Notes on: Iesha
Jackson, Doris L. Watson, Claytee D. White and
Marcia Gallo (2022) Research as (re)vision: laying
claim to oral history as a just-us
research methodology. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF
RESEARCH & METHOD IN EDUCATION 2022, VOL. 45,
NO. 4, 330–342
https://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2022.2076827
Dave Harris
They wanted to do some oral history with three
Black and Latinx schoolteachers to see how they
navigated racial micro-aggressions and everyday
challenges, but their local IRB said it wasn't
proper research, despite oral history being
defended in the literature. The US generally deems
oral history not to be scholarly enough, so they
proceeded anyway, after critically reflecting on
what counts as research, which was taxing. They
'refused to accept' that their approach was
'somehow less worthy or rigourous' and began to
recreate an approach to research 'in community
(330)', reclaiming the power within their own
multiple identities which include Black Indigenous
People of Colour (BIPOC), women, queer and
scholars. They recalculated their own depth of
understanding of colonised Western research
practices that had rendered their knowledge as
inferior or invalid and in the process recaptured
what it is that they knew and had forgotten. That
new understanding formed the methodology of their
research.
They located themselves in the new complexity of
creative qualitative research, something
culturally informed and critical, challenging, and
reforming taken for granted norms. Researchers
could no longer be the primary instrument for data
collection, nor searching for patterns as the
primary tool for making meaning. They wanted to
include 'embracing the resonances of our souls'
(331), and align with indigenous traditions and
their abilities to create a community in which
they understood each other. They call this a 'just
– us' methodology.
They analyse indigenous roots of oral history and
revised conventional research methods. They drew
on Dillard and Bell to understand the process as
'"situated, sacred and spiritual work that happens
in multiple spaces and places where African
ascendants and other indigenous peoples find
ourselves"'. The vision and practice of such
research is healing and racially just.
Oral history is briefly reviewed, and much of it
lies outside of the IRB purview. It can be seen as
a 'co-optation of indigenous oral traditions'.
They want to reclaim storytelling in particular.
They summarise the different approaches in a nice
table [eventually]. There are differences of
ontology, epistemology and methodology.
Traditional oral history is usually divided into
usable versus useless oral history depending on
contribution to historical records based on
missing voices. Useless oral history is often one
in which the interviewer was unprepared and
therefore does not collect meaningful information
or where research is not designed to contribute to
the historical record. As a result it's usual to
outline essential purposes — to fill in the
historical record, understand people's experience
of historical events, contribute to the
understanding of specific topics, gain community
knowledge. Others have tried to tidy up oral
history by suggesting a division between the raw
materials like conducting and transcribing
interviews and classifying the products that
result. Still further commentaries discuss ways in
which narrative was studied and understood within
academic circles, say in terms of the academic
disciplines: sometimes this has challenged
colonial projects. There has been a decolonised
approach. Feminist scholars in particular have
challenged the validity of conventional oral
history and amplified the voices of females,
arguing that women should speak for themselves to
reveal their own realities. Indigenous methods do
the same, with an awareness that colonial and
epistemological hierarchies can be perpetuated,
and as an alternative, requiring '"intimate
reciprocal relations with storytellers and
community partners"' (333), or maintaining '"clear
and culturally specific responsibilities to the
collective"'. Additional requirements may also be
necessary to avoid whitewashing indigenous ways of
knowing. It may be important to produce work 'that
honours the collective even if it is rejected
within the Academy'.
It is common to find academic sources describing
oral traditions as prehistoric earlier endeavours
preceding proper academic oral history, such as
the work of African storytellers. As a result,
gestures, intonation and context are often omitted
in oral performances, together with traditional
elements as well as personal memories. 'The
concern with authenticity, accuracy and/or
validity of oral tradition… Is mediated by oral
history' or alternatively historical memory is
preserved to connect present generations to the
past, to 'allow communal knowledge to
proliferate'. Indigenous people might claim to
remember at need rather than being fixated '"on
elites and archives"'.
Oral history often has indigenous roots. Scholars
visiting places they did not originate from often
created 'for themselves a whitewashed version of
indigenous practices' (334). This is to be
contrasted with indigenous people who 'broadly…
are original to their homelands'. A Maori example
is provided — individuals do not see themselves as
separate from their oral history and traditions.
Banks – Wallace claims that storytelling in the
African-American oral tradition is about healing
and nurturing, '"through communion with The
Spirit"', that the sharing of stories is sacred
work, and that has played a '"critical role in the
survival of African-Americans"'. It is 'part of
who we are as BIPOC', and an accepted research
method in producing products that are disseminated
through our communities.
Indigenous elders have various knowledges that
they share as they are passed through 'story work'
which includes education and research work, making
meaning. This is not 'recounting fantasy or
fiction or even publicly performing stories as
entertainment' but more a matter of being able to
'reclaim the events containing accurate, factual
data from memories, feelings and facts spoken by
narrators or storytellers' [which rather
contradicts what was said before] it also includes
'several ethical considerations' including '"being
intellectually, emotionally, physically and
spiritually ready to fully absorb cultural
knowledge"… Reciprocity… Benefit to the community,
maintaining trust… Listening with your whole being
or collecting stories in a manner that is as
spiritual and emotional as it is intellectual and
physical' (334 – 5). It is teaching through
'codified (even if only tacitly) practices'.
Usually, however we've not been allowed to define
this outside the boundaries of white academic
norms so we ought to reclaim it as originators of
oral history [originators maybe, but is this the
best form of oral history? Should be sticking with
the original form?].
Dillard reminds us that teaching and research both
involve memory and remembering, and in their case
remembering means referring back to the literature
and the storing of themselves. There is also a
part of consciousness that does not rely on words
it is 'spiritual in nature', according to Dillard
again involving consciousness, choosing 'to be in
relationship with the divine power of all things'
(335). They chose this to connect with things
beyond their intellect, in order to further go
beyond the 'scientification of oral history'.
There were led by a consciousness or inner knowing
'that called us to this work' they felt obliged to
highlight the racial injustice of being erased.
They sought language that attempted to unmask
these traditionally held political and cultural
constructions and depressions and that led them to
re-vision research methodology. The result is a
'unique application of interviews feelings and
facts that expands critical thinking, storytelling
dialogues that enrich teaching and learning. There
is no model for their project, although it is not
completely new — 'it is a reconstruction based on
salvaging and reforming fractured pieces of our
indigenous selves and histories'. They see it as a
matter of surrendering and highlighting healing
potential, aligning with their own cultural ways
of knowing and being. Each author provides their
own story of how they became a researcher tapping
into indigenous oral traditions and cultivating a
liberatory process helping them theorise research
as ReVision.
Marcio Gallo: disrupting narratives
She was inspired to work with the Collective and
reaffirm its significance, to share the
'unvarnished truths of our lives' (336) which also
involved 'learning to unlearn'. She is an
historian of LGBTQ social movements and she knows
that personal narratives are crucial especially
when archives do not provide much evidence of such
people. Both oral history and lesbian and gay
history were animated by the same imperative to
interpret marginalised subjects and their
histories. She began by researching the first US
lesbian organisation the Daughters of Bilitis
(DOB), a pre-Stonewall group. Archives were
limited so oral history became a necessity. Using
a snowball method, she contacted 35 women and men
and interviewed them multiple times. She
encountered questions of race and racial silences
in these histories, for example the eight original
founders included 2 WOC, a Filipina and a Chicana,
as well as one young blind black person. The
significance of black and brown women emerged in
other oral histories, including one who urged the
adoption of civil rights movement tactics, and the
original founder of a magazine. The revitalising
potential of oral history was clear and has been
carried on in their current 'just – us' work that
disrupts 'previously all-white narratives'.
Doris L Watson (re-) remembering my way back
She returned to faculty after a three-year stint
as Associate Dean just as Covid 19 emerged. Her
spiritual self was reawakened and she invoked
practices of walking meditation in her own
spiritual practices [attributed to a certain Thich
Nhat Nanh], which engendered peace and
serenity, it involves walking in a childlike
manner 'i.e. playfully' [and rather mindfully
'letting go of to get somewhere and just be']. She
let go of and re-engage scholars she'd read many
years before include bell hooks, Paolo Freire and
Cynthia Dillard. She re-engaged with teachers of
colour and the group that became to be known as
The Collective, a cross disciplinary team, which
encouraged her to let go of what she thought she
knew. She was not 'intimidated by the magic we
conjure as BIPOC scholars and leaders' (337).
In conventional qualitative research, we are
taught to consider ontology, epistemology,
axiology ['what is the role of values'],
rhetorical [values] 'what is the language of
research', and methodological. She finds this
conventional training 'most inauspicious'
instructed to 'know and thereby control the world
rather than allowed to come to know… We have
diminished our own ability to hear our stories —
the stories that lend to community — to (re-)
remembering'
She's been transformed, provided with the gift of
immersion in her local community, able to hear and
learn of lived experiences. She is now been able
to challenge academically acceptable definitions
of knowledge and ReVision her own philosophical
assumptions the community has been the research
method enabling participants to remember
themselves to research 'who we were, who we have
forgotten' [in other words, a collective therapy
after management]
Claytee D White: speaking our own truths
She was a non-traditional graduate student in
history who undertook oral history training. She
was initially 'scared and excited' and began with
an interview with a couple talking about the 1920s
in Las Vegas. She added various other projects
from different communities occupations and ethnic
groups. Eventually she looked at white supremacy
in a particular county school district. She went
on to examine women in gaming and entertainment,
and found that all the work so far had been
authored by white men, and that much of the
earlier history involving black women had been
ignored. An early collaborator was a local worker
and mother in the community, she provided access
to community memories involving stories of
historical events which 'went beyond storytelling
and became recognised as history, American
history' (338). More participants were invited to
relate black experience and more people are now
telling their own story 'with racial power as
racial emancipation and anti-subordination'
encouraged by BLM. 'This truth is filtering into
the schools'
Iesha Jackson: finding myself through (re)
revision
She reflected on Dillard and Bell referring to
'situated sacred and spiritual elements of the
process of research' when black and indigenous
people find themselves. She began with traditional
academic work, but when the IRB said her project
was not research, an unanticipated consequence,
put herself on a path to redefining herself as a
scholar. She stopped thinking about collecting
data and started 'gathering and mending pieces of
ourselves to research process that was no longer
limited by the confines of an institutional review
board' after participation in conversation, 'the
boundaries between researcher and researched were
obscured'
Former students were invited to join the project,
'people with whom I developed affinity' (339)
budding educators. The point was to understand the
life history, why they chose teaching and how the
teacher education program might develop an
induction programme will histories were to be a
foundation. They were connected with the research
team from the beginning and this 'allowed the
sacred and spiritual to flow'. Connections went
beyond those expected by the role of Professor,
into a genuine willingness to share. She inserted
herself and her experiences, shared stories,
deepened their personal relationships. 'I was not
concerned with accuracy, validity, a historical
record, or any of the other methodological
traditions', although she thought her practice was
actually 'more aligned with oral traditions' in
that she understood shared stories as part of
individual past present and future lives and also
simultaneously worked 'to provide mutual healing
and nurturing' is that part of the work that
helped her 'recognise the sacredness of our
process' — she means 'both set apart (outside the
bounds of what the institution deems research) and
reverently dedicated to ourselves as we created
(and still maintain) a community had resorted the
way I think about what it means to conduct
research. [And beyond criticism in the Durkheim
sense?]
The project occurred at the time that she was
questioning 'my will to remain in the Academy' she
was still going through the motions of being a
professor but had lost sight of the vision. She
was interested in the spiritual aspect of
research, affirming her call to teach. This is
been reaffirmed. Research itself is now
'"nurturing the spirit – self [Banks-Walker] in
communion with the divinely orchestrated
collection of people who see and understand a
greater purpose for a collective work'. This would
not have emerged if they'd stuck with traditional
research methods. She would have been
uncomfortable inside those boundaries. Reclaiming
the approach 'was liberatory and life-giving for
me' (340).
Overall, even though the institution said this was
not research, she experienced it as an invitation
to theorise and to revise the concept of research,
to develop a new conception through indigenous
methodologies and methods. These included
situating themselves in community, beyond what is
normally thought of as ethnography, responding to
individuals and the collective through the
understanding of 'the Zulu concept ubuntu,
commonly translated as "I am because we are" but
encapsulating a larger concept of the oneness of
humanity"' with our whole beings, evoke Spirit in
a way that is not usual in oral history. We do not
separate the personal from the professional. We
bring our full selves to our work. These make the
methods authentic to us 'or "just – us", while
also being connected to indigenous roots of
gathering and recording data. We saw our research
as worthy and legitimate in spite of IRB'[still
hurts then]. We suggest that this is a pathway
'for racially just approaches to scholarship
with/as Black and Latinx peoples'. We want to
create an academic life '"that resonates with
spirit" to centre that life around community,
something integral to socialisation knowledge
construction and the preservation of history. We
confront erasure co-optation and scientification
and do not see the future 'through colonised
lens'. Indigenous traditions shaped our
methodology and also helped us create bonds with
each other and to understand ourselves. We must
address the racist past the development of
methodology including oral history and we must
develop the potential for indigenous practices to
bring a full selves to our research including a
process of spiritual recovery necessarily linked
to political self recovery. This s only the
beginning
[Dillard, CB seems to do a lot of work — there are
several pieces between 2006 and 2018, all of which
mention spirituality and remembering culture]
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