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Reclaiming scholarship: Critical indigenous research methodologies.

According to Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999), « From the vantage point of the colonized . . . the word ‘research’ . . . is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary » (p. 1). This is because research invokes, for indigenous communities, past and present incidents of abusive, exploitative research practices. Yet many indigenous scholars, although recognizing the reasons for why indigenous communities remain distrustful of researchers, argue that research can serve beneficial purposes when it is driven by community interests and undertaken with attention paid to the complexity, resilience, contradiction, and self-determination of these communities. For this reason indigenous scholars have been calling for indigenous communities to (re) claim research and knowledge-making practices that are (1) driven by indigenous peoples, knowledges, beliefs, and practices; (2) rooted in recognition of the impact of Eurocentric culture on the history, beliefs, and practices of indigenous peoples and communities; and (3) guided by the intention of promoting the anticolonial or emancipatory interests of indigenous communities. CIRM is a response to this call. A Critical Indigenous Research Methodologies (CIRM) perspective fundamentally begins as an emancipatory project rooted in relationships and is driven explicitly by community interests. Admittedly, CIRM shares similarities with other critical perspectives, most notably in its commitment that research should be driven by the community; that it should serve the needs of the community; and that the research endeavor should work to ultimately recognize basic human, community, and civil rights. However, other facets of CIRM make it distinct from other critical approaches. Specifically, CIRM is rooted in indigenous knowledge systems and recognizes the role of indigenous beliefs and practices in the construction and acquisition of knowledge—this recognition serves to influence the techniques (methods) and expectations guiding the research process. CIRM recognizes that indigenous peoples think and behave in ways unique to their worldviews and experiences and thus places a heavy emphasis on the role relationships, responsibility, respect, reciprocity, and accountability play in our interactions with the human, physical, and spiritual world around us. In addition, CIRM is driven by a belief that information and knowledge are sometimes esoteric; that the knowledge uncovered through scientific inquiry does not solely belong to the researcher; and that the acquisition of knowledge requires one to enter into a relationship with those ideas—to learn from them, to care for them, and to pass them on to the next generation. From a CIRM perspective, knowledge is sacred and to be entrusted with it carries great responsibility, thus adding a seriousness to subsequent decisions researchers make in terms of how and when to ask for information and how and when to share the knowledge with which they have been entrusted. Finally, CIRM specifically recognizes the political positioning of indigenous peoples in contemporary societies and reasons that it is of litde use to create frameworks rooted in these principles of relationships, reciprocity, and responsibility if these methodologies do not also promote emancipatory agendas that recognize the self-determination and inherent sovereignty of indigenous peoples. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)