Close to home: An Indigenist project of story gathering

This article describes an Indigenist re-search project where I gathered stories from my mother who went to the St. Johns Anglican Residential School. The re-search project was a personal, close to home project that took place from 2015 to 2017. This article articulates a personal, layered, wholistic and seasonally governed Indigenist methodology. It illustrates what makes a project Indigenist by way of its focus and process that is wholistic and guided by an Anishinaabe worldview calling attention to spirit, heart, mind and body. In this article, the term re-search versus research is applied to indicate an act of ‘looking again’ at how to re-search. My hyphenated re-search restores Indigeneity and Indigenous knowledge in how one comes to know (knowledge production).  This article demonstrates a reworking of how I engage in research through an act of re-searching through memory and story sharing.  The methodology presented herein illustrates a process of gathering stories, having conversations, making meaning of those stories, and reframing and representing them in multiple modes such as film, creative arts and text. My Indigeneity as well as my Anishinaabe teachings and knowledge are the foundation of how I searched and guided this wholistic process.  Pivotal to this project is the relationship of daughter and mother and the restoring of both knowledge and relationship through re-search.  This article articulates a methodology that is steeped in relational accountability, seasonally guided and restoring of Indigenous knowledge

Four Generations For Generations: A Pow Wow Story to Transform Academic Evaluation Criteria

Within this article, I share a story of four generations of my family and community coming together through pow wow dancing. I present the storying and re-storing of Indigenous scholarly engagement through pow wow regalia making and dance to accomplish two things: 1) to center Indigenous knowledge, kinship and community work through scholarship; and 2) to generate merit and value in the good work in which Indigenous scholars engage. Our creative and cultural selves are often excluded in terms of what receives value and merit in collective agreements. The academy wants us to teach, publish, and engage in community service. My community service is often within Indigenous kinship and community service where I engage in creativity and expressive arts. Evaluations of our tenure attribute value, credit, and merit for work produced, service generated, and research conducted steeped in a eurowestern definition of scholarly work. We theorize about the significance and importance of our culture and traditions; however, our families and communities’ practices are regarded as external and outside of the eurowestern academic contexts. This article brings together the knowledge of preparing for and dancing in a pow wow as valued and good work of Indigenous scholars within the academy. It calls attention to a need to revise systems of value and merit in a manner that benefits Indigenous scholars’ whole knowledge systems

Wholistic and Ethical: Social Inclusion with Indigenous Peoples

This paper begins with a poem and is inclusive of my voice as Anishinaabekwe (Ojibway woman) and is authored from my spirit, heart, mind and body. The idea of social inclusion and Indigenous peoples leave more to the imagination and vision than what is the reality and actuality in Canada. This article begins with my location followed with skepticism and hope. Skepticism deals with the exclusion of Indigenous peoples since colonial contact and the subsequent challenges and impacts. Hope begins to affirm the possibilities, strengths and Indigenous knowledge that guides wholistic cultural frameworks and ethics of social inclusion. A wholistic cultural framework is presented; guided by seven sacred teachings and from each element thoughts for consideration are guided by Indigenous values and principles. From each element this paper presents a wholistic and ethical perspective in approaching social inclusion and Indigenous peoples. (author's abstract

Kaandossiwin: how we come to know

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