Abstract
This chapter explores indigenous paradigm research, highlighting the ways in which indigenous peoples have been negatively impacted by Western research paradigms and methodologies. It then describes, how a number of indigenous scholars are resisting imposed research strategies and creating spaces for fuller expression of research based in indigenous paradigms. The chapter illuminates the epistemic violence perpetuated by unreflective imposition of Western paradigms on indigenous people, exploring the work of scholars who are addressing that violence by re-centering indigenous people and their paradigms. It explains a number of ways of collaborating with integrity when engaging with indigenous people in research, including symmetrical worldviewing, inter-paradigmatic dialogue and respectful engagement with principles of indigenous research. I share examples from my own research, the research of a number of other indigenous scholars and that of emergent paradigm scholars whose epistemologies have significant resonances with indigenous paradigms.
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Notes
- 1.
Auntie Joan Hendricks, of Minjerribah, has many times explained these three principles as key tenets of Aboriginal Australian worldview.
- 2.
I developed a research methodology based on dialogue across multiple paradigms that created processes of building on resonances between indigenous and emergent western paradigms. This would not have been possible without the support of the indigenous elders, senior people, and knowledge holders who supported my process of “becoming researcher” (Walker, 2013).
- 3.
Spivak (1988) used Foucault’s terminology of epistemic violence to indicate the hegemony of western worldview and the resulting marginalization and suppression of non-western ways of knowing and being.
- 4.
A number of senior indigenous women in Australia maintain that is the responsibility the nonindigenous people to educate themselves as deeply and widely as possible about indigenous issues and indigenous settler power relations, rather than relying solely on Aboriginal people to educate them (Graham, 1998; Huggins, 1998; Holt, 2000).
- 5.
Emergent paradigm research is innovative, paradigm shifting research that lacks sufficiently sustained scholarship for the Academy to define it as a paradigm.
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Walker, P. (2015). Indigenous Paradigm Research. In: Bretherton, D., Law, S. (eds) Methodologies in Peace Psychology. Peace Psychology Book Series, vol 26. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18395-4_8
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