Where Do We Go from Here? Moving Forward and the Reclamation of Voice
Indigenous scholars within the academy continue to voice a concern that has been expressed within communities for decades: that indigenous knowledge should be protected and respected (Battiste, 2000, 2002; Battiste & Henderson, 2002; G. Smith, 2000; L. Smith, 2000). It is only through the development of research frameworks and practices that are centered on serving indigenous communities and indigenous practices that we can actively work toward answering the call that Parker (1916) and Deloria (1969) put forth decades ago. If indigenous peoples are to reclaim our research and our intellectual voices, indigenous research(ers) must (re)claim and (re)define how research is understood and taken up. Graham Smith (2000) echoes the concerns of Parker and Deloria to assert the need for indigenous peoples to pursue self-determination and reclaim an intellectual life that honors and respects indigenous knowledges as he explains,
My message … is that we have the option to set our own courses with respect to realizing our dreams and aspirations, and therefore we ought to be considering developing resistance initiatives around that kind of philosophy, initiatives that are positive and proactive. We must reclaim our own lives in order to put our destinies in our own hands. (p. 211, italics added)
Resistance to CIRM
It is not surprising that this process of reclaiming an indigenous research methodology and thought-world has been met with resistance from non-indigenous colleagues. Echoing some of Parker's concerns (1916) just after the close of the nineteenth century, Cook-Lynn (2000) explains,
At the close of the [twentieth] century, the efforts that indigenous peoples have made to speak for themselves and their peoples, either through their own works or through the interpretative works of translators, are being subjected to abuse and scholarly/political attacks that goes far beyond the normal critical analysis of academic work. (p. 80)
Thus indigenous scholarship, when it is engaged, suffers from the same practices and treatment that relegated indigenous worldviews to the periphery in the first place. Not engaging indigenous research is a hegemonic method by which the “Whitestream world” (Grande, 2008, p. 234) can discredit, ignore, or deny an intellectual life for indigenous peoples (see, for example, Battiste, 2002). Hegemony is a term first coined by Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci (Gramsci, Hoare, & Nowell-Smith, 1971) to indicate how a society comes to believe that the manner in which things, like Western research, are engaged in has always been that way; it erases the fact that these beliefs have been influenced by imperial and colonial practices that have silenced and subverted the voices and thoughts of indigenous people for centuries. In this way, the power to name or determine the beliefs and practices of the community has come to rest on the shoulders of those responsible for colonizing these spaces rather than on those who have always inhabited the space(s). Viewed in this light, we can see that there is little that is “commonsense” or “natural” about the ways in which research has historically been taken up in indigenous communities.
Cook-Lynn (2000) goes on to note, “It can be argued that pretending the work does not exist or pretending ignorance of it is one of the methods of discrediting the work” (p. 89). Ignoring, silencing, and hiding critical indigenous scholarship and its concomitant methods and methodologies are hegemonic practices. These practices of discrediting end up denying, once again, the basic human rights of indigenous peoples to develop their own intellectual lives and thought-worlds, defined not in the Cartesian sense but on indigenous terms. CIRM, then, must be counterhegemonic, calling attention to actions that seek to disrupt the “commonsense” nature of research and thinking that accompany mainstream ideas and research, as well as anticolonial.
Similarly, Graham Smith (2000) points to another trend that has surfaced in an attempt to discredit the work of indigenous scholars. That is, attacking the credibility of the work serves to place into question the accountability the research(er) has to the academic community and to the indigenous community that is being served by the research.
Within the postmodern analysis, there is often an emphasis on the critique—that is, on what has gone wrong—at the expense of providing transformative strategies and outcomes. Many academics have their research shaped by the institution in which they work—for example, in order to fulfill the institution's academic expectations that research be positivistic and so on. A lot less emphasis is put on the critique that's developed out of the organic community context (it's not seen as real academic work). To put this another way, many Maori academics complain that we have to perform to two levels of accountability. Our academic credibility does not just depend on the institution we work for and the number of papers or books we produce. Our academic credibility is also set in very powerful ways by the communities in which we are located. (G. Smith, 2000, p. 213)
Echoing some of G. Smith's concerns, Cook-Lynn (2000) points out that scarier still are the methodologies that are rising in response to indigenous efforts to engage in indigenous-centered research and practices:
[Questioning the] veracity and authority of representational stories, questioning liberation theology, politics, and mediation—these have emerged as the disciplinary methodologies used to interpret and analyze the singular native voice. In the process much of what is written and published as the American Indian literary voice of the twentieth century is subject to analysis as either inauthentic or too transgressive and counterhegemonic, and often is discredited in literature as not even aesthetically pleasing. (p. 81)
This strategic response by those opposed to CIRM in discrediting the long-silenced voices of indigenous peoples is unsurprising given the history of Western research practices concerning indigenous communities.
Indigenous researchers embracing CIRM may also find their efforts are trivialized as a certain fawning for a former utopia that cannot be achieved and as such may be dismissed as irrelevant, obsolete, or nonpracticable by current researchers. Such views dismiss thousands of years of indigenous research because lifestyles engaged in by indigenous peoples in the past are viewed as nonviable in today's modern societies; these views represent a failure to understand that those traditions and forms of engaging in research do not remain in the past but continue to influence the present. That is, as indigenous researchers we are linked to the past through traditions, some of which are embedded in research done by our ancestors, but this does not mean indigenous researchers are stuck in the past. The past matters for the present in that we are all constructed by traditions that morph through their use and engagement.
That said, indigenous researchers may find themselves on sandy ground and at a distinct researching disadvantage in an academy dominated by an almost unwavering belief in a singular epistemological approach grounded in Western understandings of science and in which academicians mistakenly assume the goal of CIRM is to time-travel back to a precontact era. To be clear, CIRM does not pretend that the goal is to flash back to precontact times (although wouldn't that be something?!?). Rather, CIRM is grounded in a belief that by centering indigenous worldviews, values, beliefs, and traditions (old and new), it is possible to rehabilitate academic research into a responsible community member—into research that sustains, supports, and provides sustenance to those who dare to envision healthy, thriving futures grounded in indigenous worldviews and considerations of self-determination and sovereignty.
Response to Critiques
Moreover, it is imperative that indigenous scholars respond directly to the critiques while simultaneously not becoming distracted by them. In order to do this, we argue that indigenous scholarship should stay focused on the relational aspects of the research and the justice-oriented nature of the work. Indeed, Cook-Lynn (2000) notes that to not engage in critical research is a denial of a “basic human right” (p. 86, italics added). She goes on to argue that the denial of indigenous peoples' right, “to express [themselves] collectively and historically in terms of continued self-determination, is a kind of genocide that is perhaps even more immoral than the physical genocide of war and torture” (p. 86). Cook-Lynn's sentiment might be best addressed by Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999), who writes,
The denial by the West of humanity to indigenous peoples, the denial of citizenship and human rights, the denial of the right to self-determination—all these demonstrate palpably the enormous lack of respect which has marked the relations of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. (p. 120)
Notably, Cook-Lynn's and Smith's commentaries bear striking resemblance to Parker's work (1916) in their analysis of the importance of self-determination and the right to an intellectual life.
CIRM responds to the critique surrounding indigenous scholarship by moving the focus of the arguments away from an emphasis on dismissals to a focus aimed squarely at addressing particular issues of (in)justice. CIRM calls for attention to the needs of peoples and communities. Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) is again insightful when she notes, “Reclaiming a voice in this context has also been about reclaiming, reconnecting and reordering those ways of knowing which were submerged, hidden or driven underground” (p. 69). Ultimately the reclamation project of CIRM is a vital component of this work. We envision, in the foreseeable future, methodologies that do not succumb to the bitter politics of being right but ones that focus on doing right—that is, working toward fulfilling the needs of communities, asserting a right to intellectual and scholarly freedoms and creativity, and engaging the research process with integrity.