Unspeakable Things: Indigenous Research and Social Science

Abstract

Aboriginal peoples historically know the social sciences as a form of violence, part of the naming and claiming of Aboriginal peoples, their lands and histories for the colonizers. From the 1800s to 1958, tens of thousands of Aboriginal individuals were taken from their homes and families and exhibited, while craniometry was used to ‘scientifically’ prove the inferiority of Aboriginal peoples, so justifying genocide and forcible assimilation. Today, Aboriginal knowledge is tolerated at the university insofar as it conforms to colonial standards of science and increasingly, insofar as it can demonstrate its profitability. Against such colonial science, however, Aboriginal peoples are undertaking research on their own terms and for their own communities, drawing on Aboriginal ontologies and epistemologies. Distinct relations to the natural world and ancestors, and responsibilities to future generations shape Aboriginal research as unique practices that have as their ultimate aim the explicitly political goals of decolonization and liberation.