research is ceremony

09 Nov 2020

So I’ve been posting erotic glitch art on Instagram for a few months now, but it’s been a perilous path : Instagram doesn’t like erotic content. It got me to experiment with Are.na again (here’s my profile!) and I’m very happy I did go back to this platform. I realized that there’s so many cool kids over there researching all the weird things I’m interested into (guerilla theory, cybernetics, decolonization, that kind of thing). The latest treasure I’ve found on Are.na is this scanned document on Indigenous research methods and I was just in awe in front of this text.

First, since I’ve been reading mostly articles online for so long, I felt very nostalgic to see this scanned document with little marks on the pages to indicate which parts are important. Second, I felt very happy to see that somebody somewhere took the time the highlights of this book (which felt different once again, from me usually just downloading whole books and browsing through them in my solitude). Also, the way the author of this book write (I was about to write speak, and I think speak would be adequate here for once) really warmed my heart. For once, an academic text didn’t feel cold. It isn’t surprising from an Indigenous writer honestly.

I was happy to realize that, despite the fact that I have found this text in an obscure corner of the internet, the book in and on itself wasn’t that obscure and could be downloaded. I’m very excited to dive more into Indigenous methodology and praxis in academia. But for now I’d like to just let here the most important passage of what I’ve read so far.

[…] an Indigenous methodology must be a process that adheres to relation accountability. Respect, reciprocity and responsibility are key features of any healthy relationship and must be included in an Indigenous methodology; Cora (Weber-Pillwax, 2001) call these the 3’R’s of Indigeneous research and learning. In and Indigenous research paradigm, the researcher must ask :

• How do my methods help to build respectufl relationships between the topic that I am studying and myself as researcher (on multiple levels)?
• How do my methods help to build repectful relationships between myself and the other research participants?
• How can I relate respectfully to other participants involved in this research so that together we can form a stronger relationship with the idea that we will share?
• What is my role as researcher in this relationship, and what are my responsibilties?
• Am I being responsible in fulfiling my role and obligations to the other participants, to the topic and to all of my relations?
• What am I contributing of giving back to the relationship? Is the sharing, growth and learning that is taking place reciprocal?

Wilson, Shawn. 2008. Research is Ceremony, p.77.