructions of informed consent: Researching with indigenous populations. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 5(4). Hoppers, C. A. (Ed.). (2002). Indigenous knowledge and the integration of knowledge systems. Claremont, South Africa: New Africa Books. Goduka, I. N. (2000). African/indigenous philosophies: Legitimizing spiritually centered wisdoms within the academy. In P. Higgs, N. C. G. Vakalisa, T. V. Mda, & N. T. Assie-Lumumba (Eds.), African voices in education (pp. 63–83). Lansdowne, South Africa: Juta. Gonzalez, M. C. (2000). The four seasons of ethnography: A creation-centered ontology for ethnography. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 24, 623–650. Kaphagawani, D., & Malherbe, J. (2000). Africa epistemology. In P. H. Coetzee & A. P. J. Roux (Eds.), Philosophy from Africa: A text with readings (pp. 205–216). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

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Louis, R. P. (2006). Can you hear us now? Voices from the margin: Using indigenous methodologies in geographic research. Geographic Research, 45(2), 130–139. Louw, D. J. (2001). Ubuntu: An African assessment of the religious order. Retrieved September 27, 2001, from http://www. bu. edu/wcp/papers/ Afrlouw.htm. Manuelito, K. (2004). An indigenous perspective on self-determination. In K. Mutua & B. B. Swadener (Eds.), Decolonizing research in cross-cultural contexts: Critical personal narratives. Albany: State University of New York Press. Porsanger, J. (2004). An essay about indigenous methodology. NORDLIT, 15, 105–120. Rigney, L. (1999). Internationalization of an indigenous anticolonial cultural critique of research methodologies. Wicazo Sa Review, 14(2). Sefa Dei, G., Hall, B., & Rosenberg, D. (2002). Indigenous knowledges in global contexts: Multiple readings of our world. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Manitoba, Canada: Fernwood.

6 DECOLONIZING EVALUATION Many tribes place a strong value on sacred sites and spiritual practice. Because Western research and evaluation paradigms tend to see Science and faith in mutually exclusive ways or ways that prioritise Science over faith, this can cause tension in the evaluation process. Western philosophies are also often anthropocentric—prioritising human over animal relations and sacred places, or refusing to recognise the nama or spiritual energy in things non-human. Katie Johnston-Goodstar (2012)

All evaluation is value based and representative of particular value commitments. “Appropriateness,” then must take account of the social, cultural, and political context of the location where evaluative work occurs, as well as the social location of the evaluator Hayley M. Cavino (2013)

Overview Of utmost important to the evaluation field is the extent to which evaluators demonstrate cultural competence; acknowledge the complexity of cultural identity; recognize the dynamics of power; recognize and eliminate bias in language; and employ culturally appropriate options and evaluation frameworks emanating from indigenous value systems, epistemologies, and realities. Indigenous evaluators are talking back to the evaluation profession challenging the hegemony that still dominates who can evaluate, what can be evaluated, and with what methodologies (Cavino, 2013). The chapter situates evaluation in the formerly colonized within the global discourse on decolonization of evaluation. 114

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this chapter you should be able to do the following: 1. Debate how evaluation can address the interests, needs, and culture of the formerly marginalized societies and still remain connected to international and global dynamics and good practices. 2. Critique the universal application of evaluation tools across diverse contexts. 3. Apply indigenous worldviews, values, and epistemologies to the evaluation process. 4. Apply cultural validity to the evaluation process.

Before You Start Read this story excerpt, and discuss any similar situations you have observed or heard about. In the village of Shakawe in Northern Botswana, the government introduced and distributed chickens in an effort to alleviate poverty. The sponsor deemed the project a success. Within three months, all the chickens had disappeared. The community members quipped, “We did not need chickens; we needed boats to go fishing.”

WHY EVALUATION Well-performed evaluation is expected to inform development planning and outcome. The evaluation should focus on the contribution of development to the world of individuals, their relatives, others, and the environment upon which they depend (Bellagio ­Leaders Forum, 2012). Thus, it should generally contribute to societal progress by providing invaluable information to policy and decision makers and advancing understanding of how development can best be approached globally. There is also mounting evidence that evaluation is globally being embraced as witnessed by the following: —— The declaration of 2015 as the Year of Evaluation by EvalPartners and its inclusion in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, reinforced by the UN General Assembly Declaration and the subsequent launch of the Eval Agenda 2020 (https://evalpartners.org/global-evaluation-agenda) —— The explosion in the evaluation profession worldwide, particularly in the Global South —— The growing interest in the private sector in measuring social impact —— The need for increased evidence-based policy design and implementation

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Despite the important role that evaluation plays in development, like research, it has become a colonial prejudice that reinforces uneven and biased power relations (Bowman & Dodge-Francis, 2018; Cavino, 2013; Held, 2019). In their concept paper, the South to South Cooperation (2018) authors noted the following: —— There is a lingering perception that everything that comes from the Global North is superior and scientifically more robust, encouraging the Global South to be a passive recipient of “tried and tested” evaluation theories and practices. —— There is a dearth of visible original work in the Global South, thus, commissioned evaluations, M&E systems, and education in evaluation continue to be informed by dominant paradigms from the Global North. —— Evaluation viewed through the lenses of the Global North does not attend sufficiently to the intricate contextual issues shaped by societal cultures and traditions in the Global South. —— Many practitioners use frameworks developed by funders and commissioners with a narrow focus on results and without engaging with the approaches that can inform the customization of their data collection and analysis to local contexts and societal cultures. —— Capacity strengthening tends to transfer knowledge from the Global North, and those who teach have been steeped in ideologies and frameworks from the latter, while few academic institutions in the Global South see evaluation as a legitimate area of study and work. Fresh perspectives, novel ideas, and inspiring innovations are thus severely limited. The terms South or Global South are defined as developing countries that are located primarily in the Southern Hemisphere. South-South cooperation thus refers to collaboration among developing countries in the political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, and technical domains (South to South Corporation, 2018). The Global South to South perceptions are reinforced by other voices from around the world as follows: —— There is blind reliance on Eurocentric models, strategies, techniques, and research methods that often lead to inadequate assessments, wrong prescriptions, and flat evaluation models (Jeng, 2012). —— The bulk of evaluation in low- and middle-income countries are on aid programs or small-scale philanthropic projects that do not necessarily translate into successful scalable national development program interventions (Ofir & Shiva Kumar, 2012). —— Evaluation is dominated by external evaluators often ignorant of the context and culture of the people. —— The focus is on evaluation outcomes as defined by the sponsors at the expense of the beneficiaries’ views on what counts as program success.

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—— Donors use their own evaluation systems rather than country systems to ensure visibility of their efforts (Leautier, 2012). —— Programs implemented are either of no relevance or are not a priority to the communities. —— Communities have no voice in the initiation of the programs, their goals, purposes and the evaluation designs, implementation, methodology, or analysis and reporting. —— Evaluation reports and recommendations are submitted to the funders in formats that they require and, in most cases, not submitted to the communities —— Mainstream evaluators fail to address the broader struggles of indigenous people which include sovereignty, self-determination, and decolonization (Cavino, 2013). Elsewhere, Chilisa, Major, Gaotlhobogwe, and Mokgolodi (2017) noted that evaluation is a lens through which judgments are made and standards set about what should be considered to be real program outcomes, knowledge that measures that reality, and the values that support the practice. In developing countries, it has become the worst instrument of epistemological imperialism: an attempt to determine the kinds of facts to be gathered, the appropriate techniques for gathering and theorizing the data, and r­ eporting on it. Unlike research where there is a choice on using knowledge that is generated, evaluation has as one of its objectives accountability and utilization of evaluation results. As a practice, evaluation makes compelling judgments about the realities considered as relevant to measure accountability and ways to improve interventions and thus contribute to development. Indigenous scholars are challenging the way evaluation research is conducted and calling for extending the decolonization and indigenization of methodologies to the evaluation discipline. From the previous chapters, we note the following: —— Paradigms inform the methodologies and methods, research processes, priorities, choices, actions, and dissemination of research findings. Consequently, evaluators need to engage with paradigms that inform their evaluation methodologies. —— Indigenous paradigms need their own space so that they can engage with Western approaches (Held, 2019; Kovach, 2009; Romm, 2018; Wilson, 2008). There is a need to locate indigenous evaluation in its paradigmatic space. —— Indigenous pathways to research emanate from indigenous worldviews, philosophies, and indigenous knowledge not available to nonindigenous research. There is need to identify evaluation frameworks that emanate from the philosophies and value systems of indigenous peoples. —— A methodology separated from its overarching paradigm is not sufficient for decolonization (Held, 2019; Kovach, 2009; Romm, 2018; Walter & Andersen 2013; Wilson, 2008). A predominantly indigenous evaluation approach assumes evaluation practices informed by an indigenous paradigm or worldview.

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—— Relationality is a common element across indigenous worldviews; hence, we can talk of a relational indigenous paradigm with shared philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and values. Refer to Chapter 2. —— Within a relational indigenous paradigm are worldviews specific to the histories, experiences, and cultural beliefs and practices of indigenous peoples that should guide methodologies. Refer to Chapter 5.

EVALUATION DISCOURSE IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT Evaluation theory and methodology has been aligned to the four research paradigms, namely, the postpositivist, the constructivist, the pragmatic, and the transformative paradigms discussed in Chapter 2. Each of the four paradigms is linked to an evaluation branch under the evaluation tree metaphor. There are four branches associated with the big four paradigms discussed in Chapter 2. Carden and Alkin (2012) articulate three branches, namely the use, methods, and valuing and proposes a fourth branch that they call context. Mertens and Wilson (2019) have articulated four branches, namely use, methods, valuing, and the social justice branches. In this chapter, a fifth evaluation branch called needs and context is suggested under a postcolonial indigenous paradigm. See Figure 6.1. Selecting an evaluation tree branch that will guide your study is an important step in designing the evaluation. Within each tree branch are different models and frameworks that guide the evaluation. When evaluation in the contexts of the marginalized people of FIGURE 6.1  ■  A Five-Branch Tree of Evaluation Approaches

Needs and context Use Methods

Values Social justice

Social accountability, fiscal control, and social inquiry

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the world, including Africans, indigenous people of Canada, Australia, Asia, and North America, is discussed, often the questions are on the contributions to the field of evaluation originating from these contexts. In this debate, Carden and Alkin (2012) classify the common approaches used in the Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC) under three branches, use, methods, and valuing, according to whether they were transferred from the global North; they were adapted to suit the sociocultural, political, and ecological setting or they originated in these countries.

Postpositivism and the Methods Branch Here the focus is on quantitative methods that can measure the merit or worth of a program. The logical framework and the International Initiative on Impact Evaluation (3ie; https://www.3ieimpact.org) are examples of quantitative methods that were transferred to LMIC. The 3ie focuses on conducting experiments and quasi-experiments to measure project impacts. The randomized control designs are common in this approach. The main criticism of these designs is that coming from the postpositivist perspective, the approach requires the evaluator to narrow the evaluation questions to what is measurable and quantifiable. The complexity of social problems, diversity of contexts, relationships, and connections of human beings to one another and to the ecological systems is peripheral to the evaluation process. These approaches were transferred to LMIC, and many bilateral development agencies and multilateral development banks, for example, the World Bank, require its use without any adaptation to the diverse contexts under which interventions are implemented (Carden & Alkin, 2012).

Pragmatism and the Use Branch The focus is on data that are useful to the stakeholders. Mixed methods designs are preferred over other methods. A common tool used in the developed countries under this branch is the logical framework. The logical framework is a results-based management tool with a focus on ensuring that the results of the evaluation are used. Carden and Alkin (2012) refer to it as an example of a tool that was transferred to the LMIC with very little adaptation.

Constructivism and the Value Branch The value branch focuses on identifying multiple values and perspectives by using predominantly qualitative approaches. Carden and Alkin (2012) identify participatory rural appraisal approaches as examples of valuing methods used in LMIC. Participatory research methods are discussed in Chapter 12. These approaches, although developed in the Global North, have been adapted for use in LMIC.

The Transformative Paradigm and the Social Justice Branch Mertens and Wilson (2019) have added the social justice branch to the tree. This framework promotes the views and voices of marginalized groups on diverse issues that include human rights, gender, equality, race/ethnicity asymmetries, and geopolitical

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power imbalances. For example, whose voice is heard when the majority of evaluators in Africa are from the Global North? Mertens and Wilson (2019) argue that evaluation frameworks by scholars from Africa and indigenous scholars of Canada, Australia, Asia, and North America not visible in the evaluation tree metaphor by Carden and Alkin (2012) fit in the social justice branch.

The Postcolonial Indigenous Paradigm and the Needs and Context Branch Culture and indigenous worldviews, philosophies, paradigms, and knowledge not available to nonindigenous research should inform the realities that we seek to articulate. There are emerging indigenous evaluation approaches with clear roots in the culture, philosophy, history, and experiences of the people. These frameworks clearly call for an evaluation approach that begins by questioning who initiated the programs, the priorities addressed by the programs, and the programs’ cultural and contextual appropriateness. They fit in the context branch suggested by Carden and Alkin (2012). Culture infuses all contexts, while context grounds all aspects of the evaluation (LaFrance, Nichols, & Kirkhart, 2012). In line with the focus on culture and context, indigenous evaluators discuss culturally responsive indigenous evaluation (CRIE) (Bowman & Dodge-Francis, 2018) and evaluations informed by indigenous paradigms and worldviews. Rog (2012) has identified four aspects of context, namely problem context, intervention context, setting evaluation context, and decision-making context. CRIE recognizes that demographic, sociopolitical, and contextual dimensions, locations, perspectives, and characteristics of culture matter in evaluation. CRIE addresses issues of context and intersectionality by questioning how multiple forms of inequality and identity interrelate in different contexts and over time. Culturally responsive indigenous evaluation frameworks call for use of evaluation tools and frameworks that are informed by indigenous communities’ world­ views and cultures. What I have found interesting is that when indigenous scholars from North America and Canada address context in evaluation, they note the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. The declaration calls for addressing the minimal standards for the survival, dignity, and well-being of indigenous people. Despite this declaration, mainstream evaluation hardly addresses the core issues of indigenous communities such as sovereignty, self-determination, and decolonization of the evaluation process (Cavino, 2013). To locate the discourse on indigenous evaluation in a new branch is thus to situate indigenous research and evaluation in its own paradigmatic space to enable a dialogue with nonindigenous paradigms.

BLIND RELIANCE ON EUROCENTRIC TOOLS As already noted, one of the widely used evaluation tools transferred from North A ­ merica and Europe for use by donor agencies in assessing aid flows is the logical framework. In its simplest form, the logical framework is a 4x4 matrix with vertical and horizontal columns. The vertical columns depict goal, purpose, output, and activities, while the horizontal columns represent project description, objective verifiable indicators, means of verification, and risks and assumptions. It is a useful tool that helps to comprehend

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the intervention objectives, activities, and inputs. It delineates how target values and measurement tools are selected. It further identifies the external environment factors that may hinder the realization of objectives, activities, and outputs. The logic frame, however, can also serve as an example of how evaluation tools can reinforce relations of power and control (Chambers & Pettit, 2004). It reinforces unequal power relations between the donors and the aid recipients. For example, it inhibits process and participation through donor-induced meetings on the logical frame that hardly include the disempowered recipients, for example, the poor in poverty reduction interventions. Its focus on one single core problem of the intervention constrains the evaluation process given the multiple changing realities of a complex world. It is gender, context, and culturally insensitive. Its prolonged use in developing countries despite the frustration it generates is an indication of the silencing power of the aid agencies ­(Chambers & Pettit, 2004). The logic frame is but one tool put in place by many bilateral and multilateral agencies that fund development projects in the Global South or the developing world. When used in their original form without adaptation, which is common practice, they become a form of technology transfer from North America and Europe to the Other. At times, they present a singular approach for all activities in an intervention.

ACTIVITY 6.1 Read an extract of the hypothetical water project that used the logic frame for planning, monitoring, and evaluation, and answer questions that follow

The Water Project Development workers identified an impoverished peripheral community with poor access to water. A donor agency contracted a nongovernmental organization (NGO) to develop and deliver water supplies. The local government authority considered the project to be valuable. The logic frame reiterated the overarching goal as contributing to alleviating poverty through enhanced health, resulting from improved water supply. The outputs contributing to achieving this purpose were improved access to better-quality water, the establishment of a water users’ committee, and a sustainable system of maintenance by community members to support water delivery. Specific and verifiable activities included enclosing and

fencing off a spring on a nearby hill; constructing two large water-­storage tanks; laying pipes with taps to 50 household clusters; and employing a part-time maintenance officer to keep everything in working order. Project funds were disbursed on time, and some community members worked hard to assist with laying pipes and taps to their homes. Community ownership seemed to be present; all looked on track. A week after the keys to the fenced-in water tanks were handed to the village head, some peripheral pipes had been cut, with valuable water flowing away; a few taps were opened overnight, and the tank’s enclosure fence was cut with wire clippers; animals shared the water with the community; and young men from up the hill were seen milling around in the early morning.

What Went Wrong? The project team knew that the village was of mixed ethnicity, but they did not realize that the (Continued)

122   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) villagers living in the area where the tube wells had been sunk and the water tanks placed were members of the same ethnic clan as the village head. The fenced-off spring at the hilltop was in the subvillage of the other community, those of a different ethnic background from the ­v illage head. The leader of those from the hilltop explained that his ancestors had always recognized that the water needed to be protected and revered, that it was a communal resource, and it had always been available to any locals or visitors prepared to trek up the hill to get it. Community members near the spring at the hilltop and on the upper slopes complained that they had lost access, and furthermore, that their homes on the hillside were not among those chosen for receiving piped water, which was available farther down the hill. No recognition of those who had protected the source of the water for hundreds of years had been given, and the ancestors of those on the hilltop were angry. Still further complications were identified. The person employed to do the maintenance was the nephew of the village head. The water users’ committee comprised members, mostly men, who were from the same clan as the village head, plus only one member of the other ethnic community—a

local shopkeeper who had negotiated for the provision of water near his shop and small tearoom. There were more and more problems unfolding: Women from both communities had no say in the ongoing management of the resource. Source: Grove, N. J., & Anthony, B. (2008). Beyond the logic frame: A new tool for examining health and peace building initiatives. Development in Practice, 18(1), 66–81.

1. Draw the logic frame, and fill the 4x4 matrix using information in this hypothetical project. 2. Discuss gender and cultural sensitivity in this project. 3. Discuss the danger of treating diverse communities as if they are the same. 4. What is the role of spirituality and cultural taboos in this project? How can they be factored into the evaluation of projects? 5. What would have been the best way to plan, monitor, and evaluate this project? 6. Demonstrate how the logic frame can be adapted to make it gender and culturally responsive to the needs of the stakeholders and clients.

THE SHIFT IN EVALUATION PRACTICE It is clear from this case study that context plays an important function in evaluation. The role of context in evaluation has been a subject of discussion as demonstrated by Stufflebeam’s Context Input Process Product model; Stake’s responsive evaluation model; Weiss on the social context of program evaluation; Wholey’s work on m ­ anagers and ­decision-making context; and Patton’s text on organizational contexts (Fitzpatrick, 2012). These contextual factors were aimed to give voice to managers and program participants and to increase the use of evaluation findings. Pawson and Tiley (1997) developed an evaluation model that used context to explain differences. Today’s issues of context include the following: —— In developing countries, problematizing evaluation that is sometimes viewed as a Western notion imposed by former colonial powers —— Sovereignty, self-determination, and decolonization of the evaluation process (Cavino, 2013)

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—— Design and framing of evaluation informed by indigenous philosophies and worldviews and theoretical frameworks that include a decolonization discourse There has thus been a shift toward requiring evaluation to consider context and cultural sensitivity, awareness, competence, and responsiveness. The American Evaluation Association (AEA), for instance, in 2011 adopted a statement on cultural competence in evaluation. The statement noted that the evaluation profession suffers from a history of the use of inappropriate evaluation methods among indigenous nations and developing countries driven by Western thought. To ensure recognition, accurate interpretation, and respect for diversity, evaluators should ensure that the members of the evaluation team collectively demonstrate cultural competence, acknowledge the complexity of cultural identity, recognize the dynamics of power, recognize and eliminate bias in language, and employ culturally appropriate options. The notion of cultural competence is, however, still steeped in Western hegemony (Cavino, 2013). Cavino (2013) notes that competency is predominantly understood as the possession and demonstration of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are needed for the level of performance of the evaluator. This definition of competency has invariably focused on access to indigenous participants, subject programs, or knowledge systems, ignoring issues of accountability to the communities and use of indigenous research and evaluation frameworks and methodologies to initiate meaningful change. Evaluation in colonized spaces requires the design and framing of evaluation informed by indigenous philosophies and worldviews and theoretical frameworks that include a ­decolonization discourse and indigenous theory (Laenui, 2000; Smith, 1999; Wilson, 2008); postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and tribal critical theory (Bowman & Dodge-­ Francis, 2018); and postcolonial indigenous feminisms (see Chapters 2 and 13). In North America, among indigenous nations, there were efforts to articulate indigenous research and evaluation approaches (Chouinard & Cousins, 2009; LaFrance & Nichols, 2010; LaFrance, Nichols, & Kirkhart, 2012; Smith, 1999). The formerly colonized of the world, including Africans and indigenous people of Canada, Australia, Asia, and North America, are exploring ways to decolonize and indigenize evaluation by pushing for evaluation that does not only inquire about societies and communities but also views ecosystems and global systems as essential components that should shape how we conceptualize evaluation. Leading professional associations such as the African Evaluation Association (AEA) Aoteore New Zealand Evaluation (ANZEA), and the Canadian Evaluation Society (CES) continue to push the boundaries of evaluation to avoid the “sameness” syndrome and to bring to the center of evaluation context issues, culture, and power relations. There is a need to address complexity in global evaluation. In Africa, the AEA called for an evaluation agenda that prioritizes e­ valuation for development supported by evaluation frameworks and techniques that are rooted in African worldviews, African development, Africa’s vision, models of poverty reduction that go beyond poverty reduction schemes, and Africa’s models that show respect for human dignity. There is an emphasis on an evaluation theory of change that is informed by w ­ orldviews that see interconnectedness between the people and the environment, is rational, and, at the same time, mystical and spiritual (Chilisa et al., 2017). Johnston-Goodstar (2012), writing from Canada, calls for indigenous evaluation with a cultural lens and evaluation approaches embedded in indigenous worldviews/paradigms that consider identity, epistemology, and spirituality. He contends that indigenous evaluation should be situated in the context of a specific place, time, and community. Programs should be understood within

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their relationship to place, setting, and community, and evaluations should be planned, undertaken, and validated in relation to cultural context. What follows is a discussion of perspectives on decolonizing evaluation using a paradigmatic lens and culturally responsive indigenous frameworks and models arising from indigenous paradigms and worldviews. Evaluation paradigmatic perspectives from Africa and Asia are discussed as well as culturally responsive indigenous evaluation frameworks and indigenous multicultural validity.

Culture and Context Evaluation Models: Context First Approach LaFrance et al. (2012), have proposed a context-first evaluation approach based on the indigenous knowledge and worldviews of the American Indian Communities. They note that the framework is defined by context and understood within it. It defines the ­epistemology, methodology, and method and thus it adopts a “context-first approach.” Figure 6.2 illustrates the model.

FIGURE 6.2  ■  Indigenous Evaluation Model US KNOWLED IGENO GE IND

KE

EN

BUILDING THE SCAFFOLDING

IG N

PLANNING, IMPLEMENTING AND CELEBRATING

O

GI

S

M U NIT Y

PE R

COM

S VE TI EC SP

F

TS

M U LT IPL E

RE

CREATING THE STORY

VE

ENGAGING COMMUNITY AND CELEBRATING LEARNING

TY

ION AT RV SE OB

PLACE

DIVIDUAL EXPER ND IN IEN LA CE A UN M M CO

ULTURAL VA EC LU R ES CO

Source: LaFrance, J., Nichols, R., & Kirkhart, K. E. (2012). Culture writes the script: On the centrality of contexts in indigenous evaluation. In D. J. Rog, J. L. Fitzpatrick, & R. F. Conner (Eds.), Context: A framework for its influence on evaluation practice. New Directions for Evaluation, 135, 59-74.

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In the outer circle, indigenous knowledge, which includes empirical knowledge and careful observation from multiple perspectives, provides the foundation for understanding the world through the culture of the people. Place, gifts, community, and sovereignty are the core values that inform the evaluation process, its implementation methodology, methods, and dissemination. The inner circle in the model reveals the centrality of story and method in guiding the design of evaluation in ways that  respect tribal values and takes into account culture and community considerations.

Perspectives From the American Indian Higher Education Consortium: An Indigenous Evaluation Framework The American Indian Higher Education Consortium (ALHEC), consisting of 34 Indian tribally controlled colleges and universities, has articulated an indigenous evaluation framework bringing together indigenous ways of knowing and Western evaluation practice. The framework is an attempt to counter or refute the deficit-based Western-based evaluation practice that is associated with criticisms and stories of ­ ­deficiencies and failings of indigenous peoples. Evaluation as taught in a Western tradition defines judgment and success by Western standards and fails to r­ ecognize strength in the communities. The history of this failure to serve ­communities should be recognized in evaluation practice and evaluation redefined so as to emphasize a movement from that of conveying judgment to that of viewing ­evaluation as an opportunity for learning. The proposed framework promotes evaluation that responds to indigenous people’s concerns for usefulness of projects, restoration and ­preservation of values and culture, recognizes sovereignty, and is grounded in i­ndigenous ­epistemologies (LaFrance & Nichols, 2010). Five core values are p­ roposed to guide the evaluation. See table 6.1 What follows is a discussion of Five four values. People of Place.  There is emphasis on indigenous knowledge as intimately connected to the natural world. It encompasses learning about the place of the people within it and the people’s relationship to the land. This connectedness to the environment is similar to African perspectives on people’s relationships to the environment that include the living and the nonliving. Some narratives generate knowledge on the history of communities. Recognizing Gifts.  This core value emphasizes the importance of respect for the uniqueness of every context and the need to value their gifts. People are also expected to nurture the relationships they have with the universe and to maintain harmony and balance with nature. Evaluation thus considers the well-being in addition to uniqueness of every individual or situation. This requires multiple ways of measuring accomplishment in every situation or person. The evaluation of a student’s progress, for example, will require that student growth is valued regardless of whether it meets the normative standard, including his or her sense of responsibility toward his or her accomplishment. Centrality of Community and Family.  Family and community are core elements of one’s personal identity. Introductions, for example, include acknowledging tribal background,

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lineage, ancestry, and kinship affiliation. The indigenous protocol of research participants introducing themselves has become a common practice in indigenous research (Drahm-Butler, 2016; Goduka & Chilisa, 2016; Karen, 2003). The narratives provide information about one’s physical space, cultural location, ecological connection, and TABLE 6.1  ■  Core Values and Evaluation Practice Core Values

Indigenous Evaluation Practice

Indigenous knowledge creation context is critical

• Evaluation itself becomes part of context; it is not an external function. • Evaluation needs to attend to the relationship between the program and community. • If specific variables are to be analyzed, care must be taken to do so without ignoring the contextual situation.

People of place

• Honor the place-based nature of many programs. • Situate the program by describing its relationship to the community, including its history, current situation, and the individuals affected. • Respect that what occurs in one place may not be easily transferred to other situations or places.

Recognizing our gifts— personal sovereignty

• • • •

Centrality of community and family

• Engage the community, not only the program, when planning and implementing an evaluation. • Use participatory practices that engage stakeholders. • Make evaluation processes transparent. • Understand that programs may focus not only on individual achievement but also on restoring community health and well-being.

Tribal sovereignty

• • • •

Consider the whole person when assessing merit. Allow for creativity and self-expression. Use multiple ways to measure accomplishment. Make connection to accomplishment and responsibility.

Ensure tribal ownership and control of data. Follow tribal institutional review board processes. Build capacity in the community. Secure proper permission if future publishing is expected. • Report in ways meaningful to tribal audiences as well as funders.

Source: LaFrance, J., & Nichols, R. (2010). Reframing evaluation: Defining an indigenous evaluation framework. The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 23(2), 13–31.

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relationships to others and to the living and the nonliving (Chilisa et al., 2017). This can be part of the process of preserving and restoring peoples’ cultures. Sovereignty.  There is emphasis on tribal sovereignty derived from a sense of place, language, history, and culture. It is an expression of Indian people’s ongoing nationhood and the quest to reclaim indigenous knowledge as part of tribal sovereignty.

Evaluation Perspective From Hawaii and Aotearoa: The value Added Approach Kawakami (2007) articulates an indigenous evaluation framework that promotes the practice of indigenous worldviews, facilitates collaboration that embraces cultural and academic perspectives, and views and implements projects in the context of specific place, time, community, and history. The framework discusses indigenous perspectives on community culture, value of projects, and indigenous worldviews. Kawakami (2007) advocates for new and expansive paradigms that value cultural identity, relationships, sense of place, and projects’ immediate and long-term contributions and service to the community. According to the framework, evaluation must be implemented as holistic and contextualized as specific to a place, time, community, and history. It should promote and practice indigenous worldviews and consider indigenous identity, epistemology, value, and spirituality. The framework encourages collaboration that brings together complementary knowledge from the community with that from the academia (Kawakami, 2007). In the framework, value added by community projects is an important component of the approach. To add value to the community, the project should be culturally relevant and historically meaningful. To assess value added, evaluators should therefore inquire if the community members initiated and designed the project, determined the data collection methods, and were involved in the analysis of the data. Value added should go beyond a narrow cost-benefit perspective that is limited to review of financial activity; attainment or nonattainment of stated objectives, benchmarks, and timelines; and student test scores, completion of written deliverable products, and dissemination plans. Value added should be assessed by investigating the spiritual elements at play within a program and their possible influence in achieving the project outcomes either as defined by funder or community. Context of individuals and groups must play an important role in defining and achieving success. Table 6.2 contrasts the methodology in an indigenous evaluation framework with that primarily practiced in mainstream evaluation. It focuses on who designs the project; its purpose and goals; and the driving question in the project, the methodology, data collection methods, analysis, format of presenting the findings, how findings are disseminated, and impact in terms of value added for the community. The main emphasis is that communities should initiate their programs and set their program goals based on their priorities and needs to promote sustainable benefits over time.

128   Indigenous Research Methodologies TABLE 6.2  ■  A Conceptual Framework for Indigenous Evaluation Practice Functions

Primarily Indigenous (includes some mainstream and adds dimensions)

Primarily Practiced Mainstream

Purpose and Goals

Set by community agenda

Externally generated

Driving question

Has the community been affected in a positive way as a result of the program/ project/initiative?

Have proposal goals/objectives been met?

Methodology

Quantitative, qualitative, and more

Primarily quantitative

Data

Multiple measures and sources of data that include spiritual, cultural, historical, social, emotional, cognitive, and theoretical situated information.

Objective decontextualized data.

Graphics, narratives, culturally created manifestations oli (chant), and hula “valid” to that place.

Objective validity and reliability. Statistical significance and effect size.

Analysis

Cultural and environmental significance

Statistical and practical significance and effect size

Format for Findings

Narrative, mo’olelo (stories), relationships, photos, DVDs, CDs, videos

Written reports, charts, tables, graphs, databases

Conclusions and Recommendations

To promote courtesy, findings shared among community, evaluator, and funder.

Fulfillment of contract. Submitted to funder.

Revised community agenda. Impact

Value added, lessons learned, clarity empowerment

Revised funding priorities

Source: Kawakami, A. J. (2007). Improving the practice of evaluation through indigenous values and methods: Decolonizing evaluation practice—Returning the gaze from Hawaii and AOTEAROA. Multi-Disciplinary Research on Hawaiian Well-Being, 4(1), 319-347.

TABLE 6.3  ■  Evolution of the CRE Model Western Paradigm

Indigenous Paradigm

Blended CRIE Model Framework

Strengths, skills, and capacities

Relation and community building

Building community through sharing knowledge and strengths, using a strength-based approach

Challenges and barriers

Using your teachings

Seeing challenges as opportunities for applying teachings and community problem-solving activities

Gaps and needs

Humility and balance

Addressing needs and gaps by humbly asking for help, codeveloping solutions, and restoring balance

Solutions and strategies

Visioning and pathfinding

Using community and experiential knowledge to document evidence-based practices that guide decision making and a future sustainable vision

Source: Bowman, N., Mohican& Dodge-Francis, C. (2018). Culturally responsive indigenous evaluation and tribal governments: Understanding the relationship. In F. Cram, K. A Tibbetts, & J. LaFrance (Eds.), Indigenous evaluation. New Directions for Evaluation, 159, 17–31.

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ACTIVITY 6.2 Read the article Bowman, N., Mohican/Lunaape, & Dodge-Francis, C. (2018). Culturally responsive indigenous evaluation and tribal governments: Understanding the relationship. In F. Cram, K. A.

Tibbetts, & J. LaFrance (Eds.), Indigenous Evaluation. New Directions for Evaluation, 159, 17-31. Debate whether the blended CRIE model framework can be applied in your contexts.

Blended Culturally Responsive Indigenous Evaluation In Chapter 2, it was noted that there is a view that indigenous research and evaluation should be incorporated within the transformative paradigm (Cram & Mertens, 2015). Others (Held, 2019; Romm, 2018; Wilson, 2008) propose that the indigenous paradigms should be allowed to occupy their own space. Supporting this, Johnson and Stefurak (2013) have argued that it is possible for researchers to conduct research using different paradigms simultaneously, a stance they call dialectical pluralism. Bowman and Dodge-Francis (2018) present a culturally indigenous evaluation that integrates elements of an indigenous paradigm with that of a Western paradigm. Table 6.3 shows the elements in an indigenous paradigm and a Western paradigm and elements in the blended culturally responsive indigenous evaluation model that is a combination of the two paradigms. Bowman and Dodge Francis suggest that while the model was designed in a U.S. context, it can be applied globally.

Decolonizing Evaluation Through a Paradigmatic Lens: The Eastern Paradigm Craig Russon (2008) discussed an Eastern paradigm of evaluation informed by five axioms originated by Guba and Lincoln (2005), namely the nature of reality, inquirer-objective relationship, the nature of truth, attribution, and the role of ­values in inquiry. Assumptions about these ­a xioms inform the Eastern paradigm of evaluation.

Nature of Reality Russon (2008) contends that from an Eastern paradigm of evaluation, reality is transcendent and cannot be comprehended completely by the human mind. The implication for evaluators is that they should look for tools that approximate reality. Such tools will include metaphors, analogies, and systems models.

Inquirer-Objective Relationship Russon (2008) compares the Eastern paradigm version of the inquirer-­objective relationship to the rationalistic and naturalistic version. He observes that they both view the object of inquiry as separate and distinct and are both empirically based. In comparison,

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in an Eastern paradigm, the inquirer and the object of inquiry exist in a separate state of nondifferentiation. In addition, the paradigm does not have an ­empirical orientation. The implication is that evaluation should pay attention to intuition and be hyperemphatic by practicing genuineness and concreteness (­ Russon, 2008).

The Nature of Truth Whereas in the rationalistic version truth is context free and context dependent, in the Eastern paradigm, truth is paradoxical. Paradoxical anecdotes call to question conventional values as well as concepts such as time, space, and reality. Implications for evaluation are that the evaluator should explore multiple sides of the story and practice balanced reporting.

Attribution/Explanation of Action The rationalistic version of evaluation is that every action can be explained as the results of a real cause and the action as correlated with the action. In the naturalistic inquiry, action can be explained in terms of multiple interacting factors, events, and processes. The naturalistic and rationalistic paradigms concur on the link between action and results. In comparison, in the Eastern paradigm, there may be action unattached to any event, process, or factor. In a project, the results may therefore arise not because of any activity but out of their own accord. The implication for evaluation is that evaluators should advance or design alternative tools to logic models and logical frameworks.

TABLE 6.4  ■  Eastern Paradigm of Evaluation Axioms Linked to Practice Axiom 1: The nature of reality

• Use metaphors, analogies, and models to approximate reality

Axiom 2: The inquirer-objective relationship

• • • •

Axiom 3: The nature of truth statements

• Explore multiple sides of each issue • Balance reporting

Axiom 4: Attribution/explanation of action

• Use alternatives to logic models and logical frameworks • Reserve judgments

Axiom 5: The role of values in inquiry

• Avoid either/or in favor of both/and thinking • Seek new insights into the object of inquiry

Practice hyperempathy Pay attention to intuition Be in the moment and be real Embrace ambiguity and uncertainty

Source: Russon, C. (2008). An Eastern paradigm of evaluation. Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation, 5(10), 1–7.

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The Role of Values in Inquiry From the rationalistic version, inquiry is value bound. In the Eastern evaluation paradigm, the evaluator avoids either/or in favor of both/and thinking. The evaluator avoids the common values used in projects such as effective or not effective, relevant, and not efficient and pursues new insights into the project of inquiry.

THE MADE IN AFRICA EVALUATION PERSPECTIVE: A PARADIGMATIC LENS At its biannual conference in 2007, the African Evaluation Association made the following resolutions: —— African evaluation standards and practices should be based on African values and worldviews. —— The existing body of knowledge on African values and worldviews should be central to guiding and shaping evaluation in Africa. —— There is a need to foster and develop the intellectual leadership and capacity within Africa and ensure that it plays a greater role in guiding and developing evaluation theories and practices. These have become the background for the Made in Africa Evaluation (MAE) approach (Chilisa et al., 2017). The MAE is an attempt to identify and articulate how African philosophies, culture, history, belief systems, and contexts contribute to evaluation theory, practice, and methods. The contribution should include a deliberate effort at originating or developing completely new evaluation practices from within “the continent,” and “uncovering practices that could inform the evolution of evaluation in the rest of the world.” MAE is an evolving transdisciplinary concept that borrows from philosophers, researchers, policy analysts, development practitioners, linguists, evaluators, administrators, indigenous knowledge holders, and Western and non-Western literature to make explicit evaluation practices that are rooted in African cultures, development agenda, philosophies, worldviews, and a postcolonial indigenous paradigm. The MAE has become a concept that embraces African resistance to blind borrowing of Western values and standards to evaluate programs in Africa; capacity building of African policy analysts, researchers, and evaluators to carry out their own evaluation; adaptation of evaluation tools, instruments, strategies, and theory and model adjustment; and the development of evaluation practice, theory, and methodologies emanating from local cultures, indigenous knowledge systems, African philosophies, and African paradigms. MAE is a practice that has no boundaries between Africa and those from the rest of the world. It has no boundaries between knowledge systems; thus, it can be integrated or predominately African driven. It promotes global partnerships of knowledge systems and of evaluation actors and stakeholders. It seeks to stamp out decontextualized evaluation, while at the same time creating new African-informed evaluation strategies. In its most advanced form, it is predominantly informed by African worldview philosophies. Following are its core elements:

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1. Goal and Purpose Africans are to play a greater role in solving their own problems, thus questions on who initiates community programs and projects are essential. Using evaluation as a tool for development that contributes to the well-being of individuals, their relatives, others, and the environment to which they are connected is critical. 2. Methodology There is need to adopt evaluation methodologies informed by a decolonization and indigenization intent, African worldviews, philosophies, and philosophical assumptions about the nature of relational ontologies, epistemologies, and axiologies: —— Choosing Holistic construction of evaluation knowledge to produce evidence —— Listening to metaphors on the environment that have a relationship to the project —— Valuing community knowledge and using it as a basis for further improvement and sustainability of project. —— Using both community set standards, stakeholders’ standards, and donors’ standards to evaluate worth and merit (Integrated approach) 3. Values Core values are based on an I/we relationship. See Chapters 5. The emphasis is on belongingness, togetherness, interdependence, relationships, collectiveness, love, and harmony: —— Valuing community strength and building community relationships to inform evaluation intent, motive, and methodology —— Multicultural or social validity —— Fairness —— Reflexivity based on an I/we relationship —— Community as knowers and community as evaluators —— Evaluators and funding agents establishing long lasting relationships with communities

DECOLONIZATION INTENT Among indigenous scholars, indigenous evaluation has a decolonization intent and explicitly names white privilege (Hopson, 2009; Kawakami, 2007). Elsewhere, we noted that decolonization of evaluation may be viewed as the restructuring of power relations in the global construction of evaluation knowledge production, such that the African

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people may actively participate in the construction of what is evaluated, when it is evaluated, by whom, and with what methodologies (Chilisa et al., 2017). In this context, contextualized and culturally appropriate evaluation should be African-people-centered and value culturally relevant and indigenized evaluation processes and methodologies predominantly informed by African worldviews and paradigms. Decolonization calls for ­A frican resistance to blindly borrowing Western values and standards to evaluate programs in Africa; capacity building of African policy analysts, researchers, and evaluators to enable them to carry out their own evaluation; promoting adaptation of evaluation tools, instruments, strategies, and theory and model adjustment to ensure relevancy to African settings; and the development of novel evaluation practices, theory, and methodologies emanating from local cultures, indigenous knowledge systems, and African philosophies.

Relational Ontology As noted in Chapter 2, an African reality includes a spiritual and a material e­ xistence (Carroll, 2008). African ontology recognizes people’s relation to the cosmos, an interdependent and interconnectedness that promotes peace, love, and harmony. The I/we relationship with its emphasis on a connection of human beings to nonliving things reminds us that evaluation of projects from the African perspective should include a holistic approach that links the project to the sustainability of the environment. All areas of culture, living experience, and indigenous knowledge ­systems must be utilized to conceptualize the realities to be evaluated and to come up with techniques through which these realities can be known. Evaluation of development programs in Africa should be about the contribution of projects to the quality and well-being of the people. From the everyday practice of the Africans, the ­well-­being of relatives and those around, including things, is as important as one’s well-­being. Thus, an African will usually say he or she is not that well because a ­relative is not well.

Relational Epistemology The African epistemology is oriented toward an affect-symbolic-imagery such that an affective-oriented evaluator studies reality through the interaction of affect and symbolic imagery (Carroll, 2008). Emphasis is on the process and use of words, gestures, dance, song, rhythm, and well-established general beliefs, concepts, and theories of any ­particular people, which are stored in their language, practices, rituals, proverbs, revered traditions, myths, and folktales to access or convey meaning (Carroll, 2008). These modes of knowing are the basis for the design of methodologies for accessing a reality that has a connection with the knower and a means of verification of this reality. For example, an evaluation of the utilization of a clinic has to start with the space and place where the clinic is located. The evaluation has to access process and methods that enable the exploration of all the revered traditions and myths about the space and place in addition to counts of who visited the clinic and the reasons for the visits. What is critical is what informs the evaluation process, what the critical outcomes of evaluation are, and how reality can be accessed.

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Relational Axiology The value system of most African societies is built around respect for others and oneself. There is emphasis on values grounded on cooperation, collective responsibilities, interdependence, and interpersonal relationships among people as the highest value (Carroll, 2008). From these principles, an ethical framework emerges with emphasis on accountable responsibilities of researchers and evaluators and respectful relationships between the researchers, evaluators, and the participants that take into account the participants’ web of relationships with the living and the nonliving. African evaluators must hold themselves responsible for uncovering hidden, subtle, and racist theories that may be embedded in current methodologies, work to legitimize the centrality of African ideals and values as valid frames of reference for acquiring and examining data, and maintain inquiry rooted in strict interpretation of place. Community spirit, cooperation, collectiveness, democracy, and consensus building are the values espoused through a relational axiology (Chilisa, 2005). These value orientations also influence the evaluation theory of change, criteria or standards, indicators of success or failure of projects, and conclusions about the worth or merit of programs, policies, or projects. African Teleology.  There is a sense of directedness toward definite ends and definite purposes, which in turn compels commitment to a given goal. The implication for evaluation is that the evaluation inquiry must question the relevance and functionality of a program, project, or policy. African Logic.  The emphasis is on a diunital logic as opposed to the either/or logic common in Euro-American thought. African Identity.  The African Renaissance philosophy calls for a search for identity, a redefinition, and a re-evaluation of the self (and of Africa for that matter) in the context of a globalizing world (Makgoba, Shope, & Mazwai, 1999). Afrikanization seeks legitimacy for African scholarship embedded in the histories, experiences, ways of perceiving realities, and value systems of the African people (Msila, 2009). Afrikanization can thus be viewed as an empowerment tool directed toward the mental decolonization, liberation, and emancipation of Africans, so that they do not see themselves only as objects of research but also as producers of knowledge.

Methodology Carroll (2008) has proposed research methodology questions based on an African worldview that can be adapted to a relational-based evaluation inquiry. See Chapter 2. In an African relational-based evaluation methodology, evaluation questions are developed through consultation with participants or community. Evaluation participants are involved in identifying program evaluation goals and defining them based on the understanding or incorporation of the living and nonliving and collectively sharing their knowledge and life experiences and needs as a frame of reference. The evaluation process and the methods are targeted at building relationships between the evaluator and the evaluated; among the evaluated and among all stakeholders. The methods target the

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advancement of communal interest and value and nurture community strength. It is important to understand the context and site and to collect a lot of information from the people about their values, beliefs, customs, spirituality, and general characteristics of their perceptual space. This perceptual space includes the living and nonliving. It is critical for the evaluator to understand that reality is not only on materialist ontology, but from an African perspective, nonmaterial things such as spirits, witches, sacred places, and the universe also form part of reality. In an African relational-based evaluation approach, there are multiple realities that need to be considered in the evaluation process. Knowledge is situational. The targeted evaluation outcomes reflect the communal nature of Africans by concentrating on change for all as against change for individuals. As the community is actively involved in the evaluation process through scribes, the community helps the outsider evaluator regarding ways of how to collect data from the nonmaterial world. The evaluation processes reflect the African logic of circularity as opposed to the linearity logic of the traditional evaluation methods. The circular nature of the African logic represents the interdependence and interconnectedness between the universe and nature. By actively involving the African people from the beginning to the end of the evaluation process, thereby adopting participatory evaluation throughout, through these approaches the African people are no longer viewed as passive recipients of knowledge constructed on their behalf but rather people who can coproduce knowledge and own their knowledge. They can collect and interpret their own stories/narratives. Data are analyzed with the community or with the people who understand and can interpret the language, idioms, and proverbs of the local people. The process of building relationships throughout is as valuable as the evaluation outcome. Muwanga-Zake’s study (2009) illustrates an evaluation practice informed by African worldviews. In the study, the Afrocentric paradigm and Ubuntu philosophy were combined with aspects of Western participative paradigms, namely postmodern, developmental, and constructivist evaluation paradigms to evaluate a computer educational program for teachers in South Africa.

ACTIVITY 6.3 Read the following excerpt from Muwanga-Zake, J. W. F. (2009). Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education: Building bridges across knowledge systems: Ubuntu and participative research paradigms in Bantu communities. Discuss how an ubuntu-based validity concept informed a culturally and contextually indigenous evaluation process.

Setting the Evaluation Agenda Muwanga-Zake (2009) engaged with the decolonization of evaluation research by moving the

focus from external determined program goals and objectives of the computer program to a focus on the agenda of the people, namely the teachers’ values, needs, and priorities to be met by the program. For the teachers, a computer program would be a priority if it contributed to poverty alleviation and if it contributed toward learning leading to employment of learners. Using Ubuntu elements of collaboration, togetherness, cooperation, and consensus building, teachers were involved in the planning and execution of the (Continued)

136   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) evaluation. Ubuntu was used to inform a strategy of gaining access and achieving rapport with the participants. The strategy to gain entry into the research site is described as follows: Greet Bantu, sit with them, understand their needs, and if possible, eat with them. In short, become a Muntu for full cooperation of Bantu in research (Muwanga-Zake, 2009, p. 418). Becoming a Muntu is described as a method that involves evaluators being transformed and submitting themselves to Ubuntu. It is Ubuntu, for instance, to share with participants one’s family, history, clan, and totem, and the participants’ depth of knowledge of the evaluator determines the quantity and quality of indigenous knowledge accessed (Muwanga-Zake, 2009, p. 418). Through the application of Ubuntu and the I/we relationship, with emphasis on inclusiveness, a non-Muntu through transformation can become a Muntu. A Muntu evaluator can go through complete transformation by embracing generic African values and moving further to embrace the ethno philosophy dominant in a particular location.

Values, Validity, and Ubuntu Muwanga-Zake (2009) takes concepts of validity discussed in the literature (Le compete

et al., 1993; Heron, 1996) and shows their application in the evaluation process from a buntu perspective. Technical Validity: Fit between research questions, data collection procedures, interpretation of data, and reporting. The evaluator and the teachers engaged in a discourse analysis of Ubuntu, that is, understanding, for example, gestures, glances, thoughts, values, emotions, and attitudes and translating research questions between local languages and English. Psychosocial Validity: The practice in the way the evaluation is carried out. Ubuntu social norms in gaining entry to a site and creating rapport were followed. Value Validity: The contribution of research and intervention to personal and social transformation. The teachers’ values and needs were prioritized, and teachers were trained in evaluation skills and became coevaluators. The teachers used the evaluation findings. Fairness: Obtaining voice/a balanced representation of the multiple voices of all stakeholders. It was also an Ubuntu principle to recognize the elderly, spiritual leaders, chiefs, and other leadership around the school including those who were not participants.

INDIGENOUS MULTICULTURAL VALIDITY Kirkhart (2013) posits that validity is the mechanism through which we assess the cultural responsiveness of our evaluations. Placing culture at the center of the evaluation discourse and practice enables a debate and a reflection on evaluation rigor, evaluation ethics and standards, and evaluator competencies (Hood, Hopson, & Kirkhart, 2015). When researchers consider data analysis, there is always talk of validity. In indigenous evaluation, the interest is on the concept of indigenous or multicultural validity. It is an important concept that helps us to think through how data are collected, analyzed, reported, and disseminated. —— Validity also speaks to the question of whether the people feel that what has been produced is relevant to them, to their problems, and to their challenges. So, this sort of validity involves not only “this is what we found” but also responding to the question, “Is what I’m reporting still addressing what is relevant to the community and helpful to the community?” From an indigenous perspective,

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when we start to acknowledge communities as arbitrators of quality, this brings validity (Chilisa & Denborough, 2019). —— Multicultural validity requires evaluators to communicate findings in a way that addresses the prioritized challenges of the community. Validity is therefore about relevance and resonance: how findings resonate with the culture of the people (Kirkhart, 2013). —— It requires culturally appropriate language and communication styles, culturally specific methods, and culturally specific measures validated with specific populations. —— It guards against methodological dissonance (standardized/predetermined measures, outcome indicators, and instruments) to evaluate programs that conflict with localized community and culture-specific practices. Multicultural validity requires cultural appropriateness of measurement tools and cultural congruence of design configurations, quality of interactions between and among participants in the valuation process, and cultural congruence of theoretical perspectives underlying the program, the evaluation, and the validity assumptions (Kirkhart, 2013). The evaluation processes are, however, mediated by relational power that manifests among members of the evaluation, political agendas, discursive power that dictates what is considered a reality and truth, and historical ­experiences that shape the realities under review (Haugen & Chouinard, 2018). Hood et al.’s (2015) checklist to assess the cultural responsiveness of evaluations can be used along with Haugen and Chouinard’s (2018) conceptual model of power in culturally responsive evaluation to interrogate multicultural validity of evaluation (see Table 6.5). Haugen and ­Chouinard’s (2018) conceptual model of power in culturally responsive evaluation has four ­c ategories as follows: —— Relational power: It is power that manifests between evaluation members, for example, stakeholders who may be evaluation funders, community advisory board members, program managers, program participants, or evaluators. It is power that is also influenced by gender, class, ethnicity, or geographical location, for example, the north versus the south. —— Political power: Political agendas, for example, from governments or funders, and power structures within organizations may also impact the evaluation process and affect outcomes. —— Discursive power: Societal discourses may predetermine what counts as reality and truth. For example, certain evaluation tools and models dominate evaluation research in low- and middle-income countries —— Historical power: The historical context of a community, a program, a nation, or a continent is important in terms of understanding power dynamics that may cause tensions. For example, the marginalization of indigenous peoples’ ways of knowing and a narrow focus on what culturally competence entails may cause tensions in evaluation of programs.

Content Description History of place, people, program (or other evaluand), and evaluation’s role. Knowledge of cultural heritages and traditions, including their evaluation over time.

Recognizes multiple cultural intersections at individual, organizational, and systems levels. Cultural contexts and affiliations of evaluators and evaluand. Geographic anchors of culture in place.

Understanding how privilege is attached to some cultural signifiers and prejudice to others. Attention to equity and social justice; avoid perpetuating discrimination, disparity, or condescension.

Element

History

Location

Power

Who holds power in various ways, and what are the impacts of how power is exercised? What are the formal, legal, political, social, and economic sources of power? What are the informal sources of power? Consider relational power, political discursive and historical temporal power (Haugen & Chouinard, 2018).

What is valued here? How do people understand their lives? What is the geography of this place? How do people relate to the land?

What are the cultural identifications of persons in the community, and how do these compare to those of the program staff and of the evaluators?

What is the history of evaluation in this community or with this program?

How has what is here today been shaped by what came before it?

What is the story of how this program came to be in this place?

What is the story of this community?

Questions Raised

Questions Extended

Is the community empowered? Who owns the data? Where is the report? Does the community have access to the findings? Is it written in the language accessible to the community? How is the evaluation building local capacity? What is the strength of the community? What relational power manifests among members of the evaluation? Whose political agenda is valued? What is considered a reality? How do the historical experiences shape the beliefs and values of both participants and evaluators?

What is the history of the place? What values need to be restored?

TABLE 6.5  ■  Culture Checklist: Considerations to Improve the Multicultural Validity of Evaluation

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Addresses whose perspectives are amplified and whose are silenced. Maps inclusion and exclusion or marginalization. Includes use of language, jargon, and communicative strategies. Connections among the evaluation, evaluand, and community. Relating evaluation to place, time, and universe. Maintaining accountability to community with respect and responsibility. Establishing trust in internal relationship. Calling attention to rhythm, pace, and scheduling, to time both preceding and following evaluation. Directs attention to longer impacts and implications— positive or negative Attention to how the evaluation or the persons who conduct it return benefit to the evaluand and the surrounding community, both during and after the evaluation process.

Voice

Connection

Time

Return

How does evaluation advance the goals of the community or serve the needs of its people? Has the benefit returned to the community compensated them fairly for their time and attention or for any disruption created by this evaluation? In what ways are persons better off? Have any been harmed or disadvantaged?

How does the rhythm of this evaluation fit the context? Is it moving too fast? Too slow? Has it considered important outcomes at various points in time? Will it have the patience to watch carefully for small changes? For long-term consequences?

How do members of the community relate to one another, to the program and its personnel, and to the evaluators? How do the evaluators relate to persons in the program and community? How does the evaluation relate to the core values of the cultures, community, and context?

Who participates in the planning, design, and implementation of the evaluation? Whose messages are heard and heeded? Whose methods of communication are reflected in the languages and expressions that are used to discuss the evaluation process, raise questions, interpret findings, and communicate results?

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(Continued)

What is the value added by the program? Does the program have any cultural and environmental significance? What is restored? What is revitalized?

How are indigenous and academic knowledge brought together? What is the role of spirituality in the program? Has the evaluation created sound cohesion, harmony, and brought healing?

Is the program relevant to needs and priorities of the community?

Who initiated the program?

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The ability to be molded, to receive new information, recognize and change response to new experiences, and evolve new ideas. Applies both to evaluators and to their designs, process, and products.

Apply the principles of evaluation to one’s own person and work. Selfscrutiny and reflective practice. Underscores the importance of metaevaluation

Plasticity

Reflexivity

What do I know in this context, and why? What do I know that I don’t understand? What areas of new learning must I watch for and reflect upon? What do I need to let go of or relearn, and how can I work on that? What are the strengths and limitations of this evaluation and how it has addressed culture? How strong are the arguments supporting validity? What counterarguments challenge validity?

How is the evaluation changing in response to local context? Are the evaluators staying open to new ideas, or are they overly committed to following a fixed plan or timeline? What has surprised them that changes how they think about evaluation? What have they learned about evaluation? What have they learned in this place that is new or changes their understanding of good evaluation?

Questions Raised

What community strengths has the evaluation elicited? What has the community learned?

Questions Extended

Sources: Adapted from Hood, S., Hopson, R. K., & Kirkhart, K. (2015). Culturally responsive evaluation: Theory practice and future implications. In K. E. Newcomer, H. P. Hatry, & J. S. Wholey (Eds.), Handbook of practical program evaluation (pp. 218-31). Wiley Online Library; Kirkhart, K. E. (2013). Advancing considerations of culture and validity: Honoring the key evaluation checklist. In S. I. Donaldson (Ed.), The future of evaluation in society: A tribute to Michael Scriven (pp. 129–159). Greenwich, CT: Information Age; Haugen J., & Chouinard, J. (2018). Transparent, translucent, opaque: Exploring the dimensions of power in culturally responsive evaluation contexts. American Evaluation Journal, 1-10. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1177/1098214018796342.

Content Description

Element

TABLE 6.5  ■ (Continued)

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CONDUCTING AN INDIGENOUS EVALUATION In the evaluation branch, context was proposed as a necessary branch that makes visible the unique epistemologies of the formerly colonized and historically marginalized communities. The nine considerations to improve the indigenous multicultural validity of evaluation can guide the evaluation process. Step 1: Paying Attention to Context. Take the mosquito intervention presented in Activity 6.4 as an example of a project to be evaluated. The questions to be addressed at this early stage of evaluation can include the following: 1. Who initiated the program, and what role did the community play? 2. What are community stories about malaria prevention? What is the folklore about mosquitoes and malaria prevention? 3. What is the history of malaria prevention? Has there been any intervention program before? 4. What is the history of the community in relation to mosquito and malaria prevention? 5. What is the structure of the community, and how is power distributed and shared? 6. What role does spirituality play in malaria prevention? Step 2: Engaging the Stakeholders.  In the second stage, the evaluator should recruit stakeholders. The stakeholders should be representative of the intended beneficiaries of the project. It should be a group of people inclusive of persons directly and indirectly impacted by the project (Bowman, Francis, & Tyndall, 2015). At this point, it is critical to build rapport with the stakeholders and sustain healthy relationships with the group. This requires knowledge of community values, taboos, and how to gain entry into the community. Stakeholders can be the source of information for questions raised during the preparation stage. Step 3: Purpose of the Evaluation.  At this stage, the evaluator works with stakeholders to articulate what the community would consider as success for the project. In the historically marginalized and less developed countries, most of the programs/projects are externally funded. The evaluator should thus balance the funders’ measurement of success with that of the community. Considering the mosquito net intervention, for example, the community might measure success or benefits by assessing the level of knowledge on malaria prevention, materials designed for the communities on mosquitoes and malaria prevention, and family roles and responsibilities in preventing malaria. Funders may request information on malaria deaths after and before the intervention, number of mosquito nets distributed, and how money was spent.

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Step 4: Evaluation Questions.  On the basis of the community and funders’ views of what counts as success, the evaluator and the community frame the questions. Step 5: Evaluation Design.  An indigenous evaluation is informed by multiple methods embedded in indigenous epistemologies and draws from community stories, indigenous knowledge, languages, metaphors, folklores, philosophies, and worldviews and is inclusive of mainstream methodologies. Bowman and Dodge-Francis’s (2018) blended culturally indigenous evaluation model is an example of how elements of an indigenous paradigm can be integrated with a Western paradigm to guide an indigenous evaluation. Step 6: Data Collection.  Indigenous tools, for example, songs, folklore, community stories, histories, legends, metaphors, and artifacts, are used to create an expansive context. Standard instruments based on mainstream epistemologies are adapted. Step 7: Data Analysis.  The findings have to be useful to the communities and to the funders. At this level, the focus should be on the products useful to the stakeholders. Using the mosquito net, for example, the communities might want to distill from the data stories that communicate community strength, harmony, and values and restore and revitalize those values that make communities responsible for themselves. This can be combined with other mainstream measures of success identified under the evaluation questions. Step 8: Report Writing.  Evaluators need to address questions of language and communication, ways in which the report can appeal to the physical, the emotional, the spiritual, the physical, and the cognitive. Step 9: Dissemination.  The dissemination procedures are tied to the products of the evaluation. You can imagine the production of reading materials for rural area pupils in primary schools on mosquitos, stories, folklore, histories of the community, malaria prevention, and so on. This could be useful to the community while the funders would want accountability on how the money was used and the reduction deaths caused by malaria. The extract below is an example of a philanthropic program in Africa. Read it, and discuss the role of funded programs in development in the Global South and how the evaluation discipline can be reshaped so that projects serve the needs of the people.

ACTIVITY 6.4 Read the following excerpt from Sonia Shah, the author of The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years, which will be published by Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux in July 2019.

Malaria Mosquito Nets (Evaluation) Last week, in honor of World Malaria Day, viewers of “American Idol” were urged to donate $10 for an insecticide-treated bed net to save an ­African child from malaria, the mosquito-transmitted scourge

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that infects about 300 million people every year, killing nearly 1 million. The premise behind the idea of treated nets is simple. The netting prevents malarial mosquitoes from biting people while they're asleep, and the insecticide kills and repels the insects. World health experts say that using the nets can reduce child mortality in malarial regions by 20%. But even as donations roll in and millions of bed nets pile up in warehouses across Africa, aid agencies and nongovernmental organizations are quietly grappling with a problem: Data suggest that, at least in some places, nearly half of A ­ fricans who have access to the nets refuse to sleep under them. To date, millions of dollars from international agencies, NGOs, and USAID have been spent to get treated nets into the hands of impoverished, subSaharan Africans. The interagency Roll Back Malaria Partnership is calling for $730 million more. But, as even the staunchest advocate will admit, the treated nets were not designed with the cultural preferences of the rural African villager in mind. Among other design flaws, their tight mesh blocks ventilation, a serious problem in the hot, humid places where malaria roosts. Minor discomfort might be tolerable in rural A ­frican ­communities desperate for antimalarial prevention. But, as medical anthropologists have consistently found, because malaria is so common

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in much of sub-Saharan Africa, and because the overwhelming majority of cases go away on their own, most rural Africans consider malaria a minor ailment, the way that Westerners might think of the cold or flu. Many rural people also believe that malaria is caused not just by mosquitoes but also by other factors such as mangos or hard work. As a result, while we see the treated nets as a lifesaving gift, they see them as a discomfort that provides only partial protection against a trivial illness. Is it any wonder that many use their nets to catch fish or as wedding veils or room dividers—all documented uses of insecticide-treated bed nets? Perhaps what we need is a whole new approach. Instead of masterminding solutions for distant problems and then handing them down from on high—as we do not just in our antimalaria efforts but in a variety of aid programs aimed at extreme poverty—we should empower the poor to come up with their own solutions and then help figure out how to implement them. Such a process might not lead to grand, magic-bullet solutions. More likely, we'd get microsolutions, variable from locale to locale, from village to village. But we'd be supporting self-reliance and building goodwill along the way. And we'd surely avoid the wastefulness—and really, the affront—of befuddling communities with “gifts” that many neither want nor use.

ACTIVITY 6.5 Read an extract of the hypothetical water project, and apply an indigenous approach to evaluate the program by addressing the evaluation steps in table 6.5. Use the culture checklist to address each step. Compare and contrast the procedures with a conventional evaluation using the logical frame.

The Water Project Development workers identified an impoverished peripheral community with poor access

to water. A donor agency contracted an NGO to develop and deliver water supplies. The local government authority considered the project to be valuable. The logic frame reiterated the overarching goal as contributing to alleviating poverty through enhanced health, resulting from improved water supply. The outputs contributing to achieving this purpose were improved access to better-quality water, the establishment of a water users’ committee, and a sustainable (Continued)

144   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) system of maintenance by community members to support water delivery. Specific and verifiable activities included enclosing and fencing off a spring on a nearby hill; constructing two large

water-storage tanks; laying pipes with taps to 50 household clusters; and employing a parttime maintenance officer to keep everything in working order.

1. Preparing for the evaluation 2. Identifying and creating rapport with stakeholders 3. Purpose and goal of the evaluation 4. The evaluation approach 5. Evaluation tools, methods, and success indicators 6. Data collection 7. Analysis and interpretation 8. Report writing 9. Dissemination

ACTIVITY 6.6 The evaluation tree metaphor has a needs/aspiration context branch. Do a literature search on indigenous evaluation and extend the branch

with indigenous evaluation scholars. Discuss their evaluation frameworks and models and debate how they can be adapted to your contexts.

SUMMARY The use of inappropriate evaluation frameworks, tools, and methods among indigenous nations and developing countries driven by Western thought has led to evaluations findings that do not capture program outcomes and program benefits that are meaningful to the people. Evaluation theories and frameworks, measurement tools, outcome indicators, and dissemination of results should be adapted to be contextually appropriate and congruent with the needs, experiences, and culture of the people. Indigenous scholars are calling for a shift from evaluation that only assesses implementation and outcomes

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of programs to evaluation that considers the initiators of programs so that communities can own solutions to their challenges. Indigenous scholars are envisioning evaluation frameworks, concepts, tools, and checklists based on their philosophies and cultures that evaluators can use to make evaluation contextual, culturally appropriate, and relevant to the needs of the people.

Key Points ——

——

Indigenous evaluation deserves a branch in the evaluation tree metaphor that makes visible indigenous evaluation frameworks and indigenous scholars. Mainstream evaluation’s preoccupation with cultural competence fails to address broader issues of indigenous peoples’ struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, needs and aspirations, and efforts to decolonize evaluation.

——

Context and culture matter in evaluation.

——

Indigenous evaluation should adopt a contextfirst approach.

—— Relational power and political, discursive, and historical temporal power mediate validity issues and should be interrogated when assessing rigor in indigenous evaluation.

Suggested Readings Bowman, N. R., Francis, C. D., & Tyndall, M. (2015). A practical approach for evaluating indigenous projects in tribal reservation contexts. In Culturally Responsive Indigenous Evaluation (pp. 281–317). Las Vegas, NV: Information Age. Carden, F., & Alkin, M. A. (2012). Evaluation roots: An international perspective. Journal of Multidisciplinary Evaluation, 8(17), 102–118. Carroll, K. K. (2008). Africana studies and research methodology: Revisiting the centrality of Afrikan worldview. The Journal of Pan African Studies, 2(2), 5–27. Chilisa, B. (2015). A synthesis on the made in Africa evaluation concept. Chilisa, B., Major, T. E., Gaotlhobogwe, M., & Mokgolodi, H. (2016). Decolonizing and indigenizing evaluation practice in Africa: Toward African relational evaluation

approaches. The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 30(3), 312–328. Chilisa, B., & Malunga, C. (2012). Made in Africa evaluation: Uncovering African roots in evaluation theory and practice. Paper presented at African Thought Leaders Forum on Evaluation and Development: Expanding Thought Leadership in Africa at the Bellagio Centre, November 14–17, 2012. Easton, P. B. (2010). Identifying the evaluative impulse in local culture: Insights from West African proverbs. American Journal of Evaluation, 33(4),515–531. Gaotlhobogwe, M., Major, T., Koloi-Keaikitse, S., & Chilisa, B. (2018). Conceptualizing evaluation in African context. New Directions for Evaluation, 159, 47–62. Grove, N. J., & Anthony, B. (2008). Beyond the logic frame: A new tool for examining health

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and peace building initiatives. Development in Practice, 18(1), 66–81. Hood, S., Hopson, R. K., & Kirkhart, K. (2015). Culturally responsive evaluation: Theory, practice and future implications. In K. E. Necomer, H. P. Hatry, & J. S. Wholey (Eds.), Handbook of practical program evaluation (pp. 218–317). Wiley Online Library. Jeng, A. (2012). Rebirth, restoration and reclamation: The potential for Africa-centered evaluation and development models. African Thought Leaders Forum on Evaluation and Development, Bellagio. Kawakami, A. J. (2007). Improving the practice of evaluation through indigenous values and methods: Decolonizing evaluation practice—Returning the

gaze from Hawaii and AOTEAROA. Multidisciplinary Research on Hawaiian Wellbeing, 4(1), 319–347 Kerry, S. (2012). Kaupapa Maori theorybased evaluation. Evaluation Journal of Australasia,12(1), 6–18. Kirkhart, K. E. (2013). Repositioning validity. CREA Inaugural Conference. Chicago, IL: Syracuse University. Muwanga-Zake, J. W. F. (2009). Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education: Building bridges across knowledge systems: Ubuntu and participative research paradigms in Bantu communities. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 30(4): 413–426. doi: 10.1080/01596300903237198

7 DECOLONIZING MIXED METHODS RESEARCH As long as the knowledge that is traded across boundary does not happen among equals, that is western researchers and indigenous researchers, the legacy of colonialism continues. Louis Botha (2011, p. 32)

Social science knowledge about a small nation in the hands of a big power is a potentially dangerous weapon. It contributes to the asymmetric patterns already existing in the world because it contributes to manipulation in the interests of big powers. Johan Galtung (1967, p. 14)

Overview The decolonization of research methodologies literature continues to critique the marginalization of local indigenous knowledge and call for integration of indigenous research with Western-driven research. The international community of researchers is inviting us to challenge the conventional thinking of seeing mixed methods research (MMR) as mixing the dichotomy of methods that are either quantitative or qualitative and to focus more on integration of knowledge systems. Jon and Williams-Mozley (2012) ask what MMR would look like if rather than focusing on the mixing of conventional qualitative and quantitative methods, MMR was conceptualized along the idea of integrating nonindigenous and indigenous approaches or methods. This chapter gives an overview of the characteristics of MMR under the five paradigms discussed 147

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in this book, namely postpositivist, constructivist, pragmatist, transformative, and indigenous paradigms. The multiple definitions of MMR, the rationale and designs, and three examples of indigenous MMR are presented. Indigenous mixed methods focus on mixing the quantitative, qualitative, and indigenous research paradigms. The main argument in this chapter is that indigenous and Western knowledge should be integrated to acknowledge and enhance participation of indigenous peoples as knowers and creators of their own destinies, to increase the relevance of research to their needs, to enhance rigor in the research process, and to disseminate research findings in ways appropriate for both academic and community settings. The following were noted in Chapter 6 and should guide perspectives on indigenous mixed methods: • A methodology separated from its overarching paradigm is not sufficient for decolonization (Held, 2019; Kovach, 2009; Wilson, 2008). Thus, there is need to locate indigenous research in its own paradigmatic space. • Within a generic relational indigenous paradigm are worldviews specific to the histories, experiences, and cultural beliefs and practices of indigenous peoples. Context specific methodologies should guide research processes.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this chapter you should be able to do the following: 1. Compare and contrast the characteristics of MMR under the five paradigms, and justify the choice you would make to inform the design of your study. 2. Discuss the definitions and rationale for MMR presented by the multiple scholars, and justify the choice of definitions and rationales that resonate with your worldview. 3. Discuss the features of an indigenous mixed methods study. 4. Comprehend and apply indigenous mixed methods approaches to research.

Before You Start • Debate the Louis Botha quotation provided in the opening of this chapter, and discuss ways in which indigenous and nonindigenous knowledge and practices can be integrated on equal terms.

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TOWARD THE MEANING OF MMR A review of definitions of MMR (Plano Clark & Ivankova, 2016) revealed 10 definitions of MMR. These definitions fall into six categories: (1) an emphasis on method (Greene, Caracelli, & Graham, 1989; Morgan, 2014a; Morse & Niehaus, 2009); (2) a focus on methodology (Creswell, Klassen, Plano Clark, & Smith, 2011; Tashakkori & Creswell, 2007); (3) a focus on method and methodology (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011); (4) methodology and philosophy (Johnson, Onwuegbuzie, & Turner, 2007); (5) a philosophy perspective (Greene, 2007); and (6) a community of research practice perspective (Teddlie & ­Tashakkori, 2009). A seventh category proposes the integration of indigenous research and Western-based research (Chatwood et al., 2015; Chilisa & Tsheko, 2014; Hutchinson et al., 2014). Table 7.1 regroups the definitions into four categories. The majority of the definitions emphasize mixing of mainstream qualitative research methodologies and methods with mainstream quantitative methodologies and methods. Where does this leave indigenous research? What is quantitative research, and what is qualitative research? Walter and Andersen (2013) on the definition of mainstream quantitative methodology note that it is defined in terms of the characteristics that make it different from qualitative research. They note, The methodological practice of such quantitative research failed, and fails, to recognize its own culturally and racially situated origins and, more particularly, its contemporary dominant and racial parameters. (p. 43) The Porteus Maze in Chapter 3 and the logical framework discussed in Chapter 6 clearly revealed the biases in the tools that define constructs to be quantified. Indigenous quantitative methodologies are defined as methodologies within which the practices and the processes of the research are conceived and framed through an indigenous standpoint, informed by an indigenous ontology, epistemology, and axiology (Walter & Andersen, 2013, p. 83). In Chapter 3, it was noted that the anthropologists with their qualitative culture-­ collection methods reduced Africans to a childlike race, passive onlookers caught up in sorcery and stagnation. In Chapter 2, it was noted that an indigenous plant, with an indigenous name, once it entered the academic laboratories, lost its name and character, assuming new ownership under a different name, never again to be recognized by the indigenous community from which it came. The culture-collection methods included taking human beings for observation. In Botswana, the El Negro demonstrates clearly the ­culture-collecting methods. El Negro is the remains of a chief whose body was stolen from its grave by two brothers, Jules and Eduoard Verraux, on the night after he was buried. They took the body to France in 1830. The body was sold to Francesco Darder, who deposited it in the museum in Banyole north of Barcelona in Spain. There, the body represented all “negro” people and became a symbol of Spanish exploitation and enslavement of black Africans. It was removed from public exhibition in 1997 after protests by Africans and people of African ancestry, and later repatriated to Africa where it was reburied in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, on October 5, 2000 (Chilisa & Preece 2005). These observations invite us to think seriously about our framing of and naming of mixed methods in indigenous research. Will indigenous quantitative and qualitative methods and methodologies not lose their meaning and get lost when we subsume them under mainstream paradigms? In this book, mixed methods research is defined within the philosophical frames of an indigenous paradigm. See Table 7.1.

Philosophy Greene (2007) “The core meaning of mixing methods in social inquiry is to invite multiple mental models into the same inquiry space for purposes of respectful conversation, dialogue and learning one from the other, toward a collective generation of better understanding of the phenomena being studied. By definition, then, mixed methods social inquiry involves a plurality of philosophical paradigms, theoretical assumptions, methodological traditions, data gathering and analysis techniques, and personalized understandings and value commitments—because these are stuff of mental models.” (p. 13)

Blackstock (2009) When the spiritual, the emotional, the physical and the cognitive are brought together with a Western quantitative approach, Blackstock calls the approach “enveloping quantitative research in an indigenous envelope” and does not use the term mixed methods.

Methodologies and Methods

Greene, Caracelli, & Graham (1989)

“We defined mixed-method designs as those that include at least one quantitative method (designed to collect numbers) and one qualitative method (designed to collect words), where neither type of method is inherently linked to any particular inquiry paradigm.” (p. 256)

Johnson & Onwuegbuzie (2004)

“Mixed methods research is formally defined here as the class of research where the researcher mixes or combines quantitative and qualitative research techniques, methods, approaches, concepts or language into a single study.”

TABLE 7.1  ■  Review of Definitions of Mixed Methods Research

“We refer to [mixed methods research] as the third research community in this chapter because we are focusing on the relationships that exist within and among the three major groups that are currently doing research in the social and behavioural sciences. Mixed methods (MM) research has emerged as an alternative to the dichotomy of qualitative (QUAL) and quantitative (QUAN) traditions during the past 20 years.” (p. 4)

Teddlie & Tashakkori (2009)

Communities

The indigenous mixed methods also takes the form of combining quantitative and qualitative methods and indigenous research frameworks in a single or multiphase study.

Qualitative methods with qualitative data emanating from an indigenous paradigmatic lens in a single study or multiple phases;

Chilisa & Tsheko (2014)

Chatwood et al. (2015) propose a definition of MMR that considers methodologies of combining Western and indigenous knowledge as distinct paradigms in indigenous research.

Paradigm Focus

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Mixed methods are defined as mixing indigenous and non-indigenous paradigms or methods.

Botha (2011) Considers as mixed methods combining conventional qualitative research with indigenous research. The purpose for mixing is to draw on the interaction of these methods to clarify the relationship between Western research and indigenous ways of knowing so that more appropriate theories, practices, and relations can be developed for their interrelation. (p. 314)

“Mixed methods research is a research design with philosophical assumptions as well as methods of inquiry. As a methodology, it involves philosophical assumptions that guide the direction of collection and analysis of data and the mixture of qualitative and quantitative approaches in many phases in the research process. As a method, it focuses on collecting, analyzing and mixing both quantitative and qualitative data in a single study or series of studies. Its central premise is that the use of quantitative and qualitative approaches in combination provides a better understanding of research problems than either approach alone.” (p. 5)

Tashakkori & Creswell (2007)

“As an effort to be as inclusive as possible, we have broadly defined mixed methods here as research in which the investigator collects and analyses data, integrates the findings, and draws inferences using both qualitative and quantitative approaches or methods in a single study or a program of inquiry.” (p. 4)

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(Continued)

Jon & Williams-Mozley, 2012

Creswell & Plano Clark (2007)

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• Focusing on research questions that call for real-life contextual understandings, multi-level perspectives, and cultural influences; • Employing rigorous quantitative research assessing magnitude and frequency of constructs and rigorous qualitative research exploring the meaning and understanding of construct; • Utilizing multiple methods (e.g., intervention trials and in-depth interviews);

“For purposes of this discussion, mixed methods research will be defined as a research approach or methodology:

Creswell, Klassen, Plano Clark, & Smith (2011)

“Mixed method research is therefore a systematic way of using two or more research methods to answer a single research question.” (p. 9)

Morse & Niehaus (2009)

“Mixed methods research is the type of research in which a researcher or team of researchers combines elements of qualitative and quantitative viewpoints, data collection, analysis, inference techniques for the broad purposes of breadth and depth of understanding and corroboration.” (p. 123)

Johnson, Onwuegbuzie, & Turner (2007)

Methodologies and Methods

TABLE 7.1  ■ (Continued) Philosophy

Communities

Paradigm Focus

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Adapted from: Plano Clark, V. L., & Ivankova, N. V. (2016). Mixed methods research—A guide to the field. London, UK: Sage.

Mixed methods research designs are “projects that collect both qualitative and quantitative data so that using the combined strengths of qualitative and quantitative methods will accomplish more than would have been possible with one method alone.” (p. xiii)

Morgan (2014)

investigation within philosophical and theoretical positions.” (p. 4)

• Intentionally integrating or combining these methods to draw on the strength of each; and framing the

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Paradigms in MMR There are recommendations to teach MMR according to philosophical frames of postpositivism, constructivism, pragmatism, transformation, dialectical pluralism, realism, and critical realism (Mertens et al., 2016). Romm (2018) proposes philosophical frameworks on MMR guided by the postpositivist, constructivist, and pragmatist, transformative, and indigenous paradigms. When paradigms are used to frame the methodology, the following questions are asked: —— What are the ways of perceiving reality? —— What are the ways of knowing? —— What are the ethical values that inform the way the research is conceived, the way questions are asked, the way the study is conducted, the way the analysis is done, and how results reported? In line with the paradigms discussed in this book, characteristics and illustrations of the MMR within these paradigms are discussed. Postpositivist The postpositivist theory uses multiple and/or mixed methods to compare research results against other observations and results. Triangulation is not necessarily the goal of the mixing. Multiple methods or mixed methods are used to tap into different aspects of realities. The different facts or knowledge may not necessarily converge. The idea is to view knowledge as vast and impressive and our ignorance as boundless and overwhelming; consequently, we are forever moving frontiers of knowledge (Popper, 1994; Romm, 2018). Hunter and Brewer (2015) classify the approach as postpositivist because of its alignment with Popper’s stance. In line with Popper’s (1994) stance, the focus of research is to convince the reader that the findings are plausible. There is no preference of MMR over a mono method. The contention is that the value of the methodology depends on the extent to which it is convincing, valid, and closer to existing reality. The main contention is that we can never know the extent to which we are closer to an existing external reality. Quantitatively and qualitatively directed measurements and modes of analysis are thus used for purposes of understanding (Hunter & Brewer, 2015) or for purposes of making policy recommendations. Constructivist The constructivist MMR is guided by an ontological stance that perceives reality as multiple and an epistemological assumption where knowledge is perceived as subjective (Hesse-Biber, 2010). The question is how to present reality that captures the multiple voices of the participants. MMR from a constructivist stance is therefore qualitatively driven (Hesse-Biber, 2010) and action oriented (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003). The use of MMR should thus include the role of the researcher as a responsible healer who should take action to address issues emerging from his or her interaction with the participants (Romm, 2018).

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In a national study on gendered school experiences, access, achievement, and retention in junior secondary schools, the researchers started with a trend analysis on subject enrollment by gender. The data were analyzed, and subjects that showed disparities of access by gender were selected. Further analysis was conducted to determine gender differences in achievement. This was followed by a qualitative research design that used focus group interviews, individual interviews, classroom observations, folklores, songs, and proverbs explaining gendered roles that inform subject choice and participation in class. There was, for example, an overrepresentation of girls in home economics and moral education classes. There was also a tendency to punish boys harshly when girls did better than them. In this study, the quantitative approach was used to select the subjects where gendered access, equity, and achievement were apparent and to study these to understand the multiple realities from students, teachers, and school administrators and other realities communicated through the environment, the playground, school uniform, corporal punishment, classroom arrangement, naming of girls and boys, and school chores. Transformative In the transformative paradigm, the method or methods used are not as important as how they are used to advocate for social change and advance social justice. Multimethods and mixed methods are nevertheless suited for research in the transformative paradigm. Pragmatist The pragmatist paradigm is understood as the use of qualitative and quantitative viewpoints for data collection and analysis for the broad purposes of breadth and depth of understanding and corroboration. The aim is therefore to develop corroboration or breadth of findings. The focus is on the research question and how different methods can be employed to answer this question. The question asked should lead to answering it through the use of quantitative or qualitative data collection and interpretation. The approach has been critiqued as too simplistic and failing to consider questions such as who defines the research questions and on the methods that work. Indigenous Paradigms Indigenous paradigms seek to combine perspectives from this lens with nonindigenous paradigmatic perspectives. The mixed method approach takes the form of combining indigenous quantitative and qualitative methods and methodologies with nonindigenous methods and methodologies under an indigenous worldview or paradigm. It is more in line with Greene’s definition of mixing as bringing together multiple philosophies and paradigms to guide the research. It nevertheless privileges indigenous knowledge as the dominant paradigmatic lens that informs the mixing. It provides knowledge pathways in the form of the physical, the emotional, the cognitive, and the spiritual that can appeal to the ways of knowing of indigenous communities when indigenous qualitative and quantitative methods are allowed to mix with mainstream quantitative and qualitative methodologies. This chapter illustrates perspectives of indigenous mixed methods research.

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MIXED METHODS DESIGNS AND RATIONALES Choosing the mixed method research paradigm that informs a study is an essential step in designing the study. The choice should also be guided by the rationale for mixing methods. Plano Clark and Ivankova (2016) have suggested six typologies for mixing methods. We add a seventh typology derived from studies that integrate indigenous paradigms with Western paradigms. What is clear from the literature is that there is often more than one reason for mixing methods (see Table 7.2, pp. 162–165). The six typologies by Plano Clark and Ivankova (2016) focus more on techniques and methods with an underlying assumption of neutrality of methods, techniques, and procedures. The rationale for mixing with an indigenous paradigmatic lens hinges on questions of equality of knowledge systems and addressing relational, political, discursive, and historical power that dominates research about the “other” (Haugen & Chouinard, 2018). Refer back to Chapter 6. Choosing the paradigm and formulating the rationale for mixing methods also goes along with the choice of the mixed methods designs. We can distinguish between concurrent mixed methods designs, sequential mixed methods designs, and multiphase designs (Nastasi & Hitchcock, 2016; Plano Clark & Ivankova, 2016). A multiphase design that uses an indigenous paradigmatic lens is described in Chapter 8. Predominantly Qualitative Concurrent Designs.  In this design, the study derives its philosophical assumptions from a constructivist paradigm and therefore values the social construction of knowledge. The study is predominantly qualitative and uses the quantitative approach to enhance understanding of the qualitative findings. Predominantly Quantitative Concurrent Designs.  The study derives its philosophical assumptions from a postpositivist paradigm and its quest for objective truth. The qualitative research is used to enhance understanding of the quantitative findings. Sequential Designs.  Equal weight is given to both quantitative and qualitative methods. The approach is driven by a pragmatist view with a focus on how best to address each of the research questions posed by the study.

ACTIVITY 7.1 Activity 7.1 presents a study that uses a sequential mixed methods design. Read it, and answer the following questions: 1. Describe the sequential mixed methods design presented in the study. 2. How was quantitative data used?

3. What was the rationale for the mixed methods design used? 4. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology used. 5. In which paradigm do you situate the study?

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GENDERED SCHOOL EXPERIENCES: THE IMPACT ON RETENTION AND ACHIEVEMENT IN BOTSWANA AND GHANA Purpose of the Study The research focused on the gendering of the school environment and the ways in which this influenced school outcomes in selected case study schools. The school data were used to connect and qualify the national statistical data on access, retention, and achievement with the everyday experience of females and males in these schools. In this way, by finding out why such differences in achievement were produced, the study was able to enhance qualitative understandings of a range of local contexts that were only broadly described by national survey data. The research also looked at teachers and students simultaneously to reveal the ways in which the gendered school environment impacted them differentially.

Methodology The study draws on both qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative dimension of the research was a response to the lack of ethnographic studies, especially with a comparative dimension, to explain why and how differing patterns of achievement are produced. Data were collected by the in-country research team through a number of methods such as

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questionnaires, interviews, observations, and focus groups. These data collection methods were used mostly in relation to the students and teachers of the chosen classes. This was supplemented by school-level observations, informal conversations, and descriptions of critical incidents. The quantitative dimension of the research employed existing national statistical data on access, retention, and achievement to promote understanding of the ways in which national trends in educational participation are produced at the microlevel. National level statistical data were collected to contextualize the ethnographic case studies, providing the backdrop for a detailed analysis of the way in which gender influences retention and achievement at the school level.

Sampling In each country, a team of three researchers carried out empirical work in six coeducational state day schools in the junior secondary sector. Two of the schools were located in urban areas, two in peri-urban areas, and two in rural areas. The country sample of six thus comprised three relatively high-achieving schools and three relatively low-achieving, one of each within the three locations. Within each country research team, each of the three researchers was responsible for two schools, making a total of six cases in each country.

INDIGENOUS MIXED METHODS APPROACHES Three indigenous mixed methods approaches are illustrated: combining indigenous research with qualitative and quantitative methods (Chatwood et al., 2015), enveloping a quantitative research in an indigenous envelope, and combining conventional qualitative research with qualitative indigenous methods.

Quantitative Western Knowledge, Qualitative Western Knowledge + Indigenous Knowledge Chatwood et al. (2015) propose a definition of MMR that considers methodologies of combining Western and indigenous knowledge as distinct paradigms in indigenous

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research. Mixed methods research (MMR) is the mixing of paradigms, where Western quantitative and qualitative knowledge is combined with indigenous knowledge. Indigenous research is defined as that which is built on indigenous theorizing of knowledge (Chatwood et al., 2015). It is research that applies indigenous ontological, epistemological, and appropriate methodologies in the research process. When research is not conceptualized along indigenous research frameworks, what passes for indigenous research tends to be methods of data collection and analysis conducted and represented in modified hegemonic Western traditions (Kovach, 2009). Of value is the indigenous research framework and/or philosophical assumptions emanating from indigenous worldviews that guide the research. The diagram in Figure 7.1 illustrates Chatwood et al.’s (2015) conceptualization of MMR. Chatwood et al. (2015) note, The inclusion of indigenous knowledge and scholarship in the field of inquiry, with framing as a mixed method, introduces another research paradigm in that it honors a common set of beliefs, values and assumptions that a community holds in common. (p. 3) Chatwood et al. (2015) describe as mixed method a research inquiry that combines quantitative and qualitative methods based on Western ways of knowing with indigenous knowledge underpinned by an indigenous paradigm. This way of defining mixed methods is grounded in Greene’s (2007, p. 13) definition where emphasis is on the “plurality of paradigms, theoretical assumptions, and methodological traditions to inform a respectful dialogue among equals seeking to know.” Chatwood et al. (2015) describe the approach as a methodology that recognizes indigenous knowledge as a distinct relational paradigm that is mixed with Western-based quantitative and qualitative research

FIGURE 7.1  ■  Quantitative, Qualitative, and Indigenous Research

Qualitative (Western knowledge)

Quantitative (Western knowledge)

Indigenous knowledge

Mixed methods + (Meeting of paradigms)

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paradigms. The mixing is grounded in an indigenous standpoint to decolonize research and ground it in indigenous epistemological, theoretical, and methodological underpinnings. The mixed method is built on the principles of two-eyed seeing, which has become an important indigenous concept integrating indigenous and Western ways of knowing on equal footing. Embedded Transformative Emergent Mixed Method Design In their study, Chatwood et al. (2015) explored the values underlying health system stewardship through a collaborative consensus-based approach with indigenous scholars and knowledge holders. The focus was on identifying indigenous values that underlie health system stewardship. The transformative research paradigm, with its emphasis on social justice and culturally responsive research principles, formed part of the framing of the study. The study had a decolonization intent, and the two-eyed principle informed the study. In Chapter 2, two-eyed seeing developed by Albert Marshall, a Mi’kmaw elder, was presented as a model to view the world through the lens of Western and indigenous knowledge systems for the benefit of all. The Nominal Group and Embedded Traditional Knowledge Indigenous research requires participants to participate in formulating the research questions, methodology, data analysis, and dissemination strategies. In the study, the nominal group process allowed the indigenous knowledge holders and scholars to engage in the formulation of research questions with Western researchers through an iterative process. The process started with participants working independently to identify values they considered important in stewardship, sharing the values and agreeing on emergent themes. Indigenous knowledge holders and scholars illustrated their themes with stories, photographs, and films. Another important step was to produce a research output that would be respectful of the paradigms within the mixed methods approach. Field-based and narratives approaches were considered appropriate and conducive to capturing indigenous knowledge. Research team members with expertise transferring traditional knowledge through media prepared the film that was disseminated to a large number of stakeholders.

Conventional Qualitative Research + Qualitative Indigenous Research Botha (2011) considers as mixed methods combining conventional qualitative research with indigenous research. The purpose for mixing is to draw on the interaction of these methods to clarify the relationship between Western research and indigenous ways of knowing so that more appropriate theories, practices, and relations can be developed for their interrelation (Botha, 2011, p. 314). Figure 7.2 illustrates Botha’s conceptualization of mixing methods. The diagram illustrates how indigenous methods are drawn from within conventional qualitative research. For instance, Chapter 11 discusses decolonizing the interview method, which feminists view as a masculine paradigm that excludes traits viewed as feminine, such as sensitivity and emotionality (Fontana & Frey, 2005). Other methods, for example, storytelling and interpretation of texts and artwork (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003), are common in qualitative

160   Indigenous Research Methodologies FIGURE 7.2  ■  Conceptualization of Mixing Methods

Quantitative Research

(Conventional) Qualitative Research

Indigenous Research

research. Botha (2011) notes that the indigenous research that overlaps with conventional qualitative research embraces critical theorists and creative analytical practice ethnographers engaged in decolonizing and innovative methods of research with other indigenous scholars. This on the diagram is the area represented by the dashed circle. The solid outer circle of the indigenous research shows more qualitative and indigenous methods that have a different and clearer relationship to conventional qualitative research. The mixing of conventional and indigenous research thus goes beyond finding a middle ground between the two, to developing new indigenous methodologies. It is a mixed methods project that attempts to counteract appropriation of indigenous knowledge and create space for new qualitative indigenous methods. Botha’s (2011) conceptualization of mixed methods is driven by Greene’s (2007) definition where mixed methods social inquiry involves a plurality of philosophical paradigms, theoretical assumptions, methodological traditions, data gathering and analysis techniques and personalized value commitments. (p. 134) The definition emphasizes a philosophical perspective (Plano Clark & Ivankova, 2016). Botha outlines three purposes proposed by Greene (1989) for which the proposed mixed method can be used. The mixing is done for purposes of development, where results from one method inform the other method to increase the validity of constructs; initiation to discover paradoxes and contradictions and increase the breadth and depth of inquiry results; and expansion to extend the breadth and range of inquiry to increase the scope of inquiry. Refer to Table 7.2 on Plano Clark and Ivankova on purposes for mixed methods designs. Botha (2011) frames the mixing of indigenous research with conventional methods by applying the principles of reflexivity. Reflexivity has become an important concept for integrating indigenous and Western knowledge systems and reconciling social science research approaches (Levac et al., 2018). Reflexivity allows researchers to interrogate their positions within existing power. Researchers reflect on what they know, how they know it, their ways of knowing, and which questions they consider important to ask. Of importance in mixing the indigenous and conventional qualitative methods is the knowledge that gets subjugated through the conventional qualitative approach and what new indigenous methods can contribute to communicating the realities of the subjugated

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voices. Botha (2011) used a set of traditional ethnographic methods of data collection consisting of recorded and participant observation to obtain emic and etic perspectives of cultural practices and ways of knowing in a rural village in Eastern Cape of South Africa. He notes, The interviews along with the aid of my research diary, photographs and other material became audio and visual cues that formed the basis for an alternative inquiry process. (p. 317) Botha (2011) describes this alternative inquiry as a process of creating texts that came from the practical, the cognitive, and emotional experiences he went through. The reflexive practices were aligned to the “ethical and relational ways of knowing.” Relationality in indigenous research methodologies emphasize the interdependence and interconnectedness of all creation where the cognitive, the physical, the emotions, and the spiritual coexist. Creative exploration, through intuitive, experiential practice and verbal representation framed by a decolonizing agenda and a relational indigenous methodology, led to an indigenous reflexive method. I have added the reflexive method to Botha’s initial diagram. Clearly then, the community of scholars writing on indigenous research methodologies consider mixed methods as combining qualitative indigenous research with Western qualitative research (Botha, 2011; Chilisa & Tsheko, 2014) and/or combining indigenous research with qualitative and quantitative methods (Chatwood et al., 2015; Chilisa & Tsheko, 2014; Hutchinson, 2014).

Quantitative Research + An Indigenous Worldview When the spiritual, the emotional, the physical, and the cognitive are brought together with a Western quantitative approach, Blackstock (2009) calls the approach “enveloping quantitative research in an indigenous envelope” and does not use the term mixed methods. Enveloping quantitative research in an indigenous envelope is presented as an important aspect of integrating indigenous and Western knowledge for the benefit of indigenous communities. In this approach, conventional quantitative research findings are expressed within the framework of a First Nations worldview represented by the Medicine Wheel. The mixing of conventional quantitative research happens at the presentation of quantitative research findings. The approach has a clearer relationship to quantitative research and constitutes a new way of linking conventional quantitative research to indigenous research. The rationale for mixed methods research under an indigenous paradigm are summarized in Table 7.2. MMR has a decolonization intent and seeks ways to bring together Western and indigenous knowledge on equal footing to explore multiple perspectives and dimensions of a phenomenon. These multiple perspectives and dimensions emanate from an understanding of interconnected reality across time and space that is the foundation of a complex world where animals, the living, and the nonliving live in harmony, and human experience and endeavor is achieved through a balance between the spiritual, emotional, physical, and cognitive dimensions (Blackstock, 2009, p. 138).

1. Initiation (to initiate new ways of grounding methodologies at the local level)

1. Multipurpose (to examine both processes and outcomes)

1. To contextualize research and provide more knowledge pathways in the form of the physical, the spiritual, and the emotional

1. Triangulation (to increase the validity of results by converging and corroborating results from the different methods)

5. Expansion (to increase the scope of a study by using different methods for different study components)

4. Initiation (to increase the breadth and depth of results and interpretations by discovering paradox and contradiction, advancing new perspectives of frameworks, and recasting questions or results from one method with questions or results from the other method)

3. Development (to increase the validity of results by using the results from one method to help inform the sampling, measurement, and implementation of the other method)

2. Complementarity (to increase the interpretability and meaningfulness of results by elaborating, enhancing, illustrating, and clarifying results from one method with the results from the other method)

Blackstock (2009)

3. Expansion (to decolonize the areas of collaboration between indigenous and Western modes of qualitative research, reveal new perspectives, and expand the boundaries of qualitative ways of knowing)

Greene, Carecelli, & Graham (1989)

3. Triangulation through converging operations (to correct for biases present in each method)

2. Development (to develop new theories, values, and practices that inform indigenous research)

Botha (2011)

Reichardt & Cook (1997)

2. Each method type building upon the other (to use the knowledge gained from one method to benefit and complement the other)

Indigenous Mixed Methods Rationale

Mixed Methods Research Rationales

TABLE 7.2  ■  Mixed Method Research Rationales by Author

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1. To create space for indigenous knowledge, epistemologies, and values in the research process to enhance respect and equality of all knowledge systems and minimize conflict that can emerge when only Western methodologies are used

1. Participation enrichment (to combine methods to optimize the study sample by improving recruitment, determining inclusion criteria, or understanding participants’ reactions to the study)

2. To invoke indigenous knowledge to inform ways in which concepts and new theoretical frameworks for research studies are defined 3. To broaden the literature base so that we do not only depend on written texts but also on the largely unwritten texts of the formerly colonized and historically disadvantaged people

2. Offset (to offset the weaknesses and draw on the strengths associated with both quantitative and qualitative research methods)

3. Completeness (to bring together a more comprehensive account of the study topic)

6. Explanation (to use one method to help explain findings generated by the other)

5. Different research questions (to use quantitative and qualitative research to answer different questions)

(Continued)

4. To bring to the center of the entire research process the spiritual, historical, social, and the ideological aspect of the research phenomena

1. To bring to the research process indigenous tools that build and nurture relationships

1. Triangulation or greater validity (to combine quantitative and qualitative research to corroborate findings)

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4. Process and structure (to use quantitative research to provide an account of structure in social life and qualitative research to provide a sense of process)

Chilisa and Tsheko (2014)

Bryman (2006)

4. Significance enhancement (to combine methods to enhance interpretations of data, analyses, and results)

3. Treatment integrity (to combine methods to assess the fidelity and context of interventions, treatments, and programs)

2. Instrument fidelity (to combine methods to maximize the appropriateness and utility of data collection instruments and protocols)

Chatwood et al. (2015)

Collins, Onwuegbuzie, & Sutton (2006)

Chapter 7 Decolonizing Mixed Methods Research  163

16. Enhancement or building upon quantitative and qualitative findings (to augment one type of findings with data from the other research approach)

15. Diversity of views (to combine the researchers’ perspectives as found in selected variables through quantitative research with participants’ perspectives as found in emergent meanings through qualitative research)

14. Confirm and discover (to use qualitative research to generate hypotheses and qualitative research to test them)

13. Utility or improving the usefulness of findings (to develop results that are more useful to practitioners and others)

12. Illustration (to use qualitative data to illustrate quantitative results)

11. Context (to provide contextual understanding from qualitative research with broad relationships or generalizable results from quantitative research)

10. Credibility (to enhance the integrity of findings by employing both approaches)

9. Sampling (to use one approach to facilitate the sampling of respondents or cases for the other approach)

8. Instrument development (to use qualitative research to inform the development of questionnaire and scale items)

7. Unexpected results (to understand surprising results from one method by employing the other method)

Mixed Methods Research Rationales

TABLE 7.2  ■ (Continued) Indigenous Mixed Methods Rationale

164   Indigenous Research Methodologies

1. To recognize indigenous quantitative methodologies and indigenous qualitative methodologies as methodologies in their own right

1. Addressing confirmatory and exploratory questions (to use different methods to address questions that call to both verify and generate theory in the same study)

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Source: Plano Clark, V. L., & Ivankova, N. V. (2016). Mixed methods research—A guide to the field. London, UK: Sage.

3. Sequential contributions (to enhance the effectiveness of one method with the other method by using what is learned from one method to inform the other)

2. Additional coverage (to use the strengths of different methods to best achieve different goals within the study)

1. Convergent findings (to use both methods to address the same research question to produce greater certainty in the conclusions)

Morgan (2014)

3. Providing opportunity for greater assortment of divergent views (to use different methods to uncover divergent results and include diverse perspectives and voices)

2. Providing stronger inferences (to develop better conclusions by combining methods so that they offset the disadvantages that each method has on its own)

Andersen & Walter (2013); Kovach (2012); Wilson (2008)

Teddlie and Tashakkori (2009)

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166   Indigenous Research Methodologies

Blackstock (2009) asserts that qualitative and quantitative research methods are equally appropriate for use in indigenous research. Adding to this view, Walter and Andersen (2013) argue that indigenous scholars can and should act to appropriate quantitative methodologies for their own aims. They refute the argument that quantitative research is unsuitable for the study of indigeneity (Gilchrist, 1997) and lament the near absence of quantitative methodologies within the field of indigenous research methodologies. They note that the colonization intent of quantitative research to produce statistics constructs that produce and reproduce differences between the knower (Western) and the Other requires an engagement with indigenous quantitative methodologies. The process of enveloping quantitative research in an indigenous envelope starts with researchers’ understanding of the research goal, building respectful relations with the indigenous communities developing the research question and the methodology, interpretation and dissemination strategies in partnership with the community, and observing ethical protocols that honor indigenous knowledge and are culturally responsive (­Blackstock, 2009). Blackstock (2009) presents a comparison of a conventional quantitative and First Nations presentation of findings on a translational population study in The Canadian Incidence Study on Reported Child Abuse and Neglect. The research on child welfare is supported by numerous documents that give guidance on access to communities, ownership, control, and possession in the indigenous research on child welfare. Enveloping quantitative research in an indigenous envelope is presented as a mixed methods approach that brings together a conventional quantitative paradigm with a First Nations holistic worldview based on the Medicine Wheel on a translational study on child welfare. The goal was to evidence community reality that does not deny the influence of a relational worldview, emotions, or spirituality. The Medicine Wheel presents a holistic worldview that seeks balance between the spiritual, the cognitive, the physical, and the emotional. On the translational study on child welfare, the researchers invoked the spiritual in the presentation and dissemination of the findings by employing symbolic art, poetry, legends, and teachings to add meaning to the findings. The emotional requires the researcher’s emotional connection to reality. Reflexivity becomes an important component of the report process, as demonstrated by Botha (2011) in his study. In line with the concept of reflexivity, the researchers can interrogate their emotions in relation to their observation of the physical. In the study, the physical was honored by printing the report on an “ecologically friendly ink and on paper that protected old growth forests” (Blackstock, 2009). Thus, according to Blackstock (2009), the report demonstrated value, respect, and relational existence of people with the environment. In the cognitive domain, ancestral knowledge is valued, and whose language is used to communicate the findings is essential in bringing the spiritual, the physical, the emotional, and cognitive together. The report summarized the major findings based on a conventional quantitative approach that used a summary of the findings informed by a First Nations indigenous paradigm. The cover page of the two reports, the title, and the main report are different with the First Nations report using symbolic art, photos, images, poetic language, and embodying the physical through presentation of life in the form of water and a butterfly, while the conventional approach relies on the quantitative approach where the

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researchers distance themselves from the data in an effort to present an objective reality (Blackstock, 2009).

SUMMARY There are multiple ways of defining MMR and justifying its use. Most definitions from the mainstream paradigms focus on the mixing of qualitative and quantitative data and the methodology of mixing. The rationale for mixing focuses more on techniques and methods marginalizing other processes such as building relationships and connecting with participants and the environment in ways that show respect, are reciprocal and relevant to the needs of the Other, and are at the same time rigorous. Indigenous scholars focus on integrating nonindigenous and indigenous paradigms. The emphasis is more on combining indigenous research defined as research informed by indigenous paradigms and worldviews with Western research approaches in a way that gives the two knowledge systems equal status, creating space for the Other to retrieve, revitalize, reclaim, and restore indigenous knowledge that is vital for renewal. Indigenous scholars define as mixed methods combining conventional qualitative research data with indigenous qualitative methodologies (Botha, 2011). The main argument is that indigenous qualitative research emanates from an indigenous philosophical, cultural, and historical stance that is different from that which informs a conventional qualitative method. Embedding quantitative research findings in an indigenous worldview (Blackstock, 2009) and mixing quantitative and qualitative data based on Western tradition and practice with indigenous research informed by indigenous philosophies, traditions, and history are also considered as mixed methods approaches. Indigenous mixed methods are about mixing indigenous quantitative and indigenous qualitative methodologies with mainstream quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

Key Points ——

Indigenous mixed methods focus on mixing the quantitative, qualitative, and indigenous research.

——

Indigenous mixed methods contextualize research and provide more knowledge pathways in the form of the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual that can appeal to the ways of knowing of indigenous communities

——

Indigenous mixed methods are a vehicle to decolonize and integrate indigenous and Western knowledge to enhance participation of indigenous peoples as knowers, ensure the relevance of research to their needs, and disseminate research findings to academic and community settings.

168   Indigenous Research Methodologies

ACTIVITY 7.2 1. Conduct a literature search on mixed methods research in the last 5 years. Discuss how the scholarship on mixed methods research is changing. 2. Search for the cited article (a), and debate whether you would consider the research design mixed methods:

a. Berger-Gonzalez, M., Stauffacher, M., Zinsstag, J., Edwards, P., & Krutli, P. (2016). Trans-disciplinary research on cancer-healing systems between biomedicine and the Maya of Guatemala: A tool for reciprocal reflexivity in a multi-epistemological setting. Qualitative Health Research, 26(1), 77–91.

Suggested Readings Berger-Gonzalez, M., Stauffacher, M., Zinsstag, J., Edwards, P., & Krutli P. (2016). Transdisciplinary research on cancer-healing systems between biomedicine and the Maya of Guatemala: A tool for reciprocal reflexivity in a multi-epistemological setting. Qualitative Health Research, 26(1), 77–91. Blackstock, C. (2009). First Nations children count: Enveloping quantitative research in indigenous envelope. First Peoples Child & Family Review, 4(2), 135–143. Botha, L. (2011). Mixed methods as a process towards indigenous methodologies. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 14(4), 313–325. DOI:10.1080/13645 579.2010.516644 Chatwood, S., Paulette, F., Baker, R., Eriksen, A., Hansen, K. L., Eriksen, H., … Brown, A.

(2015). Approaching Etuaptmunk—Introducing a consensus-based mixed method for health services research. International Journal of Circumpolar Health, (74):1–8. Hutchinson, P., Dibngwall, C., Kurtz, D., Evans, M., Jones, G., & Corbett, H. (2014). Maintaining the integrity of indigenous knowledge: Sharing Metis knowing through mixed methods. International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, 7(1), 1–10. Nastasi, B., & Hitchcock, J. (2016). Mixed methods research and culture-specific interventions: Program design and evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Plano Clark, V. L., & Ivankova, N. V. (2016). Mixed methods research: A guide to the field. London, UK: Sage.

8 INDIGENOUS MIXED METHODS IN PROGRAM EVALUATION Although methods of indigenous evaluation share common ground with qualitative methods, the two are not synonymous. Not all indigenous methodology is qualitative, nor are all qualitative methods congruent with indigenous contexts. Joan LaFrance, Richard Nichols, and Karen E. Kirkhart (2012)

The current limited Indigenous research presence in statistical research greatly reduces the Indigenous influence in framing the types of questions being asked and the way Indigenous data are being collected, analyzed and interpreted. Maggie Walter (2005, p. 31)

Overview In Chapters 6 and 7 the following were noted: • Indigenous mixed methods contextualize research and provide more knowledge pathways in the form of the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual that can appeal to the ways of knowing of indigenous communities. • There is a need to shift from evaluation that only assesses implementation and outcome of programs to evaluation that considers the initiators of programs so that communities can own solutions to their challenges.

169

170   Indigenous Research Methodologies

• There is a need for envisioning evaluation frameworks, concepts, tools, and checklists based on indigenous philosophies and cultures that evaluators can use to make evaluation contextual, culturally appropriate, and relevant to the needs of the people. The chapter describes a multiphase indigenous mixed methods approach study to design and evaluate a risk reduction intervention. The study describes how indigenous methods that used to collect cultural knowledge and to build relationships were combined with mainstream quantitative and qualitative methods in ways that promoted relevancy and usefulness of the intervention and its outcomes to the stakeholders. The chapter illustrates an indigenous mixed methods approach that goes beyond the combination of qualitative and quantitative research approaches to the integration of the largely marginalized knowledge systems with dominant knowledge systems thorough a decolonization and indigenization research process. See also Chilisa and Tsheko (2012).

LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this chapter you should be able to do the following: 1. Apply mixed methods research with an indigenous paradigm lens to program design and evaluation. 2. Appreciate the role of collaborative and participatory methods in an indigenous mixed methods program design and evaluation. 3. Comprehend the application of indigenous mixed methods in designing culturally and context specific programs. Before You Start Read the quotations at the beginning of this chapter, and discuss the power and value of quantitative data in indigenous research.

THE INDIGENOUS PARADIGMATIC LENS A postcolonial indigenous paradigm provided a theoretical framework that informed a mixed methods research approach to design and test the efficacy of a school-based risk-reduction intervention for 14- to 17-year-old adolescents in Botswana. A postcolonial indigenous paradigm articulates a relational ontology that addresses

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relations among people and promotes love and harmony in communities. Study participants make connections with each other, while the researcher is viewed as part of the circle of ­relations. Reality implies a set of relationships. Indigenous methods were used to collect cultural knowledge and to build relationships; these approaches allowed for the integration of the largely marginalized knowledge systems with dominant knowledge systems through a decolonization and indigenization research process.

A Relational Epistemology African perspectives view relational epistemology as knowledge that has a connection with the knowers. The challenge is on how to bring this cultural knowledge into the research process. The research process is informed by a relational ethical framework that moves away from conceiving the researched as participants to seeing them as coresearchers. There is an emphasis on accountable responsibilities of researchers and respectful relationships between the researchers and the researched that take into account the researched’s web of relationships with the living and the nonliving. A mixed methods approach thus brings into the research process a combination of indigenous research methods and other methods to build a web of relationships so that research takes place in an environment that nurtures peace and appreciation for diversity, love, harmony, and possibilities of hope; togetherness, cooperation and collective action; and responsibilities and coalitions of disciplines and knowledge systems. Building relationships thus becomes a tool or method made up of a set of indigenous practices that is an essential component in mixed methods indigenous research.

Preparing for the Program: Decolonizing Collaborative Research and Building Relationships In 2007, the University of Botswana, in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania, won a U.S. National Institutes of Health grant (R24 HD05669) to build capacity to design culturally relevant and age appropriate HIV/STI prevention interventions. The indigenous mixed methods approach behind this University of Botswana and University of Pennsylvania collaborative study (to design and test the efficacy of culturally relevant and age appropriate adolescents’ risk reduction intervention to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and sexual transmitted diseases among adolescents) is described. It was a multiphase study with four phases. Figure 8.1 summarizes the phases. The following were the specific objectives of the research: To identify determinants of AIDS preventative behavior among Batswana secondary school students 14 to 17 years of age To develop population-specific, culturally appropriate sexual risk behavior interventions To pilot test the efficacy of the intervention in changing sexual risk behaviors

Structured questions around Theory of Planned Behavior

Interviews

Other Qualitative methods

Language

Determinants of risky behaviors

Pilot Survey

Theory and culture-based questionnaire

Time

Activities

Content

Intervention Curriculum

Testing efficacy

EXPERIMENT

Evaluation Methods Pretest Post-test Randomized Control Trial

Evaluation Methods dialogues; talking circles; yarning; Participatory relationship methods

Repeated measures evaluation results

Evaluation Outcome

Individualized evaluation reports through promise letters

Qualitative summative Evaluation Results:

Source: Chilisa B; Tsheko G N (2014) Mixed Methods in Indigenous Research: Building Relationships for Sustainable Intervention Outcomes. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 8(3) 222-233.

            Elicitation Phase     Pilot Survey   Designing the Intervention   Testing the Efficacy of the Intervention

Theoretical Lens: Decolonizing the mind, research, methodologies and building relationships

Storying, proverbs

Indigenous methods;

FIGURE 8.1  ■  An Indigenous Mixed Methods Approach

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Interrogating Power in Evaluation In Chapter 6, it was noted that according to Haugen and Chouinard (2018), relational, political, discursive, and historical powers dictate what is considered reality and truth and shape the realities under review. The research started with a process of building relationships and addressing hierarchical structures that privileged dominant cultures and literatures. The research personnel from the U.S. university came from minority and less privileged groups in the United States. Issues of culturally appropriate and relevant research were as important to them as to the researchers in Botswana. Our dialogue on building relationships started with agreeing on a collaboration model that transformed hierarchical relationships that exist between the universities in the North and those in the South; academic institutions and communities and a model that created spaces for the integration of cultural knowledge with global knowledge to promote cultural relevancy and usefulness of research outcomes to communities as well as ensuring that the researchers remained accountable to the communities. We agreed on a collaboration model that gave the role of principal investigator (PI) and other leadership roles to University of Botswana researchers. This was done to break the stereotype that expertise can only come from Northern universities (Chilisa, 2005; Pryor, Kuupole, Kutor, Dunne, & Adu-Yeboah, 2009). Often, when researchers from the South are given leadership responsibilities, they feel inadequate or lacking the skills and knowledge to contribute to the research (Bresciani, 2008). Most of us involved as leaders had to continuously go through a decolonization of our minds, that is, believing that the Batswana had a cultural knowledge that can be understood by those who grow in the culture and that such knowledge was relevant to the design of appropriate and useful interventions in Botswana. The health literature is rife with deficit-theorizing that depicts cultural knowledge and lack of urgency among Batswana as some of the factors that slow efforts to prevent the spread of HIV (Chilisa, 2005). We formed community advisory boards to serve as community theorists that could bring to the research the cultural knowledge, values, and processes of knowledge creation that could serve to make the interventions we designed relevant and useful to the communities. The community advisory board was made up of representatives of community interests. Their main role was to decolonize the research process by bringing to the creation of knowledge Batswana worldviews and knowledge to ensure that the research remained relevant and useful to the Batswana. In addition, an external advisory board consisting of intellectuals with expertise on global knowledge in intervention research from the United States and southern Africa was formed. Indigenous research theory promotes context-specific research that goes beyond the bounds of existing methods of data collection and analysis; literature and theory to provide more insights into theory development; and the development of interventions that address people’s needs. It involves the study of local phenomena, using local language, local subjects, and locally meaningful constructs (Ping Li, 2011) to provide solutions to local problems. Members of the external advisory board served as peer reviewers who consistently asked us to identify and make explicit indigenous theoretical orientation, methods, cultural knowledge, and culturally specific findings throughout the four phases of the study. Figure 8.2 illustrates the conceptualization process.

174   Indigenous Research Methodologies FIGURE 8.2  ■  Conceptualization Process

Global Literature Enveloped in a Relational Postcolonial Indigenous Worldview

Conceptual Framework for the Intervention

HIV Statistics in Botswana Quantitative

Phase: Indigenous Methods + Other Qualitative Methods: Concurrent Design (see Figure 8.3) Aim: To bring out culturally specific knowledge, beliefs, and practices not found in the global literature and contextualize research instruments In the first phase, our indigenous mixed methods approach combined indigenous qualitative methods with other qualitative methods to elicit adolescents’ and their parents’ beliefs, attitudes, and intentions toward sex, HIV prevention beliefs, HIV/AIDS intervention programs, and preferred modes of educating adolescents on sexuality issues and preferred components of the intervention program with regard to information, skills, methods, materials, and the implementation framework. The intention was to employ a design that would enable the community and the researched to participate in eliciting cultural knowledge on adolescent sexuality and HIV/AIDS that would enable the development of relevant and useful adolescent risk reduction interventions. As a way to build relationships, coalitions, networks, and connectedness with the community, parents were involved as research participants to deepen understanding of cultural knowledge on adolescents’ sexuality and sexual risk behaviors so that the interventions could be inclusive of community knowledge and community input. A culturally relevant intervention had to come from within the culture, the traditions, languages, and lived experiences of the Batswana adolescents. Finding methods that resonate with Batswana culture was another important step in ensuring that the communities and the research participants could reach back to their history, live the moment, and reclaim and valorize cultural knowledge that still remained relevant to the design of risk reduction interventions for adolescents and that which needed to be interrogated. Proverbs, metaphors, stories, and myths were used as culturally appropriate methods of gathering data on sociocultural factors that influence adolescent local knowledge regarding HIV prevention strategies such as ­abstinence, condom use, limiting partners, and safe male circumcision. Participants in this method were 11 adolescents, aged 14 to 17 years and consisting of five boys and six girls. The participants were selected from two randomly sampled junior secondary schools in the city of Gaborone. In this method, participants were provided with verbal and written instructions asking them to write down stories or myths that they had heard regarding the following five behaviors: abstinence, virginity, using condoms, having multiple partners, and having only one partner.

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FIGURE 8.3

Indigenous Qualitative Methods Data Analysis

Qualitative Research Results

Other Qualitative Methods Data Analysis

EMBEDDING THE STUDY IN GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE Indigenous research identifies context specific models that may lead to context-bound knowledge. In blending cultural knowledge with global knowledge, the theory of planned behavior (TPB) was employed to design individual and focus group interviews that explored adolescents’ beliefs and attitudes toward multiple sexual partners, abstinence, consistent condom use, limiting partners, and safe male circumcision. The TPB asserts a specific relationship among beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behavior. More specifically, the TPB posits that intentions to perform a specific behavior are determined by three factors: (1) attitudes toward the behavior, which are seen as reflecting behavioral beliefs about the consequences of performing the behavior; (2) subjective norms toward the behavior, which reflect individuals’ beliefs about whether specific referent persons (e.g., peers, romantic partners, parents, the church) would approve or disapprove of the behavior; and (3) perceived behavioral control over the behavior, which involves individuals’ beliefs that they have the necessary resources, skills, and opportunities to perform the behavior. As applied to HIV/AIDS prevention among adolescents in Botswana, the TPB can be used to predict adolescents’ behavioral intentions toward abstinence, condom use, and having multiple sexual partners Twenty-four participants were interviewed individually and asked to respond verbally to questions assessing behavioral, normative, and control beliefs related to the following three behaviors: condom use, abstinence, and having one partner. Behavioral belief questions included the following: (1) What is good about the behavior? and (2) What is bad about the behavior? The normative belief questions were as follows: (1) Who approves of adolescents engaging in the behavior? (2) Who disapproves of adolescents engaging in the behavior? and (3) Who do you know that engages in the behavior? The control belief questions were the following: (1) What is easy about the behavior? and (2) What is hard about the behavior? Participants’ responses were analyzed using a modified version of the Consensual Qualitative Research method (CQR) as described by Hill, Thompson, and Williams (1997). Data from the two data collection methods were analyzed separately. The combined results of the two methods of data collection used in this study provided

176   Indigenous Research Methodologies

knowledge consistent with global literature as well as culturally specific knowledge. The culturally specific knowledge was on sociocultural behavioral beliefs related mainly to the consequences of prolonged abstinence. These came under three main categories of beliefs about abstinence causing ill health: abstinence causing infertility, abstinence causing a painful erection, and prolonged abstinence causing pain for girls when they eventually gave birth. A sociocultural belief domain also emerged in the context of a question on limiting the number of partners. Adolescents reported that the beliefs on limiting partners are informed by common sayings and proverbs on multiple partners. One common proverb says, Manna keselepe o aadimanwa (meaning, a man must be shared). Although this makes reference to men, adolescents perceive the proverb as condoning multiple partners for both sexes.

Community Participation in Data Analysis It should be noted that the parents, students, and community advisory board members did not participate in the data analysis. The parents’ and students’ voices were, however, preserved in their original form through proverbs, metaphors, and stories that were told. These were used in their original form to address behavior change. Simonds and Christopher (2013) report tensions between Western and indigenous frameworks when community advisory board members participated in a qualitative data analysis of an intervention research project that had a decolonization intent and employed a community-based participatory research approach. Participation of community advisory board members was deemed important to provide insights that would not otherwise be available to the researchers. Tensions arose when the academic researchers wanted to incorporate theory into data analysis deeming an indigenous theory not a legitimate option. The community advisory board members were not comfortable with a thematic analysis of the interview scripts. Simonds and ­Christopher note that one member of the community advisory board explained that themes were confusing because when making themes, everything became scattered. Crow people (the indigenous community where the research took place) “don’t break things apart.” Indigenous community concerns with data analysis can be addressed by allowing collaborators and coresearchers to create stories and vignettes from the transcript data or to have community participants write their stories from the transcript data (Blodgettt et al., 2011; Christensen, 2012; Simonds & Christopher, 2013). Cram and Mertens (2015) have also noted tensions when an indigenous research was incorporated within a transformative paradigm, noting that evaluators in the transformative paradigm, while claiming to pursue social justice issues, still fail to address the decolonization intention of indigenous research and evaluation. The case study in this chapter illustrates an indigenous mixed methods design that is informed by an indigenous paradigmatic lens situated in the context and needs branch. Refer back to Chapter 6. Phase 2: Indigenous Methods + Qualitative Methods + Quantitative Methods: Sequential Design (see Figure 8.4) Aim: To design research instruments that are contextually and culturally appropriate

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ACTIVITY 8.1 1. Reflect on the quotations at the beginning of the chapter, and discuss qualitative methods that you think may not be congruent with indigenous contexts in your communities and ways to address them.

2. Read the article by Simonds, V. W., & Christopher, S. (2013), Adapting Western research methods to indigenous ways of knowing. American Journal of Public Health, 103(12), 1–14, and discuss the pros and cons of adapting Western methods to indigenous ways of knowing.

FIGURE 8.4

Qualitative Data Collection, Analysis, and Interpretation

Quantitative Survey Design

Survey Data Collection, Analysis, and Interpretation

Creating Indigenous Statistical Constructs In Chapter 2, Walter and Andersen's (2013) view that current statistical analysis is based on narrow aspects of indigenous peoples’ daily lives was noted. In the second phase, the focus was on designing a culturally relevant survey instrument and using it to quantitatively measure behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes of adolescents toward sex, abstinence, condom use, consistent condom use, circumcision, and HIV. In this phase, our mixed methods approach combined indigenous methods and qualitative methods to design a quantitative survey instrument to measure the prevalence of risky behaviors. A measure of the prevalence of the risky behaviors enabled us to calculate the sample size that we required to find any significant effects on the test for the efficacy of the intervention. It also enabled the identification of the beliefs and attitudes that mitigated against positive behavior that the intervention needed to address. The survey questionnaire items were built from qualitative data based on the TPB and data derived from cultural knowledge that came through stories, myths, proverbs, songs, metaphors, and local language. The use of songs, taboos, and myths to source parents’ and their children’s views on sex and sexuality brought into the discussion concepts not common in the literature. The statistical analysis was thus broadened to include the adolescents’ daily living experiences. During this phase, community voice was brought into the research process through the advisory community board whose role was to review the survey instrument. Reviews of the pilot questionnaire survey by the community advisory board made it possible to use content, materials, and language that was acceptable to the community.

178   Indigenous Research Methodologies

A self-report questionnaire collected data from 286 adolescents (34.9% boys & 65.1% girls) between the ages of 10 and 19 (mean age 15.02, standard deviation 1.02) in eight junior secondary schools. Multivariate regression analysis was used to evaluate the predictive power of the TPB. A multiple regression analysis to test the predictive power of a combination of theory-based constructs and those emanating from cultural knowledge revealed that sociocultural beliefs about abstinence and limiting partners predicted intentions to abstain or limit the number of sexual partners. Phase 3: Indigenous Methods + Other Qualitative Methods + Quantitative Methods: Concurrent Design (see Figure 8.5) Aim: To design a culturally appropriate and relevant intervention using content material from the community and the adolescents In the third phase, the indigenous mixed methods approach combined quantitative data findings from the survey on attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that encouraged healthy risk behaviors with cultural knowledge derived through indigenous methods and theory-based data derived through the qualitative structured interviews to develop a culturally appropriate and relevant intervention to promote behavior change among adolescents. The focus was on the type of data, content, and materials to drive an age-and culturally appropriate and relevant intervention curriculum that would increase adolescents’ knowledge about risk behaviors, thereby increasing positive attitudes toward risk-­ reduction behaviors and increase their confidence that they have the skills to practice safer behaviors (e.g., abstaining, using condoms, opting for safe male circumcision, and HIV testing). Parental and adolescent views on the content or topics to be included in the curriculum, the activities, and the place and time of the intervention were triangulated with pilot survey data collected in the second phase to prioritize the behaviors to be addressed, the topics in the curriculum, and the amount of time to spend on each topic. The content of activities, for example, building positive attitudes toward abstinence, condom use, and limiting partners, came from traditional or local knowledge sourced through indigenous methods, as well as from the structured interviews framed around the TPB. The interventions consisted of 12 one-hour modules, with two modules delivered during each of six sessions on six consecutive school days. The process of designing the intervention thus combined quantitative methods that built on dominant theoretical frameworks and indigenous methods that brought literature and communicated findings not accessible through mainstream qualitative methods. An HIV/STI risk-­reduction intervention was designed with the purpose to increase HIV/STI risk reduction knowledge and enhance FIGURE 8.5

Survey Results

Intervention Design

Qualitative Data From Phase 1

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behavioral beliefs that support abstinence, condom use, HIV testing, safe male circumcision, and sticking to one partner. Phase 4: Quantitative Methods + Indigenous Methods: Sequential (see Figure 8.6) Aim: To monitor intervention implementation and test the efficacy of the intervention In the final phase, we employed an indigenous mixed methods approach to determine (1) whether the intervention was effective, (2) why it was effective, (3) with whom it was most effective, and (4) whether adolescents and their parents found it relevant, useful, and culturally acceptable. An experimental design to quantitatively measure the efficacy of the intervention was combined with indigenous methods to conduct formative evaluation to assess the relevancy, usefulness, and acceptability of the intervention. We also employed indigenous practices and tools to empower and build relationship between parents and their children that could promote sustainability of intervention outcomes and encourage lasting relationships among adolescents that could last years after the intervention. In the experiment, a pretest-posttest control group design was employed. A sample of 806 Grade 9 adolescents was randomly assigned to the risk reduction intervention and a health promotion intervention and were followed up at 3, 6, and 12 months. In line with an indigenous research theoretical lens of promoting research that is useful, relevant, and beneficial to the participants, a health promotion intervention focusing on behaviors to reduce the risk of heart disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, and certain cancers; increase fruit and vegetable consumption and physical activity; and decrease cigarette smoking and alcohol use was administered to the control group (see Figure 8.7). The health promotion, like the risk-reduction intervention, consisted of 12 one-hour modules, delivered in six sessions of two hours during six consecutive school days.

FIGURE 8.6

Implementation Process Pretest Survey

Process Evaluation Using Qualitative Indigenous Methods

Posttest Quantitative

Qualitative Summative Evaluation Using Indigenous Qualitative Methods

Disseminate to Journals

Disseminate to Communities

180   Indigenous Research Methodologies FIGURE 8.7  ■  Participant Recruitment and Retention Assessed for eligibility (n=1265)

Enrollment

Excluded (n=5) Not Randomized (n=451)

• Declined to participate (n=5)

Randomly selected participants (n=809) Dropped out (n=3) Randomized (n=806)

Allocated to risk-reduction intervention (n=404)

Baseline Allocated to health promotion intervention (n=402)

Post Intervention Received risk-reduction intervention Received health promotion intervention (n=404) (n=402) Followed up at 3 months (n=382)

Follow-Up

Followed up at 3 months (n=380)

Followed up at 6 months (n=393)

Followed up at 6 months (n=387)

Followed up at 12 months (n=390)

Followed up at 12 months (n=388) Analysis

Analysed (n=404)

Analysed (n=402)

Generalized estimating equation (GEE) models were used to test the effect of the HIV/STI risk-reduction intervention compared with the health-promotion control intervention averaged over the 3-, 6-, and 12-month postintervention assessments for behavioral outcomes and averaged over the immediate postintervention and 3-, 6-, and 12-month postintervention assessments for intentions. The conclusion drawn was that the theory-based, culture-specific HIV/STI risk-reduction intervention for middle adolescence in Botswana affected significant changes over 12 months in positive intentions to abstain, limit number of sexual partners, and to circumcise, and also significantly increased HIV risk-reduction knowledge and parent-child communication, supporting the need to continue interventions tailored to adolescents’ age and culture.

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Indigenous Qualitative Evaluation Embedded in an Experimental Design The indigenous mixed methods approach combined participatory action research with the appreciative inquiry (Ludema, Cooperrider, & Barrett, 2006) and desire-focused (Tuck, 2009) frameworks to guide the implementation of the intervention. Indigenous conversational methods, namely adolescents talking to their parents, talking circles, and yarning, were used as data collection methods. One of the criticisms labeled against participatory action research is that most of the approaches are problem-focused aiming at discovering communities’ unmet needs. Conceptions of communities as knowers and participants as researchers require researchers to move from problem-focused modes of inquiry that see communities as places full of problems and needs that can only be solved with the help of outsiders, to change-focused approaches that emphasize strength and positive images of the researched (Ludema et al., 2006; Mertens, 2009; Tuck, 2009). In the change-focused approach, the researched reflect on their qualities and move toward a self-discovery. They also dream and envision the best that they could be, dialogue on strategies to implement their dream, and draw a plan to take them to their destiny. The first activity in the intervention was directed toward building group cohesion and a feeling of togetherness and worthiness among participants. At every session, there were not less than 20 adolescents. Among the Bantu people, symbols are an important strategy of building togetherness. In the intervention, the “being” relationship with others was nurtured through the use of a shield as a symbol that defined the identity of the groups. In addition, naming gives character to whatever is named. The name “Own the Future” was given to the intervention groups, and a motto, “Pulling Together We Will,” was adopted by the group as ways of knowing themselves and the goals that they stood for. One of the activities of the day thus reads, Today you enrolled in the teen club, Own the Future. Own the Future is a club to give you the skills to take control of your life, make responsible choices, plan for a bright future, and achieve your goals and dreams. Our motto in this club is Pulling Together We Will. In this teen club, Own the Future, you promise to encourage and support each other’s efforts to avoid risky behaviors and achieve your goals. Your parents could also give you support. In one of the activities of the first day of the intervention, adolescents were given approximately five minutes to think about the positive qualities and phrases that reflected their good qualities, that is, their strengths, character, and determination. They wrote and drew positive images about themselves on their personal shields. They were encouraged to express who they were and what was special about them. They were also made aware that the shield was a symbolic personal armor that would protect them from risky sexual behaviors and health problems. Some of the adolescents thought of themselves as helpful individuals and therefore drew a hand on their heart, while others drew a heart to show that they were kind-hearted people. Another important activity of the first day was to get participants to think about their future and understand that their behavior would impact on what they would be in the future. The adolescents

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then completed a goals and dreams timeline listing their goals and dreams from the current time to a day in the future, which could have been 5 to 10 years into the future. They were to discuss with their parents the goals and dreams timeline and their personal shield and to review and finalize the penultimate version. The two activities are anchored in the desire-centered research frameworks that move away from deficit approaches that are common in research with marginalized groups, to build confidence in the participants to project into the future and imagine possibilities of hope and images of transformed communities. Parental interest and involvement in their children’s lives was crucial to the implementation of the intervention and also for sustainable positive behavior change. Letters were written to parents explaining the intervention and inviting them to assume responsibility to discuss their children’s goals and dreams. Researchers relied on the adolescents to hold conversations with their parents that would capture the voices of their parents and keep them engaged in the intervention. Several factors can affect the validity of the data collected by adolescents. One of the factors is the cultural taboo on discussing sexual matters with their parents, which makes initiation of a discussion very difficult and sometimes impossible. The findings from the qualitative data in the first phase of the intervention indicated that for the intervention to work, there was a need for parent-child communication about sex and sexuality. Most of the communication between parent and child involved sending children on errands and counseling or scolding or disowning them after the children were already sexually active, when they were already either pregnant or in trouble. Parents felt inadequately informed about matters concerning sex and sexuality, were embarrassed, or had difficulty finding a suitable time to talk to their children. To address the lack of parent-child communication, adolescents were introduced to seven effective ways of holding conversations with their parents, which required them to choose time to talk to their parents, have a plan to start the conversation, be courteous, present accurate and factual information in a concise and convincing manner, and to always present a complete picture of the issue for discussion. They were trained on how to approach their parents and get them to discuss sensitive matters with them through role-play. To sustain adolescents’ and their parents’ voice in the intervention, each day’s activity involved a process where adolescents took homework assignments that required them to find out more about their parents and the role they would play in supporting them to live healthier lives, as well as find out their parents’ views on the daily activities. Participants became active researchers, taking action to engage their parents in inquiry, recording their observations and interviews; critically reflecting and evaluating their action research; and using the information to inform their next cycle of activity in the intervention. Indigenous Conversation Methods Each day started and ended with a talking circle. The talking circle was used as a method to gather adolescents’ views on the intervention process and to report on the conversations with their parents. The talking circle was also used as a method to build group trust and cohesion as well as develop openness and confidence among adolescents. Talking circles are based on the ideal of participants having respect for each other and are an example of a focus group method derived from postcolonial indigenous

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worldviews. See Chapter 11 on the talking circle. With regard to the intervention, adolescents sat in a circle at the beginning of each day’s reports on the assigned homework and at the end of each day, commenting on what they had learned. Participants were only allowed to talk when they were holding a shield, a symbol for self-protection and, in the context of the intervention, protecting one from sexual risky behaviors. In general, talking circles on the assigned activities informed the facilitators of the opinions/views of the parents and adolescents. The information was used as feedback to empower the adolescents in getting their parents involved in assisting them with the assigned activities and in ensuring that the intervention was relevant and acceptable to both parents and their children. The Shield as a Symbol of Protection On the last day, adolescents wrote letters to themselves promising how they would protect themselves in order to achieve their dream goals. They also wrote letters to their parents telling them what they would do to ensure they reached their goals and how they wanted their parents to assist them. The promise letters laid the foundation for parents and their children to continue the dialogue on the goals and dream timeline and to explore risky behaviors that are possible obstacles to the achievement of the goals and dreams after the researchers left the site. Each adolescents’ pledge, promise letter, and goals and dreams timeline served as documented data that adolescents collected on themselves and as individualized action-oriented outcomes. The adolescents discovered more about themselves and their parents than they could read in a researcher-centric report. The individualized adolescent’s reports to their parents gave voice to each adolescent and preserved each adolescent’s and family’s uniqueness. In engaging adolescents to research themselves and their parents and to submit self-promise letters to their parents, as well as their goals and dreams timelines at the end of the interventions, we preserved the multiple voices of adolescents that get silenced when researchers look for common patterns in their data, and we also disseminated the adolescents’ input to their parents. We were also able to reach a larger proportion of the community than would have been possible without engaging the adolescents. The yarn method was used to evaluate participants’ views on the effectiveness of the intervention. Yarning has been described as a way of holding a conversation (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010; Kovach, 2010). When used in research, it is called research yarning, and it is a conversational method that is directed to a specific area of inquiry with a definite purpose. In the last session, the facilitators held a yarn ball and reflected on what they had learned from the intervention. Holding on to the thread, the ball was thrown to a participant of choice who also talked holding the ball, mainly reflecting on what he or she had learned from the intervention and how the intervention impacted their goals and dreams. The activity continued until every participant had a chance to talk. The visual picture at the end was that of a web of connections showing how each participant was connected through the thread to one another. The web of connections served to summarize and emphasize the relationships that were built throughout the intervention process.

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SUMMARY The adolescent risk-reduction intervention project shows how an indigenous mixed methods approach combined well-established qualitative and quantitative methods and indigenous data collection and relationship building methods to inform the design and implementation of an intervention that accessed cultural knowledge to ensure relevancy and usefulness of the intervention to adolescents and their parents. The conclusion drawn is that when these methods are combined, they bring into the research cultural knowledge not easily accessible through the global literature and promote research relevancy and usefulness, as well as build community relationships. It is also important to note that methods and tools for building relationships and creating positive identities and images of hope and of transformed communities are important components of an indigenous mixed methods approach that seeks to make research responsive and useful to communities. An indigenous mixed methods approach goes beyond the combination of mixed quantitative and qualitative methods to engage in a decolonization and indigenization of the research process and an integration of diverse knowledge systems as well as building relationships and creating spaces for the researched to dream about a better future.

Key Points ——

Relationality, connectedness, and building relationships are key in indigenous research and evaluation.

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Indigenous research moves away from finding deficits in communities to building community strengths.

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Symbolism plays an important part in indigenous participatory research.

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A mixed methods approach that uses an indigenous research paradigm seeks to

integrate multiple ways of knowing and seeing the world, multiple standpoints, and multiple values. ——

A mixed methods approach that uses an indigenous research paradigm promotes a multidirectional lending and borrowing of knowledge systems between dominant and marginalized cultures.

——

Storying is an important methodology in indigenous interventions.

ACTIVITY 8.2 Conduct a literature review on the design and evaluation of culturally specific interventions. Critique the articles in terms of the following:

1. The paradigm that informs the design and evaluation of the intervention

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2. The role of stakeholders in the design, implementation, and evaluation of the intervention.

4. Culturally specific methods and frameworks used to design, implement, and evaluate the study

3. The process and tools used to build relationships among all stakeholders

5. The participatory action research in the study if any

Suggested Readings Chilisa, B. (2005). Educational research within postcolonial Africa: A critique of HIV/AIDS research in Botswana. International Journal of Qualitative Studies, 18(6), 659–684. Creswell, J., & Plano Clark, V. (2011). Designing and conducting mixed methods research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Getty, G. A. (2010). The journey between Western and indigenous research paradigms. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 21(1), 5–14. Hesse-Biber, S. (2010). Mixed methods research: Merging theory with practice. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Ludema, D. J., Cooperrider, D. L., & Barrett, F. J. (2006). Appreciative enquiry: The power of the unconditional positive question. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research (pp. 155–165). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Smith, T. (1999/2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous people. London, UK: Zed Books. Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409–427.

9 THEORIZING ON SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH METHODS Indigenous Perspectives Language, myth, truth, ancestral memory, dance-music-art and science provide the sources of knowledge, the canons of proof and the stimulus structures of truth. Molefi Kete Asante (1990, p. 19)

Our stories are our theories and method. Melanie Carter (2003, p. 40)

People of color have always theorized—but in forms quite different from the Western form of abstract logic. And I am inclined to say that our theorizing (and I intentionally use the verb rather than the noun) is often narrative forms, in the stories we create, in riddles and proverbs, in the play with language, since dynamic rather than fixed ideas seem more to our liking. Barbara Christian (2000, p. 12)

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Overview Chapter 9 explores the role of language, oral literature, and storytelling as foundations and sources of the literature; philosophies; theories; and methods of data collection, analysis, and interpretation of research about, on, and with the colonized Other, accounting for two thirds of the world population. The chapter illustrates how oral literatures and storytelling promote a postcolonial indigenous-based research process. The chapter further explores the place of indigenous languages in producing research reports.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Discuss the role of language and oral literature as the basis for theorizing about postcolonial indigenous methodologies. 2. Discuss the term ethnophilosophy and its relevance in research methodology. 3. Design a study that draws from ethnophilosophy to inform the methodology section of the study. 4. Discuss the use of indigenous languages in writing research reports.

Before You Start Identify any literature written in a local language of the researched and the oral literature that you may want to review to inform your understanding of a research issue you want to study. Discuss some of the challenges you might encounter as you transport the information from the local language to the academic language required by your research committee or research sponsor.

INTRODUCTION How can we conduct research without using Western academic constructs and terminologies? How can the colonized Other talk about their experiences without the imposition of nonculturally cogent terms, concepts, and paradigms? How can we minimize the intrusion of terms in our research reports that may culturally and contextually lack contingency with the historically oppressed, marginalized, colonized Other? Can research using Euro-Western academic languages accurately communicate the experiences of

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the two-thirds majority? What is the contribution of the languages stored in folklore, mythologies, and proverbs to the building of postcolonial indigenous conceptual and theoretical frameworks and the design of interventions to improve the quality of life of the people? Who is reading our research and in what and whose language? In Chapter 1, you learned that carrying out research in indigenous languages was an essential decolonization strategy. In Chapter 2, an argument was made that indigenous languages can play a significant role in contributing to the advancement of new knowledge, new concepts, new theories, new rules and methods, and techniques in research that are rooted in the colonized Other’s ways of knowing and perceiving reality. In this chapter, I expand the discussion to illustrate the use of indigenous knowledge in building conceptual frameworks, challenging deficit theorizing, and informing research intervention strategies that valorize the culture and experiences of the colonized Other.

METHODS BASED ON ETHNOPHILOSOPHY Zeverin Emagalit (2001) has used the term ethnophilosophy to refer to the collective worldviews of people that are encoded in language, folklore, myths, metaphors, taboos, and rituals. In defining ethnophilosophy in an African context, for example, Emagalit describes it as a system of thought that describes, analyzes, and tries to understand the collective worldviews of diverse African peoples as a unified body of knowledge. Elsewhere, Bagele Chilisa and Julia Preece (2005) describe ethnophilosophy as the experiences of the people encoded in their language, folklore, stories, songs, artifacts, culture, and values. These are the banks where knowledge is stored and can be retrieved to serve as literature against which other literature, predominantly written by Western-educated elites, can be reviewed. Community language, stories, songs, myths, and taboos can also serve as sources of information that can be triangulated with data from traditional methods such as interviews. Under the umbrella of ethnophilosophy, I discuss language, metaphorical sayings, proverbs, and oral literature as sources of knowledge that communicate other ways of data collection, analysis, and interpretation of the worldviews of postcolonial and indigenous societies.

Language, Metaphorical Sayings, and Proverbs Language expresses the patterns and structures of culture and consequently influences human thinking, manners, and judgment. Culture is lived, and language, through all its manifestations, projects that life, giving it form and texture. In traditional oral societies, some forms of language are proverbs and metaphorical sayings, which uphold and legitimize the value systems of a society. For research problems to be understood within the value systems of the researched people, it is important to incorporate their language in the research process. Language analysis is commonly used by poststructural researchers, interpretive researchers, and those using a critical analysis perspective. It is, however, an important technique that needs to be emphasized in postcolonial and indigenous societies, where research problems have for a long time been defined from the perspective of Western-trained researchers who use Western languages to define the research

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problems. What follows is a discussion of the contribution of language stored in proverbs and metaphors in the construction of knowledge.

Proverbs and Metaphors as Conceptual Frameworks A proverb is a short saying in common use that strikingly expresses some obvious truth or familiar experience (Guralnik & Solomon, 1980, p. 1144). Proverbs are used as tools to describe and express sociocultural events and practices and to hand down from one generation to another a community’s cultural traditions and folklore; they also communicate expected codes of behavior. Kehinde Yusuf and Joyce ­Mathangwane (2003) describe proverbs as tools people use to persuade others in their culture to see the world and behave in a common way. “Proverbs, the world’s smallest literary genre, are a most telling part of that serial narrative about humankind” (Schipper, 2003, p. 2) and articulate the very soul of society. Thus, they are important as a strategy for instructing, explicating, advising, praising, and nourishing members of a society on important social issues. Albert Gerard (1970) adds the following to the major functions of proverbs: —— Preserve the religious myths of the group —— Perpetuate the memory of a group’s past in semi-legendary chronicles —— Promulgate the group’s sense of collective identity and dignity —— Record the wisdom pragmatically accumulated by generations of ancestors in proverbs and gnomic tales —— Celebrate the prowess of kings and warriors whose high deeds have ensured the glory of the group J. L. Van Schaik (1998) classifies proverbs into seven functional categories: (1) community and family life, (2) leadership and teamwork, (3) youth, (4) behavioral guide, (5) hospitality and nourishment, (6) motivation, and (7) situation and human nature. Imagine that you wanted to conduct a study on leadership and teamwork in an institution. Van Schaik’s classification on the functions of proverbs directs you to consult the researched’s collective memories about leadership and teamwork stored in proverbs. In addition to proverbs, metaphors also communicate values. A metaphor, according to Albert S. Hornby (1994), is “the use of a word or phrase to indicate something different (though related in some way) to the literal meaning” (p. 780). Ronald Wardhaugh (1989) reports that metaphors are used as vehicles of indirectness. They are used as substitution of direct words that would have been regarded as disrespectful, offensive, or taboo by a cultural group. Keith Allan and Kate Burridge (1994) argue that metaphors are used to avoid loss of face in cases where expressing one’s experiences directly in written and spoken form can be considered a face-threatening act (Brown & Levison, 1987). Rudolf Schmitt (2005) adds that metaphorical sayings are used to uncover both objective and subjective patterns of thought and action and consequently to determine how individuals think and act. These metaphors are found in the oral literatures such as songs, folklore, and spoken language.

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In proverbs and metaphors, we find philosophical and theoretical frameworks in which we can ground research that draws from the value systems of the communities to inform program interventions that address the needs of the people. Researchers in Africa (Omolewa, Adeola, Adekanmbi, Avoseh, & Braimoh, 1998; Youngman, 1998) have used language in the form of proverbs and sayings to explain indigenous people’s understanding of researched topics. Frank Youngman (1998) demonstrates how the concept of lifelong learning is encoded in the language of the people by citing proverbs (p. 10): Dilo makwati di kwatabolotswa mo go babangwe.

You get new ideas from others.

Noka e tladiwa ke dinokana.

A river becomes full from its tributaries.

Botlhale jwa phala bo tswa phalaneng.

The intelligence of an impala comes from its offspring.

Thuto gae golelwe.

There is always something to learn, no matter how old one is.

Kazena ua kuatua rune zena ua kengeza rune.

Do not say that because you were born long ago, you know everything (quoted by Otjiherero speaking respondents).

Millicent Musyoka and Donna Mertens (2007) used the messages transmitted through proverbs to challenge deficit theorizing about people with disabilities and to build a conceptual framework for a curriculum for children with disabilities. Millicent Musyoka noted that her appreciation of individuals with disabilities in her community sprang from the following proverbs: Kila chombo na wimbile.

Every ship has its own waves.

Kila mlango kwa ufunguo wakwe.

Every door has its own key.

Kila ndege huruka kwa ubawa wake.

Every bird flies with its own wings.

The proverbs, she explained, echo the saying that “everyone can learn, but everyone learns in different ways.” These proverbs energized and convinced policymakers, teachers, and curriculum and development officers to embrace change and improve the education and welfare of children with disabilities because the change and improvement is grounded in the value system of the community.

Using Proverbs to Explore Community-Constructed Ideologies Proverbs, like stories, at times transmit ideologies of the powerful that perpetuate the dominance of some groups by privileging knowledge and practices that discriminate on the basis of gender, age, ethnicity, social class, ableness, and so on. These ideologies do not come out easily through traditional data collection methods, such as the interview method, because such methods use interview questions framed on the basis of the day-today language of research. Proverbs also communicate ideologies and worldviews that the

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researched may find too sensitive to discuss using explicit language. In a study on sexually risky behaviors, Bagele Chilisa, Tumani Malinga, and Poloko Mmonadibe (2009) asked adolescents to list proverbs that communicated messages on sexuality. Among the proverbs listed were four on multiple partners: Monna poo ga a gelwe lesaka.

A man is like a bull, should not be confined to one kraal.

Monna phafana o a hapaanelwa.

A man is like a calabash, he must be shared.

Monna selepe o a adimanwa.

A man is an axe so he can be shared.

Monna nawa o a nama

A man, like a bean seed, spreads out.

Chilisa et al. (2009) noted that by far the dominant discourse expressed in these proverbs is that of unbridled male sexual drive in which the male person is represented as someone whose sex drive must find an outlet and whose scope of operation must know no limits. A man’s infidelity is implicitly sanctioned because, like a bull, he should go outside his kraal to look for mates. Just as a bull can be rotated in several kraals to mate with other cows, a man can also meet the sexual needs of several women. In addition, in the same way that neighbors can share an axe used for chopping firewood or a calabash of water or drink, a man can be passed from one woman to the other. The proverbial metaphors, seeing man as an axe or calabash, also encourage women to accept sharing a man. The bean seed metaphor encourages males to spread their seeds (genes) as far and wide as possible. Such metaphors influence how people behave sexually and shape the societal attitude toward promiscuous behavior. To invoke proverbs in our research process is to engage in a dialogue about people’s lives using their own literature as a frame of reference for discussion. Chapter 13 discusses the Mbizi group method (Nitza, Chilisa, & Makwinja-Morara, 2010), an indigenous feminist method that draws from community stories and proverbs to engage participants in a journey of empowerment, transformation, and healing.

ACTIVITY 9. 1 Read the study extract included here and do the following: 1. Discuss the role of proverbs in the study. 2. Think of a topic that you want to investigate, and list ways in which you may employ proverbs in your study. 3. Identify proverbs in the study that give legitimacy to the postcolonial indigenous worldview of relational ontologies and

connectedness of the people to the living and the nonliving. 4. Discuss ways in which proverbs can marginalize the less powerful in a community, and say how you would use such proverbs in your research. Source: Kaplan, M. (2002). Employing proverbs to explore intergenerational relations across cultures. In M. Kaplan, N. Henkin, & A. Kusano (Eds.), Linking lifetimes: A global view of intergenerational exchange (pp. 39–64). Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

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Background

Survey Results

The focus of the “What Is Age” poster that was displayed at the Indigenous Knowledges Conference is how proverbs can be used to enhance our understanding about intergenerational relations in various cultural frameworks. This poster originally was developed to supplement a Penn State University Cooperation Extension Web-based curriculum titled “Proverbs to Promote Understanding Across Generations and Cultures.” The target population for this outreach initiative was Extension educators and other professionals interested in working with children, youth, and adults to facilitate awareness of age- and culture-related stereotypes and to stimulate critical thinking about intergenerational and cross-cultural relationships in people’s lives. The curriculum package includes five activity modules (each drawing upon proverbs from different parts of the world), a series of overheads (22 pages), marketing card, and the “What Is Age” poster (Kaplan, Ingram, & Mincemoyer, 2001). The idea for the proverbs curriculum came from a 1999 study of proverbs about the aging process and patterns of intergenerational relations. This study, which is described below, consisted of a survey conducted with students and faculty at Hawai’i Pacific University. Respondents, all of whom were bilingual, were asked to list sayings that reflect cultural values and beliefs related to

Characteristics of the survey sample: Surveys were returned by 117 respondents, each of whom was fluent in a language other than English. In surveys that were completed and content analyzed, 26 different languages were represented. . . . The responses were recategorized into four main language groups: Asian (N = 80, 67.8%), Pacific Island (N = 13, 11%), Western European (N = 20, 16.9%), and Eastern ­European (N = 5, 4.2%).

—— the aging process, —— views about the elderly people, and —— patterns of communication between people of different generations. In addition to writing out the sayings and phrases they could recall in their native languages, respondents were asked to provide English translations and write comments about the cultural, philosophical, and historical significance of the proverbs they shared. Research team members (consisting of the author and three undergraduate research assistants) also searched for proverbs in languages other than English in books, articles, and websites. (For a more detailed report about the study presented below, see Kaplan, 2002.)

Views about the elderly and the aging process The following basic themes were identified: —— There appear to be more positive than negative characterizations. —— For many of the languages that were considered, there is a juxtaposition of sayings that reflect strikingly positive views toward the elderly and sayings that reflect strikingly negative views. —— Characterizations of the elderly and the aging process are rich and varied and draw upon a wide range of metaphors, including those tied to the natural environment, animals, and food. —— As a group, survey respondents provided more than twice as many sayings that convey positive views about elderly people than sayings that convey negative views: 83 of the 117 sayings provided about the elderly (70.9%) were positive, and 37 were negative (31.6%). The following sayings reflect images of loneliness, vulnerability, and struggle: —— Swedish: “Unga lever sina liv i flock, vuxna i par, och gamla ensamma.” [“Youth goes in a flock, manhood in pairs, and old age alone.”] (Mieder, 1986, p.558) —— Hawai’ian [survey]: “Elemakule kama ‘ole moe I ke ala.” [“An oldster who has never reared children sleeps by the roadside.”] —— Hebrew: “Youth is a garland of roses, age is a crown of thorns.” (Christy, 1888, p.20).

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The following sayings expound on the “deterioration and decline” theme: —— German [survey]: “Wer rastet der rostet.” [“The person who will rust.”] —— French: “Un home est aussi vieux que ses arteres.” [“A man is as old as his arteries.”] (Davidoff, 1946, p. 8) —— Chinese (Mandarin) [survey]: “Sheng lau bing si.” [“Born, old, sick, die.”] —— Several phrases were found that convey “like father, like son” theme: —— Spanish [survey]: “De tal palo, tal astilla.” [“From such a stick, such a splinter.”] —— Japanese [survey]: “Kaeru no ko wa kaeru.” [“Children of frogs are frogs.”] —— Korean: “Pu chon cha chon.” [“Father hands down, son hands down.”] Other sayings make similar reference to the importance of ancestors: —— Hawai’ian [survey]: “Nona I ke kumu.” [“Look to the source.”] (Respondent’s comments: “Seek knowledge from the ancestors.”)

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—— Korean: “An twe myon cho sang ui t’at.” [“Blame the ancestors for failure.”] (Grant, 1982). This saying highlights a concept of family in which “ancestors play an integral part.” —— Zulu: “Ubuntu.” [“We are who we are today because of you who came before us.”] This sub-Saharan intergenerational concept was one of the driving themes of the Third Global Conference of the Federation of Aging held in Durban, South Africa, in October 1997 (Newman, 1998). The proverbs and phrases presented in this paper can be used to enliven formal and nonformal educational programs focused on intergenerational issues. This was the intent of “Proverbs to Promote Understanding Across Generations and Cultures” curriculum and the “What Is Age” poster displayed at the Indigenous Knowledges: Transforming the Academy conference. The proverbs presented in these outreach education vehicles contain “lessons” related to age and aging, cultural differences and similarities, family dynamics, societal stereotypes, and intergenerational relationships. It is feasible that they may be productively drawn upon to embellish themes presented throughout an entire course on gerontology or intergenerational programs and policy study.

STORYTELLING METHODS Stories are central to the lives of the colonized Other. They have been used to collect, deposit, analyze, store, and disseminate information and as instruments of socialization. This socialization is an important aspect in the research process because it foregrounds the responses that participants in a research study give. The socialization stories are thus important in understanding the participants’ frame of reference. Stories are also a reflection of the values of a society and act as teaching instruments as well as commentaries on society, family, or social relations. Researchers need to be aware, however, that not all stories are valuable to the building of communities. Some stories are written from the perspective of the powerful and are therefore oppressive. Such stories may exclude the voices of children, women, the poor, the disabled, homosexuals, and some ethnic or racial groups. Researchers should critique androcentric, anthropocentric, racist, heterosexual-centered, or ethnically biased and stigmatizing stories that build communities on foundations of exclusion, silencing,

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exploitation, and oppression. What is important for researchers to note, however, is that all stories are the circulating literature that is accessible to the people and informs their day-to-day experiences and practice. Any research-based interventions can either complement or compete with the knowledge transmitted through these stories. The diversity of stories in postcolonial and indigenous societies is enormous. Among the forms of stories are folklore, folktales, legends, and mythical stories, stories in song and poetic forms, and stories and narratives that emanate from interviews and focus group discussions as researchers pursue their research interests. All these stories have a function. They fill the gaps and provide the missing literature, theories, conceptual frameworks, and research methods in a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm. What follows is a discussion about the functions of a story, showing how stories reflect the values of society, are socialization instruments, are data sources and analysis tools, and provide the missing chapters on the history, philosophies, theories, concepts, categories of analysis, and interpretation in research that invoke a postcolonial indigenous perspective.

Functions of a Story in Research Folklores, folktales, stories in song and poetic forms, and the indigenous language through which they are communicated are the data collection and analysis tools that provide the missing chapters of the history, philosophies, theories, concepts, categories of analysis, and interpretation of data in research that invoke a postcolonial indigenous research perspective. 1. Stories are the tools of data collection, analysis, and interpretation that give another side of the story to deficit theorizing about the Other and allow the Other, formerly colonized and historically oppressed, to frame and tell their past and present life experiences from their perspectives. 2. Stories enable researchers to triangulate postcolonial indigenous values, belief systems, and community and family histories with other sources of knowledge. 3. They provide data from which to debate postcolonial indigenous perspectives on a variety of issues, for example, perspectives on gender relations. 4. Storytelling allows the researched to speak freely about all their relationships, including the role of spirituality in their life. 5. Stories can serve as vignettes that bring alive and make memorable the experiences of the people. 6. Stories and storytelling allow both listeners and tellers to gain understanding, to do self-analysis, and to make new decisions that enable people-owned researchdriven interventions and development programs. Daniel G. Solórzano and Tara J. Yosso (2001) describe functions of the counterstory narrative, which is a form of storytelling that can —— build community among those at the margins of society by putting a human and familiar face to educational theory and practice,

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—— challenge the perceived wisdom of those at society’s center by providing a context to understand and transform established belief systems, —— open new windows into the reality of those at the margins of society by showing the possibilities beyond the ones they live and demonstrating that they are not alone in their position, and —— teach others that by combining elements from both the story and the current reality, one can construct another world that is richer than either the story or the reality alone (Delgado Bernal, 1998; Lawson, 1995).

Stories and Relational Accountability Stories provide the literature that bears testimony to postcolonial and indigenous peoples’ relational ontology with its emphasis on connectedness with the living and the nonliving. In Chapter 5, you learned that the Bantu people of southern Africa celebrate and honor their connectedness with the living and the nonliving through totems. For each totem, there is a story passed from one generation to another. For example, the Bangwato, an ethnic group in Botswana, do not eat a duiker because it is their totem. According to the legend, the duiker saved Ngwato in a war with his brother, Kwena. Ngwato is said to have taken shelter in a bush where the duiker was grazing. When Kwena and his followers saw the duiker, they concluded that Ngwato could not be anywhere near. The Bangwato to this day maintain a relational accountability to the duiker. They cannot eat or kill a duiker. There are many such practices. Southern African species preservation, for example, occurred through totemism. Many postcolonial societies and indigenous peoples share folktales, legends, and stories that connect them to nature and to the living and the nonliving. Think of the many rituals that may still be practiced before a family meeting, a community gathering, or a family wedding or to mark the birth of a baby and so on. We learned, for instance, that the Anishambe, one of the indigenous people of North America, use aseema (tobacco) as a cultural symbol for thanking people, asking for help, praying for information, and sharing stories. My grandmother used to require that we share every evening meal with the ancestors. As we gathered around the fireplace to eat our evening meal, we would first take a handful of our dinner and put it on the floor as a gift to the dead; then, we ate. In this way, we were always reminded of our connections with the ancestors. These practices and legends are the testimonies that give legitimacy to a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm with its emphasis on relational accountability. Sharing food, exchanging gifts, and communicating with the nonliving in prayer, in song, in dance, or in speech are indigenous ways of communicating a philosophy, a belief system, a thought, or a collective worldview of a group. These practices should provide the form and context against which research with the colonized Other is conducted; using them makes it possible to use multiple social theories in research with a postcolonial indigenous perspective.

Folklores and the Design of Research Interventions: Ma ¯ori Mythos Postcolonial indigenous research perspectives call for an inquiry process that creates a space within which the colonized Other can revalorize or return to their own life perspectives and culturally inculcated goals without the imposition of Western-cogent terms,

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concepts, and paradigms. Oral literatures such as mythologies and folklores give voice to the colonized Other’s spiritual practices. These spiritual practices, if made central to the research process, can give legitimacy to interventions that resonate with the worldviews of indigenous peoples. The following extract shows how a mythology in Māori society valorized spirituality and formed the basis for an intervention to control smoking that resonated with the worldview of the Māori people.

Folktales as Counternarratives: The Batswana Story of Origin Let us imagine that a researcher wanted to study gender relations in a community and to trace the history of this asymmetrical relationship between men and women. Among the Tswana and Sotho-speaking of southern Africa, most people would locate the unequal relationship in the language, for example, in proverbs like Ga dinke di etelelwa ke e namagadi pele, di ka wela ka le mina (Women cannot be leaders). The story of origin would, however, defy this worldview. According to the Tswana story of origin, the people came from the hill of Lowe. When they came out, men and women were walking side by side, driving sheep, goats, and cattle. This story defies explanations that justify inequalities on the basis of traditions, revealing other traditional ways of viewing gender relations. It is an important contribution to knowledge production in the area of gender relations and could be used as an important entry point for a researcher who might be looking for intervention strategies to address inequalities.

Evidence in an Indigenous World The tikanga Auahi Kore research set out to communicate within a fourth world paradigm that M¯ aori traditionally have high regard for their bodies and particularly their breath, and therefore smoking is not culturally appropriate. The key risk (likely to be relevant to any fourth world research project) for The Quit Group undertaking this research as a national smoking cessation provider is the same risk that Smith succumbed to: using hap¯u-based mythos as a national generalization. This has been mediated by engagement with kaum¯ atua (learned elders) involved in the tobacco control sector, but most importantly, by both using nationally communicated mythos and carefully acknowledging that hap¯u may well have different tikanga (customs/ traditions) for this kaupapa (subject), and encouraging the communication of those local traditions in preference to research.

Establishing that smoking is a breach of the tikanga that treats breath and the body as tapu (restricted/inaccessible) lead us to the foundational mythos about the creation of Hine-ahu-one, the first created being. Tane Mahuta (the deity of forests and humanity) was responsible for the creation of the first being, and in some hap¯u , this is a man called Tiki, and among many hap¯u , a woman. The reasons vary from hap¯u to hap¯u for his decision to create another being. The location of his creative act also varied, be it at a beach or at the genital area of Papatuanuku (the earth mother of M¯a ori mythos). What seems to be commonly held by those who share this mythos is that Tane gave life to this creation through a hongi (pressing of noses and sharing of breath) and the recital of an ancient karakia (chant/prayer) (Orbell, 1995):

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Tihei mauri ora, ki te whai ao, ki te Ao M¯ arama Behold the breath of life, strive for the new world, the world of light (TPK, 1995) For the purposes of tikanga Auahi Kore, it is the hongi and karakia that are particularly pertinent. They communicate that every breath is precious, is a creative act that M¯ aori people share with Tane, and is the reason why M¯ aori hongi when we greet each other. We literally share our life-breath with the other person. Consequently, we communicated in our research that it follows that smoking, a health damaging act, violates that gift of breath.

Ma ¯ ori Mythos The case study is one example of the use of mythos to address fourth world populations in a relevant manner on a public health issue. The possibilities of application of fourth world paradigms will go as

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far as researchers wish to go. The example above is one form of mythos in M¯ aori tikanga, k¯orero p¯ ur¯ akau, or mythological stories that communicate a deep truth about the M¯ aori worldview. There are other forms of mythos that may prove just as relevant. Whakatauaki (proverbs) and k¯o waha (idioms) are either entry points into k¯o rero p¯u r¯ a kau or a reflection within themselves on the issues of the day. Waiata, waiata t¯ a hwito, waiata-a-ringa, and haka (types of songs and dances) similarly communicate through music the M¯ a ori worldview and experience. Both give an insight to the supernatural world of M¯ a ori and particularly its holistic relationship with other aspects of life. T¯ a moko (tattooing of the body and face) and mahi toi (arts) are other forms of M¯ a ori evidence that communicate a variety of themes for those who take time to learn their meaning. Source: Cram, G. (2004a, October 13–15), Evidence in an indigenous world. Paper presented at the Australasian Society 2004 International Conference, Adelaide, Australia.

Contemporary Stories Stories continue to be created around the social problems that haunt communities. In Botswana, current stories about HIV/AIDS have one common characteristic: They show how communities have defined the problem and how often the definition is embedded in the values of the society. The stories encode in them the analysis of the problem and the prescribed solution. A common story in Botswana is that HIV/AIDS is Boswagadi, which means an illness that inflicts those who indulge in love relationships with widows or widowers who have not performed the cleansing ritual. There is no cure for Boswagadi. The solution thus lies in avoiding widows and widowers. A researcher who incorporates these stories in the research process acknowledges the society’s identification, analysis, and solution of the problem. In that way, the research does not disregard the community or impose knowledge from outside. The stories are community owned and therefore common knowledge. Reflecting on these stories during the research process creates an entry point that enables a dialogue in which information can be analyzed and false knowledge that impedes progress can be discussed. Such a framework is important for a participatory research approach in which the communities arrive at solutions to the problem and take immediate action.

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Self-Praise/Identity Stories Self-knowledge and self-identity were cherished attributes in most African cultures and were taught through self-praise stories. Almost every individual knew such a story. A self-praise story told the history and family tree of the individual, valued attributes of the family lineage, and any marked historical developments. What is important is that the definition of the self was related to the environment and its people, animals, birds, and vegetation. Today, most adults in villages still recite these self-praises, stories that define a person’s complete existence and mark his or her self-identity without divorcing the person from core relations. Such stories would be good resources for psychological research on human and cognitive development as well as human behavior. The self-praise stories would help the researcher to understand better the participant and her or his values and self-image. Conventional research sums up the characteristics of participants under what is called demographic variables, which normally include age, education, and occupation. These demographic variables may add little value to a study, especially in rural communities where most adult village residents have little or no education and rely on subsistence farming for a living. The demographic variables in the conventional research process are individualistic and seek to understand the participant independent of the environment. Self-praise may be an important complementary technique of gathering information on informants because it allows the researcher to understand the participants as they define themselves in relation to others around them and the environment. In their understanding of social reality, the self cannot be divorced from others, the spirits, and the environment. Such a worldview has to be built into the research process so that at each point the researcher understands the participants’ self-definition. It is an approach that gives the researched space to appreciate their identity and to heal from possible psychological harm that may have occurred because of deficit theorizing about their communities.

Songs Stories are also told in song, in dance, and in poetic form. Songs, dance, and poems are an integral part of the oral literature that communicates historical information on events, public experience, and practice, especially experiences of the formerly colonized. Maenette Benham (2007) notes, for instance, that native Hawai’ ians mele (songs) and hula (dance) tell stories about the history, people, and land. The song on the next page, written by Mrs. Ellen Wright in Prendergast in opposition to the annexation of Hawai’i by the United States, to illustrate the value of songs in reconstructing the history of the formerly colonized. Benham notes that the goal of such narratives is to invite participation of native people and their communities in the narrative process. This participation, it is noted, engages the researcher/scholar and native/indigenous people in building relationships that bring to the surface stories of experienced phenomenon and concrete evidence around pressing issues (e.g., historic hurt and pain). In this sense, narratives are the indigenous literature through which we can enter a dialogue with the researched on a given topic of interest. There are countless missing chapters on what the world needs to know about the postcolonial and indigenous people’s histories and their resistance to colonizing ideologies of the former colonizers.

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Na Pua: The Stories That Begin Kaulana n¯ apua a’ o Hawai`i

Famous are the children of Hawai`i

Kupa’a ma hope o ka ‘¯ aina

Ever loyal to the land

Hiki mai ka ‘elele o ka loko ‘ino

When the evil-hearted messenger comes

Palapala ‘anunu me ka pa¯kaha.

With his greedy document of extortion

Pane mai Hawai`i moku o Keawe.

Hawai’i, land of Keawe answers

Kokua n¯a Hono a’o Pi’ilani.

Pi’ilani’s bays help

K¯ ako’o mai Kaua’i o Piilani.

Mano’s Kauai lends support

Pa’ap¯u me ke one Kakuhihewa.

And so do the sands of Kakuhihewa

‘A’ole ‘a’ekau’i ka p¯ulima

No one will fix a signature

Ma luna o ka pepa o ka ‘enemi,

To the paper of the enemy

Ho’ohui ‘¯ aina ku’ai hewa,

With its sin of annexation

I ka pono sivila a’o ke kanaka.

And sale of native civil rights

‘A’ole m¯ akou a’e minamina

We do not value

I ka pu’uk¯ al¯ a a ke aupuni.

The government’s sums of money

Ua lawa m¯ akou I ka p¯ohaku,

We are satisfied with the stones

I ka’ai kamaha’o o ka ‘¯ aina.

Astonishing food of the land

Ma hope m¯ akou o Lili’ulani

We back Lili’ulani

A loa’a’e ka pono a ka ‘a¯ina.

Who has won the rights of the land

(A kau hou ‘ia e ke kalaunu)

(She will be crowned again)

Ha’ina ‘ia mai ana ka puana

Tell the story

Ka po’e I aloha I ka ‘¯ aina.

Of the people who love their land.

Source: Elbert, S. H., & Mahoe, N. (1976). Na mele o hawai’i nei: 101 Hawaii songs (pp. 63–64). Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

Songs are also a commentary on people’s lives. Songs are, for instance, “capable of supplying subtle insights, local colour and details beyond what archives and other forms of oral traditions can provide” (Alagoa, 1968, p. 16). The social function of a song goes beyond the aesthetic as it also has a didactic role to play in teaching about social morality, societal values, and customs. Like proverbs, however, songs can serve as propaganda that perpetuates oppressive ideologies. In a study on sexually risky behaviors (Chilisa et al., 2009), Batswana adolescents cited the Setswana lyric, Setlogolo Ntsha Ditlhogo, as an example of an oppressive ideology that encouraged sexual exploitation of young girls by adults, especially relatives. Ditlhogo (heads) is a euphemistic expression that uncles traditionally used to request sexual favors from their nieces (although in the folksong, ditlhogo is restricted to a special relationship between a girl and her maternal uncle). Stories from the children revealed that the metaphor ditlhogo communicated sexual relations and expectations between uncles and their nieces and between cousins.

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The song Setlogolo Ntsha Ditlhogo is structured in the form of a narrative about a journey the person undertook with her uncle. On the way, they rested, and the uncle asked the niece to give him ditlhogo, a special gift reserved for uncles. The niece asks her uncle what he means by ditlhogo, and he replies that anything can be ditlhogo and that a thigh, too, can be a ditlhogo. A thigh is a metaphor for sex. The uncle naughtily says that anything can be ditlhogo, but what he really wants is serope (thigh). The concept of ditlhogo gives maternal uncles privileged access to their nieces, who should afford them special treatment as a form of duty. This kind of song reinforces normative beliefs about adult/child relationships that make adolescents powerless to refuse to have sex with older people, especially close relatives; through songs such as this one, they are made to believe that the community approves of sexual relationships between young girls and their uncles or other adults.

Stories From Research Interviews In qualitative research, the researcher can focus on the interview itself as a form of narrative or focus on stories that appear spontaneously in the course of the interview (Kvale, 1996). Teun A. Van Dijk (1993, pp. 132–133) suggests that the following are the defining characteristics of narratives: —— Stories about (past) human actions and cognitions, although descriptions of other events, objects, places, or circumstances may be part of stories, for example, as conditions or consequences to human actions

Lyrics: Setlogolo Ntsha Ditlhogo Lead voice:

Ke tsamaile le malome

Response:

A malala swii

Lead voice:

Ko pele ra itapolosa

Response:

A malala swiiswii.

Lead voice:

A re setlogolo ntsha/mpha ditlhogo

Response:

A malala swii, swii

Lead voice:

Ka re ditlhogo tsa eng malome?

Response:

A malala swiii swii

Lead voice:

A re sengwe le sengwe ke ditlhogo

Response:

Amalala swii

Lead voice:

Serope le sone ke ditlhogo

Response:

A malala swii

I travelled with my maternal uncle on the way we rested He said “niece give me heads”

I said what head uncle?

He said anything is heads

Even a thigh is heads

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—— Stories usually about events that are (made) interesting to the audience. The pragmatic interestingness is achieved by telling events/actions that are unexpected, extraordinary, deviant, or unpredictable, given the knowledge or beliefs of the audience. —— Stories told to entertain, to influence the listener’s aesthetic, ethical, or emotional reactions From a critical discourse point of view, the narrative is “a socially symbolic act in the double sense that (a) it takes on meaning in a social context, and (b) it plays a role in the construction of that social context as a site of meaning within which social actors are implicated” (Mumby, 1993, p. 7).

Storytelling and Spirituality When interviews are used as a strategy for collecting data and interviewees are invited to narrate their life experiences, they “naturally interject the spiritual aspects of their experiences into the research” (Walker, 2001, p. 20). Polly Walker (2001) gives an example of how, during a study on conflict transformation, indigenous participants spoke openly of how the spirits and ancestors informed their day-to-day experiences and challenges in resolving conflicts. She cites excerpts from some of the Aboriginal participants’ stories, which describe the way the participants’ ancestors assist in conflict transformation: If anything goes bad, I just talk to them. I believe in the spirits. I believe in the spirits getting us to reconcile. . . . Another participants says, “When I am doing talks. . . . How I psyche myself up is that I call on my mother and I can feel her on my shoulder. (p. 20) Walker (2001) concludes that the research on conflict transformation would have been lacking without consideration of the spiritual experiences that the participants chose to share and that any silencing of such spiritual experiences can lead only to research results that are “inaccurate, incomplete, and invalid” (p. 20). It is, therefore, important to always interrogate the role of spirituality in postcolonial and indigenous communities’ production, storage, analysis, and dissemination of knowledge. It is also important that researchers should interrogate their own perspectives toward spirituality, as it is most likely to affect the data obtained and its analysis and interpretation.

Stories as Information Dissemination Avenues Imagine that you were to write your dissertation or research report in a story form. Shawn Wilson (2008) notes that stories enable writers to get away from the abstraction and rules that are dictated by the Western academic discourse and allow listeners to gain life lessons and draw conclusions from their personal perspectives. Wilson wrote his dissertation in a story form and shares with us his writing style.

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My Writing Style You will notice that the book is typeset in two different fonts: the main font denotes a more “academic” style; a different font is used for the personal narrative sections, which are initially addressed to my sons, Julius, Max and Falco. When I was originally writing my doctoral thesis, which led to this book, I felt that the dominant style of writing to an anonymous reader did not live up to the standards of relational accountability I was proposing. Indigenous epistemology is all about ideas developing through the formation of relationships. An idea cannot be taken out of this relational context and still maintain its shape. Terry Tafoya (1995) describes this in his Principle of Uncertainty. Just as Heisenberg theorizes in his Theory of Uncertainty in physics, that it is impossible to know both the velocity and the location of an electron at the same time (you would have to stop it to measure its location, or you would lose its location if it maintains its velocity), Tafoya postulates that it is not possible to know exactly both the context and definition of an idea at the same time. The closer you get to defining something, the more it loses its context. Conversely, the more something is put into context, the more it loses a specific definition. So I was faced with the problem of trying to define or describe the ideas when doing so would take them out of their relational context. In an oral tradition, this problem is overcome by utilizing the direct relationship between storyteller and listener. Each recognizes the other’s role in shaping both the content and process. Addressing parts of the book to Julius, Max and Falco became a device for me to try to provide both context and definition. Instead of writing directly to readers, which is difficult without knowing their culture and context, I chose to write to my children. I further develop the relationships I have with the ideas through my relationship with my sons. I hope that this literary tool allows you to develop your own relationships both with me and with the stories in this book.

In my current thinking and writing process, it would probably make the most sense to address the entire book to my sons, but I have purposefully not gone back into my writing to switch it all to this style. As this foreword was one of the last things written in the preparation of this book, I am now at a point where I can address you directly. The writing process took me several years, and you may notice that my writing style changes, maybe matures, as the book progresses through the chapters. The chapters (other than this foreword) were pretty much written in the order they are presented: so in addition to putting forward ideas, they also represent a chronology of my maturation as a writer and Indigenous researcher. The two “voices” may initially seem disjointed. Oftentimes, they either cover entirely different material, but they may repeat one another. It was my intention that they cover more or less the same ground, but with two different emphases—one academic, and one more personal. As my writing and thinking progressed, these voices became less and less distinct. Maybe I was finally beginning to internalize what it was that I was theorizing about. In final editing of the book, I tried to make a change so that the letters to Julius, Max and Falco begin to directly address you. By chapter four the difference between the voices becomes less clear. By chapter five, you might notice that I have more or less switched to one voice that incorporates both the personal and theoretical, but can’t decide which font to use. Perhaps the book should switch to an entirely different font here, but I think that might be too confusing. Anyway, I hope that by then you will have internalized enough of the ideas to allow me to write the last parts (including this foreword) in a style that mixes the personal with the theoretical. Source: Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods, 9, pp.8–9. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Fernwood. Used by permission.

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Apart from writing the dissertation in story form, research findings can also be summarized in forms compatible with communication systems in postcolonial and indigenous communities such as poems. In a study of Batswana youths’ perspectives on gender, Michelle Commeyras and Mercy Montsi (2000) presented themes from data in poetic form. The words in the poems were taken from the essays that the youths wrote about what it would feel like if they woke up as the other sex. Following are stanzas from the poem that illustrate themes of discontentment from boys waking up as girls and girls’ disapproval of the type of life that boys lead. If I woke up tomorrow as a girl . . . I would feel disturbed, frightened, shocked, and worried. I would feel embarrassed, humiliated, and disappointed. I would feel lonely, depressed, and mentally disturbed. I might as well commit suicide. If I woke up tomorrow as a boy I would not . . . bully others or impregnate a girl and run away (Commeyras & Montsi, 2000, p. 343)

ACTIVITY 9.2 The story below illustrates how pervasive the dominant academic systems have been in guiding indigenous research and teaching of indigenous knowledge. Read it, and answer the following questions: 1. What lessons and personal perspectives do you draw from the story? 2. Think of ways in which you may transform an interview script or focus group interview script into a storyline like the one below. 3. How would you honor indigenous methods and ethics in writing a storyline from interview scripts? Would you write the names of the interviewees or use pseudo names?

Source: Harris, H. (2002). Coyote goes to school: The paradox of indigenous higher education. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 26(2), 187–196. Used by permission.

Coyote was once again fed up with running around all day in the hot sun for a few scrawny gophers and rabbits. Dirt up his nose, dirt in his eyes, and what for? Barely a mouthful. Coyote had tried getting food at the supermarket one time like the Human People do but got the shit kicked out of him for that. So, once again, he went to his brother, Raven, to ask him for advice. Coyote said, “Raven, there’s got to be an easier way to get fed. I tried the supermarket—got beaten up. Tried to get money from welfare but came up against the Devil’s Spawn in a K-Mart dress. Nothing’s worked so far. You got any other ideas?” (Continued)

204   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) “Well,” Raven said thoughtfully, “the White Humans seem pretty well fed and they say that the key to success is a good education. Maybe you could go to school.” “Humm,” Coyote mused, “maybe I’ll try it. Couldn’t hurt.” Well, Coyote went off to the city to the university because that’s where Raven said adults go to school. In a few days Coyote was back. “Well my brother,” Raven inquired, “did you get your education?” “Not exactly,” Coyote replied, “education is as hard to get as a welfare cheque. To get an education like the teachers at the university takes at least 10 years—that’s a Coyote’s entire lifetime—and in the end, you don’t get paid much anyway.” “When I got to the university, they asked me what program I was in. I didn’t know so they sent me to this guy who told me about the programs. I kinda liked the idea of biology—if I learned more about gophers maybe I could invent a great rabbit trap. But in the end I settled on Native Studies. Now that’s something I can understand—I’ve known these guys for thousands of years, even been one when it suited me.” “So I went to my introduction to Native Studies course and, can you believe it, the teacher was a white guy? Now how much sense does that make? I saw native people around town—any one of ’em has got to know more about native people than some white guy.” “When I asked this guy what Indian told him the stuff he was saying, he said none—he read it in a book. Then I asked who the Indian was who wrote the book. And he said, it wasn’t an Indian, it was a white guy. Then I asked him what Indian the guy who wrote the book learned from and the teacher got mad and told me to sit down.” The next day I went to my Indians of North America class. I was really looking forward to meeting all those Indians. And you know what? There was another white guy standing up there and not an Indian

in sight. I asked the teacher, “Are we going to visit all the Indians?” He said, “No.” So I asked him, “How are we going to learn about Indians then?” And he said, just like the other guy, from a book written by a white guy. So I asked him if I could talk to this guy who wrote the book and the teacher said, “No, he’s dead.” “By then, I was getting pretty confused about this education stuff but I went to my next class— Indian Religions. And guess what? When I went in, there wasn’t another white guy standing up at the front of the room—there was a white woman!” “I sat down and I asked her, “Are we going to the sweatlodge?” “No.” “Sundance?” “No.” “Yuwipi?” “No.” “Then how are we going to learn—no wait, I know—from a book written by a dead white guy! I’m starting to get the hang of this education business.” “So then I go to my Research Methods class thinking I’ve got it figured out. In this class, the teacher (you’ve got it—another white guy) said that our research must be ethical, that we must follow the guidelines set out by the University for research on human subjects. The rules are there, my teacher said, to protect the Indians from unscrupulous researchers. Who made these rules I asked—you guessed it—a bunch of white guys. They decided we need protecting and that they were the ones to decide how best to protect us from them. So I told my teacher that I wanted to interview my father. The teacher said, “you’ve got to ask the ethics review committee for permission.” “What?! I’ve got to ask a bunch of white guys for permission to talk to my own dad? That can’t be right. I was confused all over again.” “So I sat down and thought about all this for a long time. Finally I figured it out. If white guys teach all the courses about Indians and they teach in the way white people think, then to find Indians teaching the way Indians think, all I had to do was give up Native Studies and join the White Studies program!” (pp. 194–196).

IN WHAT LANGUAGE IS THE STORY TOLD? In Chapters 1, 2, and 3, you learned that writing and carrying out research in indigenous languages is a critical decolonization strategy. What follows is a discussion of methodological challenges and practices in researching and producing research reports in ways that give legitimacy to indigenous languages.

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Language Rights and Research Today, an imposed hierarchy of languages continues to inform in whose language the discipline of research is conducted and debated and its findings disseminated. In Africa, for instance, the language of the former colonizers—English for former British colonies, French for former French colonies, and Portuguese for former Portuguese colonies— remains the official language of instruction in all academic institutions and in public discourse. In addition, one or more languages of majority ethnic groups are selected as national languages and may be taught up to secondary school level. It then remains the responsibility of the remaining minority ethnic groups to see how they develop their languages. In the United States, English is the dominant language, and government supports the protection of Native American languages. In contrast, “U.S. English has not extended that kind of gesture to the Chicano people,” thus violating their linguistic rights and perpetuating the annihilation of not only their language but also their culture (Demas & Saavedra, 2004, p. 215). The diversity of languages spoken but not necessarily written poses possible threats to the linguistic rights of the formerly colonized and indigenous peoples and to the validity and credibility of research studies. What happens when the myriads of stories in postcolonial indigenous communities are told and written in Western languages? Who benefits when research reports are written and disseminated in Western languages? In whose language should research be conducted and data stored and analyzed? What outlets are available for reports and journal articles written in local languages? Elsa M. G. Gonzalez and Yvonna S. Lincoln (2006) discuss language and its role in research and advance the argument that researchers must produce research reports that are multilingual and multivocal. The authors recommend that researchers not familiar with the languages of the researched should work with translators and interpreters throughout the research process, and those authors should present data in more than one language, including the language in which the data were collected. In addition, researchers should review literature that is written in the local language of the researched. Aroztegui Massera (2006, cited in Lincoln & Gonzalez, 2008) reflects on how she ­presented bilingual texts in her doctoral dissertation as follows: The personal accounts this dissertation is based upon were collected in Spanish. The general criteria I used for translation is that, whenever possible, I translated the original word or sentence into English inside a parenthesis. However, the act of translation always implies the loss of information. Therefore, every time a testimony is recalled, I place the original Spanish transcript and the translation into English, together within the document. The purpose for this is to allow the reader who knows Spanish to read the original version. The difficulty in translating is mostly a cultural problem. Some words that are essential to understanding the meaning of the narratives have a specific meaning within the context of the group interviewed: Uruguayan female former political prisoners. Such words, although they might have a Standard English translation, would lose an important part of their meaning because these meanings are created by the context within which they are used. For very frequently used words, I use the original word in Spanish, in italics, and clarify the meaning only once, in this appendix. (cited in Lincoln & Gonzalez, 2008, pp. 787–788; excerpt used by permission.)

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The second example illustrates the use of bilingual texts in data collection and analysis where the researcher is not fluent in the native language and seeks assistance from a local/native partner. Richard Nader (2005, cited in Lincoln & Gonzalez, 2008) reflects on methods regarding language in data collection and analysis as follows: South Koreans were interviewed either in the Korean language or in English. The language of the interview was determined according to each participant’s preference. Korean language interpretation was provided by a Korean graduate student matriculating for her masters in science journalism on a paid basis. (p. 38) All Korean language interviews were transcribed into Korean, checked for accuracy by the interviewer and subsequently translated into English. English translation questions were clarified through discussion between the research assistant and the researcher. The researcher and the assistant discussed the English version of each Korean language interview before and following analysis. A post-interview assessment was conducted for Korean language interviews where the researcher was not in attendance to ascertain the quality of the interview and potential interviewer effects or bias in the data collected. (pp. 39–40) The researcher and assistant met frequently and practiced interviews together, being aware of non-verbal communication, interviewing using successful Korean communication methods (e.g., limited hand gestures, no antagonistic language), and by developing documents in Korean language according to styles appropriate to South Korean culture. (p. 41; excerpts used by permission.) In the third excerpt, Xiaobo Yang (2005) collected data in her native language, ­ hinese, but wrote the dissertation in the academic language of the institution, English C in her case. On reflection of this practice she observes, Using a second language to write a naturalistic inquiry research report based on the motherland language is a great challenge for the researcher. When you translate every sentence, you feel so guilty, because you lose much information, which can only be expressed and understood with one’s own language and cultural tacit knowledge. So be careful and prepare well, if you want to choose the way the researcher did. (p. 251) By and large, to decolonize research methodologies, researchers are advised to use bilingual texts in all the stages in the research process.

SUMMARY Indigenous languages and oral literature provide some of the missing chapters on the histories and experiences of indigenous peoples, peoples in the third world, historically oppressed groups, and, in general, the colonized Other. The oral literature has the potential to form the basis for theoretical and conceptual frameworks in designing research studies, to serve as evidence to debate the deficit literature about the formerly colonized, and to offer intervention strategies that resonate with peoples’ value systems and ways of knowing.

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Key Points ——

——

Language, oral literature, and storytelling are important sources of literature on the history of the formerly colonized and can provide new insights into other ways of theorizing about methodologies in social science research. Language, oral literature, and storytelling provide an entry point from which

researchers can engage in a dialogue with the researched about social issues of concern. ——

There is a need to always review oral literature and literature written in the language of the researched and to produce research reports that are multivocal and multilingual.

ACTIVITY 9.3 Make a list of the oral literature, legends, folktales, proverbs, idioms, contemporary stories, and songs in your community that you think

can inform theory and practice in social science research.

Suggested Readings Benham, M. K. P. (2007). Mo'olelo: On culturally relevant story making from an indigenous perspective. In D. J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology. (pp. 512–533). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cram, F. (2004, October 13–15). Evidence in an indigenous world. Paper presented at the Australasian Society 2004 International Conference, Adelaide, Australia. Gonzalez, E., & Lincoln, Y. (2006). Decolonizing qualitative research: Nontraditional reporting forms in the academy. In N. K. Denzin &

M. D. Giadina (Eds.), Qualitative inquiry and the conservative challenge (pp. 193–214). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Lincoln, Y. S., & Gonzalez, G. (2008). The search for emerging decolonizing methodologies in qualitative research: Further strategies for liberatory and democratic inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 14(5), 784–805. Nitza, A., Chilisa, B., & Makwinja-Morara, V. (2010). Mbizi: Empowerment and HIV/AIDS prevention for adolescent girls in Botswana. The Journal of Specialists in Group Work, 35(2), 105–114.

10 CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE INDIGENOUS RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES [To decolonize the research methodologies is] to argue that people must enter the world of scientific and scholarly analysis from the path of their historically and culturally developed perspectives. These perspectives are not counter to the universal truth, but simply access the universal through the window of one’s particular worldview. Naim Akbar (1991, p. 248)

We stand at the threshold of a history marked by multivocality, contested meanings, paradigmatic controversies, and new textual forms. At some distance down this conjectural path, when its history is written, we will find that this has been the era of emancipation: emancipation from what Hannah Arendt calls the “coerciveness of Truth,” emancipation from hearing only the voices of Western Europe, emancipation from generations of silence, and emancipation from seeing the world in one color. Egon Guba and Yvonna Lincoln (2005, p. 212)

Overview I have discussed a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm as a worldview that articulates the shared aspects of ontology, epistemology, axiology, and research methodologies of the colonized Other discussed by scholars who conduct research in former colonized societies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and among indigenous peoples in Australia, Canada, and the United States. In this chapter, you will learn about the relationship between methodology, methods, and philosophical 208

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assumptions on the nature of reality, knowledge, and values; implementation of an indigenous research and examples of evolving and culturally responsive indigenous methodologies; and the way that rigor and credibility are addressed in these methodologies.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Design a study that uses a postcolonial indigenous methodology. 2. Compare and contrast the postcolonial indigenous methodologies discussed in the chapter. 3. Discuss validity and reliability in postcolonial indigenous methodologies.

Before You Start Discuss the quotations at the beginning of the chapter and their relevance to what you have learned so far.

REGIONAL, NATIONAL, AND LOCAL SPECIFIC METHODOLOGIES A growing number of methodologies are written from the experiences of postcolonial indigenous researchers in national and regional geographic locations, as they encounter methodological imperialism and deficit-driven and damage-centered research and literature, which chronicle only the pain and hopelessness of the colonized and which entrench existing structures of domination. These methodologies draw from the philosophical and theoretical assumptions of a postcolonial indigenous paradigm to emphasize the unique contribution of sociohistorical, cultural, and political factors to social science research. The main emphasis is that people should be understood within their social context, which is inevitably influenced by their cultural, political, and historical contexts. For example, some argue that most data-gathering instruments are biased and not applicable to non-Western contexts because “they are often based on individualistic westernized assumptions and theories that mostly neglect context dynamics in which meanings emerge, and within which they continue to exist” (Roos, 2008, p. 661). Contexts and cultures among the colonized Other may differ from region to region and, within each region, by location, nationality, or ethnic group. To illustrate culturally responsive methodologies is to acknowledge the local histories, traditions, and indigenous knowledge systems that inform them. A recognition of the diversity in culture and contexts should be seen not as promoting

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fragmentation of knowledge but rather as giving voice to all, irrespective of race, location, and ethnic group. Some of these methodologies are well developed, specifying the principles underlying the research methodology: ways of identifying a research issue; reviewing of literature; selecting data collection, data analysis, and interpretation and dissemination procedures; and establishing an ethical framework. Others are still evolving. The challenge is locating and internationalizing indigenous culturally responsive methodologies and integrating Western culture-informed perspectives with indigenous culturally based methodologies in ways that permit dialogue between researchers, policymakers, communities, and nations. In this chapter, I emphasize those postcolonial indigenous culturally specific methodologies that are not common in the research methodology literature and show how philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and values converge with theory and practice to inform culturally specific methodologies. The methodologies discussed here are not the only ones in the evolving literature of methodologies informed by a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm. The following are discussed: —— Kaupapa Maori research methodologies —— Methodologies based on the Medicine Wheel —— Afrocentric methodologies Let us begin with a discussion of the relationship between a paradigm, methodology, and methods.

PARADIGM, METHODOLOGY, AND METHODS A methodology summarizes the research process, that is, how the research will proceed. Building a methodology starts with a choice of the research paradigm that informs the study. The process is, therefore, guided by philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and values and the theoretical framework that informs comprehension, interpretation, choice of literature, and research practice on a given topic of study. Figure 10.1 illustrates the parts that make up a paradigm. Methodology becomes the place where assumptions about the nature of reality, knowledge, values, and theory and practice on a given topic converge. Figure 10.2 illustrates the relationship. Methods are the tools used for gathering data and are an important component of the methodology. Building the methodology of a study begins with a standpoint on the following questions: Paradigm.  What paradigm informs your methodology? Is it the postpositivist paradigm, interpretive paradigm, transformative paradigm, or a postcolonial indigenous paradigm? Theoretical Framework.  What theories inform the choice of your research topic, the research questions you ask, the literature reviewed, data collection methods, analysis, and interpretation? Is it an indigenous knowledge-based theory, postcolonial

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FIGURE 10.1  ■  Parts That Make Up a Paradigm Theoretical Framework, Literature, & Research Practice

Paradigms:

Assumptions about the nature of reality & knowledge

- Postcolonial Indigenous - Postpositivist - Interpretive - Transformative Value Systems & Ethical Principles

FIGURE 10.2  ■  Methodology as Convergence of Three Parts

Theoretical Framework, Literature, & Research Practice

Assumptions About the Nature of Reality & Knowledge

Methodology

Value Systems & Ethical Principles

theory, critical race-based theory, feminist theory, critical theory, or a combination of some of these? Research Approach.  Is it a quantitative participatory approach study, for instance, a survey? Is it a qualitative participatory approach study, for instance, an ethnographic study? Is it a combination of qualitative and quantitative participatory approach study?

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Data Collection.  What assumptions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and values inform your data collection methods? Are you, for instance, adopting a decolonization of methods approach that inserts an indigenous data collection method into a study guided by a Euro-Western-based paradigm? Or is it a decolonization approach within a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm? What assumptions guide the selection of participants in the study (sampling), the setting of the study, and the techniques of data collection? What role do the following play in your choice of data collection and sampling procedures: ethnophilosophy, philosophic sagacity, cultural artifacts, and decolonization of interviews? Are you using any of the following: proverbs and metaphors as conceptual frameworks, storytelling methods, songs and poems, talk circles, or indigenous knowledge-based interview guides? See Chapters 9 and 11 for a discussion of these strategies. Data Analysis.  What theory informs the data analysis and interpretation approach? Is it any one of the following: an indigenous knowledge-based theory, postcolonial theory, critical theory, feminist theory, critical race theory, or a combination of these theories and others? Ethics.  What is the theory of ethics that informs the study? Take, for example, the role of the researcher as a transformative healer with responsibilities to others. These responsibilities involve the application of theories and the literature review that inform the research process, along with the four general principles of relational accountability, respectful representation, reciprocal appropriation, and rights and regulations proposed in a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm. Validity. By what and whose standards are the design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation of research findings deemed valid and reliable?

VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY: AN OVERVIEW Whatever the paradigmatic assumptions that guide the research process, the resulting studies should be convincing enough that research participants can see themselves in the descriptions. In addition, all stakeholders, practitioners, and policymakers should feel confident to act on the findings and implications of the studies. A criterion for judging the validity of a study is thus an important methodological component. Methodologies described in this chapter assume a qualitative approach. This is not to say indigenous methodologies use only qualitative methods. As noted in Chapter 5, indigenous research approaches may begin with a qualitative approach that can inform the development of theories and concepts, which can be tested for efficacy using quantitative methods. Qualitative methods are best for theory building and can involve diverse social constructs and theories that are novel and unique. The quantitative methods complement the qualitative approach in indigenous research by testing, refining indigenous research theory, and integrating it into the global

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knowledge economy. I will thus focus on validity from a postcolonial indigenous perspective.

Rigor in Qualitative Research One major concern in qualitative research, as in quantitative research, has to do with the confidence that researchers and consumers of research studies can place in the procedures used in the data gathering, the data collected, its analysis and interpretation, and the related findings and conclusions. The researcher has to be aware of possible threats to the credibility of the research study. For instance, quantitative researchers frequently describe qualitative research as subjective and therefore inherently unreliable and invalid. They also maintain that participants may lie, distort the truth, or withhold information. When that happens, the researcher is misled by incomplete, inaccurate, or biased data. This has led to rigid procedures and language that inform validity and reliability of qualitative research studies. Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba (1985; Creswell, 2009) have proposed that the validity and reliability of qualitative research studies should be judged under criteria different from those used in quantitative research. The following terms in qualitative research were suggested to describe validity and reliability: credibility for internal validity, transferability for external validity, dependability for reliability, and confirmability for objectivity. Procedures and strategies for establishing rigor and ensuring the credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability of qualitative research studies were also established. Today, there is a concern that an overemphasis on the criteria and language in judging validity in qualitative research can lead to oversimplified, mechanical procedures that reduce data to controllable elements, fragments, and predetermined structures (Brabeck & Brabeck, 2009; Cram, 2009; Koro-Ljungberg, 2010; Lincoln, 2009). I will nevertheless begin the discussion with a review of this oversimplified version of validity to enable a contrast with validity and reliability with a postcolonial indigenous critique framework.

Credibility Credibility is the equivalent of internal validity in quantitative research. Qualitative research is characterized by multiple realities and therefore multiple truths. Research evidence is therefore credible if it represents as adequately as possible the multiple realities revealed by the participants. The participants should also be able to recognize the descriptions and interpretations of their human experience as accurate and true. Following are some of the common strategies for enhancing the credibility of qualitative research studies. Prolonged and Substantial Engagement.  The credibility of a study may be threatened by errors that occur when research participants respond with what they think is the desired social response (Krefting, 1991) or when they resist intrusion into their communities by deliberately giving false information. I have noted that in most postcolonial indigenous societies, building rapport requires a process that connects the researcher to the researched through sharing of values or practices that recognize that both researcher

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and researched are connected to each other, to the cosmos, and to the environment. I noted, for instance, that practices such as tobacco smudging among the Anishambe, one of the indigenous peoples of North America, is a way of building relationships with people and gaining their trust. Prolonged time in the field and engagement with participants is important in enhancing the credibility of a study. The assumption is that as more time is spent in the field, rapport with participants will increase, and they will volunteer different and more sensitive information than they do at the beginning of a research study. The researcher should also observe long enough to identify salient issues. Researchers know they have spent enough time in the field when information, themes, patterns, trends, and examples are repeated. When this happens, the researcher may leave the field. Peer Debriefing.  The researcher should engage in discussions with peers on the procedures for the study, findings, conclusions, analysis, and hypothesis. The peer should pose searching questions to help the researcher confront her or his own values and to guide the research process. In a postcolonial indigenous paradigm, peer debriefing should also occur with research participants, who ideally should be coresearchers, and with the sages and elders of the community who are knowledgeable on the subject of discussion. Negative Case Analysis.  During the data analysis, it should not be expected that all cases will fit the appropriate categories. It is important to document negative cases. Lincoln and Guba (1985) state that when a “reasonable” number of cases fit, negative case analysis provides confidence in the hypothesis that is being proposed. Working hypotheses can be revised based on the discovery of cases that do not fit. Progressive Subjectivity.  Researchers should monitor their own developing constructions and document the process of change from the beginning of the study until it ends. The researcher can share this statement of beliefs with the peer debriefers, who may be research participants, elders of the community, or sages; peers can challenge the researcher who has not kept an open mind but found only what was expected from the beginning. Member Checks.  This is the most important criterion in establishing credibility. The researcher must verify with research participants the themes and patterns that are developing as a result of data collected and analyzed. Member checks can be formal and informal. For example, at the end of an interview, the researcher can summarize what has been said and ask if the notes accurately reflect the person’s position. Drafts of the research reports can be shared with members for comments. Triangulation Triangulation is another strategy for enhancing the credibility of a study. It is based on the assumption that the use of multiple methods, data sources, or investigators can eliminate biases in a study. There are various ways of triangulating data. Among them are methodological triangulation, investigator triangulation, triangulation of data sources, and theoretical triangulation (Krefting, 1991).

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Methodological Triangulation.  This refers to the comparison of data collected by various means, for example, data from structured interviews, talk circles, observations, diaries, documents, oral literature, storytelling, songs, language, proverbs and metaphors, and artifacts. Triangulation of Data Sources.  This is based on the importance of varying the times during which events are observed, space where they are observed, and participants in the study. Triangulation of Investigators.  Triangulation of investigators occurs when more than one researcher participates in the study. The assumption is that the team members bring a diversity of approaches that help to investigate the phenomena from multiple perspectives. Commonalities in their interpretations make a strong case for the credibility of the findings. Collaboration of two or more researchers, one Western and others indigenous or local, can enhance the credibility of a study. Theoretical Triangulation.  This refers to the comparison of ideas from different theoretical perspectives, including indigenous knowledge theories that inform conceptual frameworks, the design of interview guides, data analysis, and interpretation. Referential Adequacy In qualitative research, the researcher is the measurement tool, and the trustworthiness of the human instrument has to be established. Mathew B. Miles and Michael Huberman (1984) have suggested that the trustworthiness of the human instrument is enhanced if the following four conditions are fulfilled: 1. The researcher is familiar with the setting and phenomenon under study. 2. The researcher has a strong interest in conceptual or theoretical knowledge and has the ability to conceptualize the large amounts of qualitative data. 3. The researcher has the ability to take a multidisciplinary approach. 4. The researcher has good investigation skills. Reflexivity The truth-value of qualitative study is also affected by the closeness of the relationship between the research participants and the researcher, which develops during the prolonged interaction considered necessary to establish credibility (Krefting, 1991). This closeness creates difficulties in separating the researchers’ experiences from those of the participants. Reflexivity is a strategy to help ensure that the overinvolvement of the researcher is not a threat to the credibility of the study. Reflexivity in this context refers to the assessment of the influence of the researcher’s background and ways of perceiving reality, perceptions, experiences, ideological biases, and interests during the

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research. The researcher is the main data collection instrument. The researcher also analyzes, interprets, and reports the findings. It is important, therefore, that the researcher’s thoughts, feelings, frustrations, fears, concerns, problems, and ideas are recorded throughout the study. Qualitative researchers keep a record of these observations in journals. A journal serves as a diary that records all events that affect the way the study is conducted, analysis is made, interpretation is reached, and conclusions are made. You may wonder about the exact nature of information recorded and how it is used in writing the research report. Following is a checklist on some of the information that you may find useful to record after an interview session. The checklist is by no means exhaustive.

POSTINTERVIEW IMPRESSIONS 1. What was the emotional tone—laughter, sadness, anger, and so on? If expressed, what was the context, for example, what was the interviewee/s talking about? Any sudden change in emotional tone? If so, when? 2. Was it a difficult or easy interview to conduct? In what sense? 3. What was your relationship with the interviewee/s? How did you get on with them? How do you think they saw you? Did they ask questions about you? If so, what?

4. Were there any difficult or embarrassing moments during the study (for you and/or the interviewees). If so, what? 5. Did anything surprise you in the data collected, for example, unanticipated turns or raising of unfamiliar issues? 6. Did you face any ethical dilemmas? Responses from these questions can be used to report on methodological reflections and challenges in a study.

Transferability Transferability is the equivalent of external validity in quantitative research. Quantitative researchers randomly select representative samples from populations so they can generalize findings to the target populations. Qualitative researchers focus on situational unique cases, and generalization of findings is not always necessary. A biographical study, for example, might represent one life perspective not transferable to any other life situation. In contrast, in an ethnographic study, the researcher might wish to generalize or transfer findings to similar situations. Transferability of research findings in qualitative research can be enhanced through sampling and dense description of the setting of the study. In qualitative research, small samples are selected purposively. The researcher selects participants who are knowledgeable on the topic under study to build a sample that is specific to the needs of the study. There are, nevertheless, a variety of purposive sampling strategies that can be used.

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Snowball Sampling.  In this approach, the researcher selects a few participants who have the information that is important for the study. These selected participants help identify others who they believe have knowledge or information on the phenomenon under study. Take, for example, sages or elders in the community who are vested with indigenous knowledge. Intensity Sampling.  Sites or individuals are selected in which the phenomenon of interest is strongly represented. Homogenous Sampling. In this approach, selected participants are very similar in experience, perspective, or outlook. This approach is used when the intention of the researcher is to describe the experiences of subgroups of people who share similar characteristics. Random Purposive Sampling.  This involves randomly selecting from a group of participants who were identified because of their knowledge in the researcher’s area of interest. The approach is used when too many participants are selected purposively for all to be included in the sample. Dense Description.  Sampling alone does not provide enough information for those who read the research study to decide if findings are applicable to other settings. The researcher must provide dense background information about the research participants, research context, and setting so that those reading the study can determine if there are similar settings to which findings of the study can be applicable or transferable.

Dependability Dependability is the equivalent of reliability in quantitative research. In qualitative research, the notion of reliability, where emphasis is on replication or reoccurrence of behavior under observation, is problematic because human behavior is never static. Moreover, qualitative research seeks to study the uniqueness of these human occurrences. Replication is not feasible or defensible in qualitative research. Rather, the important question is whether the results are consistent with the data collected. Variability is thus expected, and consistency is defined in terms of dependability. Dependability may be enhanced by using a number of strategies such as dense description of methods used in conducting the study and triangulation. These are described under credibility of the study. Other methods include stepwise replication technique and code-recode procedure. Stepwise Replication. In this procedure, two researchers or teams analyze the data separately and compare results.

218   Indigenous Research Methodologies TABLE 10.1  ■  Summary of Strategies With Which to Establish Trustworthiness Strategy

Criteria

Credibility

Prolonged and varied field experience Triangulation Member checking Peer examination Referential adequacy Reflexivity (field journal)

Transferability

Sampling Dense description

Dependability

Dependability audit Dense description of research methods Stepwise replication Triangulation Peer examination Code-recode procedure

Confirmability

Confirmability audit Triangulation Reflexivity

Source: Adapted from Krefting, L. (1991). Rigor in qualitative research: The assessment of trustworthiness. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 45(3), 214–222. Used by permission of The American Occupational Therapy Association.

Code-Recode.  The researcher codes data, waits a week or two, and recodes the data to see if the results will be the same.

Confirmability Confirmability is the equivalent of objectivity in quantitative research. It refers to the extent to which findings in a study can be traced to data derived from the informants and the research settings and not to the researcher’s biases. Some of the strategies for enhancing confirmability, namely, reflexivity and triangulation, are discussed under credibility. Another important strategy is auditing. The strategy involves an external auditor following through the steps in the progression of a research study to try and understand how and why decisions were made. Auditability also implies that another researcher could arrive at comparable conclusions, given the same data and research context. Table 10.1 summarizes the strategies with which to establish trustworthiness in qualitative research and the criteria for each strategy.

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VALIDITY: A POSTCOLONIAL INDIGENOUS FRAMEWORK As noted in Chapter 1 and Chapter 5, an ethics theory built on relationships and responsibilities to the researched informs every aspect of the postcolonial indigenous research process, from choice of topic and data collection instruments to data analysis and dissemination of findings. In other words, “Every research activity is an exercise in ethics” (Clegg & Slife 2009, p. 24). Validity with a postcolonial critique framework starts with a call for recognition of conceptual frameworks, theoretical frameworks, and data collection and analysis methods derived from the researched’s frames of reference and indigenous knowledge. In this context, validity is the researcher’s responsibility to go beyond banked book research methodologies to imagine other possibilities, to accommodate the researched’s ways of knowing, and to wish for the researched what we would wish for ourselves. Concepts of fairness, ontological authenticity, educative authenticity, catalytic authenticity, and tactical authenticity, as well as positionality, voice, critical subjectivity, or self-reflexivity (Guba & Lincoln, 2005), resonate with postcolonial indigenous perspectives of validity. Fairness.  This can be described as a quality of balance that enables all participants’ and stakeholders’ views, perspectives, claims, concerns, and voices to be visible in the research texts. Omission of the views of any one of those involved becomes a form of marginalization or a way of silencing them. Catalytic and Tactical Authenticities.  In this strategy, a given inquiry is able to prompt action on the part of the research participants; the researcher/evaluator is involved in training participants in specific forms of social and political action, if the participants desire such training. The ethical theory for postcolonial indigenous research paradigm begins with assumptions about the research participants as coresearchers; thus, it assumes some level of involvement, which may require training of the researcher by the research participants or vice versa. Ontological and Educative Authenticity. This criterion determines a raised level of awareness, in the first instance, by individual research participants and, in the second, by individuals about those who surround them or with whom they come into contact for some social or organizational purpose. In a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm, research is defined as ceremony (Wilson, 2008), and each activity in the ceremony is marked by acknowledging relationships that people have with each other and the environment, as well as the moral and spiritual-based obligation that they have for each other, the community, and the environment at large. Positionality or Standpoint Judgments. Standpoint judgments are informed by standpoint theory. The main argument in standpoint theory is that knowledge is always referenced to some standpoint argument (Thompson & Gitlin, 1995). What counts

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as knowledge is tied to the interests and perceived purposes of knowledge of different ­interest groups. Specific Communities and Research Sites as Arbiters of Quality.  Methods such as the participatory rural appraisal require researchers to learn from the communities and initiate a participatory approach in which research participants and other members of the community make judgments on the quality and accuracy of the analysis and interpretation of the data that is gathered. In addition, communities have established ethics guidelines that guide the research process and define quality standards. Developing countries and indigenous communities have also come up with their own ethics review boards and ethical guidelines. The Maori, for instance, have Guidelines for Research and Evaluation with Maori (Ministry of Social Development, 2004); in Australia, the Aborigines have the Mi’ knaw Research Principles and Protocols (Aboriginal Research Centre, 2005). Voice. This criterion indicates the extent to which a text has polyvocality. In more participatory forms of research, voice includes a researcher’s voice in the text, letting research participants speak for themselves, either in text form or through plays, forums, town meetings, or other oral and performance-oriented media communications forms designed by research participants themselves (Guba & Lincoln, 2005). In Chapter 9, for example, I discussed how some forms of oral literature, such as folklores and stories, speak about the histories of the indigenous people. What are the multiple ways in which indigenous methodologies give voice to the colonized and the historically marginalized? What are the multiple ways through which interview transcripts can be reproduced to preserve the voices of research participants? Some research participants, as we observed in Chapter 5, want their names in the research reports. Critical Subjectivity or Self-Reflexivity. Shulamit Reinharz (1992) discusses three selves that researchers bring into the research process: the research-based self; brought selves, which historically, socially, and personally create our standpoints; and situationally created selves. She argues that each of these selves comes into play in the research inquiry and has a distinctive voice. The postcolonial indigenous research paradigm requires the researcher to critically reflect on self as knower, redeemer, colonizer, and transformative healer.

ACCOUNTABILITY, RESPECTFUL REPRESENTATION, RECIPROCITY, AND RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES In Chapter 5, it was noted that an ethics theory in a relational postcolonial indigenous paradigm contributes to the debate on ethical research by adding the four Rs of relational accountability, respectful representation, reciprocal appropriation, and rights and responsibilities. A postcolonial indigenous perspective requires an analysis of social

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contexts that involve specific attention to conditions of social injustices. The researcher has to pay attention to issues of concern to the colonized researched and those who are disadvantaged, to the history of the researched, to the history of the methods used, and to the literature on the colonized researched. The researcher has to move the research from deficit- and damage-centered research to investigation that builds communities and restores hope and belief in their capabilities to resolve challenges that they encounter. Postcolonial indigenous ethical theory borrows from appreciative inquiry perspectives (Reed, 2006), desire-centered research perspectives (Tuck, 2009), and positive psychology to focus on the strengths of communities, reveal the positive aspects of resilience and the acts of resistance, and the survivance needed for social change. Postcolonial indigenous ethical theory defines research as respectful when it benefits the participants. This requires that research participants play a pivotal role in making decisions on the research to be conducted, the research questions to be addressed, the analysis of the data, and the dissemination of findings. Refer back to Chapter 5. Within communities of the colonized, there are wide variations in age, socioeconomic background, sexual orientation, ethnicity, health, ableness, language spoken, and so on. The postcolonial indigenous perspective includes efforts to interrogate and include in the research process all dimensions of diversity in order to give appropriate representation in accordance with the spirit of relational ontology. A postcolonial indigenous ethical theory recognizes power sharing within diversity as an integral part of fairness and social justice and as a means to challenge power structures in order to transform lives. Research must interrogate power dimensions that arise between the researcher and the researched; power that comes with the choice of methods or techniques used in a study; power that comes with academic discourse; power that comes with the unfortunate Western ideology that sees the world in binary opposites of colonizer/colonized, first world/third/fourth world; and power that comes from archival literature, which in most cases is informed by deficitand damage-centered research. You are encouraged to use the four Rs to evaluate the ethical theory from a postcolonial indigenous perspective in the studies discussed. As you read this chapter, you will learn about context-specific indigenous-based ethics, standards, and criteria for defining and evaluating the validity or credibility of data collection, analysis, and interpretation of research findings. A methodology is good only if stakeholders, research participants, and policymakers are convinced of the rigor in the research process as well as the authenticity of the research findings. What follows is a discussion of the regional, national, and local specific postcolonial indigenous research methodologies. The methodologies bring with them nonpresent possibilities and complexities of validity.

KAUPAPA MAORI RESEARCH METHODOLOGY What is Kaupapa Maori research? Kaupapa Maori research encompasses the different sets of ideas and issues that are claimed as being important in doing culturally safe, sensitive, and relevant research in the Maori community (Bishop, 2008a, 2008b;

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Smith, 1999, 2008). Kaupapa literally means a Maori way or philosophy, a term used to describe traditional Maori ways of doing, being, and thinking encapsulated in a Maori worldview or cosmology (Henry & Pene, 2001). Kaupapa Maori research has been defined as “research that is culturally safe, that involves the mentorship of kaumātua that is culturally relevant and appropriate, while satisfying the rigor of research undertaken by a Maori researcher, not a researcher who happens to be Maori” (Irwin, 1994). Russell Bishop (2008a, 2008b) frames the discourse on Kaupapa Maori research in the context of the Treaty of Waitangi and discusses Kaupapa Maori research as a research that address the ideologies of Western culturally superiority. Marewa Glover (1997) describes Kaupapa Maori as “a desire to recover and reinstate mautaranga Maori, the indigenous system that was in place before colonization” (p. 3). Kaupapa Maori as a theory is also discussed as a localized critical theory (Smith, 1999); it “is a local theoretical positioning that is the modality through which the emancipatory goal of critical theory, in a specific historical, political, and social context, is practiced” (Smith, 2000, p. 229). It is further described as a social project that “weaves in and out of Maori cultural beliefs and values, Western forms of education, Maori aspirations and values, Western forms of education, Maori aspirations and socioeconomic needs, and Western economies and global structures” (Smith, 2000, p. 233). According to Smith (2000), Kaupapa Maori research can be summarized as research that (1) is related to being Maori, (2) is connected to Maori philosophy, (3) takes for granted the validity and legitimacy of Maori language and culture, and (4) is concerned with the struggle for autonomy of the Maori. Six principles that guide Kaupapa Maori research are outlined as follows: 1. (Tino) rangatiratanga (relative autonomy principle) 2. Taonga tuku iho (cultural aspirations principle) 3. Ako Maori (culturally preferred pedagogy) 4. Kia piki ake i nga raruraru o te kainga (mediation of socioeconomic and home difficulties principles) 5. Whanau (extended family structure principle) 6. Kaupapa (collective vision, philosophical principle) What follows is a discussion of Te Matahauariki: The Creative Relationship Framework (Parr, 2002), which is used by the Te Matahauriki Institute “to research and understand Maori culture both in a traditional sense, and also as an evolving, dynamic expression of identity” (p. 2). It is a methodology employed by Te Matahauriki as it attempted to identify and analyze those fundamental Maori concepts, philosophies, beliefs, values, customs, ethics, and practices that inform Maori law and jurisprudence (Parr, 2002, p. 4). The Te Matahauriki program objective is a contribution to an intellectual climate to realize a vision of socially inclusive laws and political and legal institutions in Aotearoa/New Zealand derived from

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two polyphyletic traditions, which will have sufficient flexibility and robustness to meet the future needs of citizens of Aotearoa/New Zealand as individuals and as collectivities. (Parr, 2002, p. 4) What follows is a brief discussion of the processes, selection of participants, their role, and the principles that guide the methodology.

The Process and Methods of the Creative Relationship Framework Identifying the Literature.  Research was undertaken on a variety of sources for implicit and explicit and operational definitions and operational examples of Maori jurisprudence (Benton, 2001). Consultation With Te Pu Wanangu  (Skilled or Wise Person). Seminars were held with key individuals, experts in tikanga (the correct way of doing things), and scholars both Maori and Pakeha (white New Zealanders). Selection of Participants.  Benton (cited in Parr, 2002) describes the Te Pu Wananga as follows: They have been gifted with a long life (the majority being in their 70s and 80s). Their memory and knowledge of Maori culture and their reflections on where to go from here span more than four generations, starting with knowledge of their own mentors—their own parents, grandparents and other elders— and now in their position as tohunga kaumātua, parents and grandparents or great-grandparents themselves, their younger kinsfolk look up to them for advice and wisdom. (p. 5) Conducting the Seminars.  A series of semistructured, in-depth, participant-driven discussions are conducted in a series of seminars. Participation and seminar discussions are guided by the four principles of the creative relationships framework: (1) intention and reflexivity, (2) rapport—formation of research relationships, (3) utu reciprocity, and (4) the reiterative process. Intention and Reflexivity.  This refers to the ability of those participating in the seminar discussion to do self-research that enables them to understand their own context. In addition, participants also have to be able to transverse their own culture and that of others. Parr (2002) notes, Closely related to the ability to reflect upon oneself and the enriched understanding ensuing from such reflections is the ability to traverse both cultures. Until you are comfortable with your own culture and secure in your understanding of

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it, arriving at a worthwhile understanding of another culture will be problematic. For a creative relationship, to also be cross-cultural, what is necessary are the skills to operate effectively within both cultures and across cultures in an inter-disciplinary capacity. In order to experience this, a researcher must have a solid understanding of themselves, their own culture, beliefs, values and epistemologies. Only then can a proper understanding of another culture be attempted. (p. 12) Knowing oneself in terms of the social, cultural, and political context in which the research is conducted has become an important topic of discussion, with various procedures suggested for self-research (Cram, 2009; Mertens, 2009, 2010a; Symonette, 2004). One of the procedures on self-research is built around the Johari window, not indigenous to non-Westerners (Mertens, 2009). Remember that it may be counterproductive to reject applicable Western ideas simply because they originate from the West. The Johari window is discussed as an example of a research procedure borrowed from the West that can enhance the process of self-research that is critical in relational ethics theory in indigenous research. The Johari window developed by Joseph Luft and Harr Ingham in the 1950s is used as a model to understand and teach self-awareness for personal development and to improve communications, interpersonal relationships, group dynamics, team development, and intergroup relationships. Anne Bell (2001) modified the Johari window to enhance self-awareness, and Donna Mertens (2009) modified the context and probing questions to fit research and evaluation contexts. A graphic representation of the Johari window used by Bell (2001, cited in Mertens, 2009, p. 78) is illustrated in Box 6.1.

BOX 10.1 JOHARI WINDOW Things I know about myself

Things I don’t know about myself

Things others know about me

Open area

Blind area

Things others don’t know

Hidden area

Unknown area

Mertens explains each quadrant and the self-awareness questions as follows: The Open Area.  One’s comfort zone, it allows for personal growth, self-disclosure, and receiving feedback from others. She suggests the following questions to expand one’s open area: —— How open am I about my own processes of learning about social justice and my own

socialization? —— What kinds of things about myself do I share easily with others? —— How do I use myself and my experience in my research? —— What is open for discussion in my interactions with others?

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The Hidden Area.  It represents self-­ —— What have I learned that was previously in my blind area? knowledge about which a person is conscious but which they choose not to disclose to others. People —— How open am I to feedback, and how do I in relationships can decide on what they choose respond when others give me feedback? not to disclose by asking the following questions, suggested by Bell (cited in Mertens, 2009): —— What important insights/learning have I gained from inviting feedback in the past? —— What do I avoid disclosing about myself? Why? The Unknown Area.  This is the area that the —— What are my motivations for not disclosing person and those with whom they are working certain things? are aware of; it represents an unexplored area. Bell (cited in Mertens, 2009) suggests questions —— What do I hide that I might disclose? to ask in this area as follows: —— What do I hide that I think could interfere —— What was previously unknown to me and (to with good research or evaluation? Is my others) which I now know about myself? rationale clear and conscious? The Blind Area. Having the potential to impede good working relationships, this area contains cultural beliefs and prejudices about others that have been normalized as a result of socialization. Bell (cited in Mertens, 2009) suggests the following questions: —— What am I likely to not perceive due to my own socialization positioning?

—— How did I become aware of this? —— What other puzzles intrigue me and call me to further exploration? These self-awareness questions can be used to guide the principle of self-questioning in the creative relationships framework.

Source: Mertens, D. M. (2009). Transformative research and evaluation. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Used by permission.

Rapport: Formation of Research Relationships.  Rapport expresses a state of harmony between people through relationship and connection (Parr, 2002). It requires mutual respect and trust, generosity, affection, and enjoyment of the other’s company, and it is enhanced by face-to-face interaction, involvement in the community, and other personal interactions. The method also requires that “the researchers prove their genuineness, worthiness, integrity appropriateness, and any number of characteristics that may be desired by research subjects” (Parr, 2002, p. 15). Utu Reciprocity.  Looks at the sorts of things that are reciprocated. Parr (2002) notes that through reciprocity, a feeling of connectedness is created. Connectedness removes the need for empowerment, feelings of separateness or distance, and the need to be in charge. The Reiterative Process. Reciprocity is manifested through the reiterative process. The reiterative process is “one of many journeys between participants—journeys that

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shape and enhance the venture that lies between them” (Parr, 2002, p. 20). The process entails recycling descriptions and emerging analysis and conclusions. Transcripts created from the seminars are taken back to the participants for comment and analysis, and every participant is free to indicate any material that they may not wish to be disclosed publicly. The reiterative process principles are as follows: 1. The names of all those present at the seminar are recorded and indicated at the beginning of the transcript. 2. Transcribing begins immediately after the seminar. 3. The speaker’s own words should be faithfully transcribed, omitting repetitions but refraining from correcting grammar or polishing styles. 4. In the transcription, the nature of gaps should always be indicated within square brackets, for example: [inaudible], [too many people talking at once], [interruption], [pause]. 5. The transcript is thoroughly reviewed by the research team as soon as possible. 6. Words are added only when necessary to provide links or clarify meaning. 7. Thereafter, the transcript is given back to participants. 8. The participants have ample time to comment on the transcript. 9. The participants must validate the transcript as an accurate account of what they said and want to say. 10. In all matters of doubt or dispute, the speaker’s decision must be accepted as final. 11. Senior members of the team are required to carefully consider all suggestions from participants. 12. Thematic analysis is then carried out on the transcripts. 13. Themes identified are taken back to participants for comment. 14. Options for future participation are discussed.

ETHICAL ISSUES IN THE CREATIVE RELATIONSHIP FRAMEWORK The creative relationship framework discusses the following ethical issues: Subjective Responsibility of the Researcher.  The researcher must be genuine and committed to the participants and the ongoing relationship formed with them. The researcher has to be constantly self-questioning to reflect on how factors such as age, gender, social class, ethnicity, or race may limit holistic understanding of issues in the study.

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Objective Responsibility.  The researcher should remain committed to sound quality research and ensure that “all genuine interests are served by honest, robust research generated through meticulous attention to detail, personal integrity, and a real commitment to co-participants” (Parr, 2002, p. 25). Participants’ Responsibility. Participants define their role during the course of the research. Participants and Consent.  Participants have a right to an informed consent. They are informed of the purpose of the study, the anticipated consequences of the research, the identity of funders and sponsors, the anticipated uses of material gathered, the possible benefits of the investigation, and the degree of anonymity and confidentiality that would be afforded participants. The issue of consent in the creative relationship framework is ongoing and is defined by “the context and circumstances of the relationship as much as by the participant themselves” (Parr, 2002, p. 27). Mutual Respect and Reciprocity. A koha is laid down as an acknowledgment that both sides have power during the process. The laying down of the koha remains “a powerful recognition of the right of others to self-determination” (Parr, 2002, p. 28). The creative relationship framework clearly shows validity concepts that are anchored in roles and responsibilities of the researcher to the researched as well as responsibilities of the researched to one another. Offering koha is recognition of power sharing and responsibilities that connect all those involved in the research process.

ACTIVITY 10.1 Discuss the data collection, methods, sampling procedures, and data analysis and ethics in the creative relationship framework methodology and illustrate how this methodology is a space

where assumptions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and values informed by a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm converge with theory and practice on the given topic.

CYCLICAL POSTCOLONIAL INDIGENOUS RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES: THE MEDICINE WHEEL Postcolonial indigenous scholars emphasize the circular and cyclical nature of methodologies embedded in postcolonial indigenous cultures. This circular and cyclical characteristic emerges from a worldview that recognizes the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things and from the integration of spiritual beliefs, values, and

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experience as valid ways of coming to know a reality. “Seeking truth and coming to know necessitates studying the cycles, relationships and connections between things” (Sefa Dei, 2002, p. 9). In this context, communications with the natural world and ancestors, as well as knowing that comes through dreams, visions, and intuitions, form an integral part of the research process (Walker, 2001). Polly Walker (2001), a Cherokee woman, discusses a cyclical indigenous methodology that draws from the Medicine Wheel. The Indigenous paradigm that underlies my research emphasizes the interconnectedness of all things. It is both ancient and modern and expressed through the American Indian Medicine Wheel. The Medicine Wheel Paradigm encompasses a holistic integration of humans and the natural world, including all beings, processes and creations. In this paradigm, the Four Directions, or Four Grandfathers, represent a complex system of knowledge. The following introductory explanation illuminates the research I conducted within this paradigm. As a Cherokee woman using methodologies based on the Medicine Wheel, I integrated all aspects of human experience represented on the Wheel. In the Medicine Wheel methodology, the East represents the Spiritual aspects of experience. In the East, researchers acknowledge their interconnectedness with the research participants and the wider community. Research from the Eastern position integrates a wide range of senses in coming to know. The South represents the Natural World. In the South, researchers honor and utilize emotional experience, speaking from the heart with authenticity. The West represents the bodily aspects of knowing. In the West, researchers are encouraged to go within themselves, discovering what is important in relation to the connections between self, others, nature and traditional teachings (Bopp, Bopp, Brown, & Lane, 1989). The North represents the mental processes of balancing intellect with wisdom. In the North, researchers work within the community to find solutions that are balanced and restore harmony to the community as a whole (Huber, 1993, pp. 358–360; Bopp et al., 1989). (pp. 18–21; excerpt used by permission.) Maria Gonzalez (2000) illustrates the cyclical approach in ethnography by employing the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Gonzalez notes that the four-­seasons strategy is “my attempt to reformulate the task of ethnography, as it might be viewed through the methodology of a circular ontology, as experienced and often expressed by Native American Indian culture” (p. 626). The researcher’s activities in the field are illustrated by employing metaphors that communicate indigenous communities’ activities during the four seasons. The methodology of circular ontology describes the role of the ethnographer in the field; the methods, activities, and procedures to be followed; and the possible threats to knowledge production using the four seasonal activities as metaphors to guide the process. The methods and procedures correspond to the conventional process in ethnography, namely, gaining entry, collecting data, compiling data for analysis, and writing the report. The use of the Medicine Wheel and the four seasons as guiding frameworks in the ontology of connectedness illustrate relationships, the cyclical nature of all experiences, and the way this can inform a research process grounded on indigenous knowledge.

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The East.  In the Medicine Wheel methodology, the East represents the spiritual aspects of experience. The Aboriginal perspective sees the earth as alive, thinking, creating, cautioning, offering a new humane alternative, and responding to kindness, respect, prayers; this view requires researchers to respect the rituals performed in coming to know a reality. Stories, songs, prayers, and rituals are meaningful sources of understanding the researched, individually and collectively (Battiste, 2000). The East is also the direction of spring and a place of beginning. In Gonzalez’s (2000) creation-centered ontology of ethnography, the spring is the time when an ethnographer can prepare for what is ahead. Preparation cannot begin until permission to do the research is given. It is a time in which the human instrument is being prepared for fieldwork. Walker (2001) notes that in the East, researchers acknowledge their interconnectedness with research participants and the wider community, integrating a wide range of senses in coming to know. The South. The South represents the natural world and is the direction of summer (Battiste, 2000; Gonzalez, 2000; Walker, 2001). It requires knowledge, understanding, appreciation, and utilization of indigenous peoples’ languages, metaphors, symbols, characters, stories, teachers, and teachings. In the South, researchers honor and use emotional experience, speaking from the heart with authenticity. This methodology requires the ethnographer’s deep involvement with the culture: The skilled ethnographer in the field learns to believe in the circle of time, and in the inevitability of changes. If there is too much focus on one’s specific experience, the product of ethnography will be narrow and non-holistic. It will not capture the essence of the culture. Rather, each and every experience within the culture is an example of the whole culture. (Gonzalez, 2000, p. 642) The West.  West is the direction of autumn and represents the bodily aspects of knowing. In the West, researchers are encouraged to go within themselves, discovering what is important in relation to the connections between self, others, nature, and traditional teachings (Bopp et al., 1989). The North.  North is the direction of winter and represents the mental processes of balancing intellect with wisdom. In the North, researchers work within the community to find solutions that are balanced and restore harmony to the community as a whole (Bopp et al., 1989; Huber, 1993, pp. 358–360). Researchers take up their responsibilities as transformative healers and make a conscious effort to work with the communities to bring about change.

PACIFIC RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES Another culturally based methodology is the tivaevae model developed by MaruaHodges (Futter-Puati & Maua-Hodges, 2019). Chapter 9 discussed how language and metaphors can be sources of literature review, worldviews, and conceptual frameworks. Chapter 11 discusses how artifacts can also serve as conceptual frameworks in indigenous research. The tivaevae is a research model context-specific to the Pacific people of the

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Cook Islands. The research model is conceptualized from a traditional tivaevae which is a handmade traditional quilt (Futter-Puati & Maua-Hodges, 2019). The framework demonstrates the potential of indigenous research methods to offer other possibilities for conceptualizing research topics, designing methodologies, collecting data, analyzing and reporting findings, and translating the findings to problem solving. Conceptualization: The handmade traditional quilt can be used as a metaphor to inform the conceptualization of the study methodology. Futter-Puati and Maua-Hodges (2019) used it as a metaphor symbolizing youth sexuality as well as informing the data collection, analysis, findings, and the translation of the findings into an educational intervention project. Her aim was to create context-specific understanding of sexuality. Maua-Hodges has also used it to conceptualize collaborative research (Futter-Puati & Maua-Hodges, 2019). Aue Te Ava and Angela Page (2018, p. 2) used quilt as a metaphor of the past, present, and future integration of social, historical, spiritual religious, economic, and political representation of Cook Islands culture. Four stages in the stitching of a tivaevae are employed in the process of designing a research project. Akapapa: conceptualized and planned research activities Akura: data collection methods Pakoti: to cut, analyze, and interpret data O’ora: presenting the findings Five key concepts that guide the stitching of the four stages are as follows: Taokotai: collaboration Tu akangateitei: respect Uriuri kite: reciprocity Tu inangaro: relationships Akaari kite: a shared vision. (Futter-Puati & Maua-Hodges, 2019) The methodology can be used along with other foundational cultural concepts found in the Cook Islands. The Pito’enua is a concept of well-being that enhances cooperation connectedness. It has the following five dimensions: Kopapa/physical well-being: defined as the physical body, its growth, development ability, and the way to care for it Tumanako/mental and emotional state: well thought out thinking processes, acknowledging and expressing thought and feelings, and being able to respond appropriately Vaerua/spiritual well-being: the values and beliefs that determine the way people live, the search for meaning and purpose in life, personal identity, and self-awareness Kopu tangat/social well-being: family relationships, friendships, and other interpersonal relationships; feeling of belonging from urupu (tribal group they belong to) compassion, caring, and social support

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Aorangi/total environment: how society influences you; the way individuals are shaped by the environment (Futter-Puati & Maua-Hodges, 2019).

The Talanoa faafaletui Interview Methods The Talanoa and Faafel illustrate methods derived from the people’s cultural knowledge and folklore. The two methods are unique to the Samoa people of the Pacific islands. The faafaletui method is derived from the Samoa famous saying, Ua nofo fale le aiga Sa Tui la Maa, which means the family of Tui are meeting to discuss the disappearance of their Maa’. According to the story, Maa’ is the daughter of the Tui who was left to perish at the sea by her brothers because they were jealous of their parents’ love for her. According to the story, the Tui family came together to deliberate on what to do about Maa’s disappearance. In this method, participants are chosen carefully, and the serious thoughts and recommendations that came from the deliberations woven together. The fafafeletua tends to involve close group discussions of a serious nature while talanoa is more open, encouraging any kind of talk to happen between any person or groups of persons, either or both in group and or one-on-one settings (Suaalii-Sauni and Fulu–Aiolupotea, 2014).

ACTIVITY 10.2 Futter-Puati and Maua-Hodges discuss how the tivaevae model was used in a PhD study. Read it, discuss the study extract, and answer the questions that follow. Discuss the tivaevae as a research metaphor in this study. 1. In what ways does postcolonial theory as an analytical tool help in the interpretation of the data? 2. Discuss how the physical, the spiritual, the emotional, and the cognitive are brought together in this study. 3. Think of the metaphors, folklores, or cultural knowledge that can inform the design of a study, the data collection methods, and interpretation or dissemination of findings. 4. Discuss the culturally safe methods specific to your community Source: Futter-Puati, D., & Maua-Hodges, T. (2019). Stitching tivaevae: A Cook Island research method. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 15(2) 140–149.

Background The study sought to illustrate the unique sexuality education needs of Kuki Airani youth by stitching respondents’ voices into a metaphorical tivaevae. . . . The Kuki Airani are [located in the] Pacific Ocean, north east of Aotearoa. To facilitate this process, Maua-Hodges tivaevae methodology was used, not only as metaphor but also as a guide. Axiology and methodology were firmly based in indigenous epistemology and ontology. Its primary objective was to maintain a relational accountability via honoring the relationships that I have in the Kuki Airani. I anticipated the findings being useful to advocate for changes to the way youth could be supported by developing understanding of sex, gender, and sexuality. The project component of this research involved using findings to develop a Kuki Airani Sexuality and Relationship educational resource for community and school educators, thus facilitating reciprocity to the community (Futter-Puati, 2017). (Continued)

232   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) As the metaphorical tivaevae was sewn throughout the research project, the needles, threaded with the five values (Taokotai: collaboration; Tu akangateitei: respect; Uriuri kite: reciprocity; Tu inangaro: relationships; Akaari kite: a shared vision) were also consecutively threaded with two theories: feminist poststructural theory and postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory did not offer a gendered analysis, and poststructral theory missed perspectives of race and indigeneity. Therefore, feminist poststructural theory was predominantly used to explore how gender and/ or sexuality were conceived. Postcolonial theory was used to explore the impact that could be felt by youth in postcolonial times and the varied ways that dominant discourses still served the interests of colonial cultures or organizations.

examination and judgment. The blank canvas has loose threads, the almost visible marks of work left uncut. The final layer, called the backing, covers, hides, tidies, and protects the work of the sewers. The backing of the tivaevae in this project is the cultural and historical influences that underlie the findings and the norms or expectations that influence the lived realities of aronga mapu within their intimate relationships. In this way, the backing of the metaphorical tivaevae can represent the hegemonic ideas and practices that hold the tivaevae together without anyone seeing. . . . The research questioned how the backing of the metaphorical tivaevae could be re-envisioned and understood.

Akapapa (Conceptualizing and Planning the Research)

My use of feminist poststructural and postcolonial theories encouraged consideration of how influences such as power, gender, colonialism, agency, religion, and performativity played out with aronga mapu responses. . . . Takoti collaboration was an important principle when considering the data collection. Aronga mapu stories were gathered through existing relationships and working in partnership with local organizations. It was the partnership that enabled me to facilitate six focus groups and implement a questionnaire with 672 youth, this being more than 20% of the youth population at the time.

I have used the tivaevae metaphor both as a guide and process as Maua-Hodges initially intended, as well as an analogy to illustrate the easily seen surface while equally revealing the seemingly invisible, unspoken, or hidden aspects of Kuki Airani (sexual) life. To assist in understanding the stages and key concepts and how they might be used within a metaphorical tivaevae, I applied myself to the making of an actual tivaevae. Engaging with the complex components of design, cutting, placing, pinning, and sewing, I transformed Maua-Hodhes’s conceptual research model into a physical embodied experience. This process helped me to embody the process and consider how the four stages of akapapa, akaruru, pakoti, and o’ora as well as the five concepts of taokotai, tu akangateitei, uriuri kite, tu inangaro, and akaari kite were inherent in the research process. Two key insights, namely the complexity gained and the many layers that constitute the finished product, were learned. Three layers were discerned: the front, the blank, and the final layer. The front layer of the tivaevae is displayed to the world. The beauty of the design, the choices of the fabric, the imagery and the framework of each stitch is open to

Akaruru (Data Collection Methods)

Pakoti (To Cut, Analyze, and Interpret) The choice of data or fabric, and which theories or stitches, I used with my metaphorical needle was important.

O’ora te tivaevae (Presenting The Report/ Findings) By examining the data for the way young people discursively constituted sexuality in the Kuki Airani and employing the multiple layers of culture, identity, power, agency, gender, performativity, and heteronormativity, a critical understanding of how sexuality education can be reimagined became possible.

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Conclusion While the study’s influence was the tivaevae research model sewn with multiple/theorized needles, the embodiment of sewing a fabric tivaevae created the space for the author

to reimagine and rework the idea contained in the tivaevae model. To reconsider, while tivaevae are structured pieces of work, they also represent the embodiment of the mind/s, body/ bodies and soul/s that create them.

THE AFROCENTRIC PARADIGM Afrocentricity is a worldview whose origin is attributed to Molefi Kete Asante’s works The Afrocentric Idea (1988a), Afrocentricity (1988b), and Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge (1990). This perspective places the African ways of perceiving reality, ways of knowing, and value systems on equal footing with other scholarly examinations of human experience. It is an African-centered worldview, which establishes a conceptual framework for how the world is seen and understood. It is culturally specific and draws on African philosophical and theoretical assumptions and serves Africans, just as classical Greek civilization serves as a reference point for Europe (Diop, 1978). Drawing from the Afrocentric paradigm, Asante (1990) came up with three basic beliefs that guide the research process. Ruth Reviere (2001) has summarized these as follows: —— Researchers must hold themselves responsible for uncovering hidden, subtle, racist theories that may be embedded in current methodologies. —— Researchers must work to legitimize the centrality of African ideals and values as valid frames of reference for acquiring and examining data. —— Researchers must maintain inquiry rooted in strict interpretation of place. According to Reviere (2001), the insistence on a clear definition of space is the central distinguishing characteristic. An Afrocentric inquiry must be executed from a clearly defined Afrocentric place and must include a clear description of this location (Reviere, 2001). Queeneth Mkabela (2005) added that an African-centered methodology focuses on Africa as the cultural center for the study of African experiences and interprets data from an African perspective. She went on to say that Afrocentrists argue for pluralism in philosophical views, without hierarchy. All cultural centers are to be respected, and thus, the diversity that is characteristic of Africa is accommodated as the researcher shifts from one cultural space to another. Eboni Baugh and Lisa Guion (2006) argue that although Afrocentric methodology is suggested for use with Africans and people of African descent, it can also serve as a guide for research with other marginalized groups and indigenous peoples because it addresses issues pertinent to most formerly colonized societies. The Afrocentric method and methodologies require researchers to develop relationships with the researched, to reaffirm those relationships, and to use methods that may not be conventional for use with Western populations; the approach is collaborative, allowing the community to participate and provide input during all stages of the research process (Baugh & Guion, 2006).

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Culture and the Afrocentric Methodologies The Nile Valley civilization is considered to be the geographic and historical foundation of cultural commonalities derived and shared among the continent’s approximately 6,000 tribes and countless descendants (Ramsey, 2006). Asante (1988a, 1990) is credited with identifying Ma’at and Nommo, extracted from the Nile Valley civilization, as the two principles intrinsic to African cultures. Ma’at is the quest for justice, truth, and harmony and, in the context of research, refers to interrogating the manner in which the research process is in harmony with the culture of the people and pursues issues of truth and justice. Nommo describes the creation of knowledge as a vehicle for improvement in human life and human relations (Reviere, 2001, p. 711). Seven cardinal virtues—truth, justice, rightness, propriety, harmony, order and balance, and reciprocity—are derived from Ma’at and Nommo. These, together with conceptions of reality based on Ubuntu, should provide a code of conduct and a standard of aspiration for ethical and moral behavior. What follows is a discussion of important Ubuntu components that should inform relational ways of perceiving and knowing reality.

Religiosity Spirituality is an important component of Ubuntu. Desmond Tutu, explaining Ubuntu, notes that Ubuntu is an organic relationship between people such that when we see another, we should recognize ourselves and God in whose image all people are made. Elsewhere, I note (Chilisa, 2005) that our understanding of humanness or reality—in Botswana, for example—is influenced by our connectedness to the earth (lefatshe) and all its inhabitants, including animals, birds, plants, and the spirits (Badimo). I note that this connectedness is embraced and celebrated through taboos and totems. Batswana see the human and physical world as one and self and world as one; separating them from their traditional conceptions of God can deplete their source of knowledge as a people (Tournas, 1996, p. 43). The existence of being and behavior is not easily separated from the supernatural and nature. People do not live a simple existence made up of hierarchies; rather, they are embedded in a web of relations and interconnectedness that extends to nonliving things. Understanding this type of reality requires a back and forth movement that connects to this web of relations. In Chapter 5, totems of the Bakalanga of Botswana were illustrated and their relevance to the research process discussed.

Ubuntu and Respect for Self and Other Through Consensus Building In the Ubuntu context, to exist is to respect others and oneself. Ubuntu embraces the importance of agreement and consensus (Louw, 2001). In African traditional culture, when issues are discussed at the Kgotla (community gathering space), there may be a hierarchy of importance among speakers, but every person gets an equal chance to speak up until some kind of agreement, consensus, or group cohesion is reached. The role of the people in consensus building is etched in the language that guides the discussion. Agreement and consensus should, however, not be confused with

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outmoded and suspect cravings for an oppressive universal sameness. . . . True Ubuntu takes plurality seriously. While it constitutes personhood through other persons, it appreciates the fact that other persons are so called precisely because we can ultimately never quite stand in their shoes or completely see through their eyes. When an Ubuntist reads solidarity and consensus, s/he therefore also reads alterity, autonomy, and cooperation. (Louw, 2001, p. 6)

Ubuntu and the Other: Respect for Particularity, Individuality, and Historicity Ubuntu respects particularity, individuality, and historicity (Louw, 2001). In the Ubuntu ethical framework, “we expose ourselves to others to encounter the difference of their humanness so as to inform and enrich our own” (Sindane, 1994, pp. 8–9). Ubuntu incorporates dialogue, preserving the Other in their Otherness, in their uniqueness, without letting the Other slip into distance. It embraces a perception of the Other that is never fixed or rigidly closed but adjustable or open ended. According to Louw (1994), when the Ubuntu read consensus, they also read open-endedness, contingency, and flux.

Self-Determination and Rebirth Ubuntu has survived colonialism and cultural imperialism, but it still suffers marginalization by dominant Western discourses tied to market profits in a capitalist world economy. Ubuntu-informed research in this context is a long process of going back and forth to question subversive research practices that continue the violence and oppression of postcolonial indigenous communities. The we in the I/we relationship is emphasized to facilitate a rebirth of a people relegated to the lowest position in the Euro-Western scale of human hierarchy and to the fourth world in the global market economy. In ethics, the we allows us to invoke the concept of African renaissance and Africanization in research. The African renaissance is a unique opportunity for Africans to define ourselves and our agenda according to our realities and taking into account the realities of those around us. It’s about Africans being agents of history and masters of our destiny. Africa is in a transformative mode. The renaissance is about African reflection and African redefinition. (Makgoba, Shope, & Mazwai, 1999, p. xii) Ubuntu is an inherent part of our rebirth; thus, we define our agenda taking into account the realities of those around us. Africanization refers to a process of placing the African worldview at the center of analysis (Teffo, 2000, p. 107). Validating this view, Kwesi Prah (1999) noted, We cannot in all seriousness study ourselves through the eyes of other people’s assumptions. I am not saying we must not know what others know or think of us. I am saying we must think for ourselves like others do for themselves. (p. 37)

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The assertions raise questions such as who should do research among formerly colonized, historically colonized societies, and in indigenous communities or culturally complex societies. Jelena Porsanger (2004), for example, noted that some extreme opinions hold that only indigenous researchers may conduct research “on, with, and about indigenous people.” Porsanger rejects this extreme view, observing that indigenous scholars and indeed those scholars from formerly colonized societies cannot be privileged on the basis of their background because there are a great variety of insider views, some of which may not be sensitive and responsive to the needs and intents of indigenous communities. The “I am we” Ubuntu principle makes provision for the rationale, modulation and interconnectedness of the categories of race, class, gender, ethnicity and their respective isms . . . and all those things which Europeans and westerners see as either/or opposites, binaries, or dichotomous thinking. (Tetreault, 1993, cited in Goduka, 2000, p. 71) From this perspective, the Ubuntu worldview addresses researchers from all worlds to see themselves first as related and connected by the same goals of commitment to build harmony among communities they study; to reciprocate by giving back to communities for what they take; and to strive for truth, justice, fairness, and inclusiveness in the construction of knowledge. A research approach informed by an Ubuntu worldview requires researchers to contextualize conventional research methods and ethical principles, taking into consideration the history of colonialism and its effects on the formerly colonized; the culture of the African people based on Ma’at and Nommo; and the seven cardinal principles of truth, justice, rightness, propriety, harmony, order and balance, and reciprocity that emanate from Ma’at, and contemporary African theorizing on Africanization and Ubuntu. What follows is an ethical framework that focuses on researcher’s and researched’s relationships and responsibilities of researchers. The framework is informed by the Ubuntu principle of “I am we, I am because we are”; Ubuntu principles of religiosity; respect for self and Other through consensus building; and respect for particularity, individuality, and historicity.

Responsibilities of Researcher as Transformative Healer Ubuntu informs our construction of harmony, justice, and reciprocity as much as it is informed by Ma’at and Nommo. In discussing the responsibilities of a researcher, one has to therefore go back and forth to invoke the seven virtues of Ma’at and to explain the application of Ubuntu-based ethical relationships between them. The application of the seven virtues of Ma’at constructs the social scientist researcher as a transformative healer (Ramsey, 2006). The role of a transformative healer involves self-reflection and self-questioning about the researcher’s responsibilities as well as relationships with others, the living and nonliving. The meaning of a transformative healer, however, has to be understood in the African context from which it emerges. In the African context, before a healer could be allowed to perform classical healing rites, he or she has to undergo intensive study of self, to understand how self is unique yet related to the whole, and to

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identify his or her life purpose. The healer has to be a living example of how to resolve crises, challenges, and difficulties (Ramsey, 2006). Elsewhere, I (Chilisa, 2009) have outlined the following as roles and responsibilities that a transformative healer needs in order to reflect on and make choices about what is ethical; 1. Researcher as a colonizer, researched as the colonized 2. Researcher as knower/teacher and researched as an object/subject/known/pupil 3. Researcher as a redeemer, researched as the problem 4. Ethical responsibilities of researchers in the application of theoretical frameworks and literature review to inform the research process I look at how each of these challenges manifests in the research process and discuss the questions that researchers who assume the responsibilities of a transformative healer need to ask themselves in order to carry out research informed by an I/we relationship.

Researcher as Colonizer, Researched as Colonized The colonizer/colonized, researcher/researched relationships can be a starting point to begin to review events and practices in the research process so that the ethical responsibility of a healer engaged in a transformative journey is not compromised. As producers of knowledge, researchers make assumptions about the power relations between themselves and the researched, and they are consciously or unconsciously guided by these assumptions. These assumptions inform the researchers’ interactions with the researched, the kind of knowledge that can be produced, and the way it can be produced. The colonizer/colonized relationship interrogates power relations with regard to researchers as privileged elites researching within and operating with Western models of thought. The concern is with Eurocentrism as a science that privileges Western ways of knowing and perceiving reality. In this framework, postcolonial indigenous researchers can assume many identities. They can operate at the level of colonizer co-opted by the dominant Western discourse on methodology, which uses Euro-Western standards as universal truths against which the Other, formerly colonized societies that are marginalized by globalization, are researched and written about. At another level, researchers can operate as healers, challenging and resisting the blind Euro-Western application of methodologies across all cultures. At this level, they are members of the formerly colonized and marginalized, writing about and rewriting what has been written about the Other, Others, and themselves. These multiple positions require knowledge production approaches that are multiple, interconnected, and sensitive, engaging researchers with ethical issues that position them as healers who need to heal themselves before they can assist others to heal. Researchers need to ask the following questions: 1. Whose side am I on? 2. Do I challenge and resist dominant discourses that marginalized those who suffer oppression?

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3. Who am I writing about? Self or Other/s or both? 4. What needs to be rewritten?

Researcher as Knower/Teacher, Researched as Object/Subject/Known/Pupil At another level, the power relations operate within spaces of researched as subject/ object and researcher as knower. Researchers act as knowledge imperialists and colonizers when they claim authenticity of description, interpretation, and dissemination of results under the guise of scholarship and authority in the area of study. The researched become objects and “passive onlookers.” In this objectification and “thingfication of people” (Loomba, 2005), researchers do not ask the researched if they agree in the way their lives are described and interpreted. bell hooks (1990) notes that, in such instances, researchers become the authoritative authors who are not sensitive to the voices of the researched but are more interested in their standing as authorities in the subject they write, a field in which the researched cannot participate. A transformative/healer reflects and raises the following questions: 1. Do the researched own a description of themselves? 2. Have the voices of the researched been captured in a way that the researched recognize themselves, know themselves, and would like others to know them? Reviere (2001, p. 711) has proposed five canons as the criteria against which research should be judged to ensure its accuracy in reflecting the lived experiences of all people including black people. These five canons—ukweli (truth), kujitolea (commitment), utulivu (calmness and peacefulness), uhaki (justice), and ujamaa (community)—are derived from the seven cardinal African virtues of truth, justice, rightness, propriety, harmony, order and balance, and reciprocity, which form the basis of an Afrocentric research methodology. The five canons speak to procedures and strategies for establishing rigor in research and establishing credibility, trustworthiness, dependability, validity, and reliability as commonly known in quantitative research. Ukweli seeks truth grounded in people’s experience. The canon of ukweli shifts the emphasis from objectivity to truth, fairness, and honesty and how these can be achieved. Ukweli requires researchers to establish whether the conclusions reached are representative of only their own position or whether they represent a consensus of the researched and other opinions. Kujitolea requires the researcher to emphasize how knowledge is structured and used over “the need for dispassion and objectivity” (Reviere, 2001, p. 716). Utulivu requires that researchers actively avoid creating, exaggerating, or sustaining divisions between or within communities but rather strive to create harmonious relationships between and within groups. Ujamaa requires that theory and practice be informed by the aspirations and interests of the community, while uhaki requires the encouragement and maintenance of harmonious relationships between communities and groups. In addition to prolonged and substantial engagement, peer debriefing, member checks, triangulation, and reflexivity (Creswell, 2009; Krefting, 1991), Reviere (2001) has proposed an African-centered procedure informed by the five

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canons of ukweli, uhaki, utulivu, ujamaa, and kujitolea. The procedure is as follows: truth, validity, and reliability of findings from an Afrocentric perspective —— involve a group of self-identified Afrocentric research scholars who meet once or twice per month to discuss relevant issues uncovered by the inquiry and provide feedback on whether the inquiry and the researcher’s interpretation of the data embody the principle of Afrocentrism as understood in the Afrocentric research community; —— use the Internet and e-mail system to solicit views and critiques of African scholars worldwide; —— initiate direct correspondence with well-established scholars, including those of Afrocentric orientation, to dialogue on the ideas and findings generated by the inquiry; and analyze the data from an Afrocentric perspective using the Afrocentric canons and, in addition, use one’s own experience and knowledge of the subject matter, as well as consulting with the wider community for interpretation of data.

Researcher as Redeemer, Researched as the Problem Researchers are also implicated in the imperialist agenda when they participate in the Othering of the researched through deficit discourses and theories or literature that construct the researched as the problem. Elsewhere, I (Chilisa, 2005) discuss the position of a researcher co-opted into the dominant Western deficit discourse about the historically colonized, resisting this discourse and failing because of the overwhelming literature that has normalized and constructed as facts and common sense the deficit discourse about the Other. Common among these deficit discourses is the normalized thinking that blames the devastating epidemic of HIV and AIDS on a “permissive female sexuality,” a thinking perpetuated by a colonial discourse on sexuality that equated African women with animals (Chilisa, 2006; Collins, 2000). This deficit thinking and constructions about the African should propel researchers to review, critique, and think afresh the steps in carrying out research. Scholars researching non-Western societies need to ask themselves the following questions: 1. What psychological harm, humiliation, embarrassment, and other losses, if any, have these theories and body of knowledge caused the researched? 2. What is the body of indigenous knowledge of the colonized that researchers can use to counter theories and to rebut the body of knowledge that may cause humiliation and embarrassment to the researched? These questions make it increasingly important for researchers to familiarize themselves with colonial epistemologies and their social construction of the colonized, formerly colonized, and historically oppressed groups to understand the theoretical landscape and literature within which the international community of researchers are encouraged and coerced

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to operate. Healers/transformative researchers should debate these theories and literature to expose the possible psychological harm and loss of whatever kind that has occurred over the years because of these theories. Postcolonial theories provide an important framework through which Western-educated researchers can explore the possible biases in the literature we read, identify the knowledge gaps that have been created because of the unidirectional borrowing of Euro-Western literature, and bring to a halt the continuing marginalization of other knowledge systems, which occurs because of the dominant Euro-Western research paradigms and their discourses on what can be researched and how it can be researched. A transformative healer needs to reflect and raise the following questions: 1. What assumptions, prejudices, or stereotypes informed the review of literature? 2. How do the literature and theories reviewed portray the researched? 3. Is there any deficit thinking or theorizing in the literature reviewed? 4. What evidence is there to bring to question the literature reviewed? 5. What are the gaps in the literature? Ethics for researchers researching in historically oppressed, formerly colonized societies should involve going back and forth to retrieve marginalized and dominant literatures to review, analyze, and challenge colonizing and deficit theorizing and interpretations and to create counternarratives that see the past differently and envision a transformative agenda for the researched. Ethics also involves defining literature and theorizing in the context of formerly colonized societies. Literature is our language: proverbs, cultural artifacts, legends, stories, practices, songs, poems, dances, tattoos, lived experiences such as our fight against HIV/AIDS, personal stories, and community stories told in weddings, funerals, celebration, wars, ritual songs and dance, and silence. In Chapter 9, it was shown how Frank Youngman (1998) and Omolewa, Adeola, Adekanmbi, Avoseh, & Braimoh (1998) used proverbs to provide an indigenous concept of lifelong learning and literacy. Bagele Chilisa and Julia Preece (2005) also show how the Batswana legend on the origin of humankind can be used as a reference point in countering Western theorizing on gender relations and Western perceptions on African tradition and gender. In an ongoing study to examine sociocultural, family, and social influences on Batswana adolescent sexual behaviors, the investigators collected metaphorical language and sayings such as proverbs, popular legends, community stories, songs, rituals, myths, and taboos that communicate messages on sex, sexuality, and gender relations. The collection is to provide baseline literature that enables the researchers to include African indigenous voices in framing issues on gender relations, sexuality, and adolescent behavior. As more and more indigenous scholars and scholars from formerly colonized societies begin to make choices on what they research and to delve into areas that colonial epistemologies dismissed as sorcery, researchers who assume their responsibilities as healers will be confronted by real limitations of Western hegemonic ethical standards, such as the principle of informed consent of the researched. A transformative healer

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will seek to go beyond Euro-Western research issues of power that mainly focus on the “I the researcher” and the “you the researched” to more involving I/we relationships that see reality differently.

Ethics Built on a Deep Respect for Religious Beliefs and the Practices of Others How do we study or come to understand a reality that does not separate the physical from the nonphysical? Data collection, both quantitative and qualitative, always begins with biographical information of the researched. Often, however, information is sought based on an I/you relationship, where emphasis is on the individual. Ethical protocols built on an I/we relationship would embrace biographical information that includes the researched’s lineage and totemism, as they relate to the topic of inquiry. Totemism embraces religion and spirituality. An I/we relationship informed by an Ubuntu worldview requires research to be conducted with care, love for one another, empathy, and compassion that is derived from an understanding of a human nature that embraces all as created by God. Dalene Swanson (2009) reveals how the concept of “I am because we are, I am we, and we are because I am” served as a point of reference in applying the concept of reflexivity in researching school mathematics among a poor community in postapartheid Africa. The Ubuntu worldview, she argued, allowed her to disrupt and decolonize dominant deficit thinking by promoting compassion, care, togetherness, empathy, and respectful ways of doing research that allowed researchers to see themselves in the researched. An Ubuntu worldview, from this perspective, is an African contribution to any researcher’s reflexivity and critical journey into the lives of others. Julie Laible (2000) calls this way of knowing a loving epistemology. She explains it as a way of knowing where the production of knowledge should include a journey of the researcher and the researched into each other’s lives.

ETHICS THAT UNDERSCORE THE IMPORTANCE OF AGREEMENT AND CONSENSUS, DIALOGUE, AND PARTICULARITY Under African eyes, an I/we relationship emphasizes respect for the self, the other, and others; it implies a unification of the self with the environment. The deontological and consequential ethical framework based on the Western mode of individualism places emphasis on a one-on-one contractual agreement where relationships between the researchers and the researched are entered through signed consent forms. An I/we relationship invites us to further ask the following questions: Whose consent is asked? Is it consent from the I, the Other, or others? Consent to do what? Is it consent to

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write and describe the Other and then to extrapolate or generalize the written story to the rest of the community, even though its members were not involved? The consent under Euro-­Western eyes carries with it a desperate hidden desire to make the I speak for those whose consent has not been sought. In the I/we relationship, if it is made known to the researched that the consent includes allowing the researcher to use the researched to speak for others, the story would be different for it would be told from multiple perspectives. In the I/we relationship, consent agreements would invoke consensus arrived at through circles of discussion where membership is informed by the intricate web of connections that are the basis of relationships based on I/we principles. In Botswana, for example, even after an institutional review board gives consent that research can be carried out, the researcher has to consult with the chief of the village, who in turn calls the people to a village council to deliberate on an issue and reach a consensus. If the researcher is allowed to do the research, then she or he may visit households to interview the identified key informants and still has to ask for individual and group consent. In an African setting, a husband may seek the views of his wife and children before he consents to speak. In most cases, people will decline to speak on behalf of family members, ­preferring everyone in the family who is affected to participate in the dialogue. From the I/we relationship emanates four types of consent: individual consent, community consent, group consent, and collective consent. Mkabela (2005) refers to the process as collective ethics and concludes that when collective ethics is translated into the research process, it would include —— An appreciation of the importance of individuals in the research group —— An understanding that research is part of a very complex (community) whole —— Respect for heritage authority —— The inclusion of elders and cultural committees in the research process —— An understanding of the interconnectedness of all things (including the spiritual) and required long-term perspective in dealing with research issues —— An understanding that researchers must act in an appropriate way and respectful way to maintain the harmony and balance of the group (community) The Afrocentric methodology reveals data collection methods and ethic protocols based on the principles of respect for the I and the Other, researcher responsibilities, connectedness, togetherness, social justice, and harmony as embodied in the I/we relationship principle. The Mmogo method (Roos, 2008) is an example of connectedness and togetherness-informed methods. It derives its name from the Setswana word Mmogo. Setswana is one of the indigenous languages of southern Africa. The word Mmogo means “relatedness, co-ownership, togetherness, co-construction and interpersonal threads” (Roos, 2008, p. 660). The method uses visual images as key to meaning making. An extract on the Mmogo method procedures follows.

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ACTIVITY 10.3 Read the extract on the method, and answer the questions that follow: 1. In what ways does the Mmogo method depart from Western social science research preoccupation with the individual as the social unit of focus? 2. How are the networks and relations of people with each other and the environment brought into focus through this method? 3. Discuss fairness, catalytic and tactical authenticities, voice, and reciprocity in the context of the Mmogo method. Source: Roos, V. (2008). The Mmogo method: Discovering symbolic community interactions. Journal of Psychology in Africa, 18(4) 659–668.

Research Design The Mmogo method is best applied in explorative and descriptive research designs. An inductive approach assists the researcher to gather data on the different relational levels of social structures and meaningful actions in which participants engage by means of a visual narrative. A visual narrative is regarded as the stories about people’s past and present experiences, values, and the socially created meanings that are inextricably connected to their social, cultural, and contextual settings (Moen, 2006). A visual narrative assists the participant as well as the researcher to “tell sociological stories that embody the flow of human experience” (Harper, 2004, p. 724).

Participants and Setting The Mmogo method is particularly suitable for research in which visual images are key to meaning making through the process of objectification (Reavey & Johnson, 2008). Engaging vulnerable people in a way that does not rely

primarily on verbal accounts can allow them to tell stories that they would not have otherwise been able to do. The Mmogo method may be applied in a community setting with smaller groups consisting of eight to ten participants to allow for optimal group interaction between participants.

Data-Gathering Materials Data-gathering materials are selected from familiar cultural items within a community. These items should symbolize the cultural embeddedness of behavior within a particular context and should be used to create objects with symbolic and socially constructed meanings. In an African context, this may include clay, grass stalks, wood pieces, needles, cloths, beads, or colorful buttons. In some cultures, such as the Zulu culture, the use of specific colors is particularly meaningful (Fiedeldey-Van Dijk, 1994). The material that is chosen should reflect the integrity of the particular context in which the data are obtained. The cultural items should be as nondirective as possible and preferably familiar to the community in which the research is conducted. In addition, these items should be able to reflect the social processes based on the shared understandings that communities use to communicate (Keesing & Starthern, 1998). The inclusion of particular materials is decided on after observing the natural living environment of the people who are going to participate in the research. W ­ agner (2007) is cautious about using cultural items since the variations, arrangements, and modifications that could be used in visual presentations could reflect both naïve and manipulative human agency. It is therefore recommended that the materials be limited to basic, culturally familiar items, and that all participants be provided with the same materials. (Continued)

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Data Collection Procedure In line with the principles of community psychology and social constructionism, the researcher does not enter the community as an expert, but as someone who, together with the members of the community, co-constructs reality. The process of entering communities for research purposes is characterized by open and transparent communication, respect, caring, and an ethical attitude. Ethical community-based research refers to an understanding and respect for different cultures and their values (Roos, Visser, Pistorius & Nefale, 2007). Harrell and Bond (2006) refer to this as a grounding of oneself in a stance of informed compassion. Data are only gathered after the specific culture has been explored, together with the manifestations of cultural expressions, which could assist in limiting assumptions and overgeneralizations; and after informed consent has been obtained from community leaders, gatekeepers, and individuals (Harrell & Bond, 2006; Roos et al., 2007). Participants are divided into groups and are then provided with the familiar cultural items, which are used to make their visual presentations. An open-ended research question (phrased as a statement) based on the proposed research is then asked, for example: Please make anything with the materials that you were provided that will tell us about your . . . This statement is open to the interpretation of the participants. The participants are then provided with an opportunity to create their visual presentations and may also engage in group discussions on any topic of their choice. Copious field notes are taken about the discussion and visual presentations, which are then analyzed for content, narrative, or discourse. Once the visual presentations have been completed, the researcher asks individual participants to give an account of their presentations. After all participants have shared the meaning of their visual presentations, all the participants are invited to comment on the others’ presentations, contributing to the co-construction of rich descriptions. Copious field notes are made about the visual presentations

and the discussions, which are then analyzed for content, narrative, or discourse. The locus of meaning shifts away from the empirically objective but gains significance in the way that the participants engage with and interpret the subject (Wagner, 2007). The visual presentations are photographed, and the discussion is transcribed verbatim.

Data Analysis Building the collective narrative involves a multilevel process of collecting, analyzing, and reconstructing the data. The Mmogo method aims to go beyond the isolated individual when trying to understand human functioning and studies social life through exploration and inspection. The process of exploration enables the researcher to explore the cultural nuances of community life, while the process of analysis refers to establishing the validity of the data (Klunklin & Greenwood, 2006). Inspection should be “flexible, imaginative, creative, and free to take new direction” (Blumer, 1969, p. 44), since the social contexts in which people participate and the historical conditions are constantly changing. The analysis involves both the analysis of the visual images as well as the interview data, with and without the participants (Reavey & Johnson, 2008). In the first stage of the analysis, the explicit and conscious meanings of the visual presentations are narrated by the participants. The visual images are analyzed by the participants themselves when they are asked about each object that was made. Banks (2001) refers to this level as the “external narrative” (p. 11). Each participant tells what was presented in their visual presentation, which Banks (2001) refers to as the “internal narrative.” Creating this narrative “comes from the intermental life experiences and intramental images that are not accessible to direct observation” (Moen, 2006, p. 7). On the second level, the group’s narrative is added to the research process by inviting the participants’ narrative about what the visual presentation prompts them to respond to, including the

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social context within which the presentations have been made. Then the apparent patterns, themes, or relationships are provisionally discussed with the participants. The participants are asked to link their visual presentations with the initial opening statement. Through carefully questioning the underlying meanings of the visual presentations, the researcher encourages participants to provide insight into the symbolic meanings that underpin the presentations, as well as insight into communal practices and behavior. Data from the focus group discussions are transcribed and analyzed according to the principles of thematic content analysis. The third level includes the researchers’ examination of the types of images that were made while reading the accompanying textual description of the data (Reavey & Johnson, 2008).

Rigor The inclusion of the context as a collective relationship provides contextual triangulation of the findings.

Ethical Aspects The Mmogo method supports the view that the community should be actively involved in the research process. Therefore, ethical aspects have to make provision for an acknowledgment of the community (by consulting with the appropriate authority structures such as the chiefs of a community), and permission to conduct the research must be obtained from the powers of structures. From the very beginning, the community is involved in the planning and conducting of the research. Community members should be included in the research team and outcomes of the research. Acquiring knowledge of how the community functions, including customs, norms, leadership styles, and other cultural expressions of social organizations, is important both in the research and in the interpretation of the findings (Harrel & Bond, 2006; Keesing & Strathern, 1998; Roos et al., 2007).

SUMMARY The chapter has demonstrated the major implications of pragmatic assumptions and culture for indigenous methodologies. Three methodologies were discussed as exemplary of culturally responsive methodologies. The methodologies discussed illustrated how relational dimensions between researchers and research participants are cultivated and how culture-specific practices inform relational-based research processes that produce valid research with defined criteria for judging the process and outcomes of a qualitative research inquiry. The methodologies offer opportunities for a dialogue between Western scholars and indigenous scholars to engage in partnerships to decolonize Euro-Western methodologies and to make indigenous knowledge part of national and international discussions.

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Key Points —— Pragmatic assumptions in culture-specific contexts and theory and practice on a given topic converge to inform a methodology in a study. —— Interconnectedness and relational ontology and epistemologies form an important framework within which to discuss the culturally responsive indigenous research methodologies discussed in this chapter.

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A growing number of methodologies draw from the philosophical and theoretical assumptions of a postcolonial indigenous paradigm to emphasize the unique contribution of sociohistorical, cultural, and political factors to social science research.

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Rigor is a standard requirement of any research inquiry, and indigenous methodologies have theory and culture- and context-driven criteria for judging the validity of an inquiry.

ACTIVITY 10.4 1. From your reading so far and your own understanding of components of a methodology, make a list of the different forms of data collection methods, sampling procedures, ethical protocols, and ways of addressing validity that emerge from

a discussion of postcolonial indigenous research methodologies. 2. Design a study that uses a culturally responsive postcolonial indigenous research methodology framework.

Suggested Readings Asante, M. K. (1988). The Afrocentric idea. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Asante, M. K. (1990). Kemet, Afrocentricity, and knowledge. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Chilisa, B. (2009). Indigenous African-centered ethics: Contesting and complementing dominant models. In D. M. Mertens & P. E. Ginsberg (Eds.), The handbook of social research ethics (pp. 407–442). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cram, F. (2004, October 13–15). Evidence in an indigenous world. Paper presented at the Australasian Society International Conference, Adelaide.

Cram, F. (2009). Maintaining indigenous voices. In D. M. Mertens & P. E. Ginsberg (Eds.), The handbook of social research ethics (pp. 308–322). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Drawson, A., Toombs, E., & Mushquash, C. (2017). Indigenous research methods: A systematic review. The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 8(2), 1–24. Futter-Puati, D., & Maua-Hodges, T. (2019). Stitching tivaevae: A Cook Island research method. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 15(2), 140–149.

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Gonzalez, M. C. (2000). The four seasons of ethnography: A creation-centered ontology for ethnography. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 24, 623–650. Koro-Ljungberg, M. (2010). Validity, responsibility, and aporia. Qualitative Inquiry, 6(8), 603–610. Levac, L., McMurtry, L., Stienstra, D., Baikie, G., Hanson, C., & Mucina, D. (2018). Learning across indigenous and Western knowledge systems and intersectionality: Reconciling social research approaches. [Technical Report]. Guelph, Canada: University of Guelph, Social and Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Lincoln, Y. (2009). Ethical practices in qualitative research. In D. M. Mertens & P. E. Ginsberg (Eds.), The handbook of social research ethics (pp. 150–169). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Mkabela, Q. (2005). Using the Afrocentric method in researching indigenous African culture. The Qualitative Report, 10(1), 178–189. Parr, R. (2002). Te Matahauariki methodology: The creative relationship framework (Te Matahauariki Institute Occasional Paper Series). Hamilton, New Zealand: University of Waikato. Pe-Pua, R., (1989). Pagttanung-tanong: A cross cultural research method. International Journal of Intercultural Relationships, 13, 147–163. Roos, V. (2008). The Mmogo method: Discovering symbolic community interactions. Journal of Psychology in Africa, 18(4), 659–668. Walker, P. (2001). Journeys around the medicine wheel: A story of indigenous research in a Western university. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 29(2), 18–21.

11 DECOLONIZING THE INTERVIEW METHOD Traditional social sciences have stubbornly refused to interrogate how we as researchers create our texts. . . . That we are human inventors of some questions and repressors of others, shapers of the very contexts we study, coparticipants in our interviews, interpreters of others’ stories and narrators of our own, is sometimes rendered irrelevant to the texts we publish. Michelle Fine (1994, p. 14)

Overview Researchers want to engage the researched in a conversation on what has been written about them and what dreams they have about improving their quality of life. This chapter critiques the dominant interview method from a postcolonial indigenous perspective and offers alternative interview strategies that reflect postcolonial indigenous worldviews. The critique relates to the asymmetrical relations between the interviewer and the interviewee and among interviewees and to the dominance of Western academic disciplines’ theories, terms, and concepts in shaping interview questions and analyzing interview transcripts. The chapter further discusses indigenous interview strategies, based on philosophic sagacity, that invoke indigenous worldviews of the colonized Other to inform the type of questions that can be asked and data analysis approaches that can be used. The alternative interview strategies require the researched to critique the literature written about them, to introduce the indigenous knowledge that informs their experiences, and to enter into a dialogue with the researcher on the researcher’s questions of interest. 248

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of the chapter you should be able to do the following: 1. Critique conventional interview approaches. 2. Discuss the postcolonial indigenous interview strategies. 3. Envision other ways of conducting interviews, informed by postcolonial indigenous worldviews and perspectives.

Before You Start Read the opening quotation, and discuss the challenges it raises with particular reference to research on postcolonial indigenous societies.

THE CONVENTIONAL INTERVIEW METHOD: AN OVERVIEW The conventional interview method, like other data collection methods, leans toward individualistic, Westernized assumptions and theories that ignore postcolonial indigenous value systems. Postcolonial indigenous worldviews lean toward communities’ togetherness, cooperation, and connectedness. A focus on individuality is a Western preoccupation (Cannella, 1997). The individual interview is, for instance, built on the assumption of an “individual knower, focusing on the concept of the individual researcher (aware of his own limitations and capabilities as a human instrument), talking, with rare exceptions, to an individual informant” (Viruru & Cannella, 2006, p. 184). There is an expectation, for instance, that a researcher should avoid “getting involved in a real conversation in which he or she answers questions asked by the respondent or provides personal opinions on the matters discussed” (Fontana & Frey, 2005, p. 660). Let us take a close look at the conventional interview method.

The Interview Structure and Questions The interview has been defined as a purposeful conversation, usually between two people (Bogdan & Biklen, 1982), or a conversation with a purpose (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Interviews can be divided into individual and group interviews and further categorized according to the manner in which interview questions are structured. When we classify interviews according to the way interview questions are structured, we come up with three types: the unstructured or nonstandardized interview, the semistructured interview, and the structured or standardized interview.

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The Unstructured or Nonstandardized Interview.  The unstructured interview starts with a general question in the area of study. This is usually accompanied by a list of topics to be covered in the interview. This type of interview allows for flexibility and makes it possible for researchers to follow interests and thoughts of informants. Interviewers freely ask questions in any order, depending on the answers. An example of an unstructured interview is the focused life story interview discussed later in this chapter. The Semistructured Interview.  These are focused interviews that have questions contained in an interview guide. They focus on the issue to be covered. The sequencing of questions is not the same for every participant as it depends on the process of the interview and answers from each individual participant. The interview guide ensures that the researcher collects similar types of data from all informants. See interview questions based on the theory of planned behavior also discussed in this chapter. The Structured or Standardized Interview.  In this type of interview, the interview schedule contains a number of preplanned questions. Each research participant is asked the same questions in the same order. The advantage of standardized interviews is that they are time saving and reduce interviewer effect; analysis of the data is easier. The disadvantage is that they direct the informants’ responses and therefore are not appropriate for qualitative research (Holloway & Wheeler, 1996).

Interview Questions There are disagreements on the type of questions that can be asked. James S­ pradley (1979) distinguishes between descriptive, structural, and contrast questions, while Michael Patton (2002) distinguishes between experience and behavior questions, opinion and value questions, feeling questions, knowledge questions, sensory questions, and background and demographic questions. Descriptive questions: Ask research participants to talk about the social scene with which they are familiar Structural questions: Help research participants demonstrate how they organize their life experiences Contrast questions: Require participants to distinguish between objects and events Experience and behavior questions: Ask participants to describe what they do Opinion and value questions: Seek understanding on how research participants think about the things they do and experience Feeling questions: Ask how research participants feel as opposed to how they think about their experiences

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Knowledge questions: Require factual information Sensory questions: Ask about things experienced through the senses Background and demographic information: Require information on the characteristics of the interviewee

POSTCOLONIAL INDIGENOUS INTERVIEW METHODS From the discussion of the interview method, it is clear that there are fairly well-­established rules and codes, which draw from a Western archive of knowledge systems and values, to inform how interviews can be conducted. A postcolonial indigenous research paradigm offers other possible interview methods, which privilege relational ways of knowing that valorize respect for relations people have with one another and with the environment. Gabo Ntseane (2009), in her study on rural women’s transition to urban business success, reflects on how an interview with a key informant ended up in a dialogue among three people. According to Ntseane, the key informant, who was the owner of the business, wanted one of her employees to join in the discussion because she had more authoritative knowledge on some aspects of the business. Ntseane notes that during the interview, the employer and the employee helped each other to elaborate on different aspects of the business. At times, they asked each other questions, and at times, they directed the questions to the researcher. She notes that the procedure she was compelled to adopt by the researched was different from the typical interview procedure. The procedure adopted valorized collective construction of knowledge and love and respect for the connections and relationships that participants had with one another. Another concern about the individual interview method has been the visibility of the researched in the finished research report. Conventional educational research methods require that data from the researched be treated with confidentiality, which in most cases is ensured by not revealing the researched people’s names. But what if the researched person wants to be visible in the scripts? Why should the names of the informants remain anonymous when the informants want them revealed? The researched women in ­Ntseane’s (2009) study wanted readers to associate the stories in the study with their names and businesses. They argued that because they did not have the writing skills to document their stories, telling them to Ntseane was the only way to tell their communities and the generations to come about their knowledge and contributions to women’s business in Botswana. Unfortunately, Ntseane could not reveal the names because it was against the stipulated research ethics of her university. These experiences in the field reveal an African orientation toward individual and community production of knowledge and an appeal for visibility where the position of the researched as a producer of knowledge is clearly marked. In Chapter 5, you learned that a postcolonial indigenous paradigm favors using the names of everyone who participates in the research, if they permit it. This ensures that the researcher is accountable to the participants, and the participants are in turn accountable to their communities. From a postcolonial indigenous perspective, information or stories told by participants

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lose their power if the storyteller is not known. What follows is a discussion of three individual interview methods based on relational ways of knowing.

The Pagtatanung-Tanong Interview Method From Indigenous Filipino Culture It is a participatory, unstructured, informal interactive interview method rooted in indigenous Filipino culture (Drawson, Toombs, & Muahquash, 2017). The method gives equal power to the researcher and the participant, allowing each to ask questions for the same amount of time (Pe-Pua, 1989). The interview might start with a group of informant participants who might feel intimidated by the researcher, who might be a stranger to the community. Also, family members are allowed to join the interview should they wish to do so. The place and time of the interview are essential for the quality of the data and will vary according to each ethnic group’s culture. Personal interaction and the relationship between the researcher and the participants are essential for quality data. Researchers have raised concern that while it captures the community realities in a more reliable way, it is time consuming (Pe-Pua, 1989).

A Relational Interview Method: The Diviner/Client Construction of a Story One of the most ancient interview strategies is the interviewing, analysis, and interpretation etched in the dingaka (diviners) practices of the people of southern Africa. Dingaka interview their client about an issue by using a set of as many as 60 bones symbolizing divine power, evil power, foreign spirits (good or bad), elderly men and women, young and old, homesteads, family life or death, and ethnic groups that include Makgoa (white people) to stimulate a discussion surrounding the client’s life and problem (Dube, 2001). The pieces represent experiences, networks, and relationships among people and with the environment and together make up a theory of social life. In constructing a story, the diviner consults the patterns of the divine set as the client throws them to the ground. The diviner asks the client to confirm the interpretation of the set as a true story about his or her life troubles. In the process, neither the set nor the diviner has exclusive knowledge. The client is invited to talk freely about his or her life and to reject the constructed story if it does not tally with her or his life experiences. The process demonstrates a postcolonial indigenous relational way of knowing in the following ways: 1. In the context of the diviner and the client, there is no absolute knowledge; the diviner and the client construct the story together, guided by an indigenous theory of social life symbolized by the divine set. 2. The divine set symbolizes a complex, expansive, and infinite context within which the interview and construction of the story take place. The complex context in many ways symbolizes the many connections and web of relations that the client has with other people, the land, and the environment. What is important to note is that context is brought to the consciousness of both the diviner and the client through symbolic representations of the environment of the client’s life.

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3. The story, in whatever form, is read and agreed upon. No interpretation occurs in the absence of the three: diviner, client, and symbolic representations (Chilisa, 2005).

A Relational Interview Method: The Focused Life-Story Interview Shane Edwards, Verne McManus, and Tim McCreanor (2005) described a method they call the focused life-story interview and how this method enabled each individual to construct his or her story in relation to the connections he or she had with other people. Robert Atkinson (1998) defines the conventional life-story approach as follows: A life story is the story a person chooses to tell about the life he or she has lived, told as completely and honestly as possible, what is remembered of it, and what the teller wants others to know of it, usually as a result of a guided interview by another. . . . A life story is a fairly complete narrating of one’s entire experience of life as a whole, highlighting the most important aspects. (p. 8) In keeping with the principles of a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm, the focused life-story interview method invokes relational ways of knowing to enable the use of an interview guide that brings to the discussion ways in which people are connected with one another and the environment, as well as topics absent from the standard vocabulary of academic disciplines. In Activity 11.1, an article by Edwards et al. (2005) illustrates how the individual is part of the collective and how procedures of the focused life-story interview valorize the web of connections that people have with those around them and with the land and the environment.

ACTIVITY 11.1 Read the study extract included here, and respond to these questions. 1. Discuss the concepts of fairness, voice, and ontological and educative authenticity discussed in Chapter 6 in the context of the extract. 2. Discuss ways in which the focused life-story interview differs from a conventional lifestory method of data collection. Source: Edwards, S., McManus, V., & McCreanor, T. (2005). Collaborative research within Maori on sensitive issues: The

application of Tikanga and Kaupapa in research on Maori sudden infant death syndrome. Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, 25, 88–104. Used by permission.

The individual as part of the collective—the notion of whanau Many research participants are often part of larger collective or whanau groupings. These whanau groupings are not based on blood connections but can be conceptualized as whanau based on history, experience, the context or the Kaupapa or connected through association constituting a whanau relationship as determined by the participants (Durie, 2004; Walker 1990). For us this (Continued)

254   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) meant that we were not only working with individual participants but with whanau members as well and thinking about our families and the impacts of research in these circles. Researchers need to be happy with the project and the people with whom they will be working in order for the research to be successful and beneficial to the stakeholder groups. It is not only about participants’ possible uncertainty about “research vampires” but acknowledgement also that the researcher has personal tapu and mana that could be affected; as such, a researcher needs to be aware and acknowledge this, both as an individual and as a member of other collective groups as there is the potential to be “touched” by the research itself or the participants themselves. For many Maori researchers karakia plays a central part of research pedagogy. In traditional times all activity took place with karakia present throughout. The effect of successive colonial acts to limit connectedness to Maori spirituality meant that karakia did not and continues not to play a central role in the everyday lives of Maori as previously experienced. This is still the same in the majority of situations today. Nevertheless karakia is still a powerful force in preparing a researcher for activity (Shirres, 1997). This is especially so when coming into contact with other people and heightened when the purpose is of sensitive nature. Some researchers are known to do their own karakia before they engage in research activity. They also repeat this process in situations that call for it and at the completion of the activity. Following interviews and field research many researchers will often find places to wash their hands with water to lift the tapu associated with human encounter. Our chosen data collection method, known as focused life story interviews, sits comfortably within

qualitative social science investigation. This method is based on the life story model discussed by Olson and Shopes (1991) and Anae (1998). Focused life story interviews are very appropriate for sensitive topics as they encourage a reflective, narrative style where the interviewee sets the pace and the interviewer listens, clarifies, probes, and possibly brings up topics which need to be covered in the interview that have not arisen spontaneously in the course of the conversation. This particular style allows for a relaxed, almost conversational approach to data interview. The hope was that the participants would feel safe and supported enough to talk through the very difficult circumstances surrounding the loss of their babies. The MSP care worker was the key to our highly positive experiences and most certainly enhanced the participant’s appreciation of the sessions. This interview method is also consistent with the principles that underpin a Kaupapa Maori research framework within which the mana of the participants and the information that has been shared is upheld, and our respect and appreciation for the contribution are conveyed. To start the interviews, the participants were asked to construct an outline of their life, paying special attention to those aspects (themes) that relate to whakapapa, relationships, family structure, economic/employment issues, education, identity, sense of belonging, access to amenities and other aspects of community that impact on the health and well-being of whanau. Multiple themes evolved and arose spontaneously throughout the course of interviews and these have added to the richness and diversity of the data. At times, when it appeared that an interview had gone “off-track,” with gentle guidance the participants were able to continue with their story. They were encouraged to expand on ideas, elaborating and providing detail wherever this was possible and appropriate.

Philosophic Sagacity and the Interview Method Another way to approach indigenous interviews is sagacity, a reflective system of thought based on the wisdom and the traditions of people (Emagalit, 2001, p. 4). From this perspective, the theory of knowledge and questions about knowledge can be found in the wisdom and beliefs of wise elders of the communities, who have not been schooled

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in the formal education system (Kaphagawani & Malherbe, 2000). This is an important epistemological assumption, given that most postcolonial indigenous thought systems have not been documented. Methods based on philosophic sagacity enable researchers to consult a large body of knowledge from the sages that is not available in the written literature. Queeneth Mkabela (2005) describes these sages as elders and members of cultural committees and suggests that they should be included in the research process. Cora Weber-Pillwax (2001) adds that the sages, who could be the elders, members of cultural committees, or any identified key informant, should play an important role in critiquing the written literature on the subject of research. This is how Weber-Pillwax describes the approach: One of the steps that I have sometimes taken in preparation for interviews is to select specific excerpts from relevant literature that I feel would speak to the person with whom I will be working. I would make these excerpts available to the people involved in my work by reading aloud or having them read on their own, and then giving a brief interpretation of what I thought the author was saying would then contextualise the focus of our work together and put my ideas forward as to how this selection fitted or raised questions. The contribution to the discussion would flow easily from this introduction. . . . The process is one where indigenous people, many of whom are not able to read the English texts, can participate in the direct analysis of written knowledge and worldviews from other cultural groups and also be active partners in the co-creation of contemporary indigenous knowledge. I believe that this seemingly simple approach has potential for ensuring the vitality of the intellectual contributions that indigenous elders are making in the area of indigenous scholarship. (p. 171) The interview method based on philosophic sagacity enables researchers to explore ways in which sages can be interviewed to analyze and give interpretations or commentaries on the oral literature stored in their languages and cultural artifacts, as well as the literature written about them. In addition to individual interviews, discussion-based interviews with more than one person contributing are a common practice. What follows is a discussion of indigenous focus group interviews.

INDIGENOUS FOCUS GROUP INTERVIEWS The Western-based focus group was developed in the 1930s because of dissatisfaction with the individual interview. It is a discussion-based interview in which multiple research participants simultaneously produce data on a specified issue. The researcher takes a less directive and dominant role. In focus group interviews, the researcher can use unstructured or semistructured questions, as is done in individual interviews. Audiovisuals such as pictures, cartoons, and photographs can be used to stimulate a discussion. Most focus groups consist of between 6 and 12 people. The basic principle is not to allow the group to be so big that participation by all is impossible or so small that it is not possible to cover a number of issues.

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The focus group interview is compatible with real communication systems in natural settings. For instance, most of the time when people want to address problems, they meet in groups of more than two people to hold a dialogue. In addition, the group interaction in focus group interviews allows more realistic perceptions of issues. Members within the group can, for example, challenge participants with extreme views, and thus, more realistic information is obtained on issues. Information is also checked for accuracy as members question, complement, and corroborate what others say. In addition, the researcher can cover a wide range of issues. The main disadvantage of Western-based focus group interviews is that a few assertive individuals may dominate the discussion. What follows is a discussion of indigenous interview methods that promote equality among participants. Many non-Western communities use various kinds of group discussion when issues must be addressed. One can think of community interviews where selected members of a community are invited for a discussion by a chief, headperson of a ward, village leader, or a wise person such as a sage. When researchers follow informants to their homes, most of the family members invite themselves to the discussion. In African contexts, for instance, it may be appropriate to distinguish focus group interviews where the facilitator determines the group membership and other focus group interviews where the identified key informant is joined by others, either because of invitation by the key informant or because of community or family values. The home is a space marked by family togetherness. When researchers visit homes to interview key informants, they should be aware that the overriding value is family togetherness, sharing, and doing things together. Postcolonial indigenous research methods call for the recognition and valorization of the variety of focus group interviews, such as community focus group interviews, family focus group interviews, and others.

Talking Circles We have noted that one of the disadvantages of the Western-based focus group interview technique is that members do not necessarily have equal opportunity to be heard. Talking circles are based on the ideal of participants’ respect for each other and are an example of a focus group method derived from postcolonial indigenous worldviews. In African contexts and among indigenous peoples, there are many occasions when people form a circle. It could be around the fireplace, during celebrations when they form circles to sing, or in games when children form circles to play. In each of these occasions, a person is given a chance to speak uninterrupted. The talking circle symbolizes and encourages sharing of ideas, respect of each other’s ideas, togetherness, and a continuous and unending compassion and love for one another. The circle also symbolizes equality of members in the circle. From Canada, Peggy Wilson and Stan Wilson (2000) explain that group members sit “in a circle that represents the holism of Mother Earth and the equality of all members” (p. 11). A common practice in talking circles is that a sacred object—a feather, a shield, a stone, a basket, or a spoon—is passed around from speaker to speaker. These sacred objects symbolize collective construction of knowledge and the relations among group members. Refer to Chapters 12 and 13 for the use of these objects in talking ­circles. The holder of the object speaks uninterrupted, and the group listens silently and

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nonjudgmentally until the speaker has finished. A talking circle may consist of as few as 2 people (Lavallée, 2009) and as many as 12 people. In most instances, a complete talking circle comprises four rounds (Wilson & Wilson, 2000). The number of talking circles may vary because of time restraints, rules, and norms of each group. For instance, Lavallée (2009) conducted a total of nine circles to complete a talking circle. See Chapter 12 for more on sharing circles and the Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection method.

Interviews and Data Analysis One of the challenges that researchers have is organizing the volumes of data from interviews in a way that is easy to use. Organizing data starts with open coding. Open coding refers to the process of breaking down data into themes, patterns, and concepts to create a meaningful story from the volume of data. The patterns, concepts, and themes become codes that are then identified across data generated through different data-gathering techniques, such as the individual and the focus group interview. Concepts, themes, and patterns are developed as researchers read through the data and ask critical questions, which may come from the abstract vocabulary of a discipline or a theory within a discipline. Euro-Western academic discipline-related language continues to dominate analysis procedures, interpretation, and reporting procedures. During the reporting, for instance, the researcher pulls together the voices of the interviewees to create generalizations, patterns, or sameness communicated in Euro-Western academic discipline language. The voices of the researched cease to exist except when cited to illustrate a theme or a pattern. Lawrence Neuman (2003, p. 458) has summarized seven Euro-Western academic ­discipline-related strategies for qualitative data analysis: 1. The narrative. Tell a detailed story about a particular slice of social life. 2. Ideal types. Compare qualitative data with a pure model of social life. Postcolonial indigenous scholars challenge the “pure model of social life” to which the data are compared. Often, the West is used as the norm against which all others should be compared, with the end result that postcolonial indigenous social life is stereotyped and then ruled inferior and demonized. 3. Success approximation. The researcher repeatedly moves back and forth between data and theory until the gap between them shrinks or disappears. 4. The illustrative model. The illustrative method requires a researcher to apply theory to a concrete historical situation or social setting or to organize data on the basis of a prior theory. The questions indigenous scholars ask are: Whose theory is it? Who wrote it, and how does it portray the researched? “There is a disturbing failure to recognize that these people (the poor and grassroots people in non-Western developing countries) do theorize in their communities as part of their community life, and that they are not only articulate but also able to interpret their experiences” (Elabor-Idemudia, 2002, p. 227). 5. Path dependency and contingency. Begin with an outcome and trace a sequence of events back to origin to see a path that constrained the set of events.

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6. Domain analysis. Locate the included terms within cover terms that make the cultural domain. 7. Analytical comparison. Identify many characteristics and a key outcome, and then check agreement and difference among the characteristics to learn which ones are associated with the outcome. It is evident from these strategies that the Western-based interview method works within standard vocabulary, terms, concepts, and categories of analysis of given disciplines, with their associated theories; above all, it is a mode of Western social science research, with its emphasis on the individual as the social unit of focus. Recently, colleagues and I embarked on a study to design a theory-driven intervention to change sexually risky adolescent behaviors. We agreed that the theory of planned behavior (TPB) should inform the intervention. TPB is a theory of the predictors of individual behavior that has been frequently applied to understanding health behaviors. The TPB asserts a specific relationship among beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behavior. More specifically, the TPB posits that intentions to perform a specific behavior are determined by three factors: (1) attitudes toward the behavior, which are seen as reflecting behavioral beliefs about the consequences of performing the behavior; (2) subjective norms toward the behavior, which reflect individuals’ beliefs about whether specific referent persons (e.g., peers, romantic partners, parents, the church) would approve or disapprove of the behavior, and (3) perceived behavioral control over the behavior, which involves individuals’ beliefs that they have the necessary resources, skills, and opportunities to perform the behavior. We used the theory to guide our qualitative interview to elicit adolescents’ views on risky sexual behaviors by asking the following questions: —— What is good about multiple partners, abstinence, and male circumcision? (behavioral beliefs question) —— What is bad about multiple partners, abstinence, and male circumcision? (behavioral beliefs question) —— Who approves of multiple partners, abstinence, and male circumcision? (normative beliefs question) —— Who disapproves of multiple partners, abstinence, and male circumcision? (normative beliefs question) —— What is easy about having multiple partners, abstinence, boys being circumcised? (control beliefs question) —— What is difficult about having multiple partners, abstinence, and boys being circumcised? (control beliefs question) Clearly, the questions are limited and constrained by the theory in its attempt to delineate individual participant intentions, which according to the theory, depend on an individual’s attitudes toward the behavior, subjective norms toward the behavior, and perceived behavioral control. Such construction of interview guides is limited in the extent to which it accounts for the broader social context surrounding behavior.

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Interviews and Analysis Based on the Medicine Wheel From the discussion above, it is clear that every discipline, be it sociology, education, or psychology, has its own language, vocabulary, concepts, terms, and theories that guide research interview questions. The argument is that researchers can base interview questions on theories, concepts, and terms that come from postcolonial indigenous worldviews. In Chapter 9, for instance, it was shown how researchers can derive theories and concepts from proverbs, myths, folklore, and so on. In this chapter, I extend the discussion on the methodology based on the Medicine Wheel by illustrating interview questions informed by the four quadrants of the Medicine Wheel. Terry L. Cross, Kathleen Earle, Holly Echo-Hawk Solie, and Kathryn Manness (2000), in their study of Native American communities, designed interview and focus group questions based on the four quadrants of the Medicine Wheel. They defined the four quadrants as context, body, mind, and spirit: —— The context includes culture, community, family, peers, work, school, and social history. —— The mind includes our cognitive processes such as thoughts, memories, knowledge, and emotional processes such as feelings, defenses and self-esteem. —— The body includes all physical aspects, such as genetic inheritance, gender and condition, as well as sleep, nutrition and substance use. —— The spirit area includes both positive and negative learned teachings and practices, as well as positive and negative metaphysical or innate forces. (Cross et al., 2000, as cited in Mertens, 2009, pp. 20–21) Sample questions for each quadrant included the following: —— Context quadrant: “How does your program draw upon extended family and kinship to help parents help their children? (for service providers)” (p. 103). —— Body quadrant: “Have you or your child (children) participated in any cultural activities to improve physical health? Examples include: special tribal celebration with food served to mark the occasion, herbal or plant remedies for certain illnesses, smudging or other ways of cleansing for special occasions, or tribally based recreational opportunities such as dancing or playing games” (p. 103). —— Mind quadrant: “How has the program helped you develop strategies that use Indian ways for addressing the needs of your child? (for parents)” (p. 104). —— Spirit quadrant: “Have you or your family participated in any rituals or ceremonies to help restore balance to your lives, either through the purging of negative forces or the development of positive forces? Do you use any Indian traditional remedies to restore balance in the spiritual area (example: sweat lodge)?” (Cross et al., 2000, as cited in Mertens, 2009, p. 104). The questions clearly draw from Native American worldviews, use their indigenous knowledge, and valorize their spiritual practices and people’s relations with each other.

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The data were further fitted into the four quadrants of context, body, mind, and spirit for analysis and interpretation (Mertens, 2009). The interview questions and the data analysis and interpretation further illustrate how postcolonial indigenous worldviews can be used as frameworks with their own language, vocabulary, concepts, terms, and theories, used either alone or to complement Euro-Western academic discipline frameworks.

SYMBOLS IN POSTCOLONIAL INDIGENOUS INTERVIEW METHODS Discussions in this book show that postcolonial indigenous interview methods use symbols such as sacred objects, drawings, crafts, sculptures, tattoos, dance, song, written literature, and so on for various reasons. In the talking circle method, for example, objects symbolize the connection of participants to each other and the collective construction of knowledge. This is similar to the relational interview method based on the diviner/ client construction of a story, where objects bring to the participant’s consciousness the many connections and web of relations that the participant has with other people, the land, and the environment. In the Mmogo method discussed in Chapter 10, participants made visual representations of their experiences using materials derived from their culture. The interview then focused on these visual images. In contrast to the Mmogo method, in the Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection method (Chapter 12), participants select a symbol—in the form of a sacred object, a sculpture, song, or dance—that communicates their life experiences and explain how it led them in a journey of their search for identity and transformation. Cross et al. (2000) bring another dimension to interviews by showing how symbolism in the Medicine Wheel worldview enabled the researchers to conduct interviews and data analysis informed by the four quadrants of the Medicine Wheel: context, body, mind, and spirit. Weber-Pillwax (2001) adds to these methods an approach where the researcher brings to the interview some written literature for the participants to critique. This method could include sages as elders and members of cultural committees commenting and giving interpretations on literature stored in cultural artifacts. It is thus clear from these examples that cultural artifacts store worldviews and can be used as stimulants in individual and focus group interviews. These cultural artifacts, which include pottery, sculptures, home painting, and basket weaving by ordinary women and men, may bring to life worldviews, topics, and other categories of thought otherwise missing in the literature. Discussed here are two examples of artifacts that a researcher can bring to the interview to engage sages in a dialogue on a given topic of a research.

The Kente and Bogolanfini Legend According to Asante legend, weaving began after two hunters observed the spider Anante creating an intricate web. They copied the technique and brought their cloth to their chief, Oti Akenten. Kente (see Figure 11.1) has been worn since the late 17th century, when imported silk cloth was unraveled to obtain silk threads for inclusion in local hand-woven textiles. The legend on the Kente communicates African perspectives on production and ownership of knowledge. It is clear from this legend that the Africans

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recognized collective production and ownership of knowledge by all, including animals and all creatures in the environment. For instance, the contribution of the spider to the weaving of Kente is acknowledged. The communication between the spider and the hunters could also illustrate the African-valued connectedness with the environment, including living and nonliving things. The legend would seem to suggest that a discussion of context in a study would be incomplete without describing the nonliving and living in the community and how people relate to the living, the nonliving, and the environment in general. The legend opens spaces for new discussions on context in research that researchers can bring to the interviews with sages. Bamana women of Mali are the creators of the unique cloth design called bogolanfini (mud cloth), shown in Figure 11.2. This cloth has a pattern of circular motifs. The central panel symbolizes motherhood, known as the “the mother of the cloth.” Each configuration has a name that is descriptive of the beliefs and values of the Bamana. Letters of the alphabet, both Chinese and Arabic, have remained the recognized ways of communicating in writing. The Bamana cloth design captures other forms of representing and storing information. These forms of writing and storing information have to be FIGURE 11.1  ■  Kente W rapper

Source: Ghana, Asante. 20th Century, Rayon. Collection of the Newark Museum. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William U. Wright, 1985 85.366.

262   Indigenous Research Methodologies FIGURE 11.2  ■  Bogolanfini (mud cloth)

Source: Artist Guacho Diarra. Mali, Bamana. Cotton and paint. Collection of the Newark Museum. Purchase 1986, The Members’ Fund 86.47.

recognized, collected, and brought to interviews with sages so that they can be analyzed and interpreted for use as baseline literature on research topics of interest. The literature on motherhood stored in the cloth, for example, supports the argument for the mother-centered, woman-centered African feminisms discussed in Chapter 13.

CONDUCTING A POSTCOLONIAL INDIGENOUS INTERVIEW From the discussion in this chapter, we can infer the following principles about a postcolonial indigenous interview. 1. The interview process is guided by a relational way of knowing and therefore brings into the process objects that communicate equality among participants; recognize and celebrate participants’ connection to each other and to the

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environment; and teach respect, love, and harmony among all those participating in the interview process. 2. The researched, who are the knowers, draw from their web of connection with land, the environment, the living, and the nonliving to engage in a dialogue on the issue of discussion. 3. The research participants have the following roles among others: critiquing the literature written about them; bringing to the discussion indigenous knowledge such as worldviews, the myths, folktales, language, and proverbs that inform their frames of reference; and entering into a dialogue with the researcher on the researcher’s questions of interest. These principles should inform guidelines for preparing and conducting an interview. What follows are suggestions on how to conduct the interview. Starting the Interview.  Indigenous research is viewed as ceremony. Interviews should thus start by recognizing and celebrating participants’ relationships with the cosmos and those around them. In Chapter 5, it was noted, for instance, that among the Anishambe, one of the indigenous people of North America, the offering of aseema (tobacco) facilitated the interview. Aseema among the Anishambe is a cultural symbol that is used to ask for help, to share information, and to thank people. Researchers must identify the cultural symbols that will allow them to gain entry to the setting and conduct interviews. See also the example on the focused life-story interview discussed in this chapter. About the Participants and the Researcher.  While starting a Western-based interview requires the researcher to document common sociodemographic information such as age, sex, occupation, and so on, a postcolonial indigenous interview method also requires documentation of the participants’ and the researcher’s relations with others, with the cosmos, and with the topic of the research. The researcher shows respect to the participants by saying who they are, describing their relationship with the participants, and explaining researchers’ interest in the research topic. Participants in turn tell their lineage stories, which connect them to one another, to the community in general, and to the cosmos. For instance, in the example of the focused life story, participants were asked at the beginning of the interview to construct an outline of their life by paying attention to themes that related to whakappa, relationships, and family structure. Rituals and Symbolism During the Interview.  Participants use cultural symbols of their choice to communicate collective construction of knowledge, sharing of ideas, or equality among all involved. Cultural symbols to facilitate discussions are common in talking circles. To conduct focus group interviews using talking circles, researchers must dialogue with participants on the cultural symbols to be used and the ground rules associated with the symbolism, which should guide the discussion. Giving Voice to the Participants.  One of the most important considerations in indigenous research interviews is that participants should decide if their names can be used in the research manuscript and when and how they can be used. Take, for example, the role

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of sages in analyzing and interpreting cultural artifacts or critiquing literature written about their people. It may be important to credit the analysis and the interpretation to individual sages so that academic scholars can acknowledge them by referencing their work. The sages’ critique of the written literature also requires recognition that can be achieved by giving details of who they are. There is thus a need to devote ample time to a discussion with participants on the use of their names in the research manuscript. The following practical guidelines, which are also common with Western-informed interviews, can be used to inform the interview process: 1. As a researcher, deal efficiently with the practicalities of interviews; for example, ensure that the tape recorder, batteries, and microphone are in good working order and properly set if you are going to use them. 2. Take care as to where the respondent and interviewer sit so that they are not too close to cause cultural discomfort and not too far apart to create a sense of power boundary. Also, take care of the effects of direct sunlight, noise, and other forms of interruptions. 3. It is important at the start of the interview to allow the respondent to relax by conducting introductions in a manner that encourages dialogue. For example, ask if there is something they would wish to know about the interview procedure before you start. 4. Help the participants to position themselves within the discourse of the study by asking them questions that allow them freedom to express their perspectives. 5. Always aim to ask simple (not loaded) questions, one at a time. 6. Be an attentive listener (avoid conducting interviews when you are tired). 7. Be sensitive not to pursue issues that appear to be complicated or sensitive too early in the interview. 8. Take note of answers that need follow-up later in the interview. 9. Give the participant time to reply. Do not attempt to cover a silence with another question (unless you want to clarify the initial question). 10. Keep reassuring participants about the importance of their replies. Indicate that what they are saying is interesting to you, for example, by making comments such as “that is quite interesting” or “that is a very interesting way of describing it.” 11. Watch for nonverbal clues of boredom or embarrassment and then respond appropriately, perhaps by changing the line of interviewing. 12. Try to end interviews on a positive note, for example, by giving the participants an opportunity to ask questions and give their opinion about their experience of the process. 13. Summarize the main points raised and ask participants if your summary is a correct interpretation of their view.

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SUMMARY This chapter advanced the argument that interview structures, types of questions asked, and analysis of the data produced from the interviews are predominantly informed by Western academic disciplines. Interview methods based on philosophic sagacity, employing cultural artifacts as interview stimulants, and informed by postcolonial indigenous worldviews were discussed as alternative strategies that give voice to marginalized communities.

Key Points ——

The conventional interview method works within a standard vocabulary, terms, concepts, and categories of analysis informed by Western academic disciplines with their associated theories and a Western social science research culture with its emphasis on the individual as the social unit of focus.

—— In postcolonial indigenous societies, researchers conduct interviews as privileged elites and knowers who are researching and operating with Western models of thought and conducting interviews within frameworks of Othering ideologies supported by deficit theories and

literature that constructs the researched as the problem. ——

Researchers should use indigenous knowledge to guide interview question structures, types of questions asked, and data analysis procedures.

——

Researchers should recognize indigenous people who have expertise and knowledge.

——

Researchers should highlight reviewed literature about the researched and dialogue with the researched to enable them to participate in a critique of the literature produced about them.

ACTIVITY 11.2 1. Compare and contrast the narrative analysis strategy of data analysis with the diviner and client approach. 2. How does the diviner and client analysis and interpretation strategy compare with the illustrative and successive approximation methods?

3. Simulate a focused life-story interview. 4. Videotape the interview and later use it to evaluate the interview skills, the structure of the interview, and the questions asked. 5. To evaluate the videos, first create a checklist informed by a postcolonial indigenous paradigm for use in the evaluation.

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Suggested Readings De Vault, M. L. (1999). Liberating method: Feminism and social research. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Drawson, A., Toombs, E., & Mushquash, C. (2017). Indigenous research methods: A systematic review. The International Indigenous Policy Journal,8(2), 1–24. Edwards, S., McManus, V., & McCreanor, T. (2005). Collaborative research within Maori on sensitive issues: The application of Tikanga and Kaupapa in research on Maori sudden infant death syndrome. Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, 25, 88–104. Futter-Puati, D., & Maua-Hodges, T. (2019). Stitching tivaevae: A Cook Island research method. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 15(2), 140–149.

 Levac, L., McMurtry, L., Stienstra, D., Baikie, G., Hanson, C., & Mucina D. (2018). Learning across indigenous and Western knowledge systems and intersectionality: Reconciling social research approaches. [Technical Report]. Guelph, Canada: University of Guelph, Social and Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Pe-Pua, R. (1989). Pagttanung-tanong: A cross cultural research method. International Journal of Intercultural Relationships, 13, 147–163. Scheurich, J. (1997). Research method in the postmodern. London, UK: Falmer Press. Viruru, R., & Cannella, G. (2006). A postcolonial critique of the ethnographic interview: Research analyzes research. In N. Denzin & M. Giardina (Eds.), Qualitative inquiry and the conservative challenge (pp. 175–192). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast.

12 PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH METHODS Research with the Indigenous community is a commitment that extends well beyond the final report, dissertation, peer-reviewed article submission, or conference presentation. It is a lifelong relationship and commitment. If contacted by the community, even many years after the completion of a research project, the research team must be prepared to assist the community with their requests. Lynn Lavallée (2009, p. 24)

Overview Discussed in this chapter are participatory research approaches that enable the colonized Other in the third and fourth worlds, as well as those discriminated against and marginalized on account of their gender, ethnicity, age, religion, social class, or ableness, to collectively share and analyze their knowledge, life experiences, and conditions and to use indigenous knowledge as a frame of reference to plan and to act. Two types of participatory action research are presented, one with an emphasis on participants as coresearchers and another with an emphasis on personal and social transformation. Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) is provided as an example of a participatory action research approach. Finally, appreciative inquiry is introduced as one of the methods for promoting healing and transformation in participatory research.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Analyze the role of participatory action research for the oppressed and disempowered groups. 2. Distinguish between participatory action research with participants as coresearchers and a transformative participatory action research approach. 3. Discuss transformative participatory action research as a decolonizing research approach. 4. Explain indigenous methods in participatory action research.

Before You Start Search your library databases for articles that use participatory action research with the historically oppressed, the disempowered, marginalized groups, indigenous peoples, and the formerly colonized in developing countries. List the variety of names used to describe research with a participatory approach and the disciplines where participatory action research has been used.

ACTION RESEARCH: AN OVERVIEW The emphasis in this book so far has been that the exploited, the poor, and the marginalized should participate as knowers in the entire research process, which includes defining the research issue, collecting the data, analyzing and interpreting the data, writing the report, and disseminating the findings. There remains, however, a missing link between research output and implementation of findings that can bring about social change. Perhaps your reflections on the following questions can define your stance toward participatory action research. 1. As a social science researcher, do you think that you and the researched should collaborate in discovering scientific facts as well as implementing the findings from the research inquiry? 2. What is your reaction to the view that once communities have participated in the research process, they should wait for professionals—for example, social workers, nurses, and teachers—to implement findings from research studies?

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3. How many research findings from doctoral dissertations and master’s theses do you think get implemented? 4. Do you think it would be possible for you to conduct a dissertation study in which a community participates in the research process and, together with the community, you implement the research findings? 5. What is your reaction to the quotation at the beginning of the chapter? There is a continuing debate on the relationship between research and social action. One view is that social science research should aim solely to discover scientific facts. Linking social science research findings to action, it is argued, should be left to other professionals, who may be looking for scientific facts to aid the improvement of human welfare. Another view is that it is important for the advancement of science and for the improvement of human welfare to devise strategies in which research and action are linked (Whyte, 1991). You have learned in previous chapters that decolonization of research methods calls for the researched to participate in the research process and for researchers to be committed to an action-oriented research process, in which researchers are activists dedicated to social transformation. This also calls for researchers who theorize and conduct research using healing and social justice methods informed by the worldviews of those whose histories, experiences, and voices have been distorted and marginalized. An overview of action-oriented research will enable you to understand the general principles and steps of action research and to appreciate the decolonization and indigenization process of conventional action research.

The Action Research Cycle The idea of action research is attributed to Kurt Lewin, a social psychologist from ­ ermany. Action research is a process of doing, reflecting on the action, drawing concluG sions, and then reflecting again on the process. It became popular in the 1980s as a mode of inquiry for practitioners, for example, adult educators, teachers, social workers, nurses, and agricultural extension workers. The argument advanced by these practitioners was that some forms of inquiry require a continuous cycle of practice and reflection based on real life experience. It was also argued that such practice-based research inevitably required involvement by the practitioners instead of relying on outside experts to observe, analyze, and solve social problems. Action research also emerged as a tool for engaging the exploited, the poor, and disempowered groups in a process of collective inquiry with the aim of empowering them to have greater control in decision making about various aspects of their lives. There is a basic sequence that all action-oriented studies follow. Stephen Kemmis and Robert McTaggart (2000, p. 563) describe the sequence as a spiral of self-reflexive cycles involving the following: Planning a Change. This involves identifying and inviting community members to participate in the research, forming partnerships with all stakeholders, bringing about full participation of community members in defining research questions, and also planning the research design and data collection methods.

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Acting and Observing the Process and Consequences of Change. This involves full participation of community members in putting the plan into action, for instance, mapping out the activities for data collection or making decisions on strategies to get a plan in motion; community members observe, monitor, analyze, and evaluate outcomes. Reflecting on These Processes and Consequences. This includes self-reflection by the researcher and participants and addressing the following: what they have learned, if it will change the way they think and do things, whether they are willing to change, how they evaluate the significance of findings, and whether the intervention proposed is appropriate based on the findings. Replanning. This involves the researcher and the community in the collaborative design of an intervention. Acting and Observing Again. The intervention is implemented, observed, monitored, and evaluated. The self-reflexive cycles are informed by six principles (Winter, 1996) that are common to all action research initiatives. The principles are as follows: Reflexive Critique.  This involves a self-questioning, self-critical thinking where biases about the researched, tendencies to exclude local and indigenous knowledge, tendencies toward deficit theorizing about the researched, and the conception of researcher as knower are questioned. Dialectic Critique.  Here there is an emphasis on the role of context in understanding the problem. Context includes the researched’s and researcher’s beliefs about conceptions of reality, the way this reality can be known, and the context-informed ethical principles that should guide the process of knowing. Collaboration.  Collaboration entails a basic acceptance that researchers and researched communities should work together and that everyone has something worthwhile to contribute.

FIGURE 12.1  ■  The Basic Action Research Cycle Revised Plan

Plan

Reflect

Act

Observe/record

Reflect

Revised Plan Act

Observe/record

Reflect

Act

Observe/record

Source: Viswanathan, M., Ammerman, A., Eng, E., Gartlehner, G., Lohr, K. N., Griffith, D., . . . Whitener, L. (July 2004). Community-based participatory research: Assessing the evidence. Evidence Report/Technology Assessment No. 99. (Prepared by RTI-University of North Carolina Evidence-based Practice Center under Contract No. 290-02-0016). AHRQ Publication 04-E022-2. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

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Risking Disturbance.  Researchers and participating communities must have willingness, intentions, and commitment to change as a result of the research process. Creating Plural Structures.  Here, researchers and participating communities acknowledge and honor multiple voices and interpretations throughout the research process. Internalizing Theory and Practice. Researchers are called on to recognize the link between theory and practice and to use the link to develop new insights and practice.

Decolonization of Action Research Research to increase voice and participation of the colonized Other requires indigenization and decolonization of the basic action research model. This indigenization has led to two types of action research: one that I will call the participant as coresearcher approach and the other, the participatory transformative research approach.

Participant as Coresearcher In the participant as coresearcher approach, the level of participation of the researched is limited to helping with the research questions, research design, analysis, authoring of research manuscripts, and dissemination of findings. The following questions can be used to evaluate the extent of participation and the presence of the voice of the researched in the participant as coresearcher approach: —— How are the research questions produced? —— Whose research questions are they? —— Do the research questions energize the researched to engage in a dialogue about their material world? —— What methods and theories are used to accurately generate and record marginalized voices, as well as indigenous and local knowledge predominantly excluded through Euro-Western conventional methodologies? —— With what and with whose theories are research questions and analysis of data conceptualized? Meera Viswanathan et al. (2004, pp. 15–16) summarizes critical elements in community-based participatory research, a form of participatory action research that engages communities as coresearchers in the research process. Table 12.1 shows areas in the research process where community members can participate and describes their roles, the benefits of their participation to the research and the community, and research challenges. The emphasis in the approach depicted in the table is on the role of community members as coresearchers participating in (a) identifying and defining the research question, (b) making decisions about the research design and data-gathering instruments, (c) data analysis and interpretation, and (d) coauthoring the report.

272   Indigenous Research Methodologies TABLE 12.1  ■  Critical Elements in Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) CBPR Implementation and Potential Impact Community Benefits

Research Benefits

Research Challenges

Research Element

CBPR Application

Assembling a research team of collaborators with the potential for forming a research partnership

Identifying collaborators who are decision makers that can move the research project forward

Resources can be used more efficiently

Increases the probability of completing the research project as intended

Time to identify the right collaborators and convincing them that they play an important role in the research project

A structure for collaboration to guide decision making

Consensus on ethics and operating principles for the research partnership to follow, including protection of study participants

The beginning of building trust and the likelihood that procedures governing protection of study participants will be understood and acceptable

An opportunity to understand each collaborator’s agenda, which may enhance recruitment and retention of study participants

An ongoing process throughout the life of research partnerships that requires skills in group facilitation, building consensus, and conflict accommodation

Defining the research question

Full participation of community in identifying issues of greatest importance; focus on community strengths as well as problems

Problems addressed are highly relevant to the study participants and other community members

Increased investment and commitment to the research process by participants

Time consuming; community may identify issues that differ from those identified by standard assessment procedures or for which funding is available

Grant proposal and funding

Community leaders/members involved as a part of the proposal writing process

Proposal is more likely to address issues of concern in a manner acceptable to community residents

Funding likelihood increases if community participation results in tangible indicators of support for recruitment and

Seeking input from the community may slow the process and complicate the proposal development

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retention efforts, such as writing letters of support, serving on steering committee, or as fiscal agents or coinvestigators

effort when time constraints are often present

Research design

Researchers communicate the need for specific study design approaches and work with community members to design more acceptable approaches, such as a delayed intervention for the control group

Participants feel as if they are contributing to the advancement of knowledge vs. as if they are passive research “subjects” and that a genuine benefit will be gained by their community

Community is less resentful of research process and more likely to participate

Design may be more expensive and/or take longer to implement Possible threats to scientific rigor

Participant recruitment and retention

Community representatives guide researchers to the most effective ways to reach the intended study participants and keep them involved in the study

Those who may benefit most from the research are identified and recruited in dignified manner rather than made to feel like research subjects

Facilitated participant recruitment and retention, which are among the major challenges in health research

Recruitment and retention approaches may be more complex, expensive, or time consuming

Formative data collection

Community members provide input to intervention design, barriers to recruitment and retention, and so on, via focus groups, structured interviews, narratives, or other qualitative method

Interventions and research approach are likely to be more acceptable to participants and thus of greater benefit to them and the broader population

Service-based and community-based interventions are likely to be more effective than if they are designed without prior formative data collection

Findings may indicate needed changes to proposed study design, intervention, and timeline, which may delay progress

(Continued)

274   Indigenous Research Methodologies TABLE 12.1  ■ (Continued) Measures, instrument design, and data collection

Community representatives involved with selecting the most appropriate intervention approach, given cultural and social factors and strengths of the community

Participants feel the intervention is designed for their needs and offers benefits while avoiding insult; provides resources for communities involved

Intervention design is more likely to be appropriate for the study population, thus increasing the likelihood of a positive study

Time consuming; hiring local staff; may be less efficient than using study staff hired for the project

Data analysis and interpretation

Community members involved regarding their interpretation of the findings within the local social and cultural context

Community members who hear the results of the study are more likely to feel that the conclusions are accurate and sensitive

Researchers are less likely to be criticized for limited insight or cultural insensitivity

Interpretations of data by nonscientists may differ from those of scientists, calling for thoughtful negotiation

Manuscript preparation and research translation

Community members are included as coauthors of the manuscripts, presentations, newspaper articles, and so on, following previously agreed-upon guidelines

Pride in accomplishment, experience with scientific writing, and potential for career advancement; findings are more likely to reach the larger community and increase potential for implementing or sustaining recommendations

The manuscript is more likely to reflect an accurate picture of the community environment of the study

Time consuming; requires extra mutual learning and negotiation

Source: Viswanathan, M., Ammerman, A., Eng, E., Gartlehner, G., Lohr, K. N., Griffith, D., . . . Whitener, L. (July 2004). Communitybased participatory research: Assessing the evidence. Evidence Report/ Technology Assessment No. 99, pp. 15–16. (Prepared by RTIUniversity of North Carolina Evidence-based Practice Center under Contract No. 290-02-0016.) AHRQ Publication 04-E022-2. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

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Although participatory research increases the level of involvement of the researched in the research process, it has limitations in that it may ignore the following: —— The geopolitical power relations within which the research is conducted; in the previous chapters, for example, we noted the deficit and damage-focused research about the researched and how that fed into the research process. —— The significance that the researcher has placed on the knowledge that is produced; in the previous chapters, the role of the researcher in a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm was discussed and the importance of selfreflexivity noted. —— The consequence of power struggles on the generation of knowledge and the effect that local social differences, such as gender, age, wealth, and class, have on who has access to what sort of knowledge. Table 12.1, for instance, emphasizes participation of community leaders and community members in the research process. There is no mention of community diversity and how local social differences, such as gender, age, race, ethnicity, ableness, wealth, and class, have informed and defined who represents the community. I will discuss the participatory transformative research approach as a methodological perspective that addresses most of the limitations outlined above.

Transformative Participatory Action Research Hsiao-Chuan Hsia (2006) defines as praxis-oriented research a type of participatory research that combines an emphasis on participants as coresearchers with an emphasis on personal and social transformation, while Robert Chambers (1994) refers to this as activist participatory research, and Donna Mertens (2009) calls it transformative participatory action research. The guiding principle in transformative participatory action research for personal and social transformation is purposive active engagement and political action by both the researched and the researcher. The researched and the researcher begin with a clear understanding that research is not neutral, and that ideology determines the methodology of searching for knowledge and defining what can be known (Freire, 1973). Activist participatory research grew out of the experiences and practices of conscientization in Latin America and from Paulo Freire’s work and inspiration, especially through his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). Freire’s concept of conscientization plays an important part in political activism of the researched. A process that is part of Freire’s liberatory education, conscientization helps the learner to move toward a new awareness of relations of power, myths, and oppression. In this context, the researched learn to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions and to take action to change the way they think and do things. The poor and the exploited are empowered to believe in themselves and to have the confidence and the will to conduct research on their own reality using their ways of knowing and to use the research findings to embark on positive social change. The most commonly cited definition of participatory action research with a transformative element first came from the Toronto Participatory Group after the Cartagena conference of 1977:

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—— Participatory research involves a whole range of powerless groups of people— exploited, the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized. —— It involves the full and active participation of the community in the entire research process. —— The subject of research originates in the community itself, and the problem is defined, analyzed, and solved by the community. —— The ultimate goal is the radical transformation of social reality and the improvement of the lives of the people themselves. The beneficiaries of the research are members of the community. —— The process of participatory research can create greater awareness in the people of their own resources and mobilize them for self-reliant development. —— It is a more scientific method of research in that the participation of the community in the research process facilitates a more accurate and authentic analysis of social reality. —— The researcher is a committed participant and learner in the process of research, that is, a militant rather than a detached observer. (Hall & Kidd, 1978, p. 5) Participatory action research for personal and social transformation in the context of postcolonial indigenous research methodologies requires politically engaged methods. The following questions can guide the thought process of a researcher: An Activist Researcher. How are the research questions asked? Are they deficit-based questions that rely on a deficit assumption about the researched, or do the questions focus on strengths and positive images of the researched? Why do I do research with the colonized and groups of people exploited and oppressed? Does the research have a clear stance against the political imperialism of its time? Does this research have a clear stance against marginalization and exploitation of the colonized that comes through either the research agenda pursued or the relationship of the researcher with the researched? Does the research address power struggles, oppression, and social differences such as race, gender, age, and class? Geopolitical Power Relations.  Does the research problematize and critique the tendency to make the researched speak through the voices, academic language, concepts, and theories of the West? Does the research problematize and critique Euro-Western archival knowledge and its exclusionary tendencies? Reflexivity.  Where do I stand with regard to the researched? Am I still the colonizer? Who are the researched? Are the researched still colonial subjects distinct from the colonizer because of their incapabilities, or are the researched active agents capable of generating solutions to their social challenges? Change and Transformation.  Will this research bring about change? What theories and methods energize the researched to engage in a change process? Does this research change the way people think and do things? What theories and methods change the way people think and do things?

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PARTICIPATORY RURAL APPRAISAL One of the participatory methods to grow out of an attempt to address some of the questions raised above is the participatory rural appraisal (PRA). This is a term used to describe a family of approaches and methods that enable the disenfranchised, dispossessed communities in the third and fourth worlds to share and analyze their indigenous knowledge, life experiences, and conditions with the goal to plan and act. It began in the early 1970s and 1980s as a response to urban-based professionals’ biased perceptions about the life experiences of the majority of the people in developing countries living in the rural areas and the defects of using large-scale surveys on these population groups. It is a people-centered methodology aimed at facilitating interaction between researchers and communities in urban and rural areas, so that researchers will better understand and learn from the researched. The goal is to initiate a participatory process that facilitates communities’ ownership of the research process and outcomes (Mukherjee, 1997). PRA is widely practiced by a number of nongovernmental organizations and government departments in countries in Latin America, Canada, Australia, Asia, and Africa that are conducting research on and with the colonized Other. PRA methods are also increasingly being explored by university students and faculty carrying out research in various disciplines such as adult education, agriculture, gender studies, and so on. Three key principles are emphasized in PRA (Grenier, 1998, p. 42): Culturally Sensitive and Responsive Behavior and Attitudes. PRA requires the researcher to be flexible, creative, patient, respectful, and willing to listen to and be taught by rural people. Visual Representation of Information and Ideas. PRA requires researchers to present information, ideas, or data in visual forms such as pictures, drawings, maps, charts, models, and graphs to increase participation by the illiterate, the poor, the exploited, disadvantaged women, children, and those with disabilities. Multiple Methods. PRA uses numerous research techniques that resonate with the colonized Other such as local histories, folklore, songs, poetry, dance, and so on. It also combines quantitative and qualitative methods to ensure meaningful participation of the researched in the inquiry process. For instance, PRA has been used to develop culturally appropriate survey questionnaires and to increase precision in sample surveys by engaging local people in the design. What follows is a discussion of some of the PRA techniques used with the survey method.

PRA Techniques and the Survey Method We noted that the PRA methodology uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. For example, it might use a survey questionnaire together with interview methods. PRA qualitative techniques can be used to inform the survey questionnaire and the sampling strategies in sample surveys. Most survey questionnaires are developed in the West using the Western languages and Western-based conceptual and theoretical frameworks. This approach, Gerard Gill (1993, cited in Mukherjee, 1997) argues, is like adopting an inappropriate technology from a developed country for use in developing countries. PRA methods can help improve the questionnaire-based methods in the following ways:

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1. Visual techniques in the PRA method can help answer questions that would otherwise remain ineffectively communicated through the usual questionnaires. 2. Through its use of community-based data collection techniques, PRA allows participants to communicate from their frame of reference using their own vocabulary. In this way, PRA can be used to incorporate culture- and agesensitive local words, terms, and concepts in the questionnaire. 3. PRA sessions in advance of a survey can assist in the framing of the questionnaire in terms of the perceived topics to be covered, the kind of questions, the importance of the questions, and the number of questions necessary in a questionnaire survey. 4. A distinct merit of PRA is the interaction with groups and communities based on topics facilitated by the outsider (Mukherjee, 1997). Questionnaire surveys can employ such group interactions to solicit group views in addition to individual responses.

Participatory Sampling Methods PRA methods can also be used to indigenize the sampling strategies in the survey method. In a sample survey, the accuracy of the method to generalize from the sample to the population from which it is drawn depends on precision of the sampling strategies selected. These sampling methods rely on accurate descriptions of the population of study in order to determine the sampling strategy and the sample size appropriate for the study. The characteristics used to describe the populations are usually limited to categories of analysis in conventional research such as age, education, and occupation. These categories exclude other categories of analysis informed by communities’ value systems and ways of perceiving reality. For instance, a sample survey to determine the income profile or wealth of a community might use indicators of wealth that are not compatible with the way a given community categorizes the wealthy and the poor. Stratifying and sampling on the basis of these indicators will automatically bias the sample toward the researcher’s perception of what it is to be wealthy or poor. Some African communities are also more likely to recognize group categories rather than individual characteristics. For instance, in some communities in Botswana, adults remember their age regiments rather than their own specific ages. In some villages, wards are organized in hierarchical structures that signify social status as well as wealth. These local variations are important if the researcher is to draw a sample that is representative of the population. Knowing the size of the population from which to draw the sample is also essential. This is not possible in many contexts because of poor record keeping. PRA techniques have been used to complement and improve conventional sampling procedures. PRA strategies such as village and social mapping can bring out characteristics of people in the community that can inform decisions on the sampling strategies to be used. Social maps might show, for instance, characteristics or indicators that distinguish individuals from one another and how people might be grouped according to their social status. Following is an illustration of how village mapping can inform sampling methods.

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Village Mapping A village map involves participants drawing their village and incorporating all the features that are important in understanding a problem of study. In this example, a village map is used to determine the size of a population so that representative samples can be drawn. Suppose that a researcher wants to identify a proportional representative sample of adults participating in a literacy program in a village made up of five wards. The researcher does not know the size of the population in each ward and is therefore unable to estimate the sample size from each ward. Here are some of the steps that the researcher could follow: —— Hold discussions with the community to explain the problem and identify community members from each ward who are interested in participating in the study —— Make plans for map drawing in each ward —— Make a list of what should be shown in the map that can assist in sample selection The following can be indicated on the map: —— Each household —— The name of each household’s head —— The number of family members in each household who attend literacy classes —— Separate symbols for recording females and males The main advantage of this procedure of determining population size is that ward members know each other and are able to give accurate information on current situations in each household. The village map could be rechecked through discussions with different ward members.

OTHER METHODS Participatory video and theater are additional data collection methods that open up communication channels with communities and research participants, promote dialogue and discussion, and set in motion dynamic exchange of views from one community to another and across communities in other countries. The participatory video is a set of techniques aimed at involving a group or a community of people in shaping and creating their own film (Lunch & Lunch, 2006). The development of participatory video is credited to the work of Don Snowden, a Canadian who in 1967 worked with fishing communities on the Fogo islands to pioneer the use of media to enable a people-centered development approach. Today, participatory video is used worldwide and applied in a diversity of situations ranging from documenting the research process, monitoring community activities and interventions, and sharing research findings from community to community to provide a healing and therapeutic environment to the disempowered or conducting a research process with a decolonization focus.

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Nick and Chris Lunch (2006, p. 12) provide the following steps for using a participatory video: —— Participants learn how to use video equipment through games and exercises. —— Facilitators help groups to identify and analyze important issues in their community by adapting a PRA, for example, participatory methods used in prioritizing issues such as well-being rankings and direct-matrix pair-wise ranking and scoring. —— Short videos and messages are directed and filmed by the participants. —— Footage can be shown to the wider community at daily screenings. —— A dynamic process of community-led learning, sharing, and exchange is set in motion. —— Completed films can be used to promote awareness and exchange between various different target groups. —— Participatory video films or video messages can be used to strengthen communication with both decision makers and with other communities.

ACTIVITY 12.1 Read the study extract included here and answer the following questions: 1. Discuss the participatory action research techniques employed in the study. 2. Would you classify the study as a participant as coresearcher approach or as a transformative participatory action research approach? Support your view. 3. Did this study lead to personal and social transformation? Support your view. 4. Assess the extent of participation, decolonization, and indigenization of the research study using the evaluation questions listed in this chapter. 5. How are the research questions asked? Are they deficit-based questions that rely on deficit assumptions about the researched, or do the questions focus on strengths and positive images of the researched?

Source: Perkins, J. J., Sanson-Fisher, R. W., Girgis, A., & Blunden, S. (1995) The development of a new methodology to assess perceived needs among indigenous Australians. Social Science Medicine, 41(2), 267–275. Used with permission of Elsevier Science LTD; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

Despite the advantages of needs assessments that utilize surveys, this methodological approach has been criticized on a number of issues. . . . Given the shortcomings inherent in the use of survey methodologies of needs assessment, the aim of this study was to develop a new refined methodology. More specifically, this methodology aimed to classify perceived needs into general areas or domains of needs, allow the identified needs to be prioritized, and finally to reduce the complexity of the assessment instrument so that those with limited formal education could indicate and prioritize their perceived needs. Prior to the study, an extensive review of the needs assessment literature was undertaken to produce a listing of the existing strategies available to collect needs information. A consultative process was then established between community

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members living in the study communities, Aboriginal Medical Service staff, and Aboriginal representatives from State Health departments and Aboriginal researchers who had previously conducted needs assessment research. The outcome of this consultation process was the development of a new strategy which incorporated graphics to collect perceived community needs. . . . Overall, items were classified into 4 domains: health; education and employment; housing; and social issues and community facilities. Each item from the 4 domains was then given to Aboriginal artists who designed and illustrated the graphics. A two stage process was adopted to administer the community perceived needs measure. In the first stage, Health Workers presented participants with the graphics from each of the domains, one domain at a time asked the question “Could you please look through these pictures and choose the three areas which you feel are of greatest need within your community. Choose the three that you would like something done about the most, and then rank these three in order of priority. The most important should be placed as number one and the least important as number three.” To enhance the visual representation of the graphics, a magnetic display board was available for participants. This board allowed participants to display their choices of need and to re-organize the priority of needs on a visual basis. . . . At the end of Stage 1, each participant had selected 3 items of need from each of the 4 domains. These 12 items were then carried over into Stage 2 where they were removed from their respective display boards and presented to the participants again. Participants were then asked to look at these 12 items and to select the

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top five items of greatest need for their community, irrespective of the domain from which the items had originally been chosen. The top five items were then displayed and participants were asked to rank these items in order of priority. Again, the top as number one and the least important as number five. Overall, the process of administration took approx. 15 min. for each person. Perceived needs assessment—a new methodology

Too Many Aborigines Going to Gaol

No Garbage Services

Appreciative Inquiry and Participatory Action Research One of the criticisms addressed to participatory action research is that most of the approaches are problem focused, aiming at discovering communities’ resource constraints, deficiencies, and unmet needs. Problem-focused modes of inquiry work with deficit questions and may serve only to contain conversations, silence marginal voices, fragment relationships, erode community, create social hierarchy, and contribute to cultural enfeeblement— thereby allowing scientific vocabularies of deficit to establish the very conditions they seek to eliminate. (Mertens, 2009, p. 184)

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The end result is that people may see their communities as places full of problems and needs that can be solved only with the help of outsiders. Jim Ludema, David Cooperrider, and Frank Barrett (2006) recommend combining participatory action research with appreciative inquiry to change the mind-set of the researcher and the researched, inform the questions researchers ask and how they ask them, and ultimately create a research process that leads to social change and transformation. Appreciative inquiry can be viewed as an approach to change-focused research (Reed, 2006). One of the challenges researchers face is moving away from the deficit-focused modes of inquiry using deficit-based questions (Ludema et al., 2006) to theoretical frameworks of positive psychology with emphasis on strengths and positive images of the researched. Appreciative inquiry is a change-focused research approach that is guided by affirmative assumptions about the researched people or communities. There are four phases to the approach: Discovery. During this phase, participants talk, discover, and learn the best of the moments in the history of an organization or community. Participants tell stories of exceptional accomplishments and discuss the aspects of their history that they most value and want to enhance. Dreaming. During this phase, participants envision and imagine other possibilities for their organizations or communities. They may, for instance, use the positive stories to create a portrait of an organization or community’s potential. Positive images grounded on extraordinary moments of a community’s or organization’s history are used to envision possibilities and suggest plans for the future. Design. In the design phase, participants dialogue on strategies to implement their dream. Destiny. This final stage involves delivery of new images of the future. During this stage, everyone realigns their activities with the positive image or ideal in a community or organization and co-creates the future. An appreciative action research inquiry approach propels researchers to address the question, “How are research questions asked, research objectives phrased, and questionnaire and interview guide questions framed?” Sarah Michael (2005) used this approach as an interview tool to move her study from problem-focused to an appreciation-focused inquiry. Michael isolated the discovery stage from the dreaming, designing, and destiny phases of the full process and designed an interview protocol based on the discovery phase. The aim of Michael’s research was to gain detailed understanding of the evolution of local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Senegal, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe; their projects and program experiences; and their relationships to their stakeholders. Michael decided to include in her research interview protocol questions centered on the best of what is within each NGO. Issues that needed to be covered were listed and then developed into appreciative questions. Michael lists these interview questions based on the discovery phase: 1. What’s your favorite memory of working here? 2. What makes this NGO a good place to work?

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3. What do you like best about your job? 4. Can you tell me about the history of your organization? 5. What first attracted you to work here? 6. What part of your work do you think your clients value most? 7. Can you describe the work of your organization? 8. What part of your work are you most proud of? 9. Which of your skills are you called on to use most often at your job? 10. How do you know when you have done a good job? 11. Can you tell me your favorite story about your clients? 12. What do you think attracts your clients to your organization? 13. What makes your organization special or different from other NGOs that you know? 14. What do you think is the heart of your organization’s success? 15. What makes your relationship with your clients work? 16. Can you tell me about the groups or people that support your NGO and its work? 17. Can you tell me about the donor organization that you find to be the most supportive of your NGO? 18. What makes your relationship with them special? 19. Can you tell me about situations in which your NGO and the government have worked together? 20. If I came back to visit you in five years, what do you think your organization would look like? 21. What strengths and resources will best help you to achieve these goals? 22. If the director of an NGO that was just starting out wanted to learn from your experience, what’s the best piece of advice that you could give them? (Michael, 2005, p. 225) Using the interview questions listed, Michael conducted 60 appreciative inquiry interviews and noted that interviewees were eager to tell their stories; offered dynamic and unrehearsed information; and spoke more openly, with less defensiveness or fear of reprisal. You can also use appreciative questions in a focus group interview using indigenous social justice methods like sharing circles. You can employ, along with appreciative inquiry, desire-centered research frameworks to move research from focusing on deficit and damage (Tuck, 2009). In a study on health, for instance, a researcher who incorporates a desire-centered framework in the research process would document the state and magnitude of a poor health system along with positive images of the health system that demonstrate hope, possibilities, and desire to change health system.

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Eve Tuck (2009) illustrates a desire-centered method related to the exhibit, “Stereotypes vs. Human Types: Images of Blacks in the 19th and 20th Centuries,” at the New York Public Library in Harlem. She explains how the exhibit illustrates a research methodology that can name damage, only to refute it and paint another world that shows resistance, defiance, survivance, hope, desire, and possibilities. In this example, Tuck explains that the exhibit was divided into two rooms. The first room, which was the stereotypes side, showed negative images of black Americans in advertising, entertainment, science, and education. The second room showed the “human types side,” “daguerreotype representations,” “compelling, dimensional and nuanced images of African Americans” (Tuck, 2009, p. 417). These images were captured by U.S.-born Africans living in the 19th century who wanted to refute the prominent stereotype images in the first room. The images in the second room, Tuck explains, revealed complexity in who black Americans believed they were and a further desire about what they can still be. This desire-centered method demonstrates the need to reflect on the theory of change that informs participatory research approaches, methods, and ethical frameworks employed in research with the colonized Other.

Healing Participatory Action Research Methods In the previous chapters, it was noted that researchers and the researched needed to heal the wounds from a long history of the subjugation of postcolonial indigenous worldviews, ways of knowing, and indigenous knowledge systems and from the deficit theorizing about them that creates stereotypes of hopelessness and lack of agency. Research with postcolonial subjects, indigenous peoples, and oppressed groups can be viewed as a “life changing ceremony” (Wilson, 2008, p. 61) in which indigenous practices of healing are incorporated in the research process through the use of various forms of symbols. Lynn Lavallée (2009) illustrates the use of the Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection method as an example of a participatory action research method that promotes healing and personal transformation.

Anishnaabe Symbol-Based Reflection The Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection method is an arts-based method named after the Anishnaabe people, from whom the method was born (Lavallée, 2009). Lavallée incorporated the knowledge, values, and beliefs of the Ojibway, Algonquin, and Cree Nations in Canada to conduct an indigenous community-based research. The Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection method emerged from this community-based research. The method includes sharing circles (see explanation in Chapter 11) and symbols such as paintings, drawings, sculptures, crafts, songs, teachings, and stories. The Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection method was influenced by a participatory action research method called photovoice (Lavallée, 2009). In the photovoice research method, participants identify, represent, and enhance their community through photography. Photovoice is similar to participatory video. Participants are provided with cameras, which they use to capture stories, events, or practices that represent their voices on a given research issue. The following are the three main goals that the photovoice and participatory video methods share with the Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection method:

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—— To enable people to record and reflect their community’s strengths and concerns —— To promote critical dialogue and knowledge about personal and community issues through large and small group discussions of photographs, or symbols in the case of the Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection method —— To enable dissemination of findings to policymakers

ACTIVITY 12.2 The following extract illustrates the execution of sharing circles and the Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection method as healing and decolonizing participatory action research methods. Read the extract, and answer the following questions:

cultural, and spiritual program. The instructor, of Cree ancestry, brought his Aboriginal teachings into the classroom.

1. What were the benefits to participants of the methods used?

Nine sharing circles with 16 people were carried out. The circles were scheduled at a convenient time for the participants, typically before or after a class. The smallest circle consisted of two people, and the largest had six. All circles included light snacks and beverages. I had prepared tobacco bundles prior to the sharing circles. . . . All 16 participants accepted the tobacco, including the non-Aboriginal participants.

2. How are the symbols and songs used in the study, and what is their role in personal transformation of the participants? 3. What is the extent of voice, participation, decolonization, and indigenization of the research study using the evaluation questions listed in this chapter? 4. Would you classify the approach as deficit-, damage-, desire-based or appreciationfocused inquiry? Source: Lavallée, L. F. (2009). Practical application of an indigenous framework and two qualitative indigenous research methods: Sharing circles and Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 8(1) 21–36. © 2009 Lavallée. Used by permission.

Introduction The research topic focused on the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual impacts of a physical activity program: a martial arts (tae kwon do) program offered to the Native Participants in this project were members of the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, an Aboriginal cultural and recreation centre. The martial arts program had been part of the Native Canadian Centre since 1999. The program was equally a social,

Conducting the Sharing Circles

Implementing Anishnaabe Symbol-Based Reflection At the end of the sharing circle, I introduced the second method: Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection. Doing this after the sharing circles allowed for examples to be used based on what was shared in the circles. I asked participants to think about a symbol or symbols that represented what and how they felt about the physical activity program and how it has influenced their lives, the lives of their families, and/or their community. I worked through some examples so that the participants could gain a deeper understanding of this method

Results Aboriginal culture and tradition were interwoven in the teaching of the martial arts. The following stories reflect this. (Continued)

286   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) I know that not all Native people are searching for their identity, but my life has been a lifelong journey of trying to understand who and what I am. This has caused problems for me. I understand now that the biggest problem was the sense of undeservingness I have. I don’t think of it as a lack of self-esteem. Coming here is opening my eyes that I am deserving. I am deserving of my black belt, I am deserving of having people care about me and not hurt me. My Medicine Wheel with the hawk—my clan—symbolizes my healing journey and the growing understanding I have of myself as Anishnaabe. Kwe—As a woman. My undeservingness as a woman—I’m understanding through our informal healing circles in the bathroom and the strength that I get when I walk through these doors that my undeservingness is a symptom that comes from our long

history and how we unlearned our ways to respect women. It comes from my Dad and his Dad and so on. . . and in turn the men I have selected because I’m comfortable with and expect to be treated unwell. So, my next symbol is The Strong Women’s Song. The song that I know has brought me helpers to unlearn this lack of deserving. (Hawk)

THE PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH PROCESS You have now learned about several research techniques that are used in indigenous participatory research approaches and how scholars have used some of the methods in their studies. I will discuss a recommended participatory action research approach that maximizes community involvement. The Trust for Community Outreach and Education (2001, p. 89) in South Africa has recommended five steps that can be followed to ensure maximum participation of communities in research projects as follows: 1. Selecting a shared community problem and planning for the action research 2. Culturally sensitive and context-relevant gathering of information guided by group reflection 3. Continuous collection of data through fieldwork 4. Community-informed analyzing and interpretation of data 5. Planning and taking action

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The PRA Field Handbook produced by Egerton University (2000, p. 14) in Kenya augments the above process by adding eight steps: 1. Site selection 2. Preliminary visits 3. Launching 4. Data gathering 5. Data synthesis and analysis 6. Preparation of community action plan (CAP) 7. Adoption of the CAP and strategies for its implementation 8. Participatory monitoring and evaluation Imagine that you wanted to engage a community in a process of collective inquiry that would empower them to make certain decisions about some aspects of their life, for example, health.

Preparation Your first step would be to decide on what shall make up a community and then to select a site. The next step is to select a person in the health field, for example, a health worker who is known to the community, to share with you the community culture and issues of concern and to introduce you to community leaders. At this initial stage, meetings should be devoted to building trust and rapport with the community. Once introduced, the researcher takes time to know the community by appearing in public gatherings, reading local literature, and participating in public events where permitted. This process should be followed by a meeting with community leaders with the intention to recruit some of them as research partners who should assist in selling the research idea to the community. The assembled team should be representative in terms of gender, ethnicity, ableness, and all other social categories intended to benefit from the research. Throughout the book, I have emphasized the importance of training the researched to be coresearchers in the inquiry. Once the research team is formed, members should be trained on goals, methods, and principles of change-focused research approaches such as appreciative inquiry (Ludema et al., 2006) and desire-based research approaches (Tuck, 2009). Training should be followed by defining the research questions and identifying issues of greatest importance to the community, keeping in mind that the research design and data-gathering techniques should be informed by change theories that move away from deficit- and damage-focused modes of inquiry to research guided by affirmative assumptions about the researched communities. A structure to guide decision making should also be discussed and agreed upon, for example, a consensus on the operational ethical principles. This should be followed by allocation of roles and responsibilities.

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Launching In the second stage, community leaders who are also part of the research team inform the whole community about the research idea through public meetings. The research should be as inclusive as possible, and thus the research project should reach all the segments of the community. It is important that the research team identify strategies for community mobilization that ensure maximum community participation. For instance, leaders of the various community organizations such as church leaders, youth organizations, women’s organizations, and so on may be requested to launch the research project in their organization. Members of the research team have to be present at all the community mobilization and launch ceremonies.

Data Collection Field data can be clustered into spatial, temporal, social, and technical data. It is important to use methods that ensure maximum participation of community members as well as maximum use of local knowledge and resources. Spatial Data.  Data collection starts with a map of what the community perceives to be its community space (Egerton University, 2000). With some training, community members use local materials such as sticks, stones, foliage, and so on to create landmarks identifying facilities, distribution of various resources, social set-ups, community constraints, strength in their community, and so on. This can be followed by transect walks and guided field walks where the researcher and community coresearchers conduct a walking tour through areas of interest to observe, to listen, to identify different zones or conditions, and to ask questions to identify problems and possible solutions. Roles are reversed; community coresearchers are the experts, and the researcher listens and learns as much as possible from them. Time-Related Data.  You have learned about the importance of a people’s history in the research process. Participatory action research recognizes the importance of recording significant events in the life of a community that may influence attitudes and behavior. PRA uses timelines to list and date major historical community events, past trends, events, disasters, tragedies, challenges, opportunities, and achievements. The timeline is created by holding discussions with groups of all ages and sectors of the community. The information can help the community to understand the underlying causes of its challenges, envision solutions based on past experiences, and focus on future actions and information requirements. Also included under time-related data are seasonal calendars and daily activity profiles. Seasonal calendars record monthly activities and highlight particular peak times in the community that may constrain, delay, or facilitate the implementation of a research project. For instance, it may not be ideal to start a community project that involves mothers during a harvesting period because most of them might be away in the fields. Daily activity profiles of men, women, youth, and elders give the research team data on the amount of time community members can devote to the project. Social Data.  Household interviews collect data about activities of each member of the household and household resources as well as a record of the household’s local folklore, songs, dance, and poetry that provide insight into values, history, practices,

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and beliefs of the community. Household histories or stories of community challenges and how they were resolved are recorded to provide insightful descriptions of characteristic problems and how they are dealt with. Intriguing practices and beliefs based on myth are also recorded. Practices that are unusual or do not fit into the conventional scientific thinking are explored for as long as they are meaningful to local people (Grenier, 1998). Technical Data.  Technical data may include survey data required to complement local data generated by the community. At this point, the researcher should reach a consensus with the coresearcher on the type of expert data needed to supplement community-produced data. As a researcher, you could still involve the community in village mapping, for instance, to determine the size of the population in the site of study.

Data Analysis Community members who were involved in the data collection should also participate in the analysis and interpretation of the findings and in identifying data-informed challenges and solutions in the community. In this way, the researcher is less likely to be criticized for limited insight or cultural insensitivity. An effective way to engage the community in the data analysis is to create thematic groups. Each group explores a theme using the available data; identifies the challenges, causes of problems, and opportunities; envisions and imagines other possibilities; and suggests solutions and plans for the future. The researcher facilitates group discussions and decision making by drawing the community’s attention to issues of sustainability, productivity, equitability, costs, technical feasibility, sociocultural acceptance, time scales, and human resources. Those involved in the data analysis should be encouraged to present their findings to the rest of the community. Presentation formats could include exhibition of diagrams, maps, charts, and photos of the research activity in public places or at selected community gatherings. Sharing information facilitates discussions and provides an additional cross-checking device, while exhibitions can inspire other community members to take part in research activities. Once the groups are through with the analysis, they can come together to prioritize the issues and agree on a community action plan. Participatory methods used in prioritizing issues could include wealth and well-being rankings and direct-matrix pair-wise ranking and scoring (Grenier, 1998). In wealth and well-being ranking, for example, people are asked to sort cards (or slips of paper) representing individuals or households from rich to poor or from sick to healthy. This technique can be used for cross-checking information and for initiating discussions on a specific topic, for example, poverty. The technique can also be used to produce a benchmark against which future development interventions can be measured or evaluated. With indirect-matrix pair-wise ranking and scoring, people rank and compare individuals, items, or resources using their own categories and criteria by raising hands or placing representative objects on a board. The Perkins et al. (1995) study discussed in Activity 12.1 illustrates some of the ranking procedures. Once completed, the community action plan should also be shared with the rest of the community using some of the PRA methods discussed in this chapter.

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Creating a Community Action Plan (CAP) The community action plan will show the goal of the research project, the objectives to be achieved, strategies to achieve the objectives, time frame, persons responsible, resources required, and a monitoring and evaluation framework.

Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation Once the research process is completed, the researcher’s role should be that of ensuring that tasks listed in the plan are completed on time, community members take up their roles and responsibilities, and a monitoring and evaluation framework is in operation. A final participatory phase is that of community involvement in the monitoring and evaluation of the activities in the CAP. Evaluation should be carried out by a team from within the community. Involving the community in the monitoring and evaluation process ensures that they continue to use local indigenous knowledge methods to track progress and actions related to the implementation of the CAP. It is good practice to form an evaluation committee made up of community members. The committee should agree on what formative evaluation methods are to be, how results will be reported to the community, when reports should be made, and how evaluation reports should be used. For instance, photovoice videos and films can be used to report on significant achievements as well as weaknesses that need to be addressed. The reports keep the community informed of their activities and enable the community to revise their implementation strategy before it is too late. Clearly, then, the PRA approach places the entire research process and implementation of the research findings in the hands of the community.

SUMMARY This chapter has discussed two types of participatory action research approaches: the participants as coresearchers-only focus and transformative participatory action research approaches that have been used with oppressed groups and postcolonial subjects. The PRA methodology was discussed as an action research approach that was developed to maximize participation of marginalized communities and oppressed groups and the colonized Other in general in the research process and in resolving challenges in their communities. The need was also noted to combine participatory action research methods that are problem focused with appreciative-inquiry and desire-focused approaches to facilitate healing and social transformation. The chapter emphasizes the need to change the mindset of the researcher and the researched.

Key Points ——

Action research aims at demystifying the research process so that it does not remain solely in the hands of experts.

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The key to action research is participation of the researched as coresearchers and the empowerment and social transformation of the colonized Other.

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Participatory action research approaches use a combination of methods to facilitate appreciative-inquiry and desirefocused approaches, leading to healing of the researched and a wider scope of representation for the voices of the dispossessed, disenfranchised colonized Other in the research process.

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Participatory action research approaches assume that the researched are best placed to identify and address their challenges and that their local indigenous knowledge can inform interventions to address community challenges.

ACTIVITY 12.3 Read the case study below, and answer the following questions: 1. How were the coresearchers selected? 2. How were decisions concerning the project made? 3. Who designed the project objectives and the research design? 4. Who designed the research instrument and collected and analyzed the data? 5. Who prepared the research report? 6. What were the benefits of the project to the community and to the coresearchers? 7. Assess the extent of participation, decolonization, and indigenization of the research study using the evaluation questions listed in this chapter. Source: Grenier, L. (1998). Working with indigenous knowledge: A guide for researchers. Ottawa, Canada: International Development Research Centre. Used by permission.

A Case Study From Ecuador IK research has often been carried out by outsiders for other outsiders, with the result that the content, language, and storage location of the data made the research findings inaccessible to the local communities. By way of contrast,

this Ecuadorian case study (Kothari, 1995) is an account of how local people compiled a book of their oral knowledge of medicinal plants. It took 10 months to complete the book (3 months to do the research; 7 months to prepare the book). An NGO representing 18 communities from the region provided administrative support. Following the presentation of the project objectives, the 18 communities were formally invited to participate in the project. Each community was asked to select two literate participants, one female and one male. The project coordinators (three NGO members, a locally respected healer, and the author) offered 10 USD per month to attract participants; the total budget was 2,000 USD. Six of the 18 communities expressed an interest, but initially the majority was unable to find a female participant. In some cases, the younger women’s parents or husbands worried about mixed-gender issues. Older women did not meet the literacy requirement, but they willingly participated once the literacy requirement was relaxed. Ultimately, the project team included the project coordinators and six men and six women from various villages. The coordinators developed a short, bilingual questionnaire to obtain the following information about the medicinal plants and their uses: symptoms and causes of illness, the corresponding plant remedy, a description of the plant and its habitat, its local name(s), the method for preparing and administrating the remedy, and the (Continued)

292   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) plant’s nonmedical uses. Other questions helped to identify the traditional healers. The coordinators trained the 12 participants to administer the questionnaire by pairing them up and asking them to interview and document one another’s knowledge of medicinal plants. This pretested and improved the wording of the questionnaire. Most important, it provided the participants with an opportunity to gain hands-on experience with an unfamiliar exercise, both as interviewers and interviewees. Following the training session, the participants selected the interviewees, usually from their own community, and completed the questionnaires in their preferred language. All the participants met once a week to discuss their experiences and to review the completed questionnaires. Important project decisions, such as addressing individual concerns, planning the direction of the project, dealing with financial matters, and setting a target number of

questionnaires to be completed per week, were made collectively. At the end of the interviewing phase, the budget was exhausted. Seven of the initial participants (five of them women) continued with the project. In the post interview phase, the collected information was sorted by plant species. If there was consensus on a particular plan remedy, the participants summarized the data. Remedies for which there was no consensus were laid aside for further investigation Kothari designed the book for the villagers. The information is presented in a structured but simple format, in both Spanish and the local language. The book presents the preparation and administration of each remedy in written and pictorial form. A drawing of the plant and its local name are also given. Four hundred copies of the book were presented to the participating communities. The intent is to have all proceeds from the sale of the book support related activities.

Suggested Readings Chambers, R. (1994). Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA): Challenges, potentials, and paradigm. World Development, 22(10), 1437–1454. Grenier, L. (1998). Working with indigenous knowledge: A guide for researchers. Ottawa, Canada: International Development Research Centre. Lavallée, L. F. (2009). Practical application of an indigenous framework and two qualitative indigenous research methods: Sharing circles and Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 8(1), 21–36. Ludema, D. J., Cooperrider, D. L., & Barrett, F. J. (2006). Appreciative inquiry: The power of the unconditional positive question. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research (pp.155–165). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Lunch, N., & Lunch, C. (2006). Insights into participatory video: A handbook for the field. Sevierville, TN: Insight. Michael, S. (2005). The promise of appreciative inquiry as an interview tool for field research. Development in Practice, 15(2), 222–230. Perkins, J. J., Sanson-Fisher, R. W., Girgis, A., & Blunden, S. (1995). The development of a new methodology to assess perceived needs among indigenous Australians. Social Science Medicine, 41(2), 267–275. RTI International. (2004). Community–based participatory research: Assessing the evidence (AHRQ Publication, No. 04-E022–2). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.

13 POSTCOLONIAL INDIGENOUS FEMINIST RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES Women in colonized spaces not only suffer the yoke of colonial oppression, but also endure the burden of two patriarchal systems imposed on them. Musa Dube (2000, p. 20)

If we fail to recognize the ways in which subjective factors such as race, class, and gender influence the construction of knowledge, we are unlikely to interrogate established knowledge which contributes to the oppression of marginalized and victimized groups. Patience Elabor–Idemudia (2002, p. 230)

Overview The chapter highlights attempts to decolonize Euro-Western methodologies from the perspective of non-Western marginalized feminisms. The argument is that women in non-Western societies have been marginalized and their voices distorted by Western patriarchies, third world patriarchies, colonialism, imperialism, and globalization, as well as by Western feminist theory and research. The chapter is devoted to defining postcolonial indigenous feminists’ methodologies; the worldviews, perspectives, and epistemologies that inform these methodologies; and research methods that privilege non-Western women. The chapter further describes healing research methods that have emerged from research with women as they encounter multiple

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oppressions and dominations. As much as possible, I use excerpts to illustrate what scholars say they do when they conduct research and write about what they call third world feminisms, African feminisms, Black feminisms, borderland-Mestizaje feminisms, or marginalized feminisms.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Distinguish between postcolonial indigenous feminist theory and Western feminist theory, as well as recognize the complementary nature of Western feminist theory and research perspectives to postcolonial indigenous feminist perspectives. 2. Understand some of the misconceptions in Western feminist theory and literature in relation to non-Western women in the third world and the African Diaspora and women in the First Nations. 3. Identify and describe postcolonial indigenous feminist epistemologies and methods that privilege non-Western women’s voices. 4. Describe healing methods used in research with women.

Before You Start Okwemba (2010), a journalist with the African Women and Child Feature Service in Kenya, reported studies showing that women who experience infertility, sadness, or anxiety after giving birth and those steeped in poverty are more vulnerable to depression. Couples, especially women, are under intense pressure from their partners and in-laws to give birth, and that blame falls squarely on the woman, even if the cause of infertility is the man. Some of the reports lead to statements such as “Depression has a feminine face in Africa,” and “HIV/AIDS has a feminine face in Africa.” What are your thoughts when you read such media reports? How does this impact the way research is carried out? What does this say about the way research findings are reported? Discuss how women’s experiences with patriarchy may vary from one context to another and how these variations can be factored into a feminist research methodology with a decolonization intent.

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INTRODUCTION Feminism is “a movement and a set of beliefs that problematizes gender inequality” (DeVault, 1999, p. 27). There are many feminisms, each distinguished according to its emphasis and aims. For instance, for African feminisms, the deconstruction of Western concepts, theories, categories of analysis, and knowledge production about Africa, Africans, and African women is a vital step toward producing knowledge that expresses the lived experiences of women. Feminism, nevertheless, expresses a concern with the neglect of women and the inevitable male bias in the structures of academic disciplines, the theoretical frameworks that inform research practices, the methodologies, the methods, the fieldwork, the analytical frameworks, and the reporting strategies. In this chapter, the emphasis is on how research is theorized and practiced from the perspective of nonWestern, marginalized feminisms.

POSTCOLONIAL INDIGENOUS FEMINIST THEORY AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES The term postcolonial indigenous feminist research methodologies is used here to refer to the process of critique, decolonization, and indigenization of Euro-Western methodologies and the theorizing of methodologies that are informed by the theoretical perspectives and the worldviews of third world feminisms, African feminisms, Black feminisms, borderland-Mestizaje feminisms, and all the marginalized non-Western feminisms. Shailaja Fennell (2009) has outlined four contested themes that come from a comparison of gender theory from Western Europe and America with those from locations within Africa and South Asia. The first theme is an argument by non-Western feminists for a deconstruction of universalization within gender theory. Scholars are, for instance, expressing their criticism about deficit theories of non-Western societies and omissions of their worldviews and the oral literatures that inform their frames of reference. There is, for instance, a discontent among non-Western feminists, who believe that some Western feminisms have used Western female-based structures of language, concepts, theories, models of reality, and worldviews as criteria against which experiences of all non-Western women and non-Western men can be known and written about. Fennell and Madeleine Arnot (2009) note that the result of universalized Western gender theory is that the diversity of experiences of girls and women in non-Western societies, their struggles, negotiations, and resistance to different forms of patriarchal oppression and domination, as well as imperial domination, are most likely to go unrecognized. A postcolonial indigenous feminist perspective moves out of the cage of universalized Western gender theory and employs postcolonial and indigenous perspectives to reveal local standpoints that express girls’ and women’s agency and resistance to oppression. The second theme centers on the denial by Western feminists of non-Western women’s power within indigenous relational worlds that celebrate motherhood, sisterhood, and friendship. In Africa, for example, a variety of African feminisms emphasize the

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296   Indigenous Research Methodologies Ngwana wa mosadi ga a wele mo isong.

A woman’s child does not fall into the fire due to exhaustion.

Ngwana wa mosadi ga a ke a bopama ka na aswa.

A woman’s child does not get lean or die from starvation.

Mosadi mooka o anya le mariga.

A woman will always provide even during difficult times.

Mmagwana ke yoo tswarang thipa kafa bogaleng.

A mother carries all the burdens of her children.

centrality of motherhood in African households and family organizations and the agency and power of mothers as the source of solidarity. Among the Tswana-speaking people in Botswana, the proverbs above (Chilisa, 2002) illustrate woman-centered, mothercentered feminism. The argument is that the Othering of motherhood and the denial of the importance of African relational gender roles have relegated African women to subject/victim and further concealed how girls and women have used these roles as sites for resistance and sources of empowerment. These perspectives demonstrate the continued need for marginalized feminisms to theorize gender analysis from the perspectives, worldviews, and lived experiences of non-Western women. The third theme is how non-Western feminists and postcolonial indigenous feminists have used poststructural deconstruction methods to voice their discontent with the hegemonic intellectual apparatus. These writers have reworked the underlying concepts of structure and agency to privilege both contextual and indigenous meanings. Patricia Hill Collins (2000), writing about black feminism, argues that knowledge is socially situated because it is based on experiences and different situations. This approach is supported by African feminists, who argue that oppressed groups can learn to identify distinct opportunities to turn their condition of marginalization into a source of critical insight about how the dominant society thinks and is constructed. Carole McCann and Seung-Kyung Kim (2003) also observe that this self-reflection and self-actualization have the potential to develop a feminist theory of knowledge that delineates a method for constructing effective knowledge from the insights of women’s experiences. The last theme is how African and Asian feminists and other non-Western feminists aim to move gender research toward postcolonial and indigenous approaches and how they construct knowledge derived from the experiences of girls and women in their specific locations and histories. Non-Western feminisms call for the critique, decolonization, and indigenization of Euro-Western methodologies as well as the literature and theory about the Other. They propose and describe ways to read literature, employ theory, and conduct research while resisting all forms of patriarchal and imperial oppression (Dube, 2000). They also urge scholars to “find and highlight theory and theorizing in spaces perhaps not deemed theoretical from a Western academic perspective” (Saavedra & Nymark, 2008, p. 258); to employ theoretical frameworks that are eclectic and combine theories and techniques from disparate disciplines and paradigms to construct their own paradigms (Sandoval, 2000); and to demonstrate “what indigenous cultures can offer in terms of

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concrete ways to read/re-read our current situations in the world” (Dillard 2008, p. 278). Catherine Marshall and Michelle Young (2006) argue that we must view gender research as a revolution and that methodology used to investigate gender issues must involve “assertive question shifting, redefinition of issues, sharp attention to the power of dominant values, and vigilant monitoring of how questions are asked and how research is used” (p. 65). The following are the aims of research in the context of postcolonial indigenous feminist frameworks: 1. Address “the complex matrix of power generated by a patriarchal, colonialist Eurocentrism that attempted to eliminate all remnants of cultures that were multifocal or egalitarian; or that represented a challenge to European male power” not usually addressed (Cannella & Manuelito, 2008, p. 48). For instance, Ifi Amadiume (1989), in her book Male Daughters, Female Husbands, shows how patriarchal tendencies introduced by colonialism changed a somewhat flexible gender system that did not totally marginalize women into a more entrenched patriarchal system that is still evident today. 2. Challenge the Western feminist construction of universal female experiences, replacing it with the recognition of “specifically situated women” located within varying complex systems of power. The argument is that Western feminisms have used Western women’s experiences as the norm and basis for the construction, analysis, and evaluation of the Other non-Western women’s experiences. This Othering of non-Western women has resulted in the creation of stereotypes and images that portray non-Western women as oppressed, uneducated, and passive. For instance, there is a tendency to portray Muslim women as oppressed and to use their veil-wearing as a measure of their oppression (Mohanty, 1991) or to use the practice of clitorectomy in third world countries as a symbol of oppression. Consequently, it is argued that Western feminist theories impose their goals and aspirations on non-Western women and advocate for the eradication of all cultural practices that are oppressive from the standpoint of Western culture. Postcolonial indigenous feminist research requires researchers to bring into the research framework issues of class, ethnicity, and agency of non-Western women and to recognize that the expressions and experiences of patriarchy vary from one context to another (Lunden, 2006). 3. Challenge researchers to identify with the colonized and historically oppressed peoples of the world and women and to design and adopt research methodologies that reject essentializing but instead engage in intersectional analyses of all forms of erasure, domination, and exclusion. Collins’s (2000) matrix of domination is an example of methodologies that engage in intersectional analyses of all forms of domination and exclusion. 4. Challenge researchers to theorize research methods, analysis frameworks, and reporting strategies from bottom up, using the experiences of women and the diversity of indigenous knowledge systems and epistemological standpoints of women. The endarkened feminist epistemology and healing methodologies

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(Dillard, 2008) are examples of research perspectives that emerge from the indigenous knowledge, wisdom, and experiences of research participants. 5. Reject simplistic and dualistic research endeavors and appropriately renegotiate and reconcile Western feminisms and non-Western feminisms to create coalitions of knowledge systems, hybridity, alliances of worldviews (Cannella & Manuelito, 2008), and transformative methods that build bridges across theories, disciplines, paradigms, and strategies for globalizing resistance from bottom up. This chapter presents borderland-Mestizaje feminism as an example of a framework that enables researchers to use what they need in order to be heard and understood (Saavedra & Nymark, 2008). 6. Challenge researchers to be radical activists who involve women and marginalized peoples in participatory transformative action research and who challenge the Eurocentric error that assumes that only “scientists have the ‘right’ (and ability) to intellectually know, interpret, and represent others” (Cannella & Manuelito, 2008, p. 49). Researchers can use the following questions to assess the extent to which a postcolonial indigenous feminist perspective is present in the research studies they read or plan to conduct: —— Do the literature, theory, and research methods expose and show non-Western women’s resistance to the multiple patriarchal systems that oppress women, to Western feminist theory that marginalizes non-Western women, and to imperialism and imperializing literatures? What alternative theory, literature, and research methodologies are proposed? —— Does this research demonstrate a genuine search for alternative research methodologies that promote interdependence between worldviews, knowledge systems, nations, races, ethnicities, and gender and sexual orientations? How does it achieve this objective? —— How does this research employ indigenous knowledge and literature to reject empire and envision alternative methodologies that rename the experiences of non-Western women from their standpoint, namely, the standpoint theory? How does it envision other ways of representing voices of women and other oppressed groups in research reports? —— Is the research action-oriented and values-oriented? To fully understand how you can evaluate the dominance of Euro-Western methodologies and Western feminist theory in research on non-Western women and how you can translate the perspectives of postcolonial indigenous feminists into your own research work, it is important to gain a basic understanding of feminist theory, Western feminisms, and how they evolved. I will highlight the generic meaning of feminist theory and how feminists problematize theory and the meaning of Western feminisms.

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Jane Flax (1993) discusses the purpose of feminist theory: 1. To understand the power differential between men and women; how it came into being; what maintains it and how the power relations between men and women affect other power relations—for instance, race, ethnicity, class, ableness; and how patriarchy reinforces other oppressive power structures 2. To understand women’s oppression, how it evolved, how it changes over time, how it is related to other forms of oppression; and finally, how to change the oppression of women But then, what is theory? Should women theorize? What are the implications if women do not theorize? Alison Jaggar and Paula Rothenberg (1993) note, A theory, in the broadest sense of the word offers a general account of how a range of phenomena are systematically interconnected by placing individual items in a larger context; it increases our understanding of the whole and the parts constituting that whole. Because people always want to make sense of their worlds, for the sake of intellectual satisfaction as well as practical control, every human society develops theories designed to organize reality in ways that make it intelligible. (p. 75) While it may appear that theories are necessary for understanding and critiquing research methods that are oppressive to women, they have also been discredited by some feminists who charge theory itself with being “elitist,” “totalizing,” “arrogant,” and even “terroristic” and privileging the realities of a few (Jaggar & Rothenberg, 1993, p. 76). Feminist liberal, radical Marxist, socialist, and postmodernist theories, for example, have been seen to originate in the West and to be associated with white middle-class women. These theories also mark the differences in Western feminisms. The views on the place of theory in women’s work are varied. Arguing for theory, Flax (1993) maintains that for women to reject theory in their work is “to internalize the cultural prescription that women are unable to think abstractly” (p. 80). Women thus need to engage in theory to remedy the biases, omissions, and marginalization that come with male-oriented social science theory and to chart ways to end the subordination and oppression of women. Others (Saavedra & Nymark, 2008) propose a bottom-up approach to theorizing as a project that is “immediately active,’’ allowing researchers to build “theory from the lives of ordinary women and from spaces unimagined in mainstream theorizing” (Dillard, 2008, p. 278). Postcolonial indigenous feminist theorizing on feminisms arises from the worldviews and lived experiences of non-Western women. Thus, we have African feminisms theorizing the experiences of women of African descent or borderland-Mestizaje feminisms theorizing from the perspectives of, for example, Chicana women. Western and non-Western feminisms are discussed to illustrate the differences and similarities in these feminisms.

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WESTERN FEMINISMS According to Chandra Mohanty (1991), all Western feminist theories take the West as the norm. Drawing from J. Gaby Weiner (1995), feminisms that arise from these theories can be summarized as follows:

Liberal (or Bourgeois or Individualistic) Feminism Liberal feminism focuses on the subordination of women through unequal opportunities that are institutionalized through the legal, political, social, and economic structures. The various versions of liberal feminism insist that women’s opportunities should be equal to men’s. The quest for equal opportunities for women and men have led to the development of gender planning and analysis tools that require policymakers and researchers to assess whether different roles and needs of women are equally represented in any given development activity. Most research sponsors today insist that women and other marginalized groups are included in a research study and that research findings are disaggregated by gender. Donna Mertens (2009) critiques a variety of gender analysis frameworks that are used in international development studies for sensitivity to cultural and contextual factors that define the lived experiences of women. She concludes that “simply adding gender as a variable to the inquiry without considering the cultural and contextual factors that surround gender does not yield transformative potential that is required” (p. 254) for marginalized groups. Most non-Western feminisms, for instance, emphasize the interdependence between men and women, noting that men are their partners in the struggle against oppression. There is, thus, a continued need for marginalized feminisms to theorize gender analysis from the perspectives, worldviews, and lived experiences of non-Western women.

Radical Feminism Radical feminism focuses on the equal but different biological and psychological characteristics of men and women and insists that, although men and women are different, their characteristics have equal value. Radical feminists insist, for example, that the nurturing, intuition, and caring attributes of women should find space in knowledge production as much as the supposedly objective-oriented and abstract thinking of men. In social science research, for example, feminists have advanced care-based research ethics as an alternative to the duty ethics principles, with their emphasis on research driven by universal principles, and the utilitarian ethics of consequences, which prioritizes the goodness of research outcomes (Edwards & Mauthner, 2002). Postcolonial indigenous feminists complement the ethics of care principle by recognizing a relational ethical framework where the researcher is a transformative healer actively involved in healing, building communities, and promoting harmony.

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The Marxist Socialist Feminist Theory Socialist feminist theory uses Marxist concepts of production, capitalism, class, race, ethnicity, and disability to explain women’s marginalization and oppression. Socialist feminisms give researchers a framework to understand how different groups of women have different experiences that are affected by oppression rooted in class, race, ethnicity, or disability. Postcolonial indigenous feminist research emphasizes the contextual and cultural complexity in which women are situated and how these intersect with class, race, ethnicity, age, or ableness and with colonialism and imperialism to produce different forms of oppression.

POSTCOLONIAL INDIGENOUS FEMINISMS What is clear, therefore, is that postcolonial indigenous feminist theories do not necessarily reject Western feminist theories but appropriate them to critique all forms of patriarchal oppressions and, in addition, critique Western feminisms for marginalizing the voices of non-Western women. The excerpt in Activity 13.1 illustrates research that resists Western feminist theory and literature that portray non-Western women as lacking agency. It shows the shortcomings of Western feminist theory as the universal point of reference in researching women’s experiences.

ACTIVITY 13.1 Read the study extract included here, and answer the following questions: 1. What features of Lunden’s thesis make it postcolonial indigenous feminist research? 2. Review the role of postcolonial theory in research discussed in Chapter 3, and discuss its application to indigenous feminist research in this excerpt. Source: Lunden, E. (2006). Postcolonial theory challenging mainstream feminist perspectives. Lund, Sweden: Lund University, Department of Political Science. Used by permission.

Postcolonial theory challenging mainstream feminist perspectives statement of purpose Lunden (2006) discussed how the concept of empowerment could be understood within Western mainstream feminist theory and postcolonial/

postmodern feminist theory. The aim was to challenge the mainstream feminist view of empowerment, which is hegemonic within the discourse of development. Lunden wanted to show that many assumptions made by Western mainstream feminist theory are not always universally true but that there are other ways of thinking about women and empowerment. The intention was more about contrasting the perspectives, rather than determining which understanding of empowerment is better.

Research Questions How does Western mainstream feminist theory conceptualize the third world woman? How does postcolonial feminist theory conceptualize the third world woman? (Continued)

302   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) How can empowerment be conceptualized from a Western mainstream feminist perspective? How can empowerment be conceptualized from a postcolonial feminist perspective? To what extent do the strategies used by the Garmeen Bank and SEWA to empower poor women reflect a Western mainstream feminist view of empowerment?

Conclusion It was concluded that the theoretical discussion revealed that the different feminist approaches understand the third world woman in very different ways, or at least focus on different aspects. Mainstream feminism highlights the oppression of women by their husbands and by patriarchal structures, while postcolonial and postmodern feminists put emphasis on third world women’s ability to organize and to act in their own interests. It was also concluded that mainstream feminism tends to see economic advancement and development as the principal solution to women’s subordination while postcolonial/postmodern perspectives require the poor women to decide what empowerment should entail. In what follows, perspectives and worldviews on research methodologies from borderland-Mestizaje feminisms and Chicana feminist epistemologies, as well as African feminisms and endarkened feminist epistemology, are

presented as examples of a growing distinctive body of literature about research practice and epistemologies emanating from non-Western feminisms. You are encouraged to identify other non-Western feminisms and the epistemologies, worldviews, and research practices emanating from those feminisms. You will recognize ideas that were also discussed in previous chapters, such as self-determination in research, relational ways of existence and knowing, and the role of an activist researcher, participatory-transformative research methods, and healing participatory action research methods. This is because postcolonial indigenous feminist methodologies have a particular resonance with postcolonial indigenous research methodologies as they both challenge dominant Western methodologies and interrogate the role of colonialism and imperialism in the construction of knowledge. Postcolonial indigenous feminist research, in addition, seeks to make visible non-Western women’s resistance to the multiple patriarchal systems that oppress women, to rename the experiences of non-Western women from their standpoints, and to envision other ways of representing voices of women and other oppressed groups in research. Feminist research in postcolonial contexts is more sensitive to the inclusion of gender, age, class, race, ethnicity, and disability in the research process and it takes a stand on behalf of building coalitions of knowledge systems.

Borderland-Mestizaje Feminism Borderland-Mestizaje feminism is a hybrid and multidimensional mode of thinking that emerges from the work of scholars who center Chicana feminist perspectives and cultural practices in their inquiries, examinations, and analyses. It is “a tool, methodology, and an epistemology” (Saavedra & Nymark, 2008, p. 257). As a tool, Ellen Demas and Cynthia Saavedra (2004) note, “La mestiza deconstructs oppressive colonizing traditions and constructs new metaphors; she unlearns patriarchal assumptions and engages in a transnational feminist struggle; she interprets history

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and writes new myths; she tears down category and invites ambiguity” (p. 218). This method “entails grappling with multiple epistemologies and rejecting binary, simplistic, and deterministic ways of theorizing and researching” (Saavedra & Nymark, 2008, p. 257). Borderland-Mestizaje feminism “resist[s] the symbolic barriers that divide communities along race, class, gender, and sexual orientation lines, academic disciplines, political ideologies and organizational structures” (Elenes, 2005, p. 1). It seeks transformation for all whose voices have been silenced and “for those bodies that have been policed, regulated and medicalized” (Saavedra & Nymark, 2008, p. 256). It seeks to highlight methodologies and methods of postcolonial indigenous societies that have been suppressed by dominant epistemologies. Borderland-Mestizaje feminism is an example of third-space methodologies. It theorizes a mosaic, rhizomatic, and integrative framework for synthesizing postcolonial indigenous methods, Western methodologies, and emergent methods and methodologies. A mosaic approach implies collecting, analyzing, and interpreting many pieces of data that voice people’s experiences, ways of knowing, and worldviews in ways that are inclusive of all knowledge systems and that value diversity and promote democracy and self-determination for all. A rhizomatic approach implies a way of viewing knowledge as dynamic, heterogeneous, and nondichotomous and thus is an approach that views postcolonial indigenous research methodologies as legitimate. Multiple Epistemologies An important characteristic of borderland-Mestizaje feminism is that it engages with multiple epistemologies. One of the most widely documented is the Chicana feminist epistemology, which Dolores Delgado Bernal (1998) describes as follows: A Chicana feminist epistemology must be concerned with the knowledge about Chicana—about who generates an understanding of their experiences, and how this knowledge is legitimized, or not legitimized. It questions objectivity, a universal foundation of knowledge, and the Western dichotomies of mind versus body; subject versus object; objective truth versus subjective emotion; and male versus female. In this sense, a Chicana feminist epistemology maintains connections to indigenous roots by embracing dualities that are necessary and complementary qualities and by challenging dichotomies that offer opposition without reconciliation. This notion of duality is connected to Leslie Marmon Silko’s (1996) traditional Native American way of life: “In this universe, there is no absolute bad; there are only balances and harmonies that ebb and flow.” (p. 64) Four sources of cultural intuition are the foundation of a Chicana feminist epistemology: one’s personal experience, the existing literature, one’s professional experience, and the analytical research process. Personal Experience. Derived from the background that the researcher brings to the study, personal experience is shaped by family values and identities and

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knowledge of the community that is passed from generation to generation through oral traditions. Existing Literature.  This consists of technical literature on a topic, such as theoretical or philosophical writings, and nontechnical literature, which includes biographies, public documents, person documents, and cultural studies writings. Professional Experience.  This refers to cultural intuition that comes through long experience of working in a particular field or on a topic. Analytical Research Process.  Delgado Bernal (1998) suggests including Chicana participants in an interactive data analysis as a strategy that contributes to the researcher’s cultural intuition. This is in addition to making comparisons, asking additional questions, thinking about what one is hearing and seeing, sorting data, developing a coding scheme, developing themes, and engaging in concept formation.

ACTIVITY 13.2 The following extract illustrates Delgado Bernal’s application of the Chicana feminist epistemology to educational research. Read it, and do as follows: 1. List all the methods used in the article, and suggest additional indigenous methods that you might use. 2. Delgado Bernal notes, “In the future, we must look for additional strategies that provide opportunities for Chicanas and are dedicated to achieving social justice.” What are some of the indigenous focus group methods dedicated to achieving social justice discussed in this book? 3. Discuss the use of multiple methods and multiple theoretical perspectives in nonWestern feminist research. Source: Adapted from Delgado Bernal, D. (1998). Using a Chicana feminist epistemology in educational research. Harvard Educational Review, 68(4), 555–582. Copyright © by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. For more information, please visit www.harvard educationalreview.org.

Introduction My historical-sociological case study, informed by my own achieved cultural intuition and a Chicana feminist epistemology, posed the following research question: How does pivoting the analysis onto key Chicana participants provide an alternative history of the 1968 Blowouts? This research question itself is distinctively Chicana, especially when compared to previous research that has examined the Blowouts. Chicano and White males have studied the event from a perspective of protest politics (Puckett, 1971); a spontaneous mass protest (Negrete, 1972); internal colonialism (Munoz, 193); the Chicano student movement (Gomez-Quinones, 1978); and a political and social development of the wider Chicano movement (Rosen, 1973). Indeed, none of their historical accounts locate Chicanas in a central position in the research or address the many factors that restricted or enabled Chicana students to participate. My study, in contrast, examined how women interpret their participation in the Blowouts nearly thirty years later, and

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how their participation is important to an understanding of transformational resistance, grassroots leadership, and an alternative history of the Blowouts (Delgado Bernal, 1997, 1998).

Methodology To gain new perspectives and interpretations of the 1968 Blowouts and Chicana school resistance, my primary methods of data collection were in-depth, semi-structured oral history interviews, with eight key female participants from the Blowouts, a twohour semi-structured focus group interview, and phone interview. Following a network sampling procedure (Gandara, 1995), I interviewed eight women who were identified by other female participants or resource individuals as “key participants” or “leaders” in the Blowouts. In scheduling these interviews, I allowed ample time, realizing that the length of each interview would vary. The interviews took place when and where it was most convenient for each woman—in their homes, their mother’s home, or at work. I created an interview protocol with open ended questions in order to elicit multiple levels of data that would address my research questions. Though the interview protocol was used as a guide, I realized that as the women spoke of very personal experiences, a less-structured approach allowed their voices and ways of knowing to come forth. I also asked probing questions to follow up on responses that were unclear or possibly incomplete in order to understand how the women interpreted the reasons and ways in which they participated in the Blowouts.

Data Analysis After conducting individual oral history interviews, I corresponded with each woman twice. The first time I sent a complete copy of the interview transcript with a letter describing their role in the analysis of the data. I now realize that the focus group process seemed natural to me, partially because of the cultural intuition I brought to the research project. I was used to my grandmother’s storytelling in which absolute

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“Truth” was less important to me than hearing and recording their life experiences. It was my familiarity with, and respect for ancestral wisdom taught from one generation to the next, and a regard for collective knowledge that allowed me to approach the research project with complete respect for each woman’s testimony of school resistance. Indeed, the women shared their community knowledge through a form of storytelling in which all the women talked about their resistance by invoking stories about their families, quoting their parents, and mentioning where their parents were born. To make a point about democratic ideals and their right to question authority, Rosalinda contrasted her upbringing and socialization with that of her mother’s generation earlier.

Conclusion How educational research is conducted significantly contributes to what and whose history, community, and knowledge is legitimated. A Chicana feminist epistemology addresses the failure of traditional research paradigms that have distorted or omitted the history and knowledge of Chicanas. Though similar endarkened feminist epistemologies exist in specific segments of women’s studies and ethnic studies, acknowledging a Chicana feminist epistemology in educational research is virtually unprecedented. And yet, a disproportionate number of all Chicana and Chicano Ph.D.s receive their doctoral degrees in the field of education. Without an articulated Chicana epistemology or an acknowledgment of cultural intuition within the field of education, these scholars are restricted by cultural hegemonicdomination in educational research. A Chicana feminist epistemology gives Chicana and Chicano education scholars some freedom to interpret their research findings outside of existing paradigms and hopefully develop and propose policies and practices that better meet the needs of Chicanas and Chicanos. A major tenet of cultural intuition and a Chicana feminist epistemology is the inclusion of Chicana research participants in the analysis of data. This allows Chicana participants—whether they are (Continued)

306   Indigenous Research Methodologies (Continued) students, parents, teachers, or school admini­ strators—to be speaking subjects who take part in producing and validating knowledge. A focus group interview is one data collection strategy that helps Chicana scholars and non-Chicana scholars include the epistemology of their research participants in the analysis of data. The example I provide in this article demonstrates how focus groups can be paired with an oral history methodology to include Chicana participants in the interpretation of data. In addition, it seems that focus groups can be effectively used with other qualitative and

quantitative research methods and methodologies, such as school ethnography, student interviews, survey research, and classroom observations. In the future, we must look for additional strategies that provide opportunities for Chicanas and are dedicated to achieving social justice. Hopefully, “an analysis of the Chicana/o experience can assist us in forging a new epistemological approach to academic life and can help us uncover a methodology that is true to and helpful in the struggle of these people as it ‘creates’ a new knowledge base” (Pizarro, 1998, p. 72).

African Feminisms and Black Feminisms Mekgwe (2003) defines African feminism as a discourse that takes care to delineate those concerns that are peculiar to the African situation. It also questions features of traditional African cultures without denigrating them, with the understanding that these might be viewed differently by the different classes of women. (p. 7) The following principles guide African feminisms and inform African feminist research practice: Contextual and Cultural Complexity. African feminisms critique and reject dominant narratives that generalize, homogenize, and essentialize the conditions of African women, men, and children; instead, it seeks awareness of specific contexts, cultures, and peoples. Such an approach requires describing particular national or regional trends, while simultaneously raising awareness of contextual variations within broader trends. Some African feminists, for instance, prefer the term womanism, arguing that the term feminism is associated with Western ideologies. From this womanism perspective arose the term Africana womanism to describe the particular experiences of people of African origin, both diasporic and indigenous. I have noted that African feminisms, in contrast to other feminisms, emphasize the centrality of motherhood in African households and family organizations and the agency and power of mothers as the source of solidarity. Comprehensiveness.  This principle of African feminism emphasizes the interrelationships, interconnectedness, and interdependence between women, men, and children and between the living and the nonliving. Research and theorizing rely on understanding the complex and comprehensive parameters of the women’s lives. Unlike Western feminism, for example, African feminisms recognize men as partners in the struggle against gender

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oppression. This desire not to separate women’s issues from the male struggle is a significant departure from Western feminism, where male gender power relations are central to the feminist position (Reed, 2001). Self-determination and Liberation.  This principle emphasizes the power and agency of Africans and African women in particular to theorize from their cultures and lived experiences, to produce knowledge that is contextually relevant, and to build relationships and heal the self, the community, and the larger sociocultural context. Africana womanism, for instance, claims that the solutions to gender inequality should be found in African philosophy. Explaining the Africana womanism position, Pamela Hudson-Wees (cited in Reed, 2001) notes, “Essentially, the Africana womanism position is that the framework for a world free of oppression already exists within traditional African philosophical worldview, if only the Africana woman will claim it” (p. 175). The philosophical worldview of the Bantu of southern Africa is that a being is because of others. “I am we; I am because we are; we are because I am”; a person is through others. Refer back to Chapter 5. It was also noted there that existence-inrelation and being-for-self-and-others sum up the African conception of life and reality. Black feminists share similar views about relational existence. For example, in writing about African American women’s collective voice experiences, Collins (2000) states, “The voice that I know is both individual and collective, personal and political, reflecting the intersection of my unique biography within the larger meaning of my historical times” (p. vi). Along similar lines, Cynthia Dillard (2008) describes an endarkened feminist epistemology that she argues is informed by African philosophical worldviews. An endarkened feminist epistemology describes how reality is known when based in the historical roots of Black feminist thought, embodying a distinguishable difference in cultural standpoint located in the intersection/overlap of the culturally constructed socializations of race, gender and other identities; and the historical and contemporary contexts of oppressions and resistance of African ascendant women. (p. 280) The emphasis is on disrupting the Euro-Western research paradigm, theorizing research from the lives of women and indigenous knowledge, and engaging in a transformative research process where the researcher is a supportive and reflective activist in the community. An endarkened feminist epistemology is guided by three key concepts that emerge from an African-based cosmology: spirituality, community, and praxis. Spirituality. Dillard (2008) notes, no matter where they reside, spirituality is “the very essence” of African people. “It is a kind of cosmological spirituality that holds central the notion that all life is sacred and the moral virtue of individuals and that of the community is the same” (p. 278). Community. An endarkened feminist epistemology emphasizes connectedness with the community through relations, language, and cultural ways of celebrating identities, including rituals to honor the living and the nonliving.

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In this context, research should become a participatory activity that involves the community and serves the ideals of the community. Praxis. This principle emphasizes action-oriented research that serves the needs of the community. In the context of an endarkened feminist epistemology, the thoughts and actions of researchers should be informed by an African worldview. The assumptions and key concepts in the endarkened feminist epistemology give rise to a healing methodology, which Dillard (2008) defines as follows: Healing methodology is both a verb and a noun. Healing is as healing does. As a noun, healing methodology [includes] the indigenous practices/pedagogies that explicitly engage and enact the cultural knowledge, historical and traditional wisdom, politics, and ever-present spiritualities of Africa and her diaspora. It is a “dynamic spirituality that does not allow for fixed or definite theory that can be applied at all times and in all places” (Gutierrez, 2003, p. xii), but it is a form of struggle against domination and is “consistent with the profound indigenous pedagogical tradition of excellence in the history of African people” (King, 2005a, p. 15). Healing methodology as spirituality, then, is deeply rooted in the Creator’s presence within history and within the lives of African ascendant people. (p. 286) Spirituality and transformation are central to healing methodologies and require centering methods in unconditional love, compassion, reciprocity, ritual, and gratitude. Dillard (2008) describes these five principles. Love entails an effort “to engage love as the experience that creates more reciprocal and thus more just sites of inquiry” (p. 287). It also includes carefully seeking understanding of the needs, aspirations, and sufferings of community members as people that the researcher loves. Embracing compassion as a methodology suggests that researchers can help communities to relieve their suffering through the process of activist research without being crushed by the weight of suffering. Seeking reciprocity refers to a researcher’s intention and capacity to see human beings as equal. That requires shedding all discrimination and prejudice and removing all boundaries between the researcher and the researched. Ritual becomes part of the research process. African life experiences embrace the need to appreciate the web of connections and relations that people have with each other, with the environment, with the land, and with nature. The research process should accommodate rituals that enable the researched to recognize, renew, and sustain their relationships with each other and with nature,

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the environment, the living, and the ancestral spirits. Talking circles methods— for example, the use of magic wooden spoons and baskets in focus groups interviews—demonstrate the application of rituals in indigenous research. Gratitude involves the need to be thankful for the work of research as spiritual methodology and as a healing process for researchers and others. Engaging in the methodologies in the spirit of gratitude responds to the researcher’s need to “remember to put back together the fragments of cultural knowledge of Africa and her Diaspora in ways that give thanks for all who have witnessed and worked on behalf of the humanity of Black people; and the inclusion of our wisdom in the world’s grand narrative” (Dillard, 2008, p. 289). African feminisms, Africana womanisms, black feminisms, and Dillard’s endarkened epistemology share similarities with African perspectives on relational indigenous methodologies, which were discussed in Chapter 5 in this context: —— A relational existence where the emphasis is on an “I am because we are” principle that encourages respect and honoring of all members of the human community as part of the research act —— An I/we connection as a relational existence that is spiritual and promotes love and harmony —— A relational way of knowing where the researched are knowers, and knowledge has a connection with the knowers —— A relational ethical framework where the researcher is a transformative healer actively involved in healing, building communities, and promoting harmony

Healing Methodologies A common thread that cuts across African feminisms and Dillard’s endarkened feminist epistemology is the emphasis on healing methods as necessary research tools for life-enriching and transformative experiences, as well as the spiritual growth of women suffering multiple oppression and domination and of researchers as well. To be a reflective activist, a postcolonial indigenous feminist researcher must listen with compassion and love to women and make visible the healing methods that women employ when they communicate their life experiences. In many instances, the research topic may trigger painful memories for participants. Research on gender violence or research in postconflict settings, for instance, often triggers memories of pain, suffering, and even anxiety. An activist researcher, it was noted in Chapter 12, aims at engaging in participatory action research that brings about change: both personal and social transformation. Carrying out research in settings where there is conflict or war and work on gender violence, for instance, requires participatory methods that bring about change, personal and social transformation, and healing for individuals and communities.

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I highlight participatory healing methods that are built on African feminisms of relationships and interconnectedness, showing how these methods can heal, encourage innovative thinking about the world, and assist participants in envisioning strategies that bring about personal and social transformation. As already noted, African approaches to epistemology are characterized by understanding of interconnectedness, the relationship and interdependence captured in the concept of Ubuntu, which recognizes that individual identity is possible only in community with others and nature. “I am because you are.” Without a relationship with the other, and without reference to the other, the individual cannot be. One cannot have a sense of “me” without a sense of “we.” Methods from a feminist and African perspective include interactive small-group work, role-plays, art-based methodologies, body sculpture, song, and storytelling. The methods can also draw from cultural practices such as drum circles and rituals. During the sharing of life experiences, for instance, women may engage in rituals using stones, which they bring to the circle, place in a basket, encircle, and retrieve when they tell a story of their life experiences. These stones become symbols of shared knowledge that can be built on for collective understanding. During sharing, stories are not debated, nor are interpretations argued. Participants listen without framing a counterresponse in their minds while stories are told, looking for patterns and threads. There is no attempt to arrive at a correct answer. Rather, all stories are considered to carry a part of the solution or truth. One method for understanding the nature of conflict, its impact on people, and ways to heal from conflict is writing down the conflict issues and their personal effects on a sheet of paper. The sheet of paper is then torn into pieces and used to build a vessel. This vessel carrying one’s pain is exchanged. The vessel is a reminder of each other’s pain and makes one mindful of one’s actions toward others. The vessel creates the impetus for generating options that take the other into account (Lazarus, 2000). The bowl of pain becomes a vessel that demonstrates the ability to transform individual and community lives into creative and positive living. The methods move the research from damagefocused research to appreciative and desire-focused inquiries. Such methods make it difficult for retribution and revenge to become entrenched but instead allow healing to take place and balance to be created. Some examples of how knowledge can be accessed through rituals are discussed in the next section.

INDIGENOUS FEMINIST PARTICIPATORY METHODS IN PRACTICE In Chapter 11, it was noted that rituals and sacred objects can be used in research to express equality among participants and their connection to each other and to the living and the nonliving; it can also be a way of appreciating the collective construction of knowledge. Here are some examples of how women are resisting conventional methods of communicating their life experiences and giving preference to indigenous methods that are participatory, make use of objects, and show love and respect to all the participants through rituals. In unpublished research notes from a case study on female leadership and

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empowerment in Botswana, Gabo Ntseane (2009) describes the researched women’s use of utensils and the meanings attached to their use. Focus Group and the Use of a Magic Wooden Spoon In one of the focus group discussions, the women insisted that they use a wooden spoon to guide the discussions instead of a focus group moderator. The focus group started with one of the women saying: “To ensure that we all contribute let us use this magic stick to help process our thoughts and contribute when it is appropriate.” The researcher was also requested to be part of the focus group because as one put it, “As a woman like us, you also have to share the wisdom that you have. The spoon says you have to eat something (no matter how small) from the same pot with us but also put in something even if it is just one firewood or a drop of water. Everyone is capable of doing something, thus the spoon has to go round and not skip anybody.” The use of a spoon symbolizes collective decision making (i.e., the idea that no one person can know it all, but several scoops of wisdom from other members help shape and refine an idea to make it a useful decision). The Use of a Basket In another focus group, a woman suggested that the host put a basket in the middle of the focus group. Asked what the role of the basket was, this is how one responded: “When women commit to coming together, it is because they want to collect something that will contribute to the welfare of their children or community. We see your study as giving you, us, and the other women in the other three countries participating in the study [the will] to contribute to a bigger purpose.” The basket represents a “vision or goal”; thus, to successfully implement the goal each individual’s contribution and participation is required. Having the basket in the middle of the focus group is a reminder and motivation for contribution. In fact, this is how one respondent kept using the basket to encourage the group to think hard about the issues: “This basket is half full, or is almost full. We can’t take it to other women in Africa not full. What will they think of us and our society?”

Using Song as a Resistance Voice and a Healing Method In Chapter 9, songs were discussed as part of the oral literature that communicates the historical information about resistance to colonialism and colonial ideology, as well as historical information on events, practices, values, and so on. In two studies on women, poverty, and resource development in the villages of Transkei in South Africa, Nhlanhla Jordan (2005) describes how songs were used as a feminist research method that revealed women’s resistance to patriarchy and also served as a source of healing. The studies, she asserts, were conducted from the women’s perspective and from an indigenous Afrocentric standpoint. Jordan reveals that an analysis of the songs showed how women have found creative ways to resist patriarchal domination by their men and to heal by using song as voice. The song and dance allowed women to relive their experiences and to get in their worlds and express their innermost feelings. Singing together also allowed them

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to collectively share the pain of patriarchal oppression and to heal through the knowledge that they collectively resist the dominance. In research with women, listening to their songs is a method that approaches the researched in a comfortable and nonthreatening manner and also allows the researcher to start from the researched’s point of reference. Ntseane (2009) also argues that, at times, women insist that their stories be heard through the songs they have composed. She notes, Instead of using the interview guide that the researcher had prepared for data collection, some groups requested that the researcher listen to songs about their leader’s attributes; stories about the leadership nicknames of female leaders/leadership; and traditional words that adequately describe the power of female leadership. A group of women belonging to an opposition political party, for example, suggested that they sing a song. This song did not only narrate the story of their leader, but also gave them an opportunity to physically demonstrate her power and authority through the way she walks, talks and demonstrates respect in her dealings with all politicians. The rich and detailed description embedded in the song included this, Kwankwetla ya rona e gata e gatoga, fa a tsena ko Khaseleng ka wa bo a botsholetse ditsompelo le bokgone jo Batswana ba bothokang meaning, “When our capable one walks to council for a meeting, you can’t miss her humbled confidence and preparedness as demonstrated by her non-verbal communication actions.” (p. 10) It is clear that images of non-Western women as passive and lacking agency are not always true. Women in Ntseane’s study are shown resisting conventional focus group interviews and becoming active participants who bring indigenous methods to the research with women. These context-specific and indigenous data collection methods still have to be documented and used in research. Ntseane (2009) concluded that the women’s resistance to her conventional focus group techniques in a preference for indigenous approaches is a wake-up call to those who still think other cultures/groups/gendered ways of research can continue to be marginalized.

Healing From Patriarchal Oppressive Ideologies: Small-Group Methods Feminist methods are action oriented, involve group work, and seek healing by naming oppression and engaging in a change process. Ami Nitza, Bagele Chilisa, and Veronica Makwinja-Morara (2010) describe a participatory group method that they call the Mbizi group model, which was used to empower Batswana adolescent girls to overcome the gender inequality that puts women at increased risk of HIV infection. The Mbizi group model was used in an intervention to assist group members in naming the barriers created by restrictive and oppressive gender context, to show how these barriers impact their lives in general and group members as individuals, and finally, to assist group members in developing and implementing collective and individual strategies for overcoming the barriers. The Mbizi group model involved heightening girls’ awareness of the social

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contexts in which they live and how these contexts influence their behavior. The specific objectives of the Mbizi group method were to assist group members to (a) examine and deconstruct dangerous cultural practices and traditions that influence girls’ sexual decision making; (b) develop collective efficacy, skills, and strategies for dealing with barriers that impede members’ success; and (c) develop a supportive peer network with more positive norms regarding gender roles. Stage 1: Goals, Interventions, and Strategies for the Initial Stage of the Group The first step toward achieving these goals is the development of an empowering group climate, which includes free expression and exchange of opinions and ideas, a strong sense of cohesion and support, and a collaborative, nonauthoritarian relationship between members. In addition to creating the conditions necessary for the rest of the group process to be effective, the development of a safe, cohesive, and empowering group climate will directly promote the goals of the group. That is, being given the opportunity to speak one’s mind and to have one’s opinions and ideas heard and valued will begin to promote a sense of empowerment. The talking circle technique can be employed at this stage. In the talking circle, the group member holding a symbolic object chosen by the group is allowed to speak his or her mind without interruption or comment from members or the leader. Initially, the talking circle can be used to have each person state his or her name or respond to a simple question; after members are comfortable with this practice, the talking circle can be used to encourage deeper levels of sharing. Finally, nonverbal and movement activities allow members to begin the process of sharing without having to speak verbally in front of the group. Stage 2: Makungulupeswa—Riddles As noted in Chapter 9, myths, stories, songs, and proverbs can promote male domination in most aspects of daily life, including promoting sexual submission of girls and women to men. The Mbizi group method heightens awareness of these messages among women and girls, their collective impact on girls and women, and their impact on group members themselves. An activity titled makungulupeswa is used to begin the development of heightened awareness. In this activity, facilitators request group members to name and write cultural messages (myths, proverbs, song lyrics, etc.) that are disempowering to women on strips of paper, which are then placed into a basket in the center of the group. Group members take turns drawing out a slip of paper and reading the message aloud. Each message is critically examined, using questions such as: What is the message being communicated? What purpose did/does the message serve? In what ways is the message limiting, restrictive, or otherwise harmful to girls and women? Following an examination of these individual messages, facilitators lead a discussion on the themes or ideas that arise from the activity. Facilitators should help members consider the social construction of gender roles, how they may have internalized the sexist messages transmitted by the culture, and how this may have limited them, hindered them, or otherwise shaped their behavior in terms of their friendships, intimate relations, and sexuality.

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Stage 3: Storytelling and Mbizi Following this collective exercise, the subsequent activities of the working phase are intended to help members reflect more deeply on their own experiences with sexism and gender discrimination and to identify changes they would like to make or strengths they have that they can apply to address challenges that they will face. Storytelling and the Mbizi technique are used to help group members share experiences of sexism, gender discrimination, or abuse. Using the talking circle, each group member is given an opportunity, at her own discretion, to share a story or give voice to her own lived experience. Once all members have had the opportunity to tell a story without interruption, facilitators give members a chance to respond to each other’s stories. Facilitators then build on members’ stories and responses to facilitate a discussion that promotes universality, cohesion, support, and empowerment. Following the sharing of stories, an activity is introduced that encourages group members to begin to consider how they can use their own internal and external strengths and resources to take action to overcome barriers and challenges that have been identified through the previous activities and discussions. Using an adaptation of A Garden as a Metaphor for Change in Group (DeLucia-Waack, 2008), the metaphor of Mbizi is used. Mbizi is an Ikalanga term that refers to the tradition of neighbors cooperating to work together, particularly to share workloads. Using a Mbizi story group, members are encouraged to identify barriers they would like to remove from their lives, skills and strategies they would like to develop, and support or assistance they need to share to achieve these goals. Stage 4: Skill-Building Based on members’ stories, the next sessions are used to provide knowledge or to promote skill development tailored to the specific needs of the group. Consistent with the goal of empowering group members, the knowledge and skills introduced must be driven by the expressed needs of the members themselves and not imposed by group leaders. Stage 5: Continuation of Relationships and Beyond The goals of the final stage are consistent with those of any group and include helping members to reflect on their learning and growth in the group, making plans for applying the learning to life outside of the group, and bringing closure to the group experience and the relationships developed within it. In addition, the group goal of developing a supportive peer network and positive norms regarding gender roles can be reinforced and solidified during this stage. Activities used in this stage provide the opportunity for both collective and individual reflection and consolidation. On a collective level, members work together to write or rewrite a proverb, story, or song that represents the awareness, new ideas, and beliefs about gender roles that were developed in the group. Alternatively, adapting the Closing: What Have We Learned About Ourselves? described by Janice DeLucia-Waack (2006), group members can work together to write a letter to other girls, sharing what they have learned in the group. At the individual level, members identify areas of growth, new knowledge and skills developed, and ways they have used their strengths to assist others in the group. Members should be asked to predict specific challenges and barriers they may face in the future;

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the group can then work together to consider how to apply member strengths or new skills developed in the group to address these potential barriers. An important final consideration in the Mbizi group method is the continuation of relationships beyond the life of the group. Ample attention is given to reflecting on the relationships developed in the group. Group members should be allowed ample opportunity to give each other feedback about their own strengths and the ways they have affected others in the group. Plans for maintaining their relationships and support for each other should be discussed. The Mbizi method embraces the I/we principle of Ubuntu where relationships and connectedness to one another are valued and continue beyond life. It is a method that gives the researched and the researcher opportunities to establish proposed long-lasting relationships that go beyond the project (Getty, 2010; Lavallée, 2009; Pryor, Kuupole, Kutor, Dunne, & Adu-Yeboah, 2009).

SUMMARY Western feminisms have contributed enormously to our understanding of male bias in the literature, theoretical frameworks that inform research practices, and biased methods that distort women’s experiences or exclude their voices from the research agenda. The problem is that often, Western feminisms have used Western women’s experiences as the norm and basis against which all other non-Western women’s life experiences are judged. Non-Western feminisms problematize Western feminisms and at the same time present alternative non-Western feminisms within the realities of life experiences that come with ongoing colonialism, imperialism, racism, and patriarchal oppression. There are many non-Western feminisms. This chapter highlighted the principles underlying borderland-Mestizaje feminism, African feminisms, a Chicana feminist epistemology, and an endarkened feminist epistemology; it showed how these inform feminist research methods. The chapter demonstrated that non-Western feminist research employs indigenous participatory methods and healing methods that promote collective thinking, resistance to oppression, personal and social transformation, and healing.

Key Points ——

——

Postcolonial indigenous feminist theories do not necessarily reject Western feminist theories but appropriate them to critique all forms of patriarchal oppression and in addition Western feminisms for muting the voices of non-Western women. Research with non-Western women is revealing social justice research methods

that promote social transformation, spiritual growth, and healing. ——

Women’s indigenous healing methods, such as the use of utensils, song, and dance, need to be documented and made visible.

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ACTIVITY 13.3 Read the extract in Activity 3.1. —— In what ways does Kaomea’s theoretical and interpretive framework reflect the principles of non-Western feminism’s research aims and practice? Read the extract in Activity 13.1, and do the following: —— Imagine you are replicating the study and answer the following:

2. Literature review: What will constitute the literature to be reviewed? 3. Methodology: • What research approach will you use: the researched as active participants or researched as coresearchers? • What data-gathering methods will you use? • What will be your strategy for data analysis?

1. Theoretical framework: Describe and discuss the feminisms and theories that inform your study.

Suggested Readings Chilisa, B., & Ntseane, P. (2010). Resisting dominant discourses: Implications of indigenous African feminist theory and methods for gender and education research. Gender and Education, 22(6), 617–631. Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York, NY: Routledge. Delgado Bernal, D. (1998). Using a Chicana feminist epistemology in educational research. Harvard Educational Review, 68, 555–582. Dillard, C. M. (2009). When the ground is black, the ground is fertile: Exploring endarkened feminist epistemology and healing methodologies of the spirit. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, & L. T. Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 277–291). Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.

Dube, M. (2000). Postcolonial feminist interpretation of the Bible. St Louis, MO: Charles Press. Fennell, S. (2007). Contested gender frameworks: Economic models and provider perspectives in education. In S. Fennell & M. Arnot (Eds.), Gender education and equality in a global context (pp. 35–55). Abingdon, VA: Routledge. Fennell, S. (2009). Decentralizing hegemonic gender theory: The implications for educational research (RECOUP Working paper No. 21). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, Development Studies and Faculty of Education. Hudson-Weems, C. (1998). African womanism. In O. Nnanemeka (Ed.), Sisterhood, feminisms, and power: From Africa to the diaspora (pp. 149–162). Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Marshall, C., & Young, M. (2006). Gender and methodology. In C. Skelton, B. Francis, &

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L. Smulyan (Eds.), The Sage handbook of gender and education (pp. 63-78). London, UK: Sage. Mekgwe, P. (2003). Theorizing African feminisms: The colonial question. Paper presented at the University of Botswana, Department of English Seminar Series. Mohanty, C. (1991). Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. In C. Mohanty, A. Russo, & L. Torres (Eds.), Third world women and the politics of feminism (pp. 51–80). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Nitza, A., Chilisa, B., & Makwinja-Morara, V. (2010). Mbizi: Empowerment and HIV/AIDS prevention for adolescent girls in Botswana. The Journal of Specialists in Group Work, 35(2), 105–114.

Nnameka, O. (Ed.). (1997). The politics of mothering: Womanhood, identity, and resistance in African literature. London, UK: Routledge. Ntseane P. G. (2009). Community leadership and empowerment: Botswana case study. Kampala, Uganda: Institute of Social Transformation. Reed, P. Y. (2001). African a womanism and African feminism: A philosophical, literary, and cosmological dialect on family. Western Journal of Black Studies, 25, 168–176. Saavedra, C. M., & Nymark, E. D. (2008). Borderland and Mestiszaje feminism: The new tribalism. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, & L. T. Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 277–291). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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14 BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS AND INTEGRATING KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS Every research activity is an exercise in research ethics; every research question is a moral dilemma, and every research decision is an instantiation of values. Joshua Clegg and Brent Slife (2009, p. 24)

Researchers are knowledge brokers, people who have the power to construct legitimating arguments for or against ideas, theories or practices. They are collectors of information and producers of meaning which can be used for, or against indigenous interests. Fiona Cram, Adreanee Ormond, and Lynette Carter (2004, p. 158)

I see having some version of self-reflective practice as a necessary core for all inquiry. For example, anyone engaging in collaborative research needs robust self-questioning disciplines as their base. Judi Marshall (2001, p. 433)

Overview This chapter draws from discussions in the book to synthesize working relationships and partnerships between researchers and the researched; partnerships between institutions and communities; and ways of integrating indigenous knowledge methods 318

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and techniques into the global knowledge economy. The chapter further outlines a matrix for planning research from a postcolonial indigenous research perspective.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of the chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Describe working relationships and partnership approaches that support research with a postcolonial indigenous perspective. 2. Debate questions that arise when one plans a research study with a postcolonial indigenous research perspective. 3. Outline a research plan for a study with a postcolonial indigenous perspective.

Before You Start 1. List and discuss some of the strategies for decolonizing and indigenizing Western-based research methodologies discussed in this book. 2. List and discuss postcolonial indigenous methods, techniques, and methodologies discussed in the book. 3. Summarize indigenous reporting and dissemination of findings strategies discussed in the book. 4. Discuss research approaches that can promote social action, change, and transformation in communities.

The focus in this book has been to complement the debate on the call for decolonization of research methods by highlighting strategies for decolonization; integrating knowledge systems; and discussing how to address power, a key factor in the planning of the research, the literature review, the formulation of the research questions, and the choice of research techniques in conducting research. I have also described postcolonial indigenous research methodologies as a framework that brings together methods, techniques, and methodologies used by global postcolonial and indigenous scholars as they conduct research with postcolonial subjects and indigenous communities. I defined postcolonial indigenous research methodologies as covering a wide spectrum of approaches that range from those that decolonize and indigenize Western research methodologies to those that emanate from the worldviews of postcolonial subjects and

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indigenous peoples. Throughout the book, I illustrated studies that decolonize and indigenize the Western research methodologies approach, as well as studies that use the worldviews of postcolonial subjects and indigenous people as a starting point to plan and execute the research process. What is still needed, however, is a framework for planning a postcolonial indigenous research study. What follows is a discussion of partnerships and working relationships between researchers and the researched and between communities and research institutions; cross-cultural partnerships and partnerships between knowledge systems; and a framework for planning and executing a postcolonial indigenous research study.

POSTCOLONIAL INDIGENOUS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE WORKING RELATIONSHIPS As I conclude this book, the sayings common to the Tswana-speaking people of southern Africa on relationships and working together come to my mind and inevitably inform my conceptualization of this chapter. Mmua lebe oa bo a bua la gagwe.

Everyone has a right to a say, for even what might appear like a bad suggestion helps people to think of better ideas.

Mongwe le mongwe o latlhela thware legonyana.

Everyone throws in a word or brings a perspective.

Mafoko a kgotla a mantle otlhe.

Every voice has a value in a gathering.

Setshware ke ntsa pedi ga se thata.

Together we can succeed.

Dilo makwati dikwatololwa mo go babangwe.

We learn from others.

All these sayings promote respect for voice in dialogues, conversations, and discussions in any forum intended to build knowledge irrespective of race, gender, ethnicity, or ability. I will begin with a discussion of postcolonial indigenous and social justice working relationships between the researchers and the researched.

Researcher–Researched Relationships Methods of gathering data can either give or deny the researched the authority to speak from their perspective. Within postcolonial indigenous methodologies, talking circles and sharing cycles (Lavallée, 2009), and use of utensils (Ntseane, 2009) are examples of social justice methods “in which all participants including the facilitator are viewed as equal, and information, and, spirituality and emotionality are shared” (Lavallée, 2009, p. 29). Refer to Chapters 11 and 13. Numerous sources of tension between the researchers and the researched remain, and these compel social science researchers to work jointly to promote

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an integrative coming together of world-views in a way that is not just pluralistic tolerance, respect and co-existence, but goes beyond that to effect transformation in the sense of the emergence of a new synthesis that incorporates the existing diversity of world-views. (Fatnowna & Pickett, 2002, p. 258) A sharing circle or talking circle research technique does not necessarily ensure that the researched share information on every topic of interest to the researcher. Sharing knowledge on some topics may be regarded as violating the cultural norms and exposing the researched, as well as their families or communities, to harm. In an interview with researchers, Lee Anne Nichols, a Cherokee woman, notes that the reason many Native Americans may be reluctant to talk about or record healing practices, for example, is that “when tribes made treaties with the Whiteman, the Whiteman did not honor their written word; so tribes now are hesitant to trust the written word” (Struthers, Lauderdale, Nicholas, Tom-Orme, & Strickland, 2005, p. 194). Also, “An Indian person may be willing to share stories about healing practices, but may not be willing to have the story audio taped because it is not the traditional way of passing history to others.” Healers, she notes, “select to pass on their knowledge to specially selected persons or apprentices.” Other reasons for the reluctance to enter into a discussion may stem from a feeling that they are not taken seriously and that non-Indians may be looking for entrepreneurial opportunities. Recently, a group of high school drama students in Botswana were brought before the village chief and punished for singing an initiation song in their drama performance. The song, it was explained, can be sung only at the initiation ceremony by the initiates. Singing the song, it was argued, was an indication of intentions to marginalize, disrespect, and demonize the culture. In Chapter 9, songs were discussed as possible sources of historical information and a commentary on political and social values, with the potential to bring to the knowledge production discourse topics and concepts nonexistent in Western literature. It is clear from these examples that there is tension about what can be said or written and by whom. The Western academic discourse has its own rules on what can be said and written, how it can be said and written, where it can be written, by whom, and for whom. Similarly, from the researched’s perspective, postcolonial indigenous discourses on the production of knowledge have their own rules on what can be said, who is allowed to say it, where and when it can be said, whether it can be written, by whom, and for what purpose. The end result is two parallel knowledge systems, each with the power to filter knowledge that eventually reaches the public domain. There is no doubt that what we know based on the research we carry out with postcolonial subjects and indigenous peoples is a product of the power struggle between the two knowledge systems, with each using its power to control and shape what is eventually said. What is the role of academic institutions in integrating these parallel knowledge systems? The literature includes many stories about how some dissertation topics, ­theoretical frameworks, methods of collecting data, ethical protocols, data analysis ­procedures, and modes of reporting—those emanating from a postcolonial indigenous

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perspective—were found unacceptable to the students’ supervisors, dissertation ­committees, and university and college ethics review boards. Polly Walker (2001) relates her experience with her university: When I began my doctoral thesis, I was concerned about how to truthfully express my experiences and those of many of my Indigenous colleagues who speak freely of spiritual experiences as an integral part of our research process, while quite aware that such expressions are held suspect within Western Academia. When I discussed my concerns regarding the articulation of the spiritual aspects of research with the supervisors of my PHD research, they told me that I could not mention spiritual experience within my thesis. They explained that if I did, it would not be considered valid social science research. (p. 18) It is also evident that the researched can either refuse to cooperate with the researcher by holding back the information that is required, by deliberately giving misleading information, or by not turning up for appointments. What follows are suggestions on working toward a social justice relationship between academic institutions and the researched.

Institutional Ethics Protocols and the Researched Most universities have ethics review boards and standardized research clearance forms that researchers complete when they apply for a permit to conduct their studies. In some universities, this application clearance form reflects a quantitative approach and is consequently limiting in its applicability to postcolonial indigenous research methods, which cover a rich diversity of qualitative methods (Hodge & Lester, 2006). In some cases, even when the application clearance form is inclusive of qualitative approaches, there is a tendency to legitimize only conventional qualitative methods such as the interview method. Universities’ ethics application forms related to human subjects should give equal status to quantitative and indigenous qualitative methods, with their emphasis on relational methods that recognize spirituality as a way of knowing. Additional questions that give legitimacy to postcolonial indigenous methods need to be asked. University research ethics application forms should, for instance, ask about the researchers’ intentions to decolonize and indigenize Western-based methods and to indicate indigenous methods to be used in the study.

Overcoming Researcher-Centric Research Projects Most students’ research projects, theses, and dissertations are designed to meet the perceived needs of the student. The choice of the research topic and the conceptualization and the implementation of the study are, in most cases, predetermined by the students, working within the boundaries of academic institutions’ standard procedures and regulations for research projects and thesis writing (Hodge & Lester, 2006). Such practices undermine attempts to decolonize research to ensure that fundamental issues such as research ownership and benefits of the research to communities are addressed. Paul Hodge and John Lester (2006) propose linking researched communities’ priorities to research and coursework as a way to promote social justice relations between the

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researcher and the researched and to reduce colonizing tendencies of academic research. The procedure involves a research unit or department working with the communities to draw a list of research topics and prioritizing the list according to communities’ issues of concern. The research unit then attaches the topics to courses and students according to student level. Some topics, for instance, may be appropriate for courses, research projects, and theses at undergraduate level, while others may be suitable for graduate-level courses and students. The next step is to draw a research unit plan that factors in the amount of time students are likely to spend negotiating their research activities with the community and strategies for interaction between the community and the research unit or department and students. The research unit facilitates the discussions with communities and, as much as possible, works out a flexible time frame that allows community members to participate as coresearchers in students’ research projects, where the design requires a participatory approach with community members as coresearchers.

Roles and Responsibilities of Researchers and Community Partners Throughout the book, the working relationships between the researchers and researched are discussed, along with the roles and responsibilities of researchers and their partners. Numerous ethics protocols guide research with postcolonial and indigenous communities. The execution of social justice research will, however, depend on the extent to which researchers take their roles and responsibilities seriously. Researchers are called on to —— Employ the worldviews, values, and cultures of indigenous peoples of the world, the formerly colonized, and historically marginalized communities to inform research methodologies —— Envision research methodologies built on worldviews that emphasize connectedness and the cyclical nature of human experiences —— Assume roles of transformative healers —— Resist colonizer/colonized relationships that embrace deficit theorizing and damage-focused research about the Other —— Promote a relational approach to research where consent to do research is sought at individual, community, and group levels and where consent is collective —— Practice researcher reflexivity informed by an “I/we” relationship —— Embrace ethical protocols that draw from cultural practices informed by connectedness and a web of relationships These roles and responsibilities could form the basis for initiatives from which to draw research guidelines and contract agreements that facilitate social justice working relationships between the researchers and the researched, with the living and the nonliving, and between institutions and communities. Refer to Chapter 10 for a discussion of researcher responsibilities.

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CROSS-CULTURAL PARTNERSHIP RESEARCH AND COLLABORATION BETWEEN ACADEMICS AND DONORS Decolonization of research methodologies requires all those involved in research with postcolonial subjects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and among indigenous peoples in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States to interrogate the “captive mind” that sees the world in one color. Decolonizing methodologies do not apply only to research “exclusively in contexts where geopolitical experience of colonization happened,” but also “among groups where colonizing research approaches are deployed” (Swadener & Mutua, 2008, p. 35). In this context, partners in research include researched communities marginalized by colonial research paradigms, research funding agencies, indigenous researchers, and international and transnational researchers committed to research that promotes social justice, human rights, and democracy. Of note are the differences in interest, motivation for research, and worldviews between Western researchers and indigenous researchers and between the funding agencies and the researchers, as well as the multiple power dimensions among them (Bresciani, 2008; Chilisa, 2005; Moseley, 2007; Pryor, Kuupole, Kutor, Dunne, & Adu-Yeboah, 2009). Chapter 4 illustrated some of the differences in worldviews and power dynamics at play in collaborative research. I conclude the book with the following suggestions on partnerships. Partnerships Between Funding Agencies, Researchers, and Communities. A postcolonial indigenous research perspective seeks to establish long-lasting relationships among partners involved in a research process. For this to become a reality, researchers must decide if they will work repeatedly in the same set of communities over an extended period of time. That will require that they develop a field or topic of research interest with defined communities and plan their research career around those research interests and the communities identified. Funding agencies should, in turn, commit to funding community participatory research studies for a reasonable time to allow relationships with all partners to evolve and be sustained. Long-lasting relationships between researchers and communities are possible. William Moseley (2007), for example, reports an ongoing research relationship with a community in Mali (Africa) that started in 1987. Partnerships Between Western and Non-Western Researchers From Developed and Developing Countries.  Collaborative research between Western and non-Western researchers creates agency and the decolonization of research methodologies as well as possible coalitions committed to multidimensional borrowing and lending from all cultures to envision methodologies that resist domination and promote and respect human rights, social justice, democracy, and healing. Scholars (Bresciani, 2008; Pryor et al., 2009) point to power dynamics that hinder healthy working relationships. It is thus crucial that collaborators devote time to articulating their worldviews. Postcolonial indigenous relational axiology that informs the four Rs of relational accountability, respectful representation, reciprocal appropriation, and rights and regulation can guide the working relationships between researchers. The Ubuntu worldview of “I am because we are”

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can help researchers to see themselves as one humanity working for a common goal. The decolonization of the working relationships between Westerns and non-Western researchers should strive for Ubuntu’s principle of resistance to dominance and spirit of respect, love, compassion, and honoring of all members of the human community as part of the research act. Researchers must also apply themselves to the relational ethics that they will employ with the researched.

Partnership of Knowledge Systems There is also a need for partnership of knowledge systems. Postcolonial indigenous techniques are predominantly qualitative. Practices and procedures are c­ ommunicated orally and stored in songs, dance, artistry, cultural taboos, and so on. Partnerships of ­parallel knowledge systems alluded to in this book could involve designing ­equivalent quantitative measures of indigenous procedures and practices that communicate ­postcolonial subjects and indigenous people’s worldviews and integrating them into the global knowledge economy. Hester du Plessis and Gauhar Raza (2004) show how indigenous knowledge methods and techniques can be integrated into the global ­ ­k nowledge economy. They conducted a research project that involved documenting, studying, and understanding the extent to which indigenous knowledge systems are used in the traditional manufacturing process of practicing artisans and crafts persons in India and South Africa; they sought to establish how these processes could be integrated with global science in multiscale assessment. They demonstrate the method of integrating the two knowledge systems by noting, When the artisan was asked how he knows when temperature of the kiln is at maximum, the (unexpected) answer is that it is indicated by the sound of the first pot cracking in kiln. Some variants on this question included answers regarding the color observed in the firing process that gives an indication of the temperature level. In our scientific terms, that crucial moment can be measured with a thermometer and translated into the exact scientific terms. (p. 6) The process clearly demonstrates how indigenous knowledge used in the traditional manufacturing process of practicing artisans was transformed to a measurement scale that could be communicated internationally. There are many opportunities for such partnerships. In the health sciences, for instance, there is growing evidence that many instruments have not been adequately validated for use in diverse settings; one example is the World Health Organization Self-Report Questionnaire, which is the most widely used psychiatric case-finding questionnaire in Africa (Patel, Simunyu, Gwazura, Lewis, & Mann, 1997). In response to this challenge, the Shona Symptom Questionnaire, an indigenous measure of common mental disorders, was developed in Zimbabwe (Patel et al., 1997). In Chapter 5, an example of an assessment scale to measure A ­ frocentrism was presented. Partnerships of knowledge systems will require the integration of ­indigenous measures of human behaviors with measures developed in other cultures to enable c­ ommunication between researchers in different cultures and with the researched in frameworks, concepts, and languages that they understand.

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PLANNING RESEARCH FROM A POSTCOLONIAL INDIGENOUS RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE After reading this book, do you wish to carry out a study that draws from the multiple epistemologies and worldviews of postcolonial subjects and indigenous peoples? Planning a research study begins with a thinking process in which decisions are made on four main areas: orienting decisions, research design and methodology, data analysis, and presenting and reporting the results (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007).

Orienting Decisions These are strategic decisions that frame the general nature of the research. The first set of questions requires the researcher to clearly define the research agenda and the role of the researched in framing the research agenda. Questions could include the following: —— Why do I do research with the formerly colonized, the oppressed, and the disempowered? —— Will the research bring about change and transformation? —— Will the research have a clear stance against the political, academic, and methodological imperialism of its time? —— Will the research take a stance against Western archival knowledge and its colonizing and Othering ideologies? A researcher who wishes the researched to participate in the identification of the issue of study, the research design, analysis, and reporting, for instance, should have a strategy for building a partnership with the researched community. The feasibility of research with such an approach will also depend on a number of factors, among them research report completion time and a host of academic requirements, including a statement of originality and the way an institution defines it and the willingness of the institution, the department, and the dissertation committee to accommodate decolonizing research approaches and indigenous knowledge-centered research approaches. These questions also require researchers to define their roles and responsibilities and to arrive at a clear, conscious definition of the self in relation to the researched. Table 14.1 (pp. 328–332) shows the main questions, subissues, and decisions that the researcher needs to consider.

Research Design and Methodology Strategic orienting decisions establish what is feasible and how the researcher addresses the practicalities of the research. Political decisions are consciously addressed ­throughout the planning of the study. Political and practical decisions have to be made on the ­following questions:

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—— Will the research take a stance against methodological imperialism? —— What is the main research approach? Is it a decolonization of Western-based methodologies, for example, indigenizing a qualitative research, quantitative survey, ethnographic study, or participatory action research study, or is it an indigenous knowledge-centered research approach? —— What is the purpose of the study, and what are the research questions emanating from the purpose of the study? —— What worldviews and theories frame the purpose of the study, research questions, and methods of data collection? —— What type of data will be required to address the research questions? —— What techniques or methods of gathering data will the study use? —— Who will carry out the study? The purpose of the research, the research questions to be addressed, and the researcher’s commitment to a politically engaged research will to a large extent determine the main research approach. Once the main research approach is chosen, the researcher can then select the data-gathering methods and validity and reliability approaches that are compatible with the political stance of the research, the purpose of the study, and the research questions the study seeks to address. In Chapter 10, it was noted that a growing number of methodologies draw from the philosophical and theoretical assumptions of postcolonial indigenous worldviews, such as the Kaupapa Maori research, Afrocentric methodologies, and methodologies based on the Medicine Wheel. The emphasis in Chapter 10 was on methodologies that emanate from the values and cultures of the researched. Some of the methods discussed in this book include the following: interview methods based on the Medicine Wheel; talking circles and sharing circles methods; Anishnaabe symbol-based research; Mmogo method; participatory rural appraisal methods; methods based on philosophic sagacity; storytelling methods; and language, metaphorical sayings, songs, and artifacts as sources of data.

Data Analysis Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies emphasize research with people rather than research on people. Practical and politically engaged questions on analysis have to be answered: —— How will the data be analyzed, and who will analyze it? —— Will the study use indigenous analytical frameworks? —— Will conventional analytical frameworks be used? —— Will the research problematize and critique the tendency to make the researched speak through the voices, academic language, concepts, and theories of the West?

Will the research have a clear stance against the political and academic imperialism of its time?

Will the research bring about change and transformation?

Whose research is it?

Why do I do research with the formerly colonized, third world, fourth world, or developing countries?

How will global science be used to further the development of indigenous knowledge systems?

What counts as knowledge? What is the place of indigenous knowledge in the produced knowledge?

Where is the place of indigenous knowledge systems in the production of knowledge?

Which worldviews inform perceptions of reality?

What theory and method change the way people think and do things?

Will this research change the way people think and do things?

What theory and methods energize the researched to engage in a change process?

Decide whether your research approach is that of decolonizing and indigenizing Western-based methodologies (that is, inserting an indigenous perspective into one of the major paradigms) or whether you will draw from indigenous knowledge systems to conduct research informed by a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm.

Decide on the theory and method that is likely to ignite a change and transformation process.

Determine whether the researched will be coresearchers and coauthors of the research report and if your institution has provisions for your intentions.

Decide whether one of your aims is to build research capacity in the community.

Will the research address power relations, inequalities, and injustices, such as those based on race, gender, age, class?

Who will write it up?

Who will carry it out?

How will its results be disseminated?

If your research topic is researcher-centric, decide on the role and level of participation of the researched.

Find out if your institution or the department has a working relationship with the community in which the study is conducted and how you can plan your study with the community.

Decisions

Estimate the amount of time you need to conduct the research with either a community-centric research approach or a researcher-centric approach that has a defined level of researched participation.

Who will design its questions and form its scope?

Who will benefit from it?

Whose interest does it serve?

Who owns it?

Subissues

Questions

TABLE 14.1  ■  Research Planning Matrix

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Subissues

Will the research name white privilege and racism in the literature?

Will the research challenge literature that perpetuates victimblaming and deficit-based theories and analysis?

Will the research problematize and critique the Euro-Western archival knowledge and its exclusionary tendencies?

Decisions

(Continued)

Find which of this literature can be accessed and written about.

Define literature from an indigenous perspective, for instance, literature as language, cultural artifacts, legends, stories, practices, songs, rituals, poems, dances, tattoos, lived experiences, personal and community stories told in weddings, funerals, celebrations, and wars.

Decide on the theories and indigenous knowledge that will guide your critique of the archival knowledge.

Determine the body of indigenous knowledge of the researched that you will use to counter theories and the body of knowledge that cause humiliation and embarrassment to the researched.

Determine the gaps in the literature.

Identify the evidence that is there to be used to bring to question the literature reviewed.

Determine and expose any deficit thinking or theorizing in the literature reviewed.

Determine and expose the way the literature and theories reviewed portray the researched.

Decide on a strategy for the review of the literature and consider using the following as a guide: Determine the assumptions, prejudices, stereotypes that inform the literature you review.

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Methodology and design questions

Will the research take a stance against Western archival knowledge and its colonizing and “othering” ideologies?

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Data Analysis Questions

Decide on the dominant worldview and how other worldviews will complement the dominant worldview.

Theoretical Framework: What informs the choice of your research topic; the research questions you ask; the literature reviewed; data collection methods, analysis and interpretation?

Subissues

Are you using any of the following: proverbs and metaphors as conceptual frameworks; storytelling methods; songs and poems; talk circles, or indigenous-knowledge-based interview guides? See Chapters 9 and 11 for a discussion of these strategies.

Are you, for instance, adopting a decolonization of methods approach that inserts an indigenous data collection method into a study guided by a Euro-Western-based paradigm? Or is it a decolonization approach within a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm? What assumptions guide the choice of selection of participants in the study (sampling), the setting of the study, and the techniques of data collection? What role does the following play in your choice of data collection and sampling of research participants’ procedures: ethnophilosophy; philosophic sagacity; cultural artifacts; and decolonization of interviews?

Data collection: What assumptions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and values inform your data collection methods?

Research Approach: Is it a quantitative participatory approach study, for instance, a survey? Is it a qualitative participatory approach study, for instance, an ethnographic study? Is it a combination of qualitative and quantitative participatory approach study?

Decisions

Decide on the research approach.

Decide on the theories that will inform the conceptual and theoretical framework of the study.

Decide on the role and place of critique, decolonization, indigenization, and dreaming and envisioning of new indigenous methods in the research study.

Paradigm: What paradigm informs your methodology? Is it the postpositivist paradigm, interpretive paradigm, transformative paradigm, or a postcolonial indigenous paradigm?

Will the research take a stance against methodological imperialism?

Is it an indigenous knowledge-based knowledge and theory; postcolonial theory; critical race-based theory; feminist theory; critical theory; or a combination of some of the above?

Decisions

Subissues

Questions

TABLE 14.1  ■ (Continued)

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What ethical principles guide the study?

What techniques or methods of gathering data will the study use?

What type of data will be required?

(Continued)

How can I relate respectfully to the other participants involved in this research so that together we can form a stronger relationship with the idea that we will share?

Decide how the methods you use will help to build respectful relationships between yourself, the researched, and the topic that you are studying.

Be aware of the community value systems that guide your interaction with the researched and your treatment of the data.

What is my relationship with the researched? Is it involved or detached? Is it that of a person who knows more than the researched?

Use the following as a guide to definition of self in relation to the researched:

Find out if the researched have a community review board that will inform your relationship with the researched.

Find out about your institutional review board and whether it will accommodate the researcher’s ethical protocols.

Decide whether the study will explore possibilities of emergent methods emanating from interaction with the research and informed by participants’ worldviews.

Decide on the indigenous methods that will be used.

Decide on the conventional methods that are suited for the research questions to be addressed and how they will be indigenized.

Decide on the most appropriate data required for the research questions to be addressed. Ensure that issues on ownership of data are addressed.

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How will reflexivity be addressed?

How will the research process build relational accountability, respectful representation, reciprocal appropriation, and rights and regulation?

What methods do I use to accurately generate and record marginalized voices and indigenous and local knowledge predominantly excluded through Euro-Western conventional methodologies?

Will the study invoke the histories, worldviews, and indigenous knowledge systems to imagine and suggest new indigenous methodologies?

Will indigenous methods be used?

Will the research critique, decolonize, and indigenize conventional methods?

Who will own the data?

Does the research need qualitative data, quantitative data, or both?

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By what and whose standards are the design, data collection, and analysis and interpretation of research findings deemed valid and reliable?

How will the research report be written and research findings disseminated?

If the study draws from an indigenous knowledge system framework, decide on the indigenous analytical framework to be used and complementary conventional approaches to be used.

Will the study use indigenous analytical frameworks?

Will the study use specific communities and research sites as arbitrators of validity standards?

Will the study adopt positionality or standpoint judgments in framing validity?

Will research results be available, accessible, and usuable for both the researched and the international community of scholars?

Will bilingual texts be used for the analyses and presentation of data?

Will the researched coauthor the report?

Will different constituencies require different forms of reporting and disseminating research findings?

Who will write the research report and for whom?

With what and whose theories do you use to conceptualize and analyze data?

Will the research problematize and critique the tendency to make the researched speak through the voices, academic language concepts, and theories of the West?

Will conventional analytical frameworks be used?

If your research approach is that of inserting an indigenous perspective into one of the major paradigms, determine the conventional analysis methods in the study and the complementary indigenous perspectives to be used.

Is the data to be analyzed quantitative or qualitative? Classify data according to that which used conventional methods and that which used indigenous methods.

Decide on the role of the researched in validating the study.

Determine if the research report will be simultaneously written in two languages.

Determine whether your institution or research committee accommodates the use of bilingual texts in the analysis and presentation of data.

Decide on indigenous methods of disseminating and reporting findings.

Ensure that there is a procedure to address coauthorship issues.

Decide on what you are contributing or giving back to the relationship.

Decide on your roles and responsibilities as a researcher and the relationships you wish to create.

How will data be analyzed?

Decisions

Subissues

Questions

TABLE 14.1  ■ (Continued)

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—— Whose worldviews and theories will be used to conceptualize and analyze the data? —— Who will verify and validate the data and the way it is interpreted? —— Whose data is it? Who will own and store it?

Presenting and Reporting Results In Activity 5.2, an extract from Wilson (2008) on a style of writing a dissertation from an indigenous perspective was presented. An argument was made for writing a dissertation in story form. The role of language in research was discussed in Chapter 9, along with strategies for presenting texts—for example, the use of bilingual texts in the analysis and presentation of data—and simultaneously writing the report in two languages. Forms of disseminating research findings to the researched include poetry, theater, art, seminars, and discussion forums. Politically engaged questions on presenting and reporting results include the following: —— Who will write the research report, for whom, and in what language? —— Will different constituencies require different forms of reporting and disseminating research findings? —— Will the researched coauthor the report? —— Will bilingual texts be used for the analyses and presentation of data? —— Will research results be available, accessible, and usable for both the researched and the international community of scholars? Addressing the politically engaged and practical questions and making decisions on them ensure that the research is aligned with the intentions of postcolonial indigenous research methodologies and that the coherence and practicability of the planned study are addressed in an ethically defensible context.

SUMMARY We are in an era that promotes multiplicity and difference. The worldviews from postcolonial and indigenous communities add to the rainbow of diversity. This chapter highlighted the role of academic institutions and institutional structures such as departments, academics, students, and researchers in recognizing the legitimacy of postcolonial indigenous research methodologies. The goal is to make them visible and integrate them in the academic discourse and the global knowledge economy.

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Key Points ——

The mind-set of academics and their

that indigenous knowledge methods and techniques are part of the current discourses on research methodologies and the global knowledge economy.

institutions must change so that they can see the researched postcolonial subject and indigenous peoples not only as sources of data and sites for application and development of new theories but also as sources of their own

——

Indigenous research methodologies require diverse partnership relations that need to be negotiated, agreed on, and acted on by the partners.

——

Social justice working relationships between researchers and participants or communities as partners require a commitment of researchers to guiding principles on their roles and responsibilities.

stories, their own theories, and constructive critiques on Western academic discourse; the researched are gatekeepers of their indigenous knowledge. ——

There is a need to build partnerships to translate research results into action and to integrate knowledge systems such

ACTIVITY 14.1 1. Review ethics protocols and application clearance forms in your institutions, and debate if they accommodate the use of postcolonial indigenous research methodologies. 2. Read through the matrix in Table 14.1, and draw a plan for a research study in which you make decisions regarding the following: a. Research theoretical and conceptual framework: Decide whether your research approach is that of decolonizing and indigenizing Western-based methodologies (that is, inserting an indigenous perspective into one of the major paradigms) or whether you will draw from indigenous knowledge systems to conduct research informed by a postcolonial indigenous research paradigm. Decide if you will plan the research with the community or if your study will be researcher-centric.

b. Literature review: Decide if the research will problematize and critique the EuroWestern archival knowledge and its exclusionary tendencies. c. Methodology and design: Decide on the dominant worldview and how other worldviews will complement the dominant worldview. Decide the most appropriate data required for the study, indigenous methods that will be used, or conventional methods that will be indigenized and how they will be indigenized. d. Data analysis: Decide if the research will use indigenous analytical frameworks, conventional analytical frameworks, or both. Decide if the participants will be involved in the analysis and interpretation of the research findings. e. Dissemination of research findings: Decide who will write the research report and for whom and if different constituencies will require different forms of reporting and dissemination strategies.

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Building Partnerships and Integrating Knowledge Systems  335

Suggested Readings Bresciani, M. (2008). Exploring misunderstanding in collaborative research between a world power and a developing country. Research and Practice Assessment, 2(1), 1–11. Hodge, P., & Lester J. (2006). Indigenous research: Whose priority? Journeys and possibilities of cross-cultural research in geography. Geographical Research, 44(1), 41–51. Moseley, W. G. (2007). Collaborating in the field, working for change: Reflecting on partnerships between academics, development organizations and rural

communities in Africa. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 28, 334–347. Pryor, J., Kuupole, A., Kutor, N., Dunne, M., & Adu-Yeboah, C. (2009). Exploring the fault lines of cross-cultural collaborative research. Compare, 39(6), 769–782. Struthers, R., Lauderdale, J., Nicholas, L. N., Tom-Orme, L., & Strickland, C. J. (2005). Respecting tribal traditions in research and publications: Voices of five Native American nurse scholars. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 16(3), 193–201.

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INDEX Academic imperialism, 58–59, 105, 203–204 Action research, 55, 268–269 Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection, 284–286 appreciative inquiry, 281–284 community action plan, 289 cycle of, 269–271 decolonization and indigenization, 269, 271–275 healing participatory action research methods, 284 implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, 290 participatory action research process, 286–290 transformative participatory action research, 275–276 See also Participatory research methods Activist researcher, 276. See also Action research Adair, J. G., 94 Adekanmbi, G. A., 43, 240 Adeola, O. A., 43, 240 Adolescent risk-reduction intervention project, 171, 174–184 Affect-symbolic-imagery, 133 Africa, historical colonization of, 7 African Americans, 9, 41, 112, 284, 307 Africana womanism, 306 African ethnophilosophy context, 58 African Evaluation Association (AEA), 123, 131 African feminism, 294–295, 306–309. See also Postcolonial indigenous feminist research methodologies African homogeneity assumptions (error of sameness), 78–81 African intellect and Porteus Maze, 56–57 African proverbs. See Proverbs and metaphorical sayings African relational-based evaluation approach, 134–135 African relational ontology, 98–102. See also Relational ontology; Ubuntu African renaissance, 235 African sexuality, 85, 190–191, 199–200, 203, 239 Africentrism self-report, 111–112, 325

Afrikanization, 134 Afrocentric paradigm, 135 Afrocentric theoretical framework, 25, 233–236, 238–239, 327 Mmogo method, 242–245, 260, 327 See also Ubuntu Agape, 101 Akbar, Naim, 208 Alatas, Syed Hussein, 6, 26 Alkin, M. A., 118–120 Allan, Keith, 189 Amadiume, Ifi, 297 American Evaluation Association (AEA), 123 American Indian Higher Education Consortium (ALHEC), 125–127 American Psychological Association (APA), 15 Ancestor relations. See Relations with the living and the nonliving Ancestors and conflict transformation, 201 Andersen, C., 21, 149, 166, 177 Anishambe, 103, 195, 214, 260, 263 Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection, 284–286 Anonymity, 107, 109, 251 Anthony, B., 122 Anthropologist researchers, 12, 56, 57 Aoteore New Zealand Evaluation (ANZEA), 123 Aoteroa. See Maori research Appreciative inquiry, 281–284 Aristotle, 35 Arnot, Madeleine, 295 Artisan knowledge, 325 Asante, Molefi Kete, 186, 233–234 Asante Kente legend, 260–262 Aseema (tobacco sharing), 103, 195, 213–214, 263 Ashcroft, Bill, 75 Aue Te Ava, 230 Australian Aboriginal people, 2, 102–104 community-based needs assessment, 280–281 Mi’Kinaw Research Principles and Protocols, 15, 220 Authenticity, 219

353

354   Indigenous Research Methodologies Avoseh, M. B. M., 43, 240 Axiology, 23, 24–25, 106–110 African, 134 interpretive paradigm, 40 positivism-postpositivism paradigm, 36 transformative paradigm, 42 See also Relational axiology; Ubuntu Background information questions, 251 Bacon, Francis, 35 Bailey, Kenneth, 79 Bakalanga totem system, 101 Bamana, 261–262 Bangwato totems, 195 Bantu people, 2, 24, 106, 195. See also Botswana; Ubuntu Barrett, Frank, 282 Barrett, L., 83 Baugh, Eboni, 233 Behaviorism, 58 Bell, Anne, 224 Benham, Maenette, 198 Bentley, Arthur F., 44 Berger-Gonzalez, M., 27, 30 Bhabha, Homi, 32, 50 Bhatia, Sunil, 54 Bidirectional Emic-Etic (BEE) tool, 27 Bilingual texts, 206 Binary opposites, 7, 53, 59–60, 73–75, 221 Biography, 40, 216, 241 Bishop, Russell, 222 Black feminism, 296 Blackstock, C., 10, 161, 166 Blaut, James M., 59–60 Bogolanfini, 261–262 Boloi, 76 Borderland-Mestizaje feminism, 302–306 Boswagadi, 76, 197 Botha, L., 11, 147, 159–161, 166 Botswana Bangwato totems, 195 HIV/AIDS sentinel surveillance, 75, 78–81 HIV/AIDS stories, 197 indigenous illness conceptions, 76–78 literacy survey, 36–38 totem system, 101 Tswana origin story, 196 See also Bantu people; Ubuntu

Bowl of pain, 310 Bowman, N., 129, 142 Braimoh, D., 43, 240 Branches of evaluation, 118–120 methods branch, 119 needs and context branch, 120 social justice branch, 119–120 use branch, 119 value branch, 119 Bresciani, Marilee J., 86 Brewer, J., 154 Buhl, Levy, 58 Burridge, Kate, 189 Bydawell, M., 83 Cambodia, 8 Canadian Evaluation Society (CES), 123 Captive mind, 6, 11, 86, 324 Carden, F., 118–120 Carden, M. A., 118 Care-based research ethics, 300 Carroll, K. K., 27, 134 Carter, Lynette, 318 Carter, Melanie, 186 Case study, 40 Catalytic and tactical authenticities, 219 Cause-effect relationships, 36, 63, 76 Cavino, H. M., 114, 123 Centre for Development of People (CEDEP), 29–30 Center/periphery dichotomies, 59, 73–74 Centers for Disease Control, 75 Centre for Scientific Research, Indigenous and Innovative Knowledge (CESRIK), 3 Ceremony, research as, 219, 284 Chambers, Robert, 41, 51, 78, 275 Chatwood, S., 157–158 Chicana feminist perspective, 302–306 Chicana/o graduate education experiences, 67 Child welfare, study on, 166 Chilisa, Bagele, 8, 15, 29, 38, 117, 188, 191, 240 Chinese language, 206 Chouinard, J., 137, 173 Christian, Barbara, 186 Christopher, S., 176 Church, Timothy, 94–95 Circumcision, female (clitorectomy), 297 Clegg, Joshua, 318 Clinical drug trials, 8

Index

Clitorectomy, 297 Coalitional consciousness, 26 Code-recode, 217 Coding, 257 Collaborative research. See Partnerships and working relationships Collectivity, ubuntu principle. See Ubuntu Collins, Patricia Hill, 296, 297, 307 Colonialism, 7, 51–52, 61 legacies in postcolonial theory, 54 survivance versus, 54 Colonization, 7–8 Colonization of the mind, 6 Colonized Other, 9 captive mind, 6, 11, 86, 324 critical race theory and, 67, 68 HIV/AIDS research and, 75–76 postcolonial theory critique, 56 resistance to dominant literature, 62–64 See also Othering ideologies; specific groups or issues Colonized Other, decolonization of. See Decolonization Colonized Other, deficit theorizing. See Deficit-focused modes of inquiry Colonized Other, diversity of. See Diversity of the researched Colonized Other, knowledge systems. See Indigenous knowledge systems Colonized Other, participatory research approaches. See Participatory research methods Colonized Other, research paradigms. See Postcolonial indigenous research paradigm Colonized Other, voice of. See Oral literature; Voice of the researched Colonizer/colonized dichotomies, 7, 53, 59, 73–75, 221 Colonizer’s model of the world, 59–60 Commeyras, Michelle, 38, 203 Commitment, 13–14 Communality, Ubuntu principle, 24. See also Ubuntu Community action plan (CAP), 289 Community-based needs assessment, 280–281 Community-based participatory research (CBPR), 33–34, 271–274 Community-based participatory research approach, 30, 176 Compassion as methodology, 308. See also Healing methodologies Competency, 123

355

Comte, Augustine, 35 Conceptual bases measure, 94 Condom marketing, 81 Confidentiality, 86, 107, 251 Confirmability, 218 Conflict transformation, assistance from ancestors, 201 Connectedness, 2 Mmogo method, 242–245 Native American Medicine Wheel, 227–229 reciprocity, 5, 24–25, 104, 106, 220, 225 relational ontology, 23–24 relations with the living and nonliving, 2, 24, 99–101, 103–106, 195, 234, 236, 261, 263, 306–307 See also Relational ontology; Ubuntu Conscientization, 275 Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) method, 175 Consensus, 234–235 Consent issues, 3–4, 86, 227, 240, 241–242 Constructivism paradigm, 19, 21, 119 mixed method research, 154–155 Contested knowledge, 19–23 naming, 22 quantitative/qualitative methodologies, 21 Context-first evaluation approach, 124–125 Context Input Process Product model, 122 Contract agreements, 15, 85 Contrast questions, 250 Conventional qualitative research, 159–161 Conventional quantitative research, 161, 166 Cooperrider, David, 282 Copyright issues for indigenous knowledge, 4, 58 Core values of evaluation practice, 126 centrality of community and family, 125–127 people of place, 125 recognizing gifts, 125 sovereignty, 127 Counter storytelling, 67, 194 “Coyote Goes to School,” 203–204 Cram, Fiona, 20, 176, 318 Creative Relationship Framework, 222–226 Credibility in qualitative research, 213–216. See also Qualitative research, rigor in Critical race theory, 123 Critical realism, 35, 154 Critical research paradigm, 41–42 Critical subjectivity, 220. See also Reflexivity

356   Indigenous Research Methodologies Critical theory, 26, 50 critical race theories, 66–69 Kaupapa Maori research methodology, 221–223 postcolonial theory as version of, 54 Critique, 16 Cross, Terry L., 259 Cultural bomb, 61 Culturally responsive indigenous evaluation (CRIE), 120, 129–130 conceptual model of power, 137 evolution of, 128 Culturally-sensitive tests and measures, 95 Africentrism self-report, 111–112 Porteus Maze, 56–57 Culturally specific knowledge, 176 Cultural reference measures, 94 Culture and context evaluation models, 124–125 Culture and language, 188. See also Language issues; Oral literature Culture-based justification, 94 Culture-collection methods, 149 Cyclical methodology (Medicine Wheel), 227–229, 259–260, 327 Data analysis, 212 arbiters of quality, 220 interviews and, 257–258 Mmogo method, 244–245 negative case analysis, 214 participatory action research process, 289 research planning questions, 327 Data collection methods, 212 indigenous distrust of the written word, 321 Mmogo method, 244 observation, 12, 35, 56, 216 participatory action research process, 288–289 talking circles and sharing circles, 108, 256–257, 260, 285–286, 320 video and theater, 279 See also Interview methods; Questionnaire survey design; Tests and measures Deaf people, 12, 58, 61 Decision-making context, 120, 122 Decolonization, 11–16, 26, 44 action-oriented research, 269, 271–274 cross-cultural working relationships, 324–325 methodology frameworks in. See Indigenous methodologies process, 12–14

strategies, 14–16, 53 See also Indigenization; Language issues Decolonization discourse and indigenous theory, 123 Decolonization intent of evaluation, 132–135 methodology, 134–135 relational axiology, 134 relational epistemology, 133 relational ontology, 133 Decolonizing evaluation. See Evaluation Decolonizing interview methods. See Interview methods Decolonizing mixed method research. See Mixed method research (MMR) Deconstruction and reconstruction, 14 Defamiliarizing, 64–65 Deficit-focused modes of inquiry, 55, 59, 61–62, 239, 281 appreciative inquiry versus, 281–284 Delgado Bernal, Dolores, 303–306 Deloria, Vine, 12, 105 Delucia-Waack, Janice, 314 Demographic diversity, 78–81. See also Diversity of the researched Demographic variables, 198 Dense description, 217 Department for International Development (DFID), 75 Dependability in qualitative research, 217 Descartes, René, 99 Descriptive questions, 250 Desire-based research framework, 54, 283 Development projects, 51 Dewey, John, 44 Dialectical pluralism, 21, 129, 154 Dillard, Cynthia, 307–309 Dilthey, William, 38–39 Dingaka (divining), 252 Discursive power of evaluation, 137 Diversity of the researched, 221 error of sameness and HIV/AIDS research, 78–81 Ubuntu worldview, 235 Divining (dingaka), as interviewing strategy, 252–253 Dodge-Francis, C., 129, 142 Dominant languages. See Language issues Dreaming, 12–13 Drug trials, 8 Dube, Musa, 293 Earle, Kathleen, 259 Earley, Mark A., 103–104 Easterbrooks, Susan, 58

Index

Eastern paradigm of evaluation, 23, 129–131 attribution/explanation of action, 130 inquirer-objective relationship, 129–130 nature of reality, 129 nature of truth, 130 role of values in inquiry, 131 Echo-Hawk, Holly, 259 Economics, 61 Ecuador, 291–292 Educational research, 52 Hawai’ian Kupuna program, 64–65 Education and colonization of the mind, 6 Educative authenticity, 219 Edwards, Shane, 253–254 Elabor-Idemudia, Patience, 1, 26, 89, 293 Elderly people, 102, 192–193 Ellis, Jason Brent, 103–104 Emagalit, Zeverin, 188 Embracing compassion as methodology, 308 Empiricism, 35 Empowerment, 11, 14, 42, 44, 59, 97, 107, 287, 296, 301–302, 313–314. See also Action research; Decolonization; Participatory research methods Encounter stage, 94 Endarkened feminist epistemology, 307–309 English language, 3, 53, 60, 80, 205–206. See also Language issues Epistemology, 23, 24, 40 African, 133 calls for diversity in research approaches, 52 endarkened feminist epistemology, 307–309 interpretive paradigm, 40 positivism-postpositivism paradigm, 36 transformative paradigm, 42 See also Relational epistemology Error of sameness, 78–81 Escobar, Arturo, 41, 51 Essentialized views of indigenous cultures, 32 Ethical issues, 5, 15–16, 82–86, 212, 220–221 care-based research ethics, 300 consent, 3, 86, 227, 240, 241–242 contract agreements, 15, 85 dimensions of diversity, 221 fairness, 219 four Rs, 5, 24, 106, 220–221, 324–325 generalization of findings, 84 HIV testing policy approach, 99 institutional review board, 242, 322

357

Maori Creative Relationship Framework, 226–227 Mmogo method, 245 naming the researched, 107, 108–109, 251 postcolonial indigenous research paradigm, 23, 41 quantitative methods and, 83 relational axiology, 24, 105–110 researcher as transformative healer, 5, 236–241 research ownership, 107 research validity in postcolonial indigenous framework, 218–220 review boards, 15 third- and first-world researcher collaboration, 84–86 Ubuntu worldview, 235, 241 See also Axiology Ethics of care, 300 Ethnography, 40, 56, 216 cyclical approach, 228–229 Ethnophilosophy, 188 Etowa, J., 31 Eurocentric male ruling class, 74 Eurocentric tools of evaluation, 120–121 European diffusionism, 59–60 Euro-Western research paradigms, 22, 26, 28–29, 32, 34–45, 106, 129, 135, 156 associated beliefs table, 40–41 deficit-based approach, 54 difference between indigenous and dominant paradigms, 24 error of sameness, 78–81 failures and alternative trends, 51 ignoring of role of oppressive events in knowledge construction, 6 interpretive paradigm, 38–41 positivism-postpositivism, 35–38 qualitative data analysis strategies, 257–258 scientific colonialism, 7–8 transformative paradigm, 41–44 universality assumptions, 6 See also Methodological imperialism; Methodology Euro-Western worldviews as universal norms, 6 Evaluation, 114 branches of. See Branches of evaluation decolonization intent. See Decolonization intent of evaluation discourse in global context, 118–120 eurocentric tools, 120–121 indigenous evaluation, 129–131, 141–142

358   Indigenous Research Methodologies MAE approach, 131–132 multicultural validity, 136–140 purpose of, 115–118 shift in practice of, 122–127 Experience and behavior questions, 250 External validity, 216 Fairness, 136, 219 Family history story, 198 Fanon, Frantz, 74 Feeling questions, 250 Female circumcision, 297 Feminist poststructural theory, 232 Feminist research methodologies, 293–294 assumed universality of gender experiences, 295, 297 empowerment, 301 liberal (or bourgeois or individualistic) feminism, 300 Marxist socialist feminism, 301 multiple feminisms, 293–294 postcolonial indigenous feminisms, 301–310 postcolonial indigenous feminist theory and research methodologies, 293–299 radical feminism, 300 supposedly oppressive cultural/religious practices, 297 theory, 298–299 See also Postcolonial indigenous feminist research methodologies Fennell, Shailaja, 295 Fine, Michelle, 25, 248 First World/Third World dichotomies, 7, 53, 59, 72–75, 84, 221 Fitznor, Laara, 99 Flax, Jane, 299 Focused life-story interview, 253–254 Focus group interviews, 255–260 indigenous feminist methods, 310–311 Medicine Wheel, 259–260 talking circles, 256–257, 260 Foucault, Michel, 5 Four Rs, 5, 24, 106, 220–221, 324–325 Fourth world, 74 Freire, Paulo, 275 Funding relationship, 324 Futter-Puati, D., 230–231

Galtung, J., 147 Gaotlhobogwe, M., 117 Gatekeepers of knowledge, 58 Gegeo, David W., 12 Gender attitudes, 203, 239. See also Feminist research methodologies; Women’s issues Gendered school experiences research, 157 Gender stereotypes, 81 Generalization, 84 transferability in qualitative research, 216–217 Generalized estimating equation (GEE) models, 180 Gerard, Albert, 189 Getty, G. A., 105 Ghananian researcher collaboration, 86 Gift giving, 103–104, 195 Gill, Gerard, 277 Glasson, G., 32 Globalization, 8–9 importance of indigenous and local knowledge, 52–53 Glover, Marewa, 222 Goduka, Ivy, 99 Gonzalez, Elsa M., 205 Gonzalez, Maria, 228 Grand tour question, 40 Greene, J. C., 155, 158, 160 Greetings, 102–103 Gregory, D., 31 Grenier, Adrian, 92 Grenier, Louise, 291 Grieving, 104 Griffiths, Gareth, 75 Grills, C., 111–112 Grounded theory, 40 Grove, N. J., 122 Guba, Egon, 129, 208, 213, 214 Guion, Lisa, 233 Hall, Stuart, 7 Harris, H., 203 Haugen, J., 137, 173 Hawai’ian studies, 64–65, 198–199 Healers, transformative researchers as, 5, 236–241, 300 Healing methodologies, 284, 309–310 endarkened feminist epistemology, 308–309 songs, 311–312 Hegemonic methodologies. See Methodological imperialism

Index

Held, M., 20 Herbal knowledge, 8, 291–292 Hermeneutics, 39 Hesse-Biber, S. N., 45 Higher education and indigenous studies, 203–204 Hill, C. E., 175 Historical power of evaluation, 137 HIV/AIDS African female sexuality and, 239 Batswana stories, 196–197 Botswana sentinel surveillance, 75, 78–81 condom marketing and, 81 demographic diversity issues, 78–81 drug test subjects, 8 exceptionality and crisis myth, 81 indigenous attitudes to precautions, 87–88 indigenous illness conceptions, 76–78, 197 indigenous mixed methods approach, 174–175, 177–180 indigenous testing policy approach, 99 peripheralized fourth world research context, 74 poverty dimension, 82 research and marginalization of indigenous knowledge, 72, 74–75 resisting dominant discourse in song, 62–64 third- and first-world researcher collaboration, 84–86 HIV/STI prevention intervention, 171, 178, 180 Hodge, Paul, 322 Homogeneity assumptions (error of sameness), 78–81. See also Diversity of the researched Homogenous sampling, 217 Hood, S., 137 Hoodia plant, 8 hooks, bell, 25, 238 Hornby, Albert S., 189 Hsia, Hsiao-Chuan, 275 Huberman, Michael, 215 Hudson-Wees, Pamela, 307 Hunter, A., 154 Husserl, Edmund, 38 Illness conceptions, 76–78, 197. See also HIV/AIDS Immersion-emersion stage, 95 Imperialism, 6–7. See also Methodological imperialism Indigenization, 26, 44, 93–96 action-oriented research process, 271–274 measures of, 94

359

methodology frameworks in. See Indigenous methodologies qualitative women’s health study, 96–98 See also Decolonization Indigenous conversation methods, 181–183 Indigenous evaluation model, 124–128, 132, 135 Indigenous higher education, 203–204 Indigenous Knowledge (IK), 27, 31 and knowledge production, 90–91 Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), 3, 29, 90–93, 125, 133, 155, 159 CESRIK survey, 3 characteristics of, 92 copyright issues, 4, 58 growing importance and relevance of, 52–53 HIV/AIDS precaution attitudes, 87–88 illness conceptions, 76–78 integration of, 26, 325 power struggle between researchers and the researched, 5 questions of inclusivity for mainstream researchers, 4–5 rhizomatic approach, 302–303 role in research, 92–93 See also Knowledge systems; Oral literature; Relational epistemology Indigenous methodologies, 29 integrative/adaptation approach, 30 least indigenous approach, 29–30 qualitative/quantitative, 21, 149 researchers’ framework, 31 third-space methodologies, 32 Indigenous mixed methods approaches, 157–167, 172, 174. See also Mixed method research (MMR) adolescent risk reduction interventions, 171, 174–184 with conventional qualitative research, 159–161 with qualitative and quantitative methods (Western), 157–159 quantitative research and, 161, 166–167 Indigenous multicultural validity, 136–140 conditions to improve, 141–142 Indigenous or local arbiters of research quality, 220 Indigenous paradigms, 117–118, 129 contested knowledge. See Contested knowledge mixed method research, 155 postcolonial, 120

360   Indigenous Research Methodologies Indigenous peoples, defining, 10 Indigenous plants and herbs, 8, 291–292 Indigenous qualitative evaluation, 181–183 conversation methods, 181–182 symbol of protection, 183 Indigenous research dimensions, 10 Indigenous research methods. See Indigenization; Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies Individualism in Western research, 24, 82–83, 209, 240–242, 249 Individualistic feminism, 300 Individually-defined self, 99 Informed compassion, 244 Informed consent, 3, 86, 227, 240, 241–242 Ingham, Harr, 224 Initiation ceremony, 321 Inquirer-objective relationship, evaluation, 129–130 Institutional review board, 241–242, 322 Integration of knowledge systems, 26, 325 Intellectual imperialism, 58 Intelligence testing, Porteus Maze, 56–57 Intensity sampling, 217 Internationalization, 16 Interpreters, 57 Interpretive paradigm, 38–41 Intervention context, 120 Interview methods, 26, 190, 248 conducting an indigenous interview, 262–264 conventional method, overview, 249–251 data analysis, 257–258 dingaka (divining), 252–253 focused life-story, 253–254 focus group, 255–260, 311 household interviews and stories, 288–289 indigenous feminist methods, 310–311 Medicine Wheel, 259–260 naming the researched, 251, 263–264 Pagtatanung-Tanong, 252 postcolonial indigenous approaches, 251–255 post interview impressions, 216 sagacity-based approach, 254–255 stories and narratives, 200–201 symbols in, 260–262 talking circles, 256–257, 260 theory of planned behavior and, 258 types of questions, 250–251 See also Postcolonial indigenous interview methods Ivankova, N. V., 156, 160

I/We relationship (I am we), 24, 25, 98–102, 106, 132–133, 136, 235–236, 241–242, 307, 315, 324–325. See also Ubuntu Jaggar, Alison, 299 James, William, 44 Jensen, Kipton, 99 Johari Window, 224–225 Johnson, R. B., 21, 129 Johnston-Goodstar, K., 114, 123 Jordan, Nhlanhla, 311 Journals, 216 Jussim, Lee, 58 Kaomea, J., 64–65 Kaplan, M., 191 Karakia, 254 Katigbak, Marcia, 94–95 Kaupapa Maori research methodology, 221–226, 254, 327 Kawakami, A. J., 127 Kemmis, Stephen, 269 Kente legend, 260–262 King, M. L., 101 Kirkhart, K. E., 136, 169 Knowledge questions, 251 Knowledge systems, 24, 104–105 cultural politics, 135–136 gatekeepers, 58 interpretive paradigm, 40 partnership of, 325 positivism-postpositivism paradigm, 36 transformative paradigm, 42 See also Epistemology; Indigenous knowledge systems Korean language, 206 Kovach, M., 20–22 Kuhn, Thomas, 23 Kupuna programs, 64–65 Ladd, Paddy, 3 LaFrance, J., 124, 169 Laible, Julie, 241 Language issues, 15, 106, 187–188, 204–206 bilingual texts, 206 critique of dominant languages, 53, 60–61, 205 culture and, 188 ethnophilosophy, 58 family relational terms, 2

Index

local interpreters, 57 research dissemination, 6 research instrument construction, 6 See also Literature as colonizing instrument; Oral literature; Questionnaire survey design Lanier, M., 32 Lavallée, Lynn, 257, 267, 284–285 Lester, John, 322 Lewin, Kurt, 269 Liberal feminism, 300 Liddell, C., 83 Life story interview, 250, 253–254 Lincoln, Yvonna S., 129, 205, 208, 214 Lippie, C., 96 Literacy studies, 36–38, 43–45 Literature as colonizing instrument, 61–62, 106 resistance, 62–64 Literature of indigenous, oppressed, or formerly colonized societies. See Oral literature Literature review, 59, 62 Locke, John, 35 Longshore, D., 111–112 Long-term researcher and researched relationship, 107, 324 Love, 99, 101–102, 263, 308–310 Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC), 119 Ludema, Jim, 282 Luft, Joseph, 224 Lunch, Nick and Chris, 280 Lunden, E., 301 Ma’at, 234, 236 Macleod, Catriona, 54, 69 Made in Africa Evaluation (MAE) approach, 131–132 Major, T. E., 117 Makungulupeswa, 313 Malaria, evaluation, 141–142 Malawi, 25 Male bourgeoisie ruling class, 74, 81 Male sexuality proverbs, 190–191 Malinga, Tumani, 191 Malunga, C., 29 Manness, Kathryn, 259 Manuelito, Kagendo, 95 Maori research, 12, 107 anti-smoking intervention, 195–197 Creative Relationship Framework, 222–226 Guidelines for Research and Evaluation, 15, 220

361

Kaupapa Maori research methodology, 221–226, 254, 327 whanau and karakia, 253–254 Marshall, Albert, 33 Marshall, Catherine, 297 Marshall, Judi, 318 Martin-Misener, R., 31 Marxism, 41 Marxist socialist feminism, 301 Massera, Aroztegui, 205 Mathangwane, Joyce, 189 Maua-Hodges, T., 229–232 Mazenge cult, 3 Mazrui, Ali, 15, 74 Mbizi group method, 191, 312–315 McCann, Carole, 296 McCreanor, Tim, 253–254 McManus, Verne, 253–254 McTaggart, Robert, 269 Mead, George Herbert, 44 Measurement and empiricism, 35 Medicinal plants, 8, 291–292 Medicine Wheel, 227–229, 259–260, 327 Mekgwe, P., 306 Member checking, 214 Mental health assessment, indigenous measures for, 95, 325 Mertens, Donna, 20, 58, 118–120, 176, 190, 224, 275, 300 Metaphors, 189. See also Proverbs and metaphorical sayings Methodological imperialism, 55–60, 106 academic imperialism, 58–59, 105 colonizer’s model of the world, 59–60 Porteus Maze, 56–57 resistance to, 57 See also Euro-Western research paradigms; Methodology Methodological triangulation, 215 Methodology, 25–34, 210–212 data collection and analysis questions, 212 indigenization, 93–96 interpretive paradigm, 40–41 mixed methods, 26, 55, 277 paradigms, 23, 210 positivism-postpositivism paradigm, 36–38 research approaches, 211 research planning questions, 326–333 sampling strategies, 216–217

362   Indigenous Research Methodologies third-space, 32, 54, 303 transformative paradigm, 42–43 universality assumptions, 6 See also Methodological imperialism; Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies; Qualitative research methods; Quantitative research methods; Validity and reliability Metz, Mary Haywood, 52 Mexican-U.S. researcher collaboration, 86 Mhango, N., 32 Michael, Sarah, 282 Mi’Kinaw Research Principles and Protocols, 15, 220 Miles, Mathew B., 215 Mixed method research (MMR), 147–148, 167, 170–171. See also Indigenous mixed methods approaches and cultural knowledge, 175–183 definitions of, 149–153 designs and rationales, 156 paradigms in, 154–161, 165–166 perspectives on, 148 rationales, 162–165 Mixed methods, 26, 55, 277 Mkabela, Queeneth, 233, 255 Mmogo method, 242–245, 260, 327 Mmonadibe, Poloko, 191 Mohanty, Chandra, 300 Mokgolodi, H., 117 Molelo wa Badimo, 78, 79 Montsi, Mercy, 203 Morgan, D. L., 44–45 Moseley, William, 324 Mother Earth, 100 Motherhood, within African feminism, 295–296 Mourning and decolonization, 13 Multicultural validity. See Indigenous multicultural validity Multi-epistemological research, 27 Multivariate regression analysis, 178 Mukherji, Partha N., 6 Music, indigenization of, 94 Muslim women, 297 Musyoka, Millicent, 190 Mutua, Kagendo, 26 Mutukudzi, O., 62–63 Muwanga-Zake, J. W. F., 135–136

Native American languages, 205 Native American Medicine Wheel, 227–229, 259, 327 Navajo, 95 Negative case analysis, 214 Neuman, Lawrence, 257 Neuman, William L., 38 New Zealand. See Maori research Nguzo Saba, 112 Nichols, Lee Anne, 321 Nichols, R., 169 Nigerian literacy study, 42–44 Nile Valley civilization, 234 Nommo, 234, 236 Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 282 Non-verbal communication, 206. See also Oral literature Ntseane, Gabo, 251, 311–312 Nurudeen, A. M., 29

Nader, Richard, 206 Naming the researched, 107, 108–109, 251, 263 National Research Foundation (NRF), 91

Pacific research methodologies, 229–231 Page, Angela, 230 Page, Reba N., 52

Objectivity, 35, 36, 303 O’Brien, Jay, 79 Observation, 12, 35, 56, 216 Okwemba, A., 294 Oliver, Richard A., 56–57 Omolewa, Michael, 43, 240 Ontological authenticity, 219 Ontology, 23–24 African, 133 interpretive paradigm, 39–40 positivism-postpositivism paradigm, 36 transformative research paradigm, 42 See also Relational ontology Open coding, 257 Opinion and value questions, 250 Oral literature, 89, 206, 220, 240 ethnophilosophy, 58 indigenization of music, 94 instruments of patriarchal oppression, 194, 313 Māori anti-smoking intervention, 195–197 song, 62–63, 198–200, 311–312 See also Proverbs and metaphorical sayings; Stories and storytelling Organizational context, 122 Ormond, Adreanee, 318 Othering ideologies, 6–7, 53, 73–75, 239 Ownership of research, 107

Index

Pallas, Aaron M., 52 Paradigm, 23, 210. See also Postcolonial indigenous research paradigm Parent-child communication, 182 Parr, R., 225 Participant as coresearcher, 271–275 training the researched, 287 See also Partnerships and working relationships Participatory healing methods, 284, 309–310 Participatory research methods, 14, 267 action research overview, 268–271 action research process, 286–290 Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection, 284–286 appreciative inquiry, 281–282 case study from Ecuador, 291–292 data analysis, 289 data collection, 288–289 desire-based framework, 54, 283 implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, 290 indigenous feminist methods, 310–315 Mbizi group method, 191, 312–315 participatory rural appraisal, 220, 277–279 photovoice, 284 polyvocalism and, 220 sampling methods, 278–279 training the researched to be coresearchers, 287 video and theater, 279 See also Action research Participatory rural appraisal (PRA), 220, 277–279 participatory action research process, 286–290 Participatory rural appraisal approach, 119 Partnerships and working relationships, 26, 84–86, 318–320 African sayings, 320 decolonization, 324–325 funding and, 324 long-term relationship, 324 naming the researched, 107, 108–109 overcoming researcher-centric projects, 322–323 participant as coresearcher approach, 271–274 partnership of knowledge systems, 325 prioritizing community issues, 323 researcher-researched relationships, 320 roles and responsibilities, 323 training coresearchers, 287 See also Researcher and researched relationship Patton, Michael, 250 Pawson, R., 122 Peer debriefing, 214

363

Peripheral Others, 54, 74, 81 Phenomenology, 39, 40 Philosophic sagacity, 254–255 Philosophy, 58, 188 Phiri, A., 32 Photovoice, 284 Pito’enua, 230 Planning research, 326 data analysis, 327, 333 matrix for, 328–332 orienting decisions, 326 research design and methodology, 326–327 Plano Clark, V. L., 156, 160 Poetic format for research findings, 203 Political colonialism, 7 Political power of evaluation, 137 Polyvocalism, 220 Popper, K. R., 154 Population size determination, 289 Porteus Maze, 56–57 Positionality or standpoint judgments, 219–220 Positivism, 7, 35 Positivism-postpositivism paradigm, 35–38 axiology, 36 epistemology, 36 methodology, 36–37 ontology, 36 Possession, 4 Postcolonial, 9 Postcolonial indigenous feminisms, 32, 123, 301–310 Postcolonial indigenous feminist research methodologies, 293–299 African feminisms, 294–295, 306–309 aims of research, 297–299 Black feminism, 296 Borderland-Mestizaje feminism, 302–306 challenging Western universalized gender theory, 295, 297 endarkened feminist epistemology, 307–309 fundamental themes, 295–297 healing methodologies, 309–310 Mbizi group method, 191, 312–315 men as partners against gender oppression, 306–307 postcolonial indigenous feminisms, 301–310 poststructural deconstruction methods, 296 question to guide research, 298 theoretical frameworks, 296 understanding Western feminisms, 300–301

364   Indigenous Research Methodologies womanism, 306 See also Feminist research methodologies Postcolonial indigenous interview methods, 251–255 focus group, 255–260 principles for conducting an interview, 262–264 symbols in, 260–262 See also Interview methods Postcolonial indigenous paradigm, 32, 120, 170–174 decolonizing collaborative research, 171 interrogating power in evaluation, 173–175 relational epistemology, 171 Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies, 25–32, 209–210 Afrocentric paradigm, 25, 233–236 illustrating culturally responsive methodologies, 209–210 indigenizing research methodologies, 93–96 Kaupapa Maori research methodology, 221–226, 254, 327 Medicine Wheel, 227–229, 259–260, 327 Mmogo method, 242–245, 260, 327 Pacific research methodologies, 229–231 paradigm, methodology, and methods, 210–212 postcolonial indigenous feminist methodologies and, 302 qualitative research examples, 68–69 questions and concerns for researchers, 4–5 research planning questions, 326–327 resistance to dominant literature, 62–64 role of indigenous knowledge in, 92–93 third-space methodologies, 32, 54, 303 transformative paradigm and, 44 validity and reliability, 212, 218–220 See also Postcolonial indigenous research paradigm Postcolonial indigenous research paradigm, 23, 44, 89, 98, 208–209 difference between indigenous and dominant paradigms, 24 ethical protocols, 23, 41 relational axiology, 23, 24–25, 105–110 relational epistemology, 23, 24, 104–105 relational ontology, 23–24, 98–104 research as ceremony, 219 theoretical assumptions, 23 See also Decolonization; Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies Postcolonial indigenous research terminology, 5–16, 23–25, 209–212

Postcolonial theories and discourse, 23, 53–54 aims of postcolonial indigenous theory, 54–55 critique, 54 critique of dominant languages, 53, 60–61 feminisms, 297–301 research aims, 54–55 See also Afrocentric theoretical framework; Postcolonial indigenous feminist research methodologies; Theory and theorizing; specific theories or paradigms Postcolonial theory, 123, 232 Postpositivism paradigm, 19 and methods branch, 119 mixed method research, 154 Poverty and HIV/AIDS, 82 Power, conceptual model of, 137 Power relations, researchers and researched, 6, 15, 26, 40, 53, 84, 237–238, 275, 320–322. See also Empowerment; Ethical issues; Researcher and researched relationship Pragmatism paradigm, 19, 44–45, 119 mixed method research, 155 Praxis-oriented research, 275 Predominantly qualitative concurrent designs, 156 Predominantly quantitative concurrent designs, 156 Preece, Julia, 8, 188, 240 Problem context, 120 Problem statement, 36 Progressive subjectivity, 214 Prostitutes, 8 Proverbs and metaphorical sayings, 188–193, 196 as conceptual frameworks, 189–190 exploring community-constructed ideologies, 190–193 functional categories, 189 lifelong learning and literacy, 240 metaphors, 189 respecting other’s voices, 320 woman-centered, mother-centered feminism, 295–296 Psychology, 7 indigenous measures, 95, 325 intellectual imperialism, 58 Psychosocial validity, 136 Publishers, gatekeepers of knowledge, 58 Qualitative research, rigor in, 212–218 confirmability, 218 credibility components, 213–216

Index

dependability (reliability), 217 reflexivity, 215 transferability (generalizability), 216–217 triangulation, 214 Qualitative research methods, 211, 212 indigenous women’s health study, 96–98 interview as narrative, 200–201 participatory rural appraisal, 277–278 sampling, 216–217 table of examples, 68–69 transformative paradigm, 42 Western-based data analysis strategies, 257–258 Quantitative research methods, 211, 212 ethical issues, 82–83 positivism-postpositivism paradigm, 36–38 transformative paradigm, 42 See also Tests and measures Questionnaire survey design, 36–38, 56 Africentrism self-report, 111–112 indigenous illness conceptions, 76–78 indigenous mental health assessment, 95, 325 participatory rural appraisal, 277–278 positivism-postpositivism paradigm, 36–38 Question types, in interviews, 250–251 Race-based methodologies, 66–69 Race/ethnicity, class, gender, age, and ableness, 53 Racial bias in research, 26, 41 Radical feminism, 300 Random purposive sampling, 217 Rapport development, 214, 225 Realism, 35, 154 Reality, 35 illness conceptions and perceptions of, 76 ontology, 23, 39, 98 positivist paradigm, 35 transformative paradigm, 42 See also Positivism-postpositivism paradigm; Relational ontology Rebirth, in Ubuntu worldview, 235–236 Reciprocity, 5, 24–25, 104, 106, 220, 225, 227 Referential adequacy, 215 Reflexivity, 11, 160, 166, 220, 223–224, 241 action-oriented research process, 270–271, 276 Johari Window, 224–225 Reinharz, Shulamit, 220 Reiterative process, 225 Relational accountability, 5, 23, 24, 106, 111, 195, 220 Relational axiology, 24, 106–110

365

African perspectives, 106 four Rs, 5, 24, 106, 220–221, 324–325 See also Axiology Relational economics, 61 Relational epistemology, 23, 24, 104–105 Borderland-Mestizaje feminism, 303 endarkened feminist epistemology, 307–309 Relationality, principle of, 10 Relational ontology, 23–24, 98–104 African perspectives, 98–102 Australian and Canadian perspectives, 102–104 use of social networks, 101 See also Connectedness; I/We relationship Relational power of evaluation, 137 Relational terms, 2 Relation building, 102–104, 214 Relations with the cosmos, 103–104 Relations with the living and the nonliving, 2, 24, 99–101, 103–106, 195, 234, 236, 261, 263, 306–307. See also Spirituality; Totems Reliability, 83 dependability in qualitative research, 217 See also Validity and reliability Replication, 217 Reporting research findings alternative narrative formats, 201–203, 333 indigenous languages and, 204–206 Research, 5–6 Research and social action, 269. See also Action research Research as ceremony, 219, 284 Research assistants, 57 Researcher and researched relationship, 5, 8, 24–25, 106, 237, 322 four Rs, 5, 24, 106 indigenous distrust of the written word, 320–321 interpretive paradigm, 40 long-term relationship, 107 long-term working relationship, 324 Maori Creative Relationship Framework, 226 participant as coresearcher approach, 271–275 power relations, 6, 15, 26, 41, 53, 84, 221, 237–238, 275, 320 reflexivity and qualitative research credibility, 215 research planning questions, 326–327 training, 287 See also Ethical issues; Partnerships and working relationships

366   Indigenous Research Methodologies Researcher as transformative healer, 5, 236–241, 300. See also Healing methodologies Researcher roles and responsibilities, 5, 10, 15. See also Ethical issues Research findings dissemination, alternative narrative forms, 201–203 Research funding, 324–325 Researching back, 54–60 Research methodology. See Methodology Research ownership, 107 Research paradigm, 23, 210. See also Euro-Western research paradigms; Postcolonial indigenous research methodologies Research planning. See Planning research Research quality, indigenous or local arbiters, 220 Research questions, 271, 276, 282, 287, 326 interpretive research paradigm, 41 literature review and, 62 prioritizing community issues, 322–323 Respect, in Ubuntu, 234 Respectful representation, 5, 10–11, 24, 106–107, 220–221 Responsive evaluation model, 122 Reviere, Ruth, 233, 238–239 Rhizomatic approach, 302–303 Rights and regulations of the researched, 5, 24, 106, 220–221 Rog, D. J., 120 Romm, N., 154 Romm, N. R. A., 20 Rothenberg, Paula, 299 Ruling class, 74 Russon, Craig, 129 Sagacity-based interview approach, 254–255 Said, Edward, 75 Sameness error, 78–81 Sampling methods, 216–217, 278–279 San, 8 Sandoval, Chela, 26, 101 Schaik, J. L., 189 Scheurich, James J., 18, 26, 50 Schmitt, Rudolf, 189 Schumaker, L., 57 Scientific colonialism, 7–8 colonized Other category, 9 Sefa Dei, George J., 90 Self, Ubuntu conception of (I am we), 25, 99. See also Ubuntu

Self-determination, 14, 95, 235, 307 Self-praise stories, 198 Self-reflexivity, 220 action-oriented research process, 270–271 See also Reflexivity Semistructured interview, 250 Sensory questions, 251 Sequential designs, 156 Setlogolo Ntsha Ditlhogo, 200 Setting evaluation context, 120 Sexuality, 85, 191, 199–200, 203, 239, 240 Sexually risky behaviors, 191, 199, 258 Sex workers, 8 Shah, Sonia, 142 Sharing circles, 257, 284–285, 321 Sharra, Steve, 25 Shona Symptom Questionnaire, 95, 325 Silko, Leslie Marmon, 303 Simonds, V. W., 176 Slife, Brent, 318 Smith, G. H., 222 Smith, Linda T., 10, 14, 62, 107 Smith, T., 78 Smoking cessation intervention, 196–197 Snowball sampling, 217 Snowden, Don, 279 Social context of program evaluation, 122 Social data collection, 288–289 Socialist feminist theory, 301 Socialization, 193–194 Social justice, 14–15 axiology and, 42 postcolonial indigenous ethical theory, 220–221 relational indigenous paradigm, 95–96 researcher-researched relationships, 320–324 third-space methodologies, 32 Ubuntu principle, 24 See also Action research; Decolonization; Ethical issues; Postcolonial indigenous feminist research methodologies Social reality, 23–24, 42. See also Ontology Social science methodologies. See Methodology Solie, 259 Solórzano, Daniel G., 194 Songs, 62–63, 198–200, 311–312, 321 South-Global South, 116, 121, 142 South-South Cooperation, 116 Spatial data collection, 288 Spirit possession, 3

Index

Spirituality, 101, 103–104 endarkened feminist epistemology, 308–309 exclusion as academic research topic, 321–322 gendered cultural/religious practices, 297 relations with the living and the nonliving, 2, 24, 99–101, 103–106, 195, 234, 236, 261, 263, 306–307 storytelling and, 202 Tswana origin story, 196 Ubuntu and, 234 Spivak, Gayatri, 6, 8, 74, 81, 86 Spradley, James, 250 Standpoint judgments, 219–220 Stefurak, T., 21, 129 Stephenson, Brenda, 58 Stepwise replication, 217 Stories and storytelling, 108, 327 counter storytelling, 67, 194 critique of dominant academic institutions, 203–204 dingaka (divining) as interviewing strategy, 252–253 dissertation or research report formats, 201–203 indigenous qualitative methodology, 96–98 instruments of oppression, 193–194, 314 Mbizi group method, 314 relational accountability and, 195 research interviews, 200–201 research uses, 194–195 self-praise/identity, 198 socializing function, 193–194 songs, 62–64, 198–199, 311–312 Tswana origin story, 196 value of the elderly, 102 Structural questions, 250 Structured or standardized interview, 250 Sudden infant death syndrome, 253–254 Survey design. See Questionnaire survey design Survivance, 54 Sutton, Carole, 94 Swadener, Beth, 26 Swanson, Dalene, 25, 241 Symbol-based reflection, 284–286 Symbols, in indigenous practices, 260–262, 309–312 Taboos, 3, 76, 234 metaphors and, 189 Tafoya, Terry, 202 Talanoa Faafeletua interview methods, 231 Talking circles, 108, 182–183, 256–257, 260, 320 Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection, 284–286

367

Tanzanian moral-economic concepts, 61 Technical data collection, 289 Technical validity, 136 Te Matahauariki methodology, 222–227 Terminology in postcolonial indigenous research methodologies, 5–16, 23–25, 209–212 Tests and measures biases in, 209 indigenous measures, 95, 325 Porteus Maze, 56–57 See also Questionnaire survey design Thayer-Bacon, Barbara, 104 Theoretical triangulation, 215 Theory and theorizing, 23, 53, 55, 187, 210–211, 299 African capabilities for, 58 aims of postcolonial indigenous theory, 54–55 ethnophilosophy, 188 feminist theory, 297–301 oppression by, 62 proverbs and metaphors as conceptual frameworks, 189–190 universalized binary opposites, 7, 53, 59, 73–75, 221 See also Afrocentric theoretical framework; Feminist research methodologies; Postcolonial theories and discourse Theory of planned behavior (TPB), 175, 177–178, 258 Thiong’o, Ngugi wa, 16, 60, 74 Third-space methodologies, 32, 54, 303 Thompson, B. J., 175 Tiffin, Helen, 75 Tiley, N., 122 Time lines, 288 Time-related data collection, 288 Tivaevae research model, 229–233 Tobacco sharing (aseema), 103, 195, 214, 263 Tobacco use intervention, 195–197 Totems, 2, 76, 101, 195, 234, 241 Training coresearchers, 287 Transferability, 216–217 Transformative healer, 5, 236–241, 300 endarkened feminist epistemology, 307–309 Transformative paradigm, 19–20, 119–120 mixed method research, 155, 159 Transformative participatory action research, 275–276 Transformative research paradigm, 41–44, 55 Triangulation, 214 Tribal critical theory, 123 Trustworthiness, 215, 218

368   Indigenous Research Methodologies Tshireletso, Batshi, 3 Tswana origin story, 196 Tuck, Eve, 54, 284 Tutu, Desmond, 25, 101 Ubuntu, 24, 25, 98–99, 106, 135–136, 241, 310 components of, 234–236 decolonizing working relationships, 325 HIV testing policy approach, 99 Mbizi group method, 314 UNESCO, 72 United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), 75 Universal assumptions in Euro-Western methodologies, 6, 61, 73–74, 78–81, 237, 295. See also Diversity of the researched Unstructured interview, 249 Validity, 136–137 Validity and reliability, 83, 212–220 Afrocentric theoretical framework, 239 postcolonial indigenous research methodologies, 212–213, 218–220 qualitative research rigor, 212–218 See also Qualitative research, rigor in Value added approach, 127 Value systems, 23, 24–25 critical theory versus, 54 interpretive paradigm, 40 proverbs and metaphorical sayings, 188–193 transformative paradigm, 42 See also Axiology Value validity, 136 Van Dijk, Teun A., 200–201 Variables, 36 demographic, 198 Video-based participatory methods, 279 Village chief, 58 Village mapping, 279, 289 Viswanathan, Meera, 271 Vizenor, Gerald, 54 Voice of the researched, 187, 220, 238 interviews and, 257, 263–264 use of song, 62–64, 198–200, 311–312 See also Oral literature; Proverbs and metaphorical sayings Vukic, A., 31 Walker, Polly, 201, 228, 322 Walter, M., 21, 149, 166, 169, 177

Wardhaugh, Ronald, 189 The Water Project, 121–122, 143–144 Watson-Gegeo, Karen A., 12 Ways of knowing (epistemology), 23 Wealth and well-being ranking, 289 Weaving legend (Kente), 260–262 Weber-Pillwax, Cora, 106, 254–255, 260 Weiner, Gaby, 300 West as concept, 7 Western methodologies. See Euro-Western research paradigms; Methodology Western research paradigms. See Euro-Western research paradigms Whanau, 254 Widows and widowers, 76, 197 Williams, E. N., 175 Williams-Mozley, 147 Wilson, A. T., 118–120 Wilson, Peggy, 256 Wilson, Shawn, 2, 20, 23, 24, 98, 102, 105, 106, 107– 109, 201–202, 333 Wilson, Stan, 256 Witches and witchcraft, 24, 35, 39, 63, 76 Womanism, 306 Women’s cult affliction, 3 Women’s issues, 293–294 African female sexuality and HIV/AIDS, 239 HIV/AIDS intervention targeting, 80–81 patriarchal oppression in all worlds, 74 qualitative indigenous health study, 96–98 supposedly oppressive cultural/religious practices, 297 See also Feminist research methodologies Working relationships. See Partnerships and working relationships; Researcher and researched relationship World Health Organization (WHO), 75 Self-Report Questionnaire, 324 Writing, 58 Yang, Xiaobo, 206 Yarn method, 183 Yosso, Tara J., 194 Young, Lauren J., 52 Young, Michelle D., 50, 297 Youngman, Frank, 190, 240 Yusuf, Kehinde, 189 Zimbabwe, 7, 57