This paper seeks to engage the cultural interface where Indigenous knowledge meets western academia, by questioning the validity of traditional research methods. Firstly, it is a response to the challenges facing Indigenous people confronted with the ethical and methodological issues arising from academic research. Secondly, it is a journey into academia, where the researcher is all too often forced to remove the “self” from the “subject”; a difficult task for an Aboriginal person involved in research concerning Aboriginal people. Distancing oneself from research is even more difficult if the research is based closer to home, in one's own community.Therefore, a significant need exists for Indigenous people to conduct and present research in a manner respectful of Indigenous ways of understanding and reflective of the ways in which Indigenous peoples wish to be framed and understood. This need has fuelled the search for Indigenous methodologies, which challenge the imperial basis of Western knowledge and the images of the Indigenous “Other”. The search for appropriate methodologies is part of the process Linda Smith (1999) calls “decolonisation” .The Indigenous researcher - burdened with the challenge to perform academically rigorous research and the desire to practice this research respectfully - is often overwhelmed with internal conflict. Indigenous autoethnography represents one methodological option to such researchers. Indigenous autoethnography seeks to establish itself as a legitimate and respectful means of acquiring and formulating knowledge, by combining the tradition of storytelling, with the practice of academic research.

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The utility of the release from proactive interference paradigm as a technique for the indirect assessment of ethnic sensitivity was explored. Children in Northern Ireland, aged 7 and 11, recalled sets of names that changed in religious affiliation between the third and fourth sets. Only the older age group demonstrated the predicted improvement in recall following change in name type, findings consistent with studies that have taken approaches to the assessment of ethnic sensitivity.

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