Indigenous Backstage Pass

Alice Te Punga Somerville

doi:10.5204/ijcis.1718

Abstract

In her poem "from turtle island to aotearoa," Anishinaabeg writer Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm writes about travelling to the other side of the world and finding ways to connect. For my part, I have taken the ‘reverse’ journey many times from Aotearoa to Turtle Island, and the poem has both nudged and nurtured my thinking about the promises and limits of Indigenous-Indigenous connections. In Indigenous Studies, we have made really important claims about the need to research our own people, and the limits of work conducted by outsiders. In this article, I reflect on the conundrum of being an Indigenous outsider in much of my current research project in which I, as a Māori scholar, engage the works of Māori writers alongside Indigenous writings from Australia, Fiji and Hawai'i. How does working in Indigenous Studies as a discipline shape my approach to researching others? Does being an Indigenous researcher give me a backstage pass?

Highlights

In her poem “from turtle island to aotearoa”, Anishinaabe writer Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm writes about travelling to the other side of the world and finding ways to connect
Keywords Indigenous Studies, methodologies, trans-Indigenous, poetry, outsider research In August 2012, I arrived at Pearson International Airport to spend a year at the University of Toronto
I had lined up an apartment in Faculty Housing and was based in a visiting capacity at what was known as Aboriginal Studies

Summary

Introduction

In her poem “from turtle island to aotearoa”, Anishinaabe writer Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm writes about travelling to the other side of the world and finding ways to connect. This idea that we are all “beneficiaries of a colonial history” can be an uncomfortable idea for communities that are marginalised in the context of the settler state in which we live, and especially when we feel a sense of deep connection and relationship between our marginalisation and the marginalisation of Indigenous peoples in this other place.

Results

Conclusion