Dispossession of Land Cultures

Indigenous Research of Land, Self, and Spirit

2020

This chapter presents findings from a critical arts-based autoethnographic study of Iowa digital maps and historical archival data of the Iowa territory (1838-1846) for Indigenous Nations with previous land tenure. Researchers have noted land and voice dispossession for these Indigenous Nations resulting from forced removal followed by decades of intentional cultural erosion, forced assimilation, loss of language, and religious discrimination and persecution into the latter 20th century. Current research highlights the resultant damage of these historical losses on living descendants of Indigenous land-based cultures. Agency of self was explored from a socialized perspective of a descendant of Scandinavian immigrants who acquired dispossessed land within the Iowa territory. This was contrasted with a cultural perspective of land as capital wealth vs. the principles and tenets of land-based culture whereby agency may be strengthened via Indigenous knowledge rooted in land-based connections and environmental sensitivities. Data representation involved poetic excerpts of land as agency.

Land as Agency

Indigenous Research of Land, Self, and Spirit

2020

A Critical Review of Gullah Geechee Midlife Women and Heirs' Property Challenges Along the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor

Versey

Advances in Public Policy and Administration

2021

This critical review explored the current scholarship of the experiences and challenges faced by Gullah Geechee midlife women heirs' property owners along the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. Past researchers have noted these women often experience invisibility due to the concurrent burdens of management of jointly owned property along the corridor in addition to legacy experiences of cultural isolation, land dispossession, voice dispossession, and ancestry enslavement. Past researchers have called for ongoing collaborative research by both non-indigenous and indigenous researchers as a gap continues for gendered perspectives for current corridor heirs' property challenges and land dispossession with respect to power, trauma, economic impact, Gullah Geechee ways of knowing, land-based cultural values, heritage tourism, governmental dispossession, and the legacy of enslavement for critical inquiry from the transformative paradigm.

Critical Autoethnography for Social Justice Research in Doctoral Education

Promoting Qualitative Research Methods for Critical Reflection and Change

2021

As autoethnography and other methods for self-as-subject research continue to increase in use across doctoral education, this guide proposes to inform the methods in this area specific to critical autoethnography for doctoral scholars desiring to conduct the many forms of social justice research. This includes indigenous research, contemporary feminist research, and arts-based research, which have also seen rise across dissertation research among many disciplines. While many works exist to describe critical autoethnography within specific contexts, few research guides examine critical autoethnography specific for use by the doctoral scholar and specific examples across research focused on societal change and/or disruption of existing power dynamics, lack of parity, or historical trauma from acculturation and/or dispossession. Thus, this chapter offers a concise research methods resource for doctoral scholars and their research supervisors to facilitate use of critical autoethnography across disciplines and among diverse research problems of inquiry.