INDIGENOUS RESEARCH METHODS IN ACADEMIA
Scientific Workshops
Indigenous research methods in Indigenous studies
First workshop meeting in Kautokeino during the Sámi education conference
wednesday 31st of May 2017: 13.00–18.30 o’clock
Room: Sullodat, Diehtosiida
Workshop organized by Pigga Keskitalo, Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen and Torjer Olsen
This session looks at better inclusion of indigenous research methods in academia. Indigenous research methods emphasize qualitative, collaborative, participatory methods, ethics, and empowerment frameworks (Tuhiwai Smith 1999; Wilson 2008; Denzin et al. 2008; Chilisa 2012). Knowledge is aimed to be produced in a relational and collaborative way based on the dynamic relationships that arise from the interaction of people with the environment, generations with each other, as well as social and physical relationships. This approach underlines storytelling, dialogues, artwork, poetry, music, and multisensorial experiences as ways of learning. But how can they become more benefitted at graduate and postgraduate levels of Indigenous studies? Educational practices shall not weaken indigenous languages, knowledge, and oral traditions. The aim of this session is to explore the experiences of applying different indigenous research methods in university teaching and learning and thus to advance the use of indigenous research methods in academia. On the other hand, recent pedagogical methods have also emphasized activating methods, such collaborative knowledge-making. What are then the differences and/or interconnections of so-called indigenous and contemporary means of Euro-American knowledge-production in academic teaching and learning?
1. Pigga Keskitalo, Associate Professor, Sámi allaskuvla
[email protected]
Stories of indigenous students’ journeys to graduate study
Higher education is widely understood to be important to Indigenous people globally. Increasing the numbers of Indigenous graduate students and researchers is a key factor in enabling leaders and communities and in the development and understanding of and respect for Indigenous histories, cultures and language. In order to better prepare Indigenous people for research and leadership roles it is important to promote opportunities for Indigenous participation in graduate education and higher degrees by research. |
The available literature indicates clear need for aspiring Indigenous graduates to be able to connect with higher education programs that align to their own cultural experience. Introduction is based on anthology project with Canadian and Australian academics focussing on Indigenous participation in stories of Indigenous students’ journeys to postgraduate study and their experience of undertaking it. Anthology book is edited together with doctors Karen Trimmer from University of Southern Queensland and Debra Hoven from Athabasca University.
2. Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, Associate Professor, University of Helsinki
[email protected]
Indigenous research methods and ethics of weaving knowledge
My paper addresses ethical issues and long-term engagement as key differences of indigenous research methods when compared to other fields of science. As an example I will take my experiences of collaborative research in Amazonia, as well as own teaching, a course on epistemological differences and decolonial methods. |
3. Torjer Olsen, Associate Professor, UiT-The Arctic University of Norway
[email protected]
Class, privilege, and power in research on indigenous issues
Even though they are hard topics to deal with, as scholars of indigenous studies we need to include and ask for issues related to class, privilege, and power. Indigenous methodologies have been an important and necessary development within the research on indigenous issues. They have provided an alternative and a correction to the dominant research methodologies. In this paper, I argue that intersectional perspectives, including other aspects and axes of power and identity are useful and even necessary to keep indigenous studies a critical discipline. |
4. Hanna Outakoski, PhD, Umeå University
[email protected]
How to accommodate empirical school research into the Indigenous research paradigm
Studying writing or any other educational activity that takes place in a complex Indigenous and multicultural context and among learners of an Indigenous language in a remote geographical context comes with both expected and unexpected challenges. Such challenges involve everything from ethical and practical considerations to emotional issues. It is also not always possible to plan the entire research project or design the research questions in cooperation with the Indigenous community that will participate in the study. This is particularly true of empirical and experimental research that may be of great value for the community although the participants do not possess any knowledge about or interest in the research subject. This paper discusses pre-research strategies and the in-the-field tactics within empirical research in the Sámi context, and how and to what extent the strategies and tactics should conform to the principles of Indigenous research. |
5. Rauna Rahko-Ravantti, University lecturer, University of Lapland
[email protected]
Indigenous education and Otherness - researching teachers
Sámi education has a strong history of assimilation, and the Sámi school culture is colored with colonization. The educational project of folk education, schooling and school system has efficiently assimilated indigenous peoples within the mainstreaming society for centuries. In this sense, the Sámi people’s situation is, in many ways, similar to other indigenous peoples’ situation. Sámi languages are endangered and the Sámi traditions, skills, and knowledge differ from the mainstream culture. During the past decades, the pursuit has been to change the influence of assimilation through school systems so that schools could strongly support, maintain, and revitalize the Sámi language and culture alongside socioeconomic and other societal factors. |
Sámi education and Sámi teachers, who implement Sámi education in Finnish basic schools, formed the core of my PhD study. The purpose was to research Sámi teachers’ work in Finnish schools and their agency as teachers. In addition, their perceptions of the development and change of Sámi education and its future development were studied. In my paper I want to discuss about otherness in education and negative but also empowering aspect of it. I will also construct methodology sides of my research.
6. Hanna Ellen Guttorm, Associate Professor, Sámi allaskuvla
[email protected]
Becoming Wondering: Struggling with Posthumanist Theories and Indigenous Methodologies in Sámi Teacher Education
Teaching in Sámi teacher education is a multiple challenge/possibility/play-(not)-to-play. In addition to many explicit rules including eg. the national curricula, there are many implicit discourses, concepts and practices we use and reproduce without noticing, without asking for alternatives. In this presentation, I’m going to read, think and wonder with some posthumanist theories and Indigenous methodologies, as well as write with my-experiences in and with Sámi teacher education. How are we deconstructing the colonial (Western) structures and mentalities in Indigenous knowledge making practices, or are we? What kind of teaching and learning are we (re-)creating? These are some tentative and fumbling questions that are not supposed to become answered but played, moved, dwelled with. |
7. Bjørn Ola Tafjord, UiT-The Arctic University of Norway
[email protected]
Indigenous methodologies and religious terminologies
Sometimes, indigenous methodologies are presented with language that brings about religious associations. For example, words like “belief,” “ceremony,” and “spirituality” have been used to point out central ideas and practices in indigenous methodologies. In some cases, such words might work as helpful pedagogical tools, facilitating a constructive approach to and a better understanding of the particularities of an indigenous methodology. But in other cases, it might block a better understanding and hinder wider academic acceptance of indigenous methodologies. To many academicians, religious language or metaphors tend to locate things in the domain of the “supernatural” or “irrational,” that is, in a different place than the one they imagine as the “secular” and “rational” domain of their own academic undertaking. |
This might result in unfortunate misunderstandings and the reinforcement of an already asymmetrical relationship between conventional academic methodologies and indigenous methodologies. In order to generate broader recognition of the critical contributions of indigenous methodologies not just to indigenous studies but to the entire academic project, I think it would be strategically wise to avoid religious terminology. Consider, for example, the difference between claiming that an indigenous methodology is based on a “theory” and claiming that it is based on a “belief.”
8. Lea Kantonen, Professor, University of Arts
e-mail [email protected]
Performing the museum – Can performance art be used as a methodological tool to highlight indigenous knowledge?
In Latin America performance art is often used a decolonizing practice to put aside the colonial baggage that defines the aesthetic frameworks of certain historical art forms such as theatre and modern art. It is the relative newness of performance art that makes it open for different forms and approaches for non-hierarchical learning. The dead white male geniuses are not the ones who have the authority to define what is the right way of doing it. In indigenous communities performance art can highlight the oral and practical ways of knowing and learning. Since 1999 I have collaborated with the community-based Wixarika secondary school Tatuutsi Maxakwaxi in the community of Tsikwaita on the Western Sierra Madre mountains, Mexico in the planning process of a community museum. Together with the teachers we have developed performance workshops as a tool to gather and archive Wixarika knowledge for the museum. In the workshop at Sámi Allaskuvla I shall show video documentation of short performances by the secondary school students. |
9. Britt Kramvig, professor, Department for tourism and Northern Studies, UiT The Arctic University of Norway
[email protected]
Doing Indigenous Methodologies: Shift from the ‘Objective Observer’ to the ‘Careful Partial Participant’
Mobilizing Indigenous methodologies in academic knowledge work is a way to recognise the epistemic authority of Indigenous elders and the practices by which wisdom is enacted in Indigenous communities, while not refusing the epistemic authority of academics. This paper tells of writing workshops, designed to introduce students to a way of writing that expresses Indigenous methodologies in recognizing multiple epistemic authorities. Conducted during a few weeks for a mixed group of Master degree students, these ‘experiments’ proposed an alternative configuration of the figure of the ‘author in the text’ who comes to life in analytic texts generated with and through Indigenous methodologies. |
In asking students to approach writing through a differently configured author, we proposed a form of participatory ethnographic writing that encouraged them to see themselves as partially participating in the collective workings of Indigenous knowledge communities, rather than adopting a position as a neutral commentator on those workings from some idealised removed observer position. For many of these students the ethic of “data-gathering” as well as writing are utterly important, many working in communities they see themselves as part of. How to “participate with care” are not only part of the methodological questions but in addition part of what fuels the possibility as well as resistance within their own writing.
(This presentation relate to a paper I work on together with Camilla Brattland, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway and Helen Verran, Charles Darwin University.)
(This presentation relate to a paper I work on together with Camilla Brattland, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway and Helen Verran, Charles Darwin University.)
10. Torkel Rasmussen, Associate Professor, Sámi allaskuvla
[email protected]
11. Irja Seurujärvi-Kari, PhD, University of Helsinki
[email protected]
Experiences from the teaching methods in multidisciplinary Sámi Studies
In this paper I would like to reflect my experiences from my teaching methods as a lecturer and co-ordinator in multidisciplinary Sámi Studies at UH during a couple of decades. My role as a university lecturer was very multi-functional; in addition to my professional work I was an activist in Sámi and indigenous movement, and I was often expected to know everything on Sámi culture and be ready to share my Sámi knowledge with different people in and outside the university.
Sámi Studies is a unique and challenging programme because the Sámi can be taught and studied from the various points of view including including linguistics, cultural anthropology, ethnography, comparative religion, archaeology, prehistory and history. |
The aim of the field of Sámi studies is to focus on the present interdisciplinary tradition of indigenous studies, and not so much on earlier Lappological tradition in which indigenous cultures and communities have often been studied in the past and viewed as an object of knowledge to serve colonial interests and needs.
The goal of Sámi Studies was to provide students with an ability to work in the duties that require specialized knowledge on Sámi and indigenous issues in the Nordic and international context. One of its aims was to afford good writing and oral skills in all Sámi languages, that’s why native speakers of different Sámi languages were invited to give preliminary courses in Inari, Skolt and South Sámi languages. In addition to languages, the aim was to train the student in Sámi culture and history, and to see issues from inside and to filter all issues and facts through Sámi human rights and present situation. It was also very important to travel to Sámi land to get to know better the local area and people; in Kilpisjärvi many courses on nature and ecology and in Inari in particular courses on the Sámi languages were held. At the same time, students could practice their Sámi language with native speakers and visit in many Sámi scientific, cultural and political institutions.
The Sámi studies could be even more than today taught and researched in a comparative way in the context of other indigenous peoples and thus to give even better understanding of Sámi knowledge and epistemologies, and so to destroy myths, illusions, and all kind of false knowledge. Different kind of other practise methods, e.g. talking circles, sharing cycles, and all kind of group action, relationship between those native researchers and other people and students are needed.
Sámi Studies is not any more limited only to the academic world but takes into account the real needs and concerns of Sámi communities and people. It means that theory and practice are connected so that the principles of participatory observation and ‘giving and talking back’ to those researched has become as an important tool. In this context, it can be mentioned a recently established Sámi research association (dutkansearvi.fi). Its purpose is to promote indigenous Sámi research and its paradigm both nationally and internationally, to practise research which develops social justice working relationships between the researchers and the researched, to increase knowledge on minority and indigenous languages and cultures and in particular, to strengthen the written use and visibility of Sámi and indigenous languages, by calling researchers and activists to write blogs into the web page and scientific articles into the new digital scientific Indigenous Journal in Sámi and other indigenous languages.
The goal of Sámi Studies was to provide students with an ability to work in the duties that require specialized knowledge on Sámi and indigenous issues in the Nordic and international context. One of its aims was to afford good writing and oral skills in all Sámi languages, that’s why native speakers of different Sámi languages were invited to give preliminary courses in Inari, Skolt and South Sámi languages. In addition to languages, the aim was to train the student in Sámi culture and history, and to see issues from inside and to filter all issues and facts through Sámi human rights and present situation. It was also very important to travel to Sámi land to get to know better the local area and people; in Kilpisjärvi many courses on nature and ecology and in Inari in particular courses on the Sámi languages were held. At the same time, students could practice their Sámi language with native speakers and visit in many Sámi scientific, cultural and political institutions.
The Sámi studies could be even more than today taught and researched in a comparative way in the context of other indigenous peoples and thus to give even better understanding of Sámi knowledge and epistemologies, and so to destroy myths, illusions, and all kind of false knowledge. Different kind of other practise methods, e.g. talking circles, sharing cycles, and all kind of group action, relationship between those native researchers and other people and students are needed.
Sámi Studies is not any more limited only to the academic world but takes into account the real needs and concerns of Sámi communities and people. It means that theory and practice are connected so that the principles of participatory observation and ‘giving and talking back’ to those researched has become as an important tool. In this context, it can be mentioned a recently established Sámi research association (dutkansearvi.fi). Its purpose is to promote indigenous Sámi research and its paradigm both nationally and internationally, to practise research which develops social justice working relationships between the researchers and the researched, to increase knowledge on minority and indigenous languages and cultures and in particular, to strengthen the written use and visibility of Sámi and indigenous languages, by calling researchers and activists to write blogs into the web page and scientific articles into the new digital scientific Indigenous Journal in Sámi and other indigenous languages.
12. Rauni Äärelä, MA (PhD), Primary school teacher, Saami language immersion teacher, researcher, University of Lapland
[email protected]
Researching language nest education in practise
I am going to introduce the PhD research done in Sámi language immersion in Finland in early childhood education context. Paper provides knowledge about how language immersion research was conducted in practice. The interest is in observations and interviews of pedagogical arrangements in the language nest. I was interested in how children’s Sámi language usage is supported and revitalized in the pedagogical practices of the nest and in the teaching and interaction situations. The model of language nest pedagogy was constructed in the form of Sámi cradle ball (šiella in North-Sámi). The rings illustrate the principles of language nest pedagogy that are the practices through which children learn language in the language nest. Article provides first-hand information about researching the operation of the language nest and the implementation of language immersion in the revitalization of the Sámi language. In this paper I will construct how to make research in a manifold situation with language nest teachers creating solutions to revitalize the Sámi language. I will also discuss about ethics of researching Indigenous education in a sensitive situation. Paper also provides grounds for further research of the establishment of language nests and attests that language nests have a first-rate and far-reaching importance for the revitalization of the Sámi language. The purpose is to strengthen and develop the Sámi language immersion education research for future demands. |
13. Aili Pyhälä, Senior Lecturer in Development and International Cooperation, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä
aili.pyhala@jyu.fi
From Photostory to PhotoVoice: my experiences using visual storytelling for promoting both science and cross-cultural relations
In this paper I share the experiences that my colleagues and I have had working with different indigenous groups in different contexts using visual media both to collect data (using PhotoVoice – an innovative tool for participatory photography) and for inter-cultural connection – i.e. to share stories and lifeways (through a PhotoStory – a visual sharing of livelihoods through photos). |
14. Fred Dervin, Professor of Multicultural Education, University of Helsinki; Renmin University of China
[email protected]
Indigenous research methods for multicultural/intercultural education
Multicultural/Intercultural education research, as it is ‘practised’ in Finland, is polymorphic. Often targeted at the ‘Other’ (especially the ‘migrant’) multicultural/intercultural education research and practice have often proved to be counterproductive, contradictory, ideologically driven without being aware of it and creating more problems than solving the ones already faced by teachers, students and parents. Although many researchers turn their gaze towards North America and Britain for inspiration, very few have tried to consider what indigenous research methods can do to multicultural/intercultural education research. |
In this paper I discuss the plurality of such methods and draw potential parallels between indigenous research methods and methods used in multicultural/intercultural education in Finland. My paper represents an attempt at bridging these two multifaceted fields of research.
15. Senior lecturer Marja-Liisa Olthuis, Associate Professor, University of Oulu Giellagas Institute
[email protected]
Revitalising Indigenous Languages. The Aanaar Saami case: Oral and literal language revitalisation.
In my paper, I will introduce the revitalisation methods used by the Aanaar Saami language community: language nests, primary school (Aanaar Saami as a MoI), the CASLE method for recreating the lost middle generation, the Master-Apprentice programme and, finally, the literary project Čyeti čälled for Aanaar Saami ‘Hundred writers for Aanaar Saami’. I will also show what impact the newly created language technology tools for Aanar Saami (text corpus, e-dictionary, spell checker, machine translation programme) have had on the new Aanaar Saami literacy. The community has successfully increased the number of speakers from 350 to approximately 450 with these methods. Nowadays these methods have found a permanent place in the language community. |
Ylva Jannok Nutti (invited speaker in the first workshop), Sámi allaskuvla
[email protected]
Indigenous critical utopian action research in education
She presents her ongoing Norwegian Research Council funded project Voices of Sámi children from the methodological point of view. She used critical utopian action research.
Dr. Ylva Jannok Nutti graduated with a doctor of education in 2011. Her dissertation research examined teachers’ implementation of cultural based teaching in Sámi kindergarten and Sámi school in Sweden using action research: work which continued with a post-doctoral fellowship but here with the focus on the end of the compulsory education in Norway. Jannok Nutti has also led several projects guided by indigenous and critical utopian action research methodologies. In the projects the focused was directed towards language and culture revitalization. In all of these projects kindergarten teachers, primary school teachers, children, youth, pupils, parents, and grandparents implemented culturally based teaching and learning activities in kindergarten, in school, and in the community. In the on-going action research project the voices and actions of children and teachers serve as foundation for the research.
Indigenous critical utopian action research in education
She presents her ongoing Norwegian Research Council funded project Voices of Sámi children from the methodological point of view. She used critical utopian action research.
Dr. Ylva Jannok Nutti graduated with a doctor of education in 2011. Her dissertation research examined teachers’ implementation of cultural based teaching in Sámi kindergarten and Sámi school in Sweden using action research: work which continued with a post-doctoral fellowship but here with the focus on the end of the compulsory education in Norway. Jannok Nutti has also led several projects guided by indigenous and critical utopian action research methodologies. In the projects the focused was directed towards language and culture revitalization. In all of these projects kindergarten teachers, primary school teachers, children, youth, pupils, parents, and grandparents implemented culturally based teaching and learning activities in kindergarten, in school, and in the community. In the on-going action research project the voices and actions of children and teachers serve as foundation for the research.