Relying on the intersections of Indigenous Research Methodologies andHumanizing Research, the authors of this article argue that by re-centering relationships through critical listening and storying, we are better suited to co-construct our shared truths and realities in the space between the telling and hearing of stories. As we do so, we move beyond the sometimes dehumanizing "slash" of researcher/participant and professor/student and into more fertile spaces where our collective desires for educational, political, and social change are forged because of our commitment to sustaining meaningful relationships as well as our refusal to ignore our impact on each other.
This article re-stories the navigation of one White female student, Abby, enrolled in a 12th grade ethnic studies course titled Native American literature. Abby reveals tensions, disruptions, and self-discoveries within a course that recentered Indigenous histories and literacies while, concurrently, decentered dominant knowledge systems. Her story addresses this article’s central question: How does Whiteness operate in an ethnic studies course? Eleven vignettes trace Abby’s critical consciousness development within and beyond this course. Relying on Paris and Alim’s (2014, 2017) culturally sustaining pedagogy and McCarty and Lee’s (2014) culturally revitalizing pedagogy, I offer culturally disruptive pedagogy to argue that as educators, researchers, and community members seek ways to sustain and revitalize cultural practices, we must also consider the ways hegemonic norms—as perpetuated by ideologies of whiteness—require a needed disruption.
In this article, we argue that co-constructing knowledge, co-creating relationships, and exchanging stories are central to educational research. Relying on humanizing and Indigenous research methods to locate relational interactions in educational research allows us to engage in transformative praxis and storying, or Projects in Humanization (PiH). We contend that PiH focus on the creation and sustenance of relationships; the human capacity to listen to, story with, and care about each other; and the establishment of more inclusive, interconnected, and decolonizing methodologies that disrupt systemic inequalities found in Western constructs of educational research. More specifically, in this article, we rely on research vignettes to argue for a necessary commitment that researchers must have to sustain, extend, and revitalize the richness of the languages, literacies, histories, cultures, and stories of and by those with whom they work.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.