Living Our Research Through Indigenous Scholar Sisterhood Practices

Abstract

In this article, we explore the concept of Indigenous scholar sisterhood practices and its powerful role in affirming Indigenous women to survive and thrive in the act of research and the larger academic landscape. We address how we, as Indigenous women scholars, extend beyond transactional validity practices in qualitative research and engage in a collective form of validity that is holistic and grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing. We explore what it means to live our research and reclaim academic spaces among a collective sisterhood, as we grapple with questions of what valid and rigorous research looks like from an Indigenous perspective. Recognizing that attempts to decolonize methodological spaces can be complex and tempered with struggles, we provide personal accounts of Indigenous scholar sisterhood practices of love, prayer, vulnerability, and resistance and protection used to maneuver through this space together. As Indigenous women scholars, we conclude by reimagining the value of collective work as a means to not only survive academia but lift up our communities.

The Wretched of the Research: Disenchanting Man2-as-Educational Researcher and Entering the 36th Chamber of Education Research

“…Educational researchers such as Bang (2020), Gutiérrez (2008), Kaomea (2001, 2016), Ladson-Billings (2009), McCarty and Lee (2014), Paris and Alim (2017), and Leanne Simpson (2017) have argued for affirming, honoring, fostering, sustaining, revitalizing, and imagining ways of gathering, interpreting, and sharing educational knowledge for collective liberation, which prioritizes and centers les damnés and gaze from below (Alim, Paris, & Wong, 2020; Dillard et al, 2000; Harney & Moten, 2013; C. D. Lee, 2017; Nasir et al, 2019; Paris & Winn, 2014; Shotton et al, 2018; Urrieta, 2019; Wynter & McKittrick, 2015). In order to do so, les damnés have engaged in modes of resistance, survivance, fugitivity/ marronage , refusal, and abolition to enact and imagine genres of being educational researcher outside of the dominant order of Man2-as-educational researcher and broader regime of Man2-as-human .…”

Thesis as kin: living relationality with research

“…As Aluli-Meyer (as cited in Martin, 2008) notes, relatedness “serves to strengthen the internal validity of the document because it is both process and product, and woven in the beginning/middle/end of the research” (p. 6). Shotton et al (2018) talk about validity in research as a way of being , “we assert that centering relationality in validity practices are necessary toward our efforts to refine models that serve and empower Indigenous communities and scholarship” (p. 638). In advocating for loving relationships with research, they see validity checking with family and community, as a continuation of relatedness, a sentiment also shared by Bawaka Country including Wright et al (2018).…”

“…Bringing research, specifically my thesis, into relationship also strengthens the accountability and validity of the research study. Wilson (2008) refers to this as relational accountability and Shotton et al (2018) note that "an Indigenous form of validity is relational" (p. 637). For Wilson (2008), relational accountability recasts the "success" of academic work within a values framework based on relationality (an Indigenist research paradigm).…”

“…Building upon the work of scholars who encourage research to be undertaken as ceremony, relation, kinship and story (Martin, 2008; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015; Wilson, 2008), this article focuses on thesis as kin, specifically as sister; the sis. Thesis as kin acts as a relational device that communes with research in intimate and relationally valid ways (Shotton et al, 2018; Wilson, 2008). I invite scholars to embrace research and writing as kin to be cared for, nourished and become together (Bawaka Country including Suchet-Pearson et al, 2013).…”

“…While it begins as a way of contending with the academic conventions of thesis production, it extends to many aspects of research as it draws from Indigenous models of kinship and reciprocity. In their paper on sisterhood practices, Shotton et al (2018) note that "relationality is at the core of how we conceptualize and shepherd the act of Indigenous scholarship, which then informs how we engage in the research" (p. 637).…”