Can You Hear us Now? Voices from the Margin: Using Indigenous Methodologies in Geographic Research

Indigenous methodologies are an alternative way of thinking about research processes. Although these methodologies vary according to the ways in which different Indigenous communities express their own unique knowledge systems, they do have common traits. This article argues that research on Indigenous issues should be carried out in a manner which is respectful and ethically sound from an Indigenous perspective. This naturally challenges Western research paradigms, yet it also affords opportunities to contribute to the body of knowledge about Indigenous peoples. It is further argued that providing a mechanism for Indigenous peoples to participate in and direct these research agendas ensures that their communal needs are met, and that geographers then learn how to build ethical research relationships with them. Indigenous methodologies do not privilege Indigenous researchers because of their Indigeneity, since there are many ‘insider’ views, and these are thus suitable for both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous researchers. However, there is a difference between research done within an Indigenous context using Western methodologies and research done using Indigenous methodologies which integrates Indigenous voices. This paper will discuss those differences while presenting a historical context of research on Indigenous peoples, providing further insights into what Indigenous methodologies entail, and proposing ways in which the academy can create space for this discourse.     

Was there an early Polynesian ‘sky father’?∗

Abstract

There is a recurring Polynesian cosmogonic tradition whereby the primordial world was transformed into the modem world by a series of events often consisting first of vague cosmic beings (whose names and nature are not generally cognate) giving rise to a Primordial Pair who then gave rise to first order anthropomorphic gods. The Primordial Pair in Tonga were ‘Seaweed’ and ‘Sediment/Slime’ while in Nuclear Polynesian we find the female named Papa‐adj. and evidence for the male being named Papa‐adj. in Proto Nuclear Polynesian and Proto Central Eastern Polynesian as well. These are thought of as physical strata or rock in Samoa while in Central Eastern Polynesia there was commonly the notion that Papa (the female) was the earth itself and that her mate was the sky or the space between the sky and the earth. It was, however, only amongst New Zealand Maori that the male was specifically given the name ‘Sky’ although an alternative name for the male in the Marquesas is ‘Sky Parent’ but seems a (lexical) development independent of the N.Z. Maori.     

Indigeneity and the refusal of whiteness

Drawing on international literature examining mismatch between racial appearance and racial identity, this paper analyses the subgroup of Indigenous Australians who have been identified, and self-identify, as ‘light-’, ‘fair-’, ‘pale-’ or ‘white-skinned’. We utilise the term ‘race discordance’ to describe the experience of regularly being attributed an identity that is different from how one personally identifies. In contrast to existing terms such as elective race, ethnic fraud and transracialism, race discordance does not seek to explain or judge the validity of identity claims that do not match perceived appearance. When unnoticed or unchallenged, ‘race discordance’ corresponds to ‘passing’. We propose the term ‘race refusal’ to describe instances when a person rejects the race they are ascribed to. In the case of white-skinned Indigenous Australians who are frequently assumed to identify as white, race refusal entails the refusal of whiteness. When light-skinned Indigenous people refuse whiteness, what are they refusing? In conversation with Audra Simpson’s notion of refusal of state recognition as an assertion of continued Indigenous sovereignty, we find that these particular micro-politics of race refusal demand rather than negate state recognition. We argue that identity refusal by pale-skinned Aboriginal people acts to disrupt histories of assimilation, white sociality and everyday racialisation while simultaneously reinforcing Australian recognition regimes.     

They're here—I can feel them: the epistemic spaces of Indigenous and Western Knowledges

Indigenous Knowledges (IK) are continually contrasted with Western positivist sciences. Yet the usual conception of IK—as a translatable knowledge about things—renders incomprehensible its discussion as a spiritual or ethical practice. A practice taking place within what we call an epistemic space. A moose hunting event can demonstrate how IK is produced through the epistemic spaces within which hunting is performed. Part of the performance is becoming-animal; as practiced by Koyukon Athabascans, a moose hunt reproduces the social relations between hunter and prey, spiritual relations that demonstrate an ontology and ethics seemingly distinct from those of the Western wildlife sciences founded upon Enlightenment humanism. Yet such ‘Western–Indigenous’ dichotomies falsely indicate entirely separable spaces within which to produce accounts of reality. Instead, this account of a moose hunt demonstrates an assemblage of actors within one space, who together become more than the authors' individual positions and selves, and becomes an event. We additionally argue that more faithfully representing this assemblage requires changing the form of the usual academic paper. Thus tacking between a narrative and theoretical approach that switches from each of our first-person points of view, we aim to depict how knowledge of one hunting event becomes assembled.     

‘My Country is like my Mother…’: respect,care, interaction and closeness as principles for undertaking cultural heritage assessments

Investigation of social values is essential to understanding relationships between people and place, particularly in Indigenous cultural heritage management. The value of long-term ethnographic studies is well recognised, however, such approaches are generally not possible in many heritage studies due to time or other constraints. Qualitative research methods have considerable potential in this space, yet few have systematically applied them to understanding Indigenous peoples’ relationships with place. This paper reports on a qualitative study with Alngith people from north-eastern Australia. It begins by exploring the embodied, experiential nature of Alngith peoples’ conception of Country and their emphasis on four interrelated themes: Respect, Care, Interaction and Closeness when describing relationships to Country. We suggest that Alngith people-to-place relationships are underwritten by these ideals and are central to local expectations for respectful, inclusive heritage practices. The results also reveal new perspectives and pathways for Aboriginal communities, and heritage managers dissatisfied with the constraints of ‘traditional’ cultural heritage assessment frameworks that emphasise archaeological methods and values. The paper further demonstrates how qualitative research methodologies can assist heritage managers to move beyond the limitations of surveys and quantitative studies and develop a deeper understanding of Indigenous values, concepts and aspirations (social values).     

Indigenous biocultural rights and the Blue Mountains: Local and international policy challenges

Indigenous knowledges play a critical role in addressing the environmental crisis, and the United Nations system has adopted a suite of international treaties to protect and strengthen Indigenous peoples’ rights, which are often described as biocultural rights. Because World Heritage Areas are nominated and monitored by UNESCO, an initial hypothesis in this study was that such areas would be subject to higher than normal standards in regard to Indigenous people’s biocultural rights. By reference to the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, Australia, this research examined how the international legislative framework influences conservation practices. We held semi-structured interviews with conservation and Indigenous local experts and compared park management practices in the Area against those used in an Indigenous Protected Area. Findings align with the literature and suggest that Indigenous and scientific knowledge systems can generate new insights for the Area and other sites. Yet, Indigenous knowledges are only marginally applied in practice. Some barriers to full participation of Indigenous people are specific to the colonial history of the area. Yet, findings point to a lack of action by Australian governments and UNESCO, and that needs to be redressed. The study calls attention to the need to support and resource Indigenous people to enable collaborative partnerships to yield significant benefits for biodiversity and protection of Country.     

Tomorrow’s Country: Practice-oriented principles for Indigenous cultural fire research in south-east Australia

First Nations peoples are revitalising diverse cultural fire practices and knowledge. Institutional and societal recognition of these practices is growing. Yet there has been little academic research on these fire practices in south-east Australia, let alone research led by Aboriginal people. We are a group of Indigenous and settler academics, practitioners, and experts focused on cultural fire management in the Victorian Loddon Mallee region. Using interviews and workshops, we facilitated knowledge sharing and discussion. In this paper, we describe three practice-oriented principles to develop and maintain collaborations across Aboriginal groups, researchers, and government in the Indigenous-led revitalisation of fire on Country: relationships (creating reciprocity and trust), Country (working with place and people), and power (acknowledging structures and values). Collaborations based on these principles will be unique to each temporal, social, cultural, and geographic context. Considering our findings, we acknowledge the challenges that exist and the opportunities that emerge to constructively hold space to grow genuinely collaborative research that creates change. We suggest that the principles we identify can be applied by anyone wanting to form genuine collaborations around the world as the need for social–ecological justice grows.     

Indigenous sovereignties: relational ontologies and environmental management

Indigenous nations have always and continue to assert their sovereignties to resist colonialism. This paper makes explicit the ways in which environmental management has been and continues to act as a tool of colonialism, particularly by privileging Western science, institutions, and administrative procedures. We argue that to decolonise environmental management, it is crucial to understand and challenge the power relations that underlie it—asking who makes decisions and on what worldview those decisions are based. Indigenous ways of being deeply challenge the foundations of environmental management and the colonising power structures that underlie it, and invite further thought about posthuman and relational ontologies. We provide a range of case studies that showcase the role of Indigenous nations in redefining and reimagining environmental management based on Indigenous sovereignties, knowledges, and ways of being. The case studies emphasise the crucial connection between Indigenous decision‐making authority and self‐governance for the enhanced protection and health of the environment. We argue that Indigenous agency, grounded in Indigenous governance and sovereignties, is driving innovation and decolonising environmental management by making space for new ways of thinking and being “in place”.     

Ways of Belonging: Reconciliation and Adelaide's Public Space Indigenous Cultural Markers

As an arguably ‘post colonial’ society, Australia is evolving its particular identity and sense of self, but reconciliation with its Indigenous peoples remains a significant political and cultural issue. Social inclusion or marginalisation is reflected in the construct of the civic landscape and this paper traces and contextualises public space Indigenous representation or ‘cultural markers’, since the 1960s in Adelaide, South Australia, the Kaurna people's land. This paper identifies social phases and time periods in the evolution of the ways in which Indigenous people and their culture have been included in the city's public space. Inclusion of Indigenous peoples in civic landscapes contributes not only to their spiritual and cultural renewal and contemporary identity, but also to the whole community's sense of self and to the process of reconciliation. This has the potential to provide a gateway to a different way of understanding place which includes an Indigenous perspective and could, symbolically, contribute to the decolonisation of Indigenous people. An inter‐related issue for the colonising culture is reconciliation with the Indigenous nature of the land, in the sense of an intimate sense of belonging and connectedness of spirit through an understanding of Indigenous cultural landscapes, an issue which this paper explores. The paper also sets out suggestions for the facilitation of further Indigenous inclusion and of re‐imagining ways of representation.     

My experiences with Indigenist methodologies

Traditionally, geographic research and engagement with Indigenous communities have largely been developed within a western research paradigm and have historically been linked to colonial practices such as extraction and/or domination. The consequences of these research practices and paradigms have been the further marginalisation of Indigenous people globally. However, geographers are increasingly being influenced by a range of Indigenous scholars from both within and beyond the discipline who highlight the colonial foundations of geographic knowledge and the ongoing production of colonial relations, and who are calling for a decolonisation of knowledge through the use of Indigenist methodologies. After exploring this shift, this paper moves to a discussion of my engagement with research in Indigenous communities using Indigenist methodologies, including the emotions and thought processes that emerged during my own research journey, which led me to southern Guyana and the Makushi and Wapishana peoples who reside in the northern savannah environments of the Amazon basin. I conclude by sharing how I am continuing that journey using Indigenist approaches in my work in the Madre de Dios region of Peru, and by encouraging future scholars to challenge traditional geographic research methods.     

What Remains? Reconciling Repatriation,Aboriginal Culture,Representation and the Past

ABSTRACT This paper uses the repatriation and ceremonial reburial of Indigenous remains to La Perouse, an Indigenous community in Sydney, as a lens through which to examine the cultural politics of representation and recognition that are central to contemporary Aboriginal identity construction. The return of the skeletal remains of 21 individuals highlights the role that representative bodies — past and present, individual and organizational — play in engagements between the State and Aboriginal people. Heralded by some as a sincere sign of reconciliation and treated as suspect and misguided by others, the reburial produced diverse responses from both Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal people alike. Speakers at the repatriation focused on righting the wrongs of the past, reconciliation, and moving forward in cooperation, suggesting the redemptive significance of these events. Among Kooris at La Perouse, debates about community, representation, and belonging expose the ways that Aboriginal people and communities operate through, against, and beyond ‘whitefella’ structures of recognition to define who they are and what their culture is.     

All Strings Attached: Negotiating Relationships of Geographic Information Science

Human geography has driven substantive improvements in methodologies and applications of Geographic Information Systems (GISs), yet Indigenous groups continue to experience erasure in geographic representations. GIS ontologies comprise categorised labels that represent lived contexts, and these ontologies are determined through the shared worldviews of those labelling spatial phenomena for entry into GIS databases. Although Western ontologies and spatial representations reflect Western understandings of human experience, they are often inappropriate in Indigenous contexts. In efforts to be represented in courts and land management, Indigenous groups nevertheless need to engage Western spatial representations to ‘claim space’. This paper examines what GISs are and do and shows that GIS technology comes with strings attached to the myriad social contexts that continue to shape the field of GIScience. We show that Intellectual Property Rights Agreements can sever and control these ‘strings’; the agreement between the Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation and university researchers reframes GIS from a technology of erasure to a technology of opportunity that enables Indigenous groups to define their own engagement. The visual and narrative outputs will contribute important understandings of the environmental crisis facing the Murray–Darling Basin and connect older and younger generations through knowledge sharing. We conclude the application of GIScience is never simply technological but always has potential to empower particular communities. Applying GIS technology to new circumstances is an engagement of new relationships in the social praxis of technology transfer, where worldviews meet and negotiations are made over what exists and how we know.     

Recent Change in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Population and Housing Geographies

The intercensal period (2006–2011) was a time of significant policy and population change in Indigenous affairs. The aim of this paper is to document the changing distribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population and housing geographies over that period. We use the Indigenous Region structure developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to show that Indigenous Australians grew at a rate that significantly outstrips the non‐Indigenous population with an increasing concentration of the Indigenous population on the urban eastern seaboard and particularly among older people. We present results that show that for certain measures, the housing situation of the Indigenous population in 2011 had improved relative to the Indigenous population in 2006. A smaller proportion of Indigenous households were estimated to live in an overcrowded dwelling compared with Indigenous households in 2006. There were also significant increases in the per cent of Indigenous households that owned or were purchasing their own home. Other results might be seen as less positive with community housing (a tenure type identified as having benefits in both qualitative and quantitative analysis) declining in importance. In net terms though, Indigenous households continue to experience a high degree of housing need. Compared with other households, they were 3.7 times as likely to live in an overcrowded dwelling.     

Participatory and community‐based research,Indigenous geographies,and the spaces of friendship: A critical engagement

Geographic engagement with Indigenous peoples remains inextricably linked to colonialism. Consequently, studying Indigenous geographies is fraught with ethical and political dilemmas. Participatory and community‐based research methods have recently been offered as one solution to address concerns about the politics of gathering, framing, producing, disseminating, and controlling knowledge about Indigenous peoples. In this article, we critically engage with the emergence of participatory and community‐based research methods as “best practice” for undertaking research into Indigenous geographies. We articulate four concerns with this form of research: a) dissent may be stifled by non‐Indigenous researchers’ investments in being “good”; b) claims to overcome difference and distance may actually retrench colonial research relations; c) the framing of particular methods as “best practices” risks closing down necessary and ongoing critique; and d) institutional pressures work against the development and maintenance of meaningful, accountable, and non‐extractive relations with Indigenous communities. We then contemplate the spatiality of the critique itself. We consider the ways in which our longstanding friendship, as researchers invested at multiple scales with Indigenous geographies and identities, provides its own distinct space of practice within which to confront the political and ethical challenges posed by research with/about/upon Indigenous geographies and peoples. While not arriving at any concrete template for undertaking research about Indigenous geographies, we suggest that certain friendships, established and situated outside research relationships, may be productive spaces within and through which research methods may be decolonized.     

Global Application of Indigenous Archaeology: Community Based Participatory Research in Turkey

What does Indigenous archaeology offer archaeologists who do not work on Native land, at Indigenous sites, or with Indigenous people? This article demonstrates the broad applicability of Indigenous archaeology and the way it can be utilized by archaeologists working in any locale. Through recent fieldwork in south central Turkey working with a non-indigenous community of local residents near the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük, I demonstrate ways that the theories and methodology of Indigenous archaeology are a useful and relevant part of practice for archaeologists working in areas that are neither on Native land nor involve sites related to indigenous heritage. It also points to the need for further investigation into collaborative methods for the development of a set of best practices within archaeological and heritage management settings.     

Protecting what is left after colonisation: embedding climate adaptation planning in traditional owner narratives

Climate change is disproportionally affecting Indigenous peoples' livelihoods across the globe. Despite this fact, climate adaptation planning and responses are not immediate concerns for most Indigenous people, whose key challenges are deeply embedded in colonial history. Through collaborative research centred on climate adaptation planning with the Yuibera and Koinmerburra Traditional Owner groups on the Great Barrier Reef Catchments, we demonstrate that Traditional Owners' primary concerns are in aligning the climate adaptation opportunity with their own strategies for Indigenous cultural renewal and survival. Their Indigenous identity generates a responsibility to protect cultural landscapes, sites, and their connections with these places. In this case study, to “protect what is left” of Indigenous material culture and socio‐cultural relationships emerged as the best approach to climate adaptation planning, providing both the decolonisation narrative and the means to strengthen their Indigenous practices. Planning for climate change adaptation is useful for Indigenous peoples when it supports decolonising, strengthens Indigenous customary practices, and recognises customary governance.     

Contesting the Settler City: Indigenous Self‐Determination,New Urban Reserves,and the Neoliberalization of Colonialism

In settler colonial contexts the historical and ongoing dispossession and displacement of Indigenous peoples is foundational to understanding the production of urban space. What does it mean that cities in what is now known as Canada are Indigenous places and premised on the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples? What roles do new urban reserves play in subverting or reinforcing the colonial‐capitalist sociospatial order? This paper examines these questions in relation to new urban reserves in Canada. Most common in the Prairie provinces, new urban reserves are satellite land holdings of First Nation communities located outside of the city. While the settler state narrowly confines new urban reserves to neoliberal agendas, First Nations are successfully advancing reserve creation to generate economic self‐sufficiency, exercise self‐determination, and subvert settler state boundaries. I argue that new urban reserves are contradictory spaces, as products and vehicles of settler‐colonial state power and Indigenous resistance and place‐making.     

“Rooted in Demographic Reality”: The Contribution of New World Censuses to Indigenous Survival

One of the most powerful narratives deployed by colonists in the nineteenth century was that the colonized natives were inherently too weak to survive contact with those who were colonizing them—the Dying Native story. I argue that to understand the history of this story, we should differentiate between three senses in which it could be taken as true or false: physical destruction, genetic adulteration and loss of distinct culture. The physical destruction version of the “Dying Native” was contested by some settler-colonial governments as they developed the capacity to manage and measure the numbers of those whom they classified as “Indian” or “Māori” or “Aboriginal”. However, the “Dying Native” story persisted as a narrative of these peoples' loss of genetic and/or cultural distinction. One strategy of Indigenous intellectuals has been to assert that they have survived as “populations” by adapting as “peoples”. In this paper, I show how an authoritative demography of colonized Indigenous populations in North America and New Zealand afforded discursive opportunities to some Indigenous intellectuals.     

Analyzing entangled territorialities and Indigenous use of maps: Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok (Quebec,Canada) dynamics of territorial negotiations,frictions, and creativity

This paper highlights the relevance of analyzing entangled territorialities and Indigenous use of maps in order to better understand what Lévy describes in terms of “spatial capital”—the socio-economic dynamics and power relationships maintained and negotiated between the stakeholders interacting within the Indigenous forestland. More specifically, it discusses the entanglement dynamics of land tenures coexisting today within Nitaskinan, the ancestral territory claimed by the Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok. Within Nitaskinan, members of the First Nation negotiate the continuity of their practices, occupation, and use of ancestral hunting territories with state institutions, logging companies, and non-Indigenous members of civil society who have interests in the land resources. All these stakeholders implement different territorial regimes that interact and sometimes conflict. Based on concrete ethnographic examples, the analysis presented here focuses on the compromises, frictions, resistance, and creativity that are part of territorial coexistence between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.     

Imagination beyond THE Ancient Cemetery on Mt.Le

Most people believe that the practice of sky burial is all- pervasive in Tibet.While some people may have a passing acquaintance with the rituals regarding sky burial in Tibet,others may be curious and seek more information. Nonetheless, they may not even know that earth burial prevailed in Tibet just before Buddhism was introduced into Tibet or as early as when the Shangshung