Abstract
Once communities’ stories are taken up by researchers and shared within the ivory tower of academia, the stories circulate within the ivory tower. It is often the case that these archived stories from communities are used by researchers, without asking permission from the communities where the stories originate. In this article, we aim to critically review and reflect on underlying theories and practices in conventional Eurocentric academia that allows for a ‘one direction’ mode of storytelling dissemination, allowing researchers to take the ‘version’ of community knowledge and/or stories without seeking the original approval from the communities themselves. We suggest ‘thoughtful’ questions for both settler and Indigenous researchers to consider in hopes of promoting ‘travelling back to original sources’ in their scholarly work.
Highlights
Once communities’ stories are taken up by researchers and shared within the ivory tower of academia, the stories circulate within the ivory tower
We are concerned with the “one-directional” mode of people and Indigenous stories travelling into academia and spreading to different disciplines, without concepts and people travelling back to the original sources of the stories
These “free flowing and travelling” ideas within academia can be used by anybody without reaching out to the primary source of the knowledge. It allows for the onedirectional mode of knowledge circulation while “effectively silenc[ing] the original time and place” (Donald, 1987, p. 3) of the primary source. To elaborate this idea further, we present a scenario representing some practices in academia: There was a research collaboration project between Indigenous Researcher A and Settler Researcher B in North America
Summary
Once communities’ stories are taken up by researchers and shared within the ivory tower of academia, the stories circulate within the ivory tower. KeyWords Primary sources, Indigenous stories, trans-systemic research, community engagement The problem is that original sources and the keepers of these stories, including Elder Audrey and the community members from our scenario, might not have access to these produced works by researchers stuck within the ivory tower.
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