Indigenous Experiences Research Articles

‘If It Wasn’t For Us … ’: Peripheral Narratives of the Pacific War

ABSTRACT Scholarship on the Indigenous experience of World War II has justly focused on recording accounts of direct witnesses of that period. Such a sense of urgency, at least in Papua New Guinea, has led to the neglect of areas of the country that, though not directly affected by the war, were invested in the war effort by providing labour and soldiers. Communities residing in those areas recall stories of their war heroes as key figures for the liberation of the country and, ultimately, its current adherence to ‘Western values’. Through an analysis of the moral claims that those peripheral stories entail, in this article I suggest potential directions for the study of narratives of World War II that move beyond ‘the era of the witness’.

Building evidence to reduce inequities in management of pain for Indigenous Australian people.

Pain is a universal experience which each person encounters differently, guided by the psycho-socio-environmental context in which it occurs. Although more research is underway yet very little is known about pain from Indigenous Australian perspective. Therefore, this study aims to examine, experience of pain and coping, and utility of three measures: Brief Pain Inventory short form, McGill Pain Questionnaire and Numerical rating scale, from Indigenous South Australian people perspective. Thirteen in-person interviews were conducted which lasted around 90min and were audio-recorded. The transcripts were coded and analysed thematically with NVivo. Six key themes were identified; 1: Spiritual conceptualisation of pain; 2: Frequent experience of trauma and injury; 3: Influence of familial history of pain; 4: Acceptance of pain as normal; 5: Outlook on biomedical management of pain; 6: Preference for non-pharmacological management of pain. Also, the three measures did not fully capture pain from an Indigenous Australian perspective which is more deeply rooted in a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual context which is cardinal to conceptualization of health and wellbeing in Indigenous Australian communities. Findings highlight some commonalities as well as unique differences between Indigenous experiences of pain as compared to non-Indigenous. Factors such as spiritual connection with pain, grief and loss, history of trauma and injury, fear of addiction to pain medication and exposure to pain from early childhood had important implications for how participants viewed pain.

Understanding the needs of justice-involved adults with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder in an Indigenous community.

Individuals with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) experience a range of neurodevelopmental challenges, often compounded by social and environmental adversity. One of the most concerning outcomes that can be associated with FASD is involvement in the justice system, where individuals with FASD are vastly over-represented. Individuals with FASD who are both justice-involved and Indigenous experience added layers of marginalization. In this community-based study, we explored the needs of 16 adults who participated in an FASD-informed restorative justice program in an Indigenous community in Alberta, Canada. Clinical record reviews and client interviews were used to gather information. Diverse needs were identified, including pervasive neurodevelopmental difficulties, notable physical and mental health challenges, complex experiences of psychosocial trauma, and varied criminogenic needs. This study increases our understanding of the unique and complex biopsychosocial and criminogenic needs of Indigenous justice-involved adults with FASD. Such an understanding is a first step in developing tailored interventions for individuals with FASD and has important practice and policy implications for supporting positive outcomes. For Indigenous individuals with FASD, intervention efforts should be integrated within the community context to promote collective healing.

Tutuku: Telling the stories of the Māori Showband world through digital innovation

In this article I will discuss the development and creation of the Tutuku digital archive. Tutuku is the name of the digital archive I have created as my nominated creative component for my PhD. Tutuku is coupled with my thesis “He Kohinga Kōrero: A selected group of Māori musicians and performers’ experiences of the 1960s through the Māori Showband movement”.
 Tutuku contains people’s narratives and experiences, which in turn each have their own mauri or life principle (objectspace, 2020). The narratives could also be described as mana taonga. Mana taonga is a specific Māori curatorial concept that taonga have their own status and power which must be managed and cared for in a culturally appropriate way (Mccarthy, Dorfman, Hakiwai, and Āwhina, 2013, 7). The concept of mana taonga creates the space for indigenous voices to be self-determining in history retelling.
 Tutuku creates pathways for expanding knowledge on many other subjects. Tutuku is available as an IOS App and web application located at Www.tutuku.co.nz. The second version will be available exclusively for Android devices in the Future. Tutuku will continue on into the future, to be a safe digital space for the sharing of indigenous experiences, culture and histories.

Indigenous language curriculum revival: an emancipatory education analysis of Taiwanese Indigenous language policy and textbooks

ABSTRACT Objective Taiwan recently published new language education policy documents and Indigenous language textbooks to support the emerging Indigenous language revitalization initiative. Thus, this study investigates how these current Indigenous policy documents and textbooks portray Indigenous agency and also examine how their contents construct Indigenous emancipatory viewpoints. Research Design To examine the Indigenous emancipatory goal in the textual data, this study incorporated themes of critical consciousness about Indigenous experiences, voices, and actions from Paulo Freire’s emancipatory theory for textual analysis. Methods/Procedures The textual analysis was informed by Freirean theory to examine two language policy documents and 48 Indigenous language textbooks. Indigenous critical consciousness of voices, experiences, and actions in the data were examined to reveal Indigenous emancipatory themes. Results Results demonstrate discrepancies within both the policy and textbooks concerning Indigenous emancipatory themes. While Indigenous language policies and textbooks advocate Indigenous sovereignty, there is a simultaneous insertion of mainstream and values juxtaposed with an Indigenous viewpoint. Conclusion The policies and textbooks embed conflicting Indigenous and mainstream viewpoints. They also construct an inconsistent critical consciousness of Indigenous experiences, voices, and actions. From the policy and textbook analysis, implications for future policy and textbook revisions concerning Indigenous language education are explored.

Conditions for Success: Indigenous Youth Reflections on Their Experiences with Canadian Education Systems

This paper brings forward the reflections of 30 Indigenous youth from across Canada and their first voice perspectives with Canadian education systems. A central component of the project was to obtain youths’ understandings of education in Canada and to seek their recommendations on ways to improve education for Indigenous youth. Accessing Indigenous youths’ experiences is important as their capacities to have successful and equitable educational experiences are strongly hindered by colonial settler policy and systemic institutional racism. Indigenous scholars have appealed for changes to education systems with a focus on challenging colonial relations of power and the multiple oppressions Indigenous youth experience when educated under Eurocentric practices. Our methodological framework is located within a relational paradigm as a mechanism to ignite dialogue and prioritize Indigenous voices in education. Our building of relations began with a sharing circle held at our Mount Saint Vincent University’s Wigwaum. Our Indigenous colleague and co-author, Jonathon MeDrano, explains how sharing circles provide equitable opportunities for people to share their ideas and respective worldviews. We then facilitated reflective journaling workshops with the youth. The young people’s reflections in this paper identify the compelling need to address systemic racism, stereotypes, and to challenge normative and colonizing structures that generate discrimination. Moreover, the young people soundly indicated that education systems in Canada require much larger integrations of Indigenous ways of knowing and being in all aspects of delivery (i.e. language, culture, Indigenous teachings), including more Indigenous counsellors to support their mental well-being.

Capitalist Transformation and Settler Colonialism: Theorizing the Interface

ABSTRACTAnthropological theory has approached Indigenous experiences of colonialism through frameworks of capitalist expansion or, more recently, through those of settler colonialism. Given their different attentions, these frameworks in conjunction provide a more nuanced account of the colonizing and displacement process than either does alone. The history of Hawaiʻi from 1778 to 1860 provides a valuable illustration of the entanglements of economic transformation and settler colonialism over time, showing the need to combine analyses of settler colonialism with those of political economy to understand the emergence of new systems of governance, law, and exchange. The establishment of settler colonialism was neither quick nor uncontested, entailing Indigenous strategic appropriation along with political, legal, and social changes that created the space for settler dominance. Settler colonialism was fostered by the prospect of a profitable plantation economy. In Hawai‘i, chiefs managed to avoid a Euro‐American capitalist takeover during the first eighty years of contact but began to lose control as the settler population grew and the capitalist economy expanded. [settler colonialism, capitalist transformation, land alienation, Hawaiian history]

Decolonizing Museums, Memorials, and Monuments

Decolonizing Museums, Memorials, and Monuments

Review: Objects of Survivance: A Material History of the American Indian School Experience, by Lindsay M. Montgomery and Chip Colwell

Review: <i>Objects of Survivance: A Material History of the American Indian School Experience</i>, by Lindsay M. Montgomery and Chip Colwell

Rural indigenous students in Peruvian Urban higher education: interweaving ecological systems of coloniality, community, barriers, and opportunities

ABSTRACT In Peru, Indigenous students from rural communities must often migrate to urban areas to access higher education. Navigating to and through urban higher education is a complex task where Peru’s oppressive colonial legacies intertwine with students’ community values, resources, and strengths. How can we more deeply understand the interconnecting systems that oppress and support rural Indigenous students, and how can we mobilize these understandings to reimagine higher education? In this paper, we use photo-cued interviewing and ecological systems theory to 1) make sense of rural Indigenous students’ experiences as they navigate to and through higher education in urban areas and 2) uncover levers for systemic change to improve higher education policy and practice. In doing so, we expand beyond a two worlds perspective of Indigenous educational experiences to offer a more holistic view on coloniality and Indigenous resilience in higher education.

Pipelines, protectors, and settler colonialism: media representations of the Dakota Access Pipeline protest

ABSTRACT Indigenous Resistance to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) garnered national and international media attention in 2016 as thousands gathered near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in protest. Increased media attention spurred enquiry concerning the representation of the Indigenous peoples leading the movement, subjecting the movement to settler assumptions about Indigenous resistance. This research employs a qualitatively-based content analysis of 80 news articles reporting on the DAPL protest. These articles range in political bias and can be categorized in one of the following groups: Conservative Bias, Liberal Bias, Mainstream News, Local News, and Indigenous News. Commonly occurring codes and themes are analysed across each category. Word count and frequency of reporting are also considered to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the media representations as they develop through time. While the non-Indigenous-led media commonly cites water security and destruction of sacred sites as the reasons for protest, the Indigenous led media also cites treaty rights, tribal sovereignty, economic vulnerability, climate change, and colonial history more frequently, indicating a multi-dimensional and more holistic understanding of the movement and the Indigenous experience. The mainstream of U.S. reporting on the DAPL protests perpetuate a reductive, one-dimensional framing of the daily struggles of Indigenous Americans by ignoring the impacts of ongoing settler colonial operations.

“They Are Always There”

To speak of “Latin America” is to seek a frame of negotiation between those for whom it remains a pragmatic grouping, those who regard it as a psychic and geographic zone of experience, and those for whom it serves little other purpose than as a postcolonial mirage. And it’s certainly true that in the case of artists Ana Mendieta (Cuba, 1948–1985) and Cecilia Vicuña (Chile, b. 1948) a negotiation of zones takes on a particularly haunting mirage. Resisting the alluring and troubling “coherences” of African and Indian postcolonial returns in contemporary art (T. J. Demos, Return to the Postcolony: Specters of Colonialism in Contemporary Art, Sternberg Press, 2013), this paper argues that the zone of Latin America remains decidedly incoherent. The work of Mendieta and Vicuña conjure a cacophony of ghosts through the active resistance of easy conflations of Indigenous and non-Indigenous postcolonial experience. Through examining the hospitality that we must show to ghosts, Derrida’s marranismo reminds us that the guest speaks of a justice to come. In understanding the Latin American experience, this paper argues, the guest and the ghost share more than a phonological likeness.

The Last Sovereigns: Sitting Bull and the Resistance of the Free Lakotas

Robert M. Utley’s The Last Sovereigns: Sitting Bull and the Resistance of the Free Lakotas exposes a new angle to the history of Sitting Bull after Little Bighorn and before his death in 1890. Reading against the grain of traditional archival sources such as government correspondence and documents, Utley shows us how the Lakotas’ search for sovereignty and agency in the years after Little Bighorn contributes to the burgeoning history of this important Lakota leader. In regard to Utley’s previous work on Sitting Bull, The Last Sovereigns serves two purposes. First, it contributes to Utley’s Sitting Bull: The Life and Times of an American Patriot (2008), filling in a period that has been understudied. Second, the accessibility of the book allows for broad audiences to understand Sitting Bull’s life in Canada before his death, while making a crucial historiographical call to action for the exploration of deeper notions of Lakota resurgence against governmental authority—both from the United States and from Canada during the late nineteenth century. Ultimately, the book argues that the act of resistance that Sitting Bull and his Lakota followers deployed provides a new mode of understanding Lakota-white relations on both sides of the US-Canadian border.In seven digestible chapters, Utley positions a large cast of characters to tell Sitting Bull’s story in the Northwest Territory, a space across the “Medicine Line”—the Native terminology for what would be considered the US-Canadian border. Of these characters, Utley homes in on not only those who wanted to push Sitting Bull back into US custody but also those who built significant relationships with the Lakota leader. Major James M. Walsh of the North-West Mounted Police, as one example, exposes the contentious authority between those in control of the territories, who allowed Lakota to reside in their region, versus the broader Canadian government, an entity that wanted Lakotas removed from their lands. Utley shows readers that Lakota communities threatened Canadian authority over Indigenous communities, as their presence diminished the bison population and heightened conflict with other Indigenous communities needing bison for sustenance. The lack of food, as Utley points out, was the contributing force behind the Lakotas returning to US-occupied territories from Canada, a move that threatened Sitting Bull’s life. While his death came days before Wounded Knee in 1890, Utley provides details for why he and his followers moved back to the United States in the first place.The Last Sovereigns is accessible for both academic and public audiences. Undergraduate classes could easily read through this book to grasp Sitting Bull’s life, just as scholars of Native American history could find great use in Utley’s close examination of this understudied period. Moreover, Utley’s approach constructed a strong foundation for a more profound historical inquiry into Sitting Bull’s life and broader history of the US-Canadian border. Beyond Sitting Bull’s experiences, scholars should use Utley’s book in tandem with other studies, such as Sheila McManus’s The Line Which Separates, to examine the exclusionary citizenship that Native Americans faced during the late nineteenth century. Sitting Bull’s expulsion from Canada could also be supported through the lens of settler colonialism and how Canadian policies sought to remove Lakota communities from their nation’s landscape. One idea for those practicing ethnohistory could be to expand Utley’s work by implementing Lakota perspectives to understand the Indigenous experiences better on this trek to and from Canada. With that said, The Last Sovereigns is a significant contribution to the study of the period between Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee. It provides deeper insights into Sitting Bull’s life, which has regularly been excluded from this period’s history.

Human-Centered Design Science Research Evaluation for Gamified Augmented Reality

As augmented reality (AR) and gamification design artifacts for education proliferate in the mobile and wearable device market, multiple frameworks have been developed to implement AR and gamification. However, there is currently no explicit guidance on designing and conducting a human-centered evaluation activity beyond suggesting possible methods that could be used for evaluation. This study focuses on human-centered design evaluation pattern for gamified AR using Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) to support educators and developers in constructing immersive AR games. Specifically, we present an evaluation pattern for a location-based educational indigenous experience that can be used as a case study to support the design of augmented (or mixed) reality interfaces, gamification implementations, and location-based services. This is achieved through the evaluation of three design iterations obtained in the development cycle of the solution. The holistic analysis of all iterations showed that the evaluation process could be reused, evolved, and its complexity reduced. Furthermore, the pattern is compatible with formative and summative evaluation and the technical or human-oriented types of evaluation. This approach provides a method to inform the evaluation of gamified AR apps. At the same time, it will enable a more approachable evaluation process to support educators, designers, and developers.

Disrupting Infrastructures of Colonial Hydro-Modernity: Lepcha and Dakelh Struggles against Temporal and Territorial Displacements

To be Indigenous within the modern nation-state is to live with a profound sense of territorial and temporal displacement. Colonial legal regimes situate indigeneity as a condition of temporal stasis, perpetuating the logic of territorial dispossession and erasure. Drawing on research in India and Canada, we focus on Indigenous experiences to theorize the relationship between colonial legal regimes, territory, temporality, and infrastructure. In the Indigenous territories of the Lepchas in the Indian Himalaya and the Dakelh in British Columbia, Canada, hydropower infrastructure effected displacements of Indigenous space-times and sovereignty. Although Indigenous peoples continue to assert legal claims challenging these massive infrastructural projects, colonial legal regimes normalize the often violent imposition of the space-times of state and capitalist development. The Dakelh have challenged the enduring impacts of a 1950s river diversion project; however, Canadian courts legitimized historic displacements, delimiting constitutional protections to current existing Dakelh rights. For the Lepchas, a recent infrastructural boom in the Indian Himalaya is threatening special constitutional provisions upholding tribal customary laws, raising concern among younger Lepchas over the future of their ancestral lands. Despite these threats, we demonstrate how Lepcha and Dakelh relations to time and territory exceed colonial containments. They call into question how the colonial present normalizes historic and ongoing displacements and demand responsibility for the past to craft alternative futures.

A Reconciled Nation? Mabo and the Reimagining of Australia's National History

ABSTRACT The High Court's 1992 decision in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) is widely regarded as a seminal moment in Australia's legal and political history. The decision established a legal right to native title and placed Indigenous history and politics at the forefront of public debate. As this historiographical survey will demonstrate, the decision, and the public debate that followed it, also spurred significant discussion in the discipline of Indigenous history about how to write and represent Indigenous history, and the place of Indigenous history in national historical narratives. For some, Mabo encouraged an emphasis on negotiation and reconciling Indigenous and settler experiences to create new narratives about Australia's history and nationhood. For others, Mabo and the politics of reconciliation constituted a further appropriation of Indigeneity by settler Australians, underscoring the historical continuity of invasion and the need to transform the discipline of history to recognise Indigenous epistemologies and history-making.

Resistance and remembering through rock art: Contact‐period rock art in Wardaman country, Northern Australia

AbstractAlthough notions of resistance are not new in rock art research concerning cross‐cultural colonial encounters, this study shows how multiple dimensions of Indigenous resistance can be explored through a multidisciplinary analysis of rock art in northern Australia. The study explores the intersections between introduced “Western” and pre‐existing “traditional” motifs in rock art near Yingalarri waterhole in Wardaman Country, Northern Territory, analysing the visual conventions and superimpositions with an eye towards Wardaman epistemological engagements with rock art and experiences of colonial occupation. These intersections reveal further dimensions of Wardaman responses to colonial occupation, including the negotiation of shifting inter‐regional relationships and engagements with Country as well as the continued emphasis on inherited artistic practices. The study also explores the continuing role that rock art, and its interpretation, plays in Indigenous colonial resistance. Wardaman discussions of introduced motifs documented during the 1988–1991 Earthwatch project brought the paintings out of the past, giving them contemporary significance via kinship connections and narratives of survival that challenge colonial efforts to erase Indigenous experiences of early colonial contact and occupation. The paper contributes to archaeological understandings of inter‐regional connections between northern Australian rock art regions and rock art production and discussion as a means for Aboriginal resistance and remembrance after the arrival of Europeans.

Queer(y)ing Naga Indigenous Theology

This article engages Queer Theology in conversation with Naga Indigenous Theology. A Naga folk poem is employed to help navigate the intricacies of indigenous experiences and the questions of sexuality in Naga Indigenous Theology. I do this by engaging both Marcella Althaus-Reid and Wati Longchar in their Liberation Theology and move towards queering Longchar’s theology. Using the hermeneutical lens of Althaus-Reid, I demonstrate that there are possible avenues of queering Longchar’s theology. There is also the prerequisite of a justice lens that demands a deconstruction of the colonial legacy in Indigenous Theology. This article shows that Naga Indigenous Theology rooted in Liberation Theology has a potential to propose a Queer Naga Indigenous Theology.

Indigenous Experience as a Strategy to Develop Rural Tourism Identity

Rural tourism is often seen as a tourist attraction, where tourists make their visit only to catch a glimpse of the village’s potential. In contrast to this trend, the rural tourism of in Tanon sub village of in the Semarang regency (Central Java) attempts to offer more by developing its local strength as “Desa Menari” (lit. Dancing Village). It offers tour packages that invite tourists to experience a life in the village, interact with local communities, find happiness, and reinterpret life. The objective of this study is to find out how the local community uses indigenous experience as a strategy to develop rural tourism in the area. This study implemented the communication theory of identity (CTI) by applying qualitative method with a case study approach. After observation and in-depth interview were conducted to rural tourism community, this study found that rural tourism community actively introduces tourism based on local wisdom experiences through the conservation of tourism in Dusun Tanon, including the conservations of community arts, traditional games, and farmer. Indigenous experience as a village identity is constructed according to its purpose, i.e. spreading harmony, knitting inspiration, and reaping memory. This village identity includes personal identity, relational identity, and enacted identity that invite tourists to capture the process of self-meaning or journey into oneself as a psychological experience.

The Visibility of an Indigenized Curriculum during Covid 19 New Zealand. An Exploration of the Experience from Indigenous Academics

The 2020 Covid19 global pandemic disrupted teaching practices of 8 universities and 16 Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics (ITPs) in New Zealand. This disruption led to the curriculum being transferred from internal classes to online delivery. It unleashed a surge of research activity and publications in the education sector. However, little research was conducted to investigate the effect to the academic experience and even less research explored the impact to Indigenized curriculums. This paper explored websites for the visibility of Indigenous programmes and Indigenous academic experiences. It does this by: 1) describing the 8 universities and 16 Polytechnics for context; 2) identifying the type of Indigenous Schools/Faculties in universities and ITPs and whether Indigenous programmes of study were visible; 3) two authors providing personal accounts as Indigenous academics moving from internal teaching to online delivery. Specific mention is made of an Indigenous avatar named “Digi Hami from NZ.” The exploration utilized a M?ori-Centered and social research approach. The analysis drew main themes and suggested that some universities and ITPs were better prepared in the transition and the virtual mode of teaching was unable to retain the same quality and depth of learning required for an Indigenized curriculum.