Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith is a Maori researcher and a pioneer of Indigenous research methodologies. Her 1999 book Decolonizing Methodologies begins with a description of research as one of the dirtiest words in the Indigenous world’s vocabulary. But what is it about research that holds such negative connotations?
The video below is a presentation about the Havasupai experience with Arizona State University. The 2011 presentation took place in Canada, at the National Conference of the First Nations Information Governance Centre (FNIGC). In it, members of the Havasupai Nation, Dianna Sue Uqualla and Carletta Tilousi, discuss an example of problematic research undertaken by university-based researchers in an Indigenous community.
Starting in 1990, members of the Havasupai community began giving DNA samples to researchers from Arizona State University. Although they believed the data was being used to support diabetes treatments for community members, it turned out that the blood samples were used to study other things, including mental illness and theories of the tribe’s geographical origins that contradicted traditional stories.
(from FNIGC’s 2011 National Conference on Mar. 1, 2011)
The link below leads to Carla Wilson’s summary and review of Tuhiwai Smith’s book. In it, she describes how Decolonizing Methdologies provides an extensive critique of unreflexive approaches to research and knowledge, like those employed in the study described above. This book calls for a new agenda for Indigenous research.
Decolonization in this context means a critical understanding of the assumptions, motivations and values that inform research projects. Tuhiwai Smith’s book uncovers the cultural assumptions behind colonial research.
Drawing on scholars like Edward Said, she describes how western colonisers, adventurers and travellers researched the Indigenous Other in ways they presumed were objective and neutral. Their studies created stories accepted by many as universal truths. However, these observations are in fact rooted in a specific point of view closely related to the processes of colonialism taking place at that time. Tuhiwai Smith argues that this not only marginalizes stories of the Other, but also puts forward problematic assumptions as universal truths.
Watch a short video of Edward Said describing what he means by Orientalism, and how it was used as a tool of colonization.
Orientalism as a Tool of Colonialism
(uploaded Oct 1, 2008)