When the marginalised research the privileged

Belinda Borell

doi:10.5204/ijcis.v7i2.112

Abstract

Since the introduction of academic research as a tool of imperialism and colonisation, indigenous people have responded to the intent, processes and implementation of its insights about their lives and experiences in a range of ways. While many of these responses have been reactionary, greater epistemological innovation is opening up new ways for indigenous researchers to understand and interpret their social world. Recent efforts have even sought to apply indigenous frameworks to the lives and experiences of their colonisers. This paper outlines one such initiative and attempts to demonstrate how this may provide valuable insights for participants, indigenous researchers and the academy itself.

Highlights

The western scientific tradition has, up until relatively recently, positioned indigenous peoples as oddities or exotic groups from which to draw information and later, as a group, with problems to fix or change
Smith (1999, 1) notes that the word ‘research’ is “inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonisation”, leaving Māori with a deep suspicion of research and the uses to which it has been put by diverse Pakeha authorities; a similar pattern to indigenous peoples internationally
The final challenge that the project posed to conducting research involved the inter-relationship between being ‘powerful’, academic researchers and the status those positions hold in wider society, compared to the negative, social positioning attributed to being a Māori group; in a sense, researching where we should not

Summary

Introduction

The western scientific tradition has, up until relatively recently, positioned indigenous peoples as oddities or exotic groups from which to draw information and later, as a group, with problems to fix or change. Any sustained examination of the particular and comparative health and social outcomes for Māori communities inevitably involves greater consideration of a comprehensive range of contributing factors, from common ideas at the site of the individual, familial, cultural to more critical analyses of institutional, structural, historical and political factors This approach to conceptualising research complemented the ideological push-back of the victim-blaming type of approaches common for explaining ethnic disparities at the time and better reflected Whāriki’s vision for Māori research. The final challenge that the project posed to conducting research involved the inter-relationship between being ‘powerful’, academic researchers and the status those positions hold in wider society, compared to the negative, social positioning attributed to being a Māori group; in a sense, researching where we should not This is exacerbated by the range of reactions and responses from potential participants, from ambivalence and caution to anger and defensiveness of the topic area. In the face of such reactions, the research team thought it prudent to adjust the title of the project to ‘Health and Culture’, which greatly enhanced recruitment and data collection

Discussion

Conclusion