Notes on: Linda Tuhiwai Smith, (2008). Decolonising
Methodologies . Research and Indigenous Peoples.
12th impression. New York: Palgrave.
Dave Harris
Introduction
For the colonised, research means 'European
imperialism and colonialism' and the word is
'probably one of the dirtiest words in the
indigenous world's vocabulary' (1), greeted with
silence, bad memories, distrust. People remember
that skulls were filled with millet seeds as a
measure of their capacity for mental thought, that
brief encounters with some of us were generalised,
that the West owned our ways of knowing and the
things we created but rejected the people who
created them, that historical practices are still
used to deny the validity of current claims to
existence and land, language and knowledge. [all
these applied to working class white people too,
of course]. Said said this Western discourse about
the Other was supported by institutions,
scholarship and bureaucracies, a scholarly
construction about the Orient, supported by
corporate institutions. Research therefore becomes
a site of struggle between the West and its
interests and ways of knowing, and the interests
and ways of resisting of the Other, indigenous
peoples. It is difficult right from the start to
discuss research methodology and indigenous
peoples in the same framework without
understanding first how the pursuit of knowledge
is embedded in imperial and colonial practices.
Of course research projects might serve the
greater good for mankind, or even emancipatory
goals for oppressed communities, but these run the
risk of being reflections of ideology, simply
assumed, ignoring other stories to tell which
question them, when seen through the eyes of the
colonised. 'And, of course, most indigenous
peoples and their communities do not differentiate
scientific or "proper" research from the forms of
amateur collecting, journalistic approaches,
filmmaking or other ways of "taking" indigenous
knowledge' (2) [Preposterous claim! They
definitely should be taught to do this -- it might
save an awful lot of misunderstanding!]: Foucault
has said these travellers' tales have contributed
as much to Western knowledge as scientific data,
and anyway scientific knowledge has often been
random ad hoc and damaging.
She has grown up within indigenous communities and
listened to their stories about research and
researchers and how they were connected with
colonisation and injustice, how cultural protocols
were broken, values negated, key people ignored.
Policies were allowed to intrude, legitimated by
research but 'informed more often by ideology'
(3). Research was seen as absolutely worthless
except for the researchers and this produced
'unspoken cynicism' [which ruins it as ideology?].
But it can't just be ignored or deconstructed.
Indigenous communities still live with poverty and
ill health and poor educational opportunities.
Adults may be addicted to alcohol, kids to drugs,
there may be destructive relationships. They are
still fed messages about their worthlessness
[no-one gets cynical about that?]. Denial of the
historical formations of these conditions have
denied claims to humanity and history and 'all
sense of hope'. Resistance involves an attempt to
'retrieve what we were and remake ourselves' (4).
The past and our stories 'are spaces of resistance
and hope'[rather dangerous imaginary ones, easily
recuperated? — she agrees they are also 'spaces of
marginalisation'].
There is now a 'burgeoning international community
of indigenous scholars and researchers' talking
about research and methodology, often informed by
critical and feminist approaches with political
commitments. There's lots of discussion about
control over research activity and the knowledge
it produces, ethical guidelines and priorities
addressing the concerns of the indigenous
themselves [ie for and on behalf of them as with
all intellectuals] — it is an activism. This book
is an attempt to assist it, and to encourage and
reconnect with indigenous researchers inside
Western education [as borderline persons?]. She
hopes for further dialogue. There are no technical
issues as yet.
The term indigenous is problematic in
collectivising distinct populations. All
collective terms are problematic. In New Zealand
the term Maori or tangata whenua are used
more frequently than indigenous with different
origin and tribal terms. Some terms are terms of
insults, originally used by colonisers but then
politicised, such as 'black Australians' by
aborigine activists. Indigenous peoples arose
initially from struggles by the American Indian
Movement and the Canadian Indian Brotherhood, with
the intention to internationalise the experiences,
issues and struggles, while recognising real
differences. There is a need to enable collective
voices and develop an umbrella term in order to
learn and share. The shared experience arises from
colonisation and denial of sovereignty. There are
other meanings, referring to 'colonial literary
and/or feminist traditions' (7) where people want
to distinguish themselves from original settlers,
although their powers and privileges 'are all
vested in their legacy as colonisers' [compare
with the controversy over the term indigenous in
Australia].
There is a clear link with researching, writing or
talking back that characterises postcolonial or
anticolonial literature, the knowingness of the
coloniser, a recovery of ourselves, getting to the
underlying code of imperialism and colonialism,
and the various constructions of the Other, the
rules by which colonial encounters are managed,
but viewed this time from the other side. For
example the ways in which travellers tales and
adventurers' records represented the Other to the
audience back in Europe, especially if they told
of savagery and primitivism, and represented
various mythical portraits, often using terms
related to animals. These had wide currency and
wide appeal, including to the downtrodden in
Europe and the powerless. [So indigenous research
puts these straight?].
There are now approaches and methodologies to try
and ensure that research with indigenous peoples
is more 'respectful, ethical, sympathetic and
useful'(9), often influenced by feminism, which
have emerged from challenges to the Academy. Some
critical questions are still important like who
owns the research and whose interests it serves,
who designs the questions and how the results
might be disseminated. There are also apparently
larger judgements: 'is her spirit clear? Does he
have a good heart? What other baggage are they
carrying? Are they useful to us? Can they fix up
our generator? Can they actually do anything?'
(10). And indigenous insiders are often judged on
insider criteria such as family background, age,
gender, religion. Even so, indigenous communities
'will still select or prefer a nonindigenous
researcher over and indigenous researcher'
sometimes based on a [cultural cringe] factor or
suspicion of a hidden agenda. Working these issues
through often takes great skill, maturity and
experience and researchers 'often get hurt and
fail in the process'.
She claims to have picked up a few useful habits
as a 16 year old Maori working with her father, a
Maori anthropologist working in museums with
artefacts, 'a world in which science and our own
indigenous beliefs and practices coexisted' (11).
She began working in health, again mediating
between bureaucracies and communities, realising
that many of the indigenous research problems were
never addressed by the literature or her own
training. She now claims to be an indigenous woman
with 'a genealogical, cultural and political set
of experiences' (12) [if you need those, there is
no hope for anyone else doing indigenous
research?]. Her extended family relationships
nurtured these traditions, which strengthened
links with tribal territories and spiritual
relationships, and incidentally made her
'sceptical, cautious about the mystical misty eyed
discourse that is sometimes employed by indigenous
people to describe our relationships with the land
and the universe': she thinks instead that Maori
had to learn how to survive and be pragmatic.
One of her tribal links was particularly exploited
by the New Zealand Government and preserved a set
of grievances — a 'particular dissent line' (13) —
while another one came from urban Maori activism
in the late 60s, organised around recognising the
Treaty of Waitangi. She helped teach Maori
language and develop Maori elementary schools, but
she writes in the context of the first world.
She does not think that Western education
precludes her from speaking from a real or
authentic indigenous position, however, nor that
hers is a '"nativist"' discourse, contradictory
and illogical (14) or 'some modernist invention of
the primitive'. This sort of criticism is levelled
by nonindigenous and indigenous communities. It
resembles the position addressed by Fanon [but no
celebration of his border thinking]. She finds it
particularly difficult to engage in debates about
post-colonialism specifically.
She thinks that indigenous people like her have a
presence in the Western imagination especially
'its margins and intersections'. At uni, she found
some sort of a home in 'anthologies labelled as
cultural studies'. Since then, she has attended
meetings and networks of indigenous people and
enjoyed debates, speeches silences, oral
traditions, showing your face, turning up at
cultural events, especially important for Maori,
giving a chance to show respect, maybe to consult
extended families. Some methodologies see this as
integral, with widespread ethical and respectful
discussion as necessary parts, as well as writing
for academic publications — reporting back and
sharing knowledge. Some of her students do this in
formal ceremonies involving family or tribal
councils; one put his work in a wreath on a casket
of a deceased relation; another presented copies
of the work to the people interviewed and enjoyed
a meal with the family; others are presented to
international conferences.
There are paradoxical results of sharing
knowledge, including widespread understanding of
matters such as the Human Genome Diversity
Project, for example (16), including sharing
theories and analyses. This might be a better way
to diffuse knowledge rather than formal schooling.
It would certainly be 'arrogant' to assume that
people are not interested in the deeper issues.
Conventional approaches to research often make
indigenous students 'very angry' especially if
they carry out fairly routine positivist tasks,
selecting, interpreting, organising and
representing and so on. There are still
difficulties working with nonindigenous
researchers and academics. Some researchers
'resent indigenous people asking questions' about
the research (17) and some are happy to exploit
indigenous peoples. However, at least in New
Zealand there is some 'bicultural research,
partnership research and multidisciplinary
research', and there has been clarification of
aims and how to research effectively and
ethically.
Chapter 1
Imperialism frames the indigenous experience as an
all-encompassing version of modernity and it still
affects experience now. There is a shared language
to describe it. For her, indigenous experience is
best articulated through 'imperialism, history,
writing, and theory' (20), words of emotion [ie
not very precise?]
Columbus is a central figure, accompanied by Cook,
who also brought capitalism, western
individualism, Christianity and disease; the
French who visited Tasmania, different Europeans
such as Dutch and Portuguese, and the various
military personnel, administrators, priests and
colonial officials who followed them. Colonialism
is best understood as an expression of
imperialism. Imperialism is economic expansion,
the subjugation of others, an organising idea and
'a discursive field of knowledge' (21). Economic
explanations have been advanced by Hobson and by
Lenin, and explanations concern search for new
markets and for new resources [OK that's
summarised that then-- marxism is only another
account]. Exploitation and subjugation of
indigenous peoples follow, developed into
increasingly sophisticated rules of practice,
which vary — confiscating land, military invasion,
or signing various treaties, dividing people into
different sorts of citizens and offering various
kinds of settlements. Imperialism as an ideology
might begin with the Enlightenment and involves
science, ideas and modernity, and involves science
with connections to economic expansion.
Imperialism and ideology extend to the ways in
which imperialism has reached into the cultures
and minds of the colonised and how they might be
able to decolonise and rediscover our sense of
'authentic humanity' (23). This has dominated
postcolonial discourse and the idea of 'writing
back'. Such writing sometimes arises from a
concern for human and civil rights and the need to
counter oppression. Colonialism develops as
'imperialism's outpost'. Colonies involves
controlling Europeans as well and they represent
an ideal image of the West or civilisation [?]
[Fanon and others say the contradiction is they
can't keep this up for long before descending into
appalling violence and oppression]. Though
sometimes there are struggles about identity
between different Europeans. Sector interests
became powerful. Indigenous communities were
perceived differently yielding quite often very
specific experience.
One theme of critique from within indigenous
community draws on authenticity, pre-colonised
societies where 'we had absolute authority over
our lives' [nice view of mechanical solidarity]
(24). Another involves an analysis of how
colonisation happens and what it means for the
future. Decolonisation involves both. The
specifics are sometimes generalised to refer to
globalisation or new world orders as world
marketplaces develop, requiring new forms of
resistance. Sometimes post-colonialism assumes
that colonialism is over, leading to some
scepticism that this has helped to re-inscribe
privileges for nonindigenous persons,
including among academics and researchers.
Late modern and late colonial research still
continues. It might be insensitive and offensive,
but it is always justified as being for the good
of mankind. It is still 'on indigenous peoples…
Still justified by the ends rather than the
means'. It often implies that indigenous peoples
are ignorant or undeveloped. Sometimes traditional
remedies are removed and analysed. The same might
go for belief systems or healing practices as part
of a 'global hunt for new knowledges' (25). There
is a new urgency for international agreement.
An old stereotype was that primitive people could
not use their minds or intellects, could not
invent or imagine, were therefore not fully human,
and this was important for imperialism and its
classifications of races or societies. There were
definite processes of dehumanisation, from
violence to ideologies which has centralised
different notions of nature or cultural
relativity, or savagery. Often the divisions were
simple binaries with no understanding of the
layers within indigenous peoples, even of
mixed-race persons: legislation developed to
regulate these.
Violence accompanied attempts to establish
independence and decolonisation, justified in the
name of restoring order, sometimes natural order,
opposed to the disorder, the lack of civilisation
that existed previously. Fanon and others point
out that colonialism [necessarily] brought
disorder and fragmentation.
There has been a need to rewrite the position of
indigenous peoples in history, to tell their own
stories for their own purposes, to give testimony,
to 'restore a spirit, to bring back into existence
our world fragmented and dying' via a form of
writing or literacy 'in a very traditional sense
of the word' (28). The same goes for theorising
existence and reality , creating a new national
culture and indigenous scholarship. Indigenous
history often relates the negation of their own
views following colonialism, and a critique of the
way history is told from the perspective of the
colonisers.
This has led to more a critique of more
systematic ideas [and some references are given,
30]: 'history is a totalising discourse' [a
systematic and coherent whole with its own
classification systems, rules and methods]; 'there
is a universal history' [humans share fundamental
characteristics and values which can be traced];
'history is one large chronology'; 'history is
about development' [especially progress, from
primitive, simple and emotional to more rational];
'history is about a self actualising human
subject' [leading to total control of the
faculties, including the control of the emotions];
'the story of history can be told in one coherent
narrative'; 'history as a discipline is innocent'
[the facts speak for themselves and tell their own
story]; 'history is constructive and uses binary
categories' [less argument for this I think, based
on one binary-- the prehistorical and historical];
'history is patriarchal' [because only men can
attain the higher orders of development].
There are other intersecting key ideas. Literacy
is a major criterion for assessing development,
and if it develops in places like the East, it is
not legitimate. Hegel's notion of people creating
their own history simply legitimates his own
preconceptions [?]. There is a suppressed notion
of Otherness in the notion of being fully human.
There is an overemphasis on the rational
individual and his manifestation in modern
industrialism, so that the people and groups who
made history were also those who developed the
state and represented a certain class and race.
Indigenous people share their critique of history
with post modern theories [The argument actually
is indigneous people invented the critique of
history shared by postmodernists, but before they
did...really? On the surface maybe]. Their
contested accounts are found in genealogies, in
weavings and carvings, even personal names and
systems of knowledge often found in oral
traditions. Such histories have often been
incorporated, however, in Western views and in
early stories, such as Christian versions of myths
of origin.
The sharp end of it all is attempts to reclaim
land, language, knowledge and sovereignty. This is
where history is still important, and where the
connections with power are revealed. Indigenous
people need to fully analyse and settle the issue
of the modern: until then 'there can be no
"post-modern" for us' (34). It is not just a
scholarly matter about truth. Coming to know the
past is crucial if it leads to new ways of doing
things. We can often realise this by visiting
various sites and telling stories from the past.
Reading writing and talking are fundamental, but
academic Western books are often regarded as
'dangerous to indigenous readers' (35) — they do
not reinforce indigenous values and identity; they
often imply that others do not exist; they often
write things that run true; they often say
negative and insensitive things. This is often
directed against school texts and journals but
these 'comments apply also to academic writing'.
The same might be said about film like 'The
Piano'. Indigenous people often experience
fragmented identities — partly in the Third World,
partly as women of colour and so on [so do all of
us — some nostalgia for community here].
Indigenous peoples sometimes do not recognise
themselves in their representations. They can even
write that way themselves if they do academic
work, so writing can be dangerous. Sometimes,
however the language of the coloniser can be
appropriated, but at some risk, for example at
'many indigenous peoples conferences where issues
of indigenous language have to be debated in the
language of the colonisers… The use of literature
to write about the terrible things which happened
under colonialism… These topics inevitably
implicated the colonisers and their literature in
the processes of cultural domination' (36) [and
the indigenous people using them?]. Some have
written in indigenous languages as a result, even
if they were mostly oral. However others have
argued that it is possible to "write back", and
frame the issues differently, but we have to
remember that some conventions might not still be
acceptable to indigenous audiences [she uses the
example of the use of pronouns such as I and we].
There is also a politics of interpretation, asking
questions like who writes and for whom. Scientific
writing is the most highly regarded, but the
imagination can be a better way of 'sharing the
world' although there are problems of
interpretation [very brief on this] (37)
Indigenous people have often been 'oppressed by
theory' which does not look at things like origins
or histories sympathetically or ethically. Much of
it has not been driven by seeking tangible benefit
but by anthropology [which was initially about
political control and exploitation?]. Where
indigenous scholars have developed their own
theories, these have sometimes been activist, but
always [?] claim to be 'grounded in a real sense
of, and sensitivity towards, what it means to be
an indigenous person' (38), making sense of
reality, prioritising and legitimating, trying to
plan to take greater control over resistance,
organising, determine action, allowing new ideas.
There is always a need to struggle with
oppositional or alternative approaches, however
and there must always be some dialogue even with
dominant views.
Recovering our own stories of the past is
important and so are methodologies and methods of
research that help us do this. However,
decolonisation does not mean 'a total rejection of
all theory or research or a western knowledge'
(39, but centring our own concerns and worldviews,
even while 'under the gaze of Western imperialism
and Western science' [tricky]. We need to escape
this gaze and reorder and reconstitute ourselves.
Most research is clearly linked to western
knowledge and has not been neutral. However,
wanting more self-determination and greater
participation in what happens to us means there is
'much more active and knowing engagement in
research' among many indigenous groups. They need
access to the technical and conceptual tools even
if they 'make us feel uncomfortable, which we
avoid, for which we have no easy response' (40).
Chapter 2
There are lots of critiques of empiricism and
positivism [pretty crude reductionist ones] but
she wants to focus on white research or academic
research, outsider research, which often appears
to indigenous people as exploitative [no doubt
--but are they right?]. This can affect any study
of indigenous peoples and involve cultural
orientations, values, different conceptualisations
of time and space, subjectivity, different
theories of knowledge language and power. Western
research draws on a whole archive of knowledge,
rules and values. Hall says we use it to
characterise and classify, condense complex images
through simple representations, develop models of
comparison and criteria of evaluation in order to
code indigenous people and their societies. There
are in fact multiple traditions of knowledge and
ways of knowing in the archive, some more dominant
than others [typical weasel] and some rules may be
more explicit than others. There can also be
descent, again some of it only implicit and more
manageable. Marxism and Western feminism are
examples. Smith thinks Western feminism is not
very radical because it has been challenged by
WOC. [Then she goes back to an easier target]
missionaries considered indigenous beliefs
'shocking, abhorrent and barbaric' (43).
[Then a nice weaselly bit ] Western scholarship
itself might have been based on appropriated black
experiences and traditions of scholarship: the
cultural archive of the West certainly 'represents
multiple traditions of knowledge'. (44). The
archive is certainly flexible and its systems can
be reformulated in different contexts, for example
in different phases of colonisation, ending with
liberal notions of a shared culture.
Racialised discourses are central, and have been
since Greek times, where slaves, or half-human eg
mythical others have been central. Eventually,
savage humans emerged in explicit discourses, and
race became linked to human reason, morality and
to science, in modernist racism. There has been a
complex intersection with gender, again traced
back to various fragments of artefacts and
representations and traditions of knowledge,
beginning with the Greeks, increasingly
legitimated through Christian beliefs and growing
through feudal and capitalist modes of production.
As a result, it is still impossible for indigenous
peoples to speak without using gendered language,
especially when using 'English, French or
Castilian' (46). [Interesting point this--Maori
languages have no gendered nouns or adjectives?]
Western practices have had consequences for
indigenous women — they have marginalised them, as
became apparent in a recent Maori claim that the
Crown had ignored the sovereign status of Maori
women and their claims to Chieftainship, which
colonialism had ignored. In the process, the claim
revealed the limitations of a legal framework
inherited from Britain, especially about
admissible evidence and valid research; textual
orientation privileging the written text over oral
testimony; views about science and facts; rules of
practice, values and morals including notions of
consent, goodwill and truth telling; subjectivity
and objectivity and the neutrality of the law;
ideas about time, space and history; views about
human nature individual, accountability and blame;
who counts as speakers and experts; the politics
of the Treaty and how they have been managed by
politicians and agencies such as the media. All
sorts of other coded ideas and systems are
included in these ideas which together 'create a
cultural "force field" which oppose competing
discourses (47).
Western forms of research also contain ideas about
humans, selves and groups, and often causal
relationships which can be observed. This
contrasts with explanations involving connections
to an external force like powerful beings or
sacred objects, or naturalistic explanations: the
change occurred, possibly with Greek philosophy
with the development of humanism and the whole
separation of humans and nature, mind and body and
so on. These concepts have been Christianised and
developed further as in Cartesian dualism and
subsequent dialectic. For Maori, however the mind
or intellect 'is associated with the entrails and
other parts of the body', not the head (48).
Ideas are then realised by culture and power. The
notion of the individual has emerged after
centuries of debate and the development of
systems, reification, in this case of Western
reality, which was seen as higher order, above
primitive societies, universal, civilised,
rational. The individual was the basic building
block, especially as capitalism developed, but the
relation between the individual and the group came
to be a major problem involving tension or
dialectical relationships. She thinks that Hegel
'has become the most significant model for
thinking about this relationship. His master slave
construct has served as a form of analysis' (49)
[presumably because it is terribly convenient in
the colonial context — but if so, it has not been
followed through, I assume, to its logical
conclusion?]
[We can also cherry pick] Rousseau, apparently
influential because he had a romantic and
idealised view of human nature as in the noble
savage: it was easy to identify the inhabitants of
the South Pacific as these, 'especially the women
of Tahiti and Polynesia', but these were soon
re-categorised as barbaric and savage. [Then there
is] social Darwinism which helped us rank
societies according to their degree of
primitiveness and therefore their survivability.
[So these were all convenient justifications for
colonialism or things that somehow caused
colonialism?]
Western concepts of time and space are often
significant for indigenous languages where there
is no clear distinction between the two, in Maori
language, for example. [but in mundane practice --
Maori have escaped a sensori-motor and pragmatic
orientation to the material world?] Western
philosophy and its interest in the relations
between time and space, whether they are absolute
categories and how they might be measured, which
led to disciplines like geography, geometry, and
physics became part of our taken for granted view
of the world and appear in 'spatialized language'
(50), mathematical notions have intruded into
social life in the form of public and private
space, social classifications of space,
theoretical space and so on. It has also affected
classifications of the indigenous world, the land
and the people, separating the two and giving the
land new names. Other bits of indigenous cultures
were classified and stored, say in museums, and
some were marketed. In one example, a carved Maori
house was purchased and sent to the British Empire
Exhibition in 1879, and displayed 'according to
the aesthetic and economic sense of the
exhibition's curators' (52), becoming a
methodological curiosity for strange people. It
was then sent to England. Finally it was agreed to
return it to its original owners. The
classification of space led to establishment of
fixed stations, mines, ports and a specific
vocabulary turning on lines, centres and outsides,
and included the loaded notion of empty spaces
(53).
The same might be said of conceptions of time and
its organisation. Native life was clearly seen as
being 'devoid of work habits' (53) with a
persistent association between race and indolence.
We might contrast Joseph Banks and his journal of
life on board ship with his puzzlement about how
the native people divided time. There is a clear
link between hard work and salvation among early
missionaries. Linear views of time are inherent in
Western ideas about history, including notions of
enlightenment and progress.
There is a notion of distance or separation
affecting both time and space, including distance
between ruler and ruled, connecting with
rationality effectiveness and impersonality, and
carrying over into neutral research. Western ideas
appear as the only ideas possible to hold,
the only rational ones [certainly the most
effective ones technologically], conveying a sense
of innate superiority, lending force to the idea
of bringing progress. It can also be seen as a
form of research which steals knowledge and uses
it to benefit the thieves. It can be called racist
in assuming an ownership, embedded in
institutional practices reflecting power
structures. Some unfortunate attitudes still
persist, where 'people out there… In the name of
science and progress still consider indigenous
peoples as specimens, not as humans' (56). [Well
yes -- and some still see people as 'hands' or
'resources']
Chapter 3
Imperialism was crucial to the project of the
enlightenment and modernity. It both drew
everything back into the centre and 'distributed
materials and ideas outwards' (58), including
knowledge, and representations of the indigenous
world. It is still these representations that
indigenous people research when they study various
academic disciplines: this can be understood as a
colonisation of the mind [no reappropriation is
possible? No contrast with experience? no border
thinking?
Initially, discoveries about and from the New
World challenged ideas the West held about itself,
and transformed its old knowledge and the validity
of these forms of knowledge. Indigenous peoples
had as much of an impact as new flora and fauna,
and needed to be classified and mapped. Typically,
they were ranked in terms of their proximity to
the human, whether they possessed a soul, whether
they were redeemable and so on. This research was
clearly interested in power and domination. The
original imaginary line between East and West was
drawn in 1493 by the Pope to divide up the world
for competing Western states, and again in 1934 in
the latest scramble for Africa. Economic
colonialism, trade and ideas and images and
experiences also helped redefine the Other. These
were worked through Enlightenment philosophy and
scientific discoveries — 'the indigenous
contribution… is rarely mentioned' (60) [Not by
those impressed by Islam or Hinduism?] . Other
people were seen as research objects, disqualified
from the beginning from having a voice,
commodified as property, to be collected along
with other interesting examples, minerals,
territories and cultures [Clifford is cited to
describe ethnography as culture collecting] (61).
'In terms of trade indigenous peoples were often
active participants, in some cases delivering
"made to order" goods', including slaves [only a
sentence about that]. Private collections were
amassed, and these became sometimes the focus of
attempts to reclaim ancestral remains. Collection
also involve rearrangement and re-distribution, as
in the plant species taken to Kew — 'botanical
colonisation' (62). This sometimes led to
interference in the ecology of the new environment
and even extinctions, including the colonisation
by weeds of New Zealand, and the spread of
disease, sometimes used as a weapon of war. This
was sometimes supported by social Darwinism, and
various proposals to preserve threatened races
'through miscegenation and cultural assimilation'
for example (62) [the Australian option]: much
depended on whether the indigenous group concerned
was considered to be redeemable. Some 'very
serious scientific views' were developed on these
matters. But there are also state policies as well
as notions such as '"Manifest Destiny"' (63).
Global knowledge reinforces the West's view of
itself as the centre of legitimate knowledge,
having appropriated the Mediterranean, Arabic
culture, and the Far East, even though these
peoples were repositioned as oriental. Other
people were denied any role in civilisation.
Colonial education, often as missionary or
religious schooling at first, imposed this
'positional superiority' (64) often in a
'systematic, frequently brutal, forms of denial of
indigenous languages, knowledges and culture'.
Some were not permitted to attend school anyway.
Colonial education is also used to create new
indigenous elites, including sending some away to
metropolitan centres.
The traditional academic disciplines were also
affected, especially the notion of science as 'the
all embracing method for gaining an understanding
of the world' (65). Other disciplines were more
directly implicated in colonialism, sometimes
tested in the colonies like classification
systems, including Hegel's [not directly we
assume]. The French notion of civilisation itself
depended upon a distinction being made between
French citizens and savages, and even Freud
continued with some of the implications
[apparently via Malinowski and the Sexual Life
of Savages — but I thought that title was
just our marketing ploy]. Other intellectuals have
been named as racists by a certain Henry Louis
Gates Jr, including 'Kant, Bacon, Hume, Jefferson
and Hegel'.
Anthropology is closely associated with the notion
of the primitive, however, with an understanding
of primitive society as a distorted version of
their own. [Far too general? Functionalist
anthropology got decidedly relativist?]. They have
exploited the hospitality of native people,
attempted to civilise savages even under the guise
of training them as anthropologists. Geography has
also been implicated as mapping racial difference,
assisting the military, trying to show links
between climate and mental abilities. History has
an obvious guilty past especially in developing
the history of the colonies, history is written by
the victor. Disciplinary boundaries [and here she
quotes Bernstein!] permit an independence and the
denial of collective responsibility: ethical
guidelines have not always applied to research in
indigenous communities.
Academic discipline is also extended to
disciplining bodies [1 of several references back
to Foucault and the convenient slippageto make it
fit education]. Overt discipline of the colonised
is clear, and includes things like taking land
away or redefining it as empty, separating out
children of various kinds through the education
system, or even forcibly removing children from
families. Suppression of indigenous languages
continued even after the Second World War.
Some native intellectuals have emerged, trained in
the West. They have often been discussed in terms
of Marxist revolutionary thought and include
liberation writers such as Fanon. They have been
able to 'rehabilitate and articulate indigenous
cultures'(69) [from the borders?], but they
risk being absorbed by the colonisers and sharing
their 'class interests, their values and their
ways of thinking'. Some, apparently did feel
ashamed of their parents, but the few Maori who
went to university in the last part of the 19th
century 'are generally viewed positively'.
Intellectuals are important in the struggle to
create a national culture, and Fanon says they
have to show that they are fully assimilated, then
they have to remember who they are and finally to
reawaken the people and to align themselves with
them. There is a problem, of course connecting
with Fanon and his situation: in New Zealand, the
indigenous people were minorities and the settlers
permanent migrants, and the situation varies
elsewhere — for example Pacific Islanders have
been incorporated into metropolitan cultures of
Australia and New Zealand providing for an
increasing cultural homogeneity.
An alternative identity for the intellectual is
not so much revolutionary nationalist, but
'"postcolonial"' and their place is still
problematic, since they have to position
themselves strategically, within the Academy,
within the indigenous world, and within the
Western world in which many of them actually
works. Spivak says this produces a constant
problem of being taken seriously and that the
Academy in particular is very difficult to change.
Indigenous communities still see education as
being crucial to development and many still want
to send their children to university. This
produces a real ambivalence and conflict over
traditional or Western leaders, and there may be
derogatory terms such as '"flash blacks"' in
Australia ['wa-Benzi' — sons of Mercedes-Benz — in
Malawi]. In New Zealand there was an attempt in
the 1980s to re-privilege elders as holders of
traditional knowledge, as opposed to younger often
better educated members of a tribe: at the moment,
better educated Maori still seem to retain close
associations with their tribe in 'very fundamental
ways' (72) [dodges the issue of conflict?].
Reporters are sometimes surprised to find that
representatives of the indigenous people do not
dress as natives and therefore do not conform to
what is considered to be authentic. Such views are
often based in the 19th century. Views of real
authentic indigenous people often silence and make
invisible groups within indigenous societies like
women, 'the urban non-status tribal person and
those whose ancestry or "blood quantam" is "too
white"' [a note says that blood quantum, not how
it is spelt in the text, refers to the amount of
native blood one has and is still used in Hawaii
to determine eligibility access to Hawaiian lands.
It is 'based on racial beliefs that the more
indigenous peoples intermarried for more
assimilated or "watered down" they became.
Conversely if they did not intermarried they
remained "pure"' (77). Sounds just like Nazi
beliefs about Jewish blood or the 'one drop of
black blood' doctrines in US states in the 1930s].
Experts had already decided the aborigines in
Tasmania were extinct, so those who claim to speak
for them are seen as 'some political invention of
people who no longer exist and to therefore no
longer have claims' (73).
There has been criticism lately of the claims for
women as a universal sisterhood, seen as
essentialist by various post theorists. WOC
attacked this particularly because it denied the
impact of imperialism and racism. The concept of
authentic also came under deconstruction, but
'more so from psychoanalytic perspectives',
because it assumed that there was a pure and
authentic self underneath the oppressions and
their consequences. However, academic debates are
one thing, but when appropriated by the media and
popular press, they can 'serve a more blatant
ideological and racist agenda'. The legendary
Trinh T Minh-ha has denounced 'anthropologists'
for deciding who is racism free and anticolonial.
For the indigenous, the term authentic was
originally an oppositional term demonstrating the
dehumanisation of colonisation and struggling to
reclaim national consciousness, still framed in
humanism, but politicised. It appealed to an
idealised past before colonisation, and
congratulated people on surviving so far,
preserving their language and some ownership of
the land. 'This may seem overly idealised' but it
has a symbolic appeal that may be 'strategically
important in political struggles'. [She changes
ground as she pleases]. The Western
psychological self may not apply directly to group
consciousness as experienced in colonised
societies anyway, so criticisms of authentic
selves might not apply. It is a western tendency
to use the criteria as a biological essentialism,
and to imply that cultures cannot change or be
diverse.
Essentialism in the 'indigenous world' can be
strategic, connected to claiming human rights and
indigenous rights, but the essence of a person is
often discussed in terms of indigenous concepts of
spirituality, tracing genealogy back to an earth
parent, sharing with other animate and inanimate
beings, and essence of life, involving land,
landscape: this is the essence of the people,
swhich is very different [still essentialism
though ]. It has been difficult for the West to
accept [there are actually quite commonplace these
days in things like Barad or Rovelli].
Christianity attempted to destroy them and then
appropriate them, but beliefs about spirituality
still represent 'the clearest contrast and mark of
difference between indigenous peoples and the
West… One of the few parts of ourselves which the
West cannot decipher, cannot understand and cannot
control… Yet' (74) [These ideas have been popular
since the Dawning of the New Age at least, before
that with Annie Besant and co., and are quite
normal in the wackier realms of quantum physics
and feminist materialism].
Chapter 4
Travellers' tales reflect the usual stories of
adventure, survival against threatening
environments, sometimes to gather new scientific
knowledge, sometimes to lead to further missionary
or trading opportunities. They were always
'ethnocentric and patriarchal', but sometimes
'perceptive and reflective' (79) often of the
imminent changes. Artistic appreciation was also
apparent. There were romanticised versions, for
example with Pocahontas.
Within New Zealand, they were varied but rapidly
organised. Sometimes there was a motive to
represent local people as particularly horrendous
and evil in order to gain funds to carry out God's
work. Some early colonisers were more
well-intentioned and became more friendly
sometimes to the extent of being reviled by their
own societies, forming relationships with
indigenous women and being accepted by indigenous
hosts. Some became Orientalists. Tasman's first
encounters represented Maori as savages and
bloodthirsty, and Cook and Banks observed Maori
through an 'imperial eye', focusing on the natural
resources in NZ, especially the woodland and the
possibility of establishing colonies, and
observing the people as a value laden kind of
'pre-ethnography' (81). Cook's survey was much
more systematic than Tasman's although somewhat
arbitrary since it involved naval circumnavigation
and extensive renaming.
The Maori themselves told stories about the
encounters. The land wars that ensued in the 1860s
further blurred the roles of Europeans, as
military men then became magistrates or Land
Commissioners or even authorities on Maori beliefs
and customs, claiming objectivity. A number of
books in the 19th century were published, mostly
as autobiography. There were more scientific
investigations using evidence and data to test
theories. Skulls were measured and weighed to
investigate primitive minds, burial caves were
excavated for artefacts, and 'dried and shrunken
heads sold and exported back to museums' (83).
This has lead to lasting resentment over the
return of items especially the remains of
ancestors.
Some more systematic studies, even if amateur,
developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
This developed more sympathy although there was
still hostility towards any deviant Maori, mixed
with the need to administer an imperial
possession. One such researcher was George Grey,
who collaborated with local Maori chiefs. Elsdon
Best was New Zealand born and developed an
ethnology based on meticulous study although he
was also a member of the armed Constabulary and a
road builder. His research among the Tuhoe is
considered to be significant and involve
systematic notetaking, checking of sources,
interviews with informants and the publications of
results, although he was also there to negotiate
the building of the road, and attracted a number
of reactions, 'openness and generosity as well as
occasions of hostility and resistance' (84). He
did work hard to try and get access to sacred
knowledge and did manage to study the use of
spiritual chants to protect knowledge and called
meetings to discuss relevant issues. He did pass
certain of the tests and barriers set for him by
local Maori. This might have been a pragmatic
matter and did not go all the way. He did seem to
have some [key informants] among the local experts
and spiritual people, who were later banned from
practice as 'quacks'.
Learned societies grew in Europe, partly to resist
the religious dominance of universities, and
eventually gained government support. 19th century
science assumed there were universal models of
human society and participated in ranking
societies according to their closeness to the
primitive. Various societies visited New Zealand
to describe flora, fauna and people. They did
practice ethical control, but necessarily
reproduced a 'culture of elitism, the
culture of patriarchy' (86). Joseph Banks, a
member of the Royal Society when he embarked with
Cook, is a good example. Earlier expeditions were
driven by different objectives including trade
possibilities and the search for treasure.
Colonisation however was always linked with
ethnography, and there was an early worry of
contamination after contact with the West. There
was early involvement by Polynesians in a learned
society, including an Hawaiian Queen.
New Zealand ethnographers also tried to
systematise Maori history, including a chronology
of Maori migration. Smith and Best used
genealogies of Maori and attributed an average
lifespan to each generation. They also introduced
the myth of the "Great Fleet" suggesting that
Maori arrived in New Zealand in 1300 A.D. A
subsidiary myth suggested that there were some
Maori from Melanesia who were conquered by more
aggressive Maori from Polynesia. This second myth
of a more peaceful group before the Maori arrived,
implied that the Maori were more aggressive and
wiped out this group , the Moriori. These myths
have shaped both academic discourse and the
understandings of Maori themselves. They
legitimise conquest and migration as part of
colonisation, as integral to settlement, as
natural and universal processes.
There is also notion of cultural decay following
the impact of the West, characterised by
population decline, acculturation, assimilation,
and hybridisation, leading to hopelessness. For
indigenous people, there is a different emphasis:
contact, invasion, genocide and destruction,
resistance and survival, recovery leading to hope
and optimism. Without doubt there is a process of
land and resources being stripped by the state,
marginalising the indigenous, having policies
imposed on them. There was [amnesia] among
academic communities which led to much subsequent
confrontation and opposition to the presence of
researchers.
These days, globalisation and the expansion of the
market sets the terms for the debate. A major
implication for the indigenous people concerns the
trade of human beings, artefacts, artworks and
other cultural items. To see these as trade
assumes a two-way transaction, though, and
indigenous peoples prefer to say that their
possessions were stolen. Claims have been usually
framed within the Western juridical system, so
that the price for land has been denounced as
outrageous (100 blankets and 50 beads for 100
million hectares of land), or by invoking statutes
of limitations international agreements and so on.
These have been variable but above all they have
destroyed the idea that there is a material
connection between people, places, language,
beliefs and practices and instated commercial
values and the idea of trade — 'trading the Other'
(89) which became a vast industry and covers
ideas, language, knowledge, beliefs and fantasies
as abstract matters. Bell hooks has called this
'eating the other'. and says that even some black
politics incorporates the idea and sees identity
as a matter of consumption. New Right politics in
NZ have also tried to commodify knowledge,
customs, land, titles and even fauna and flora, in
regional free trade areas.[For marxists, the
Anglo-Scottish bourgeoisie did this first with
'clan land' in the Clearances --'clan' meant it
belonged to the clan chief who could then enclose
and sell it]
From 'indigenous perspectives'(90) the
distinctions between categories of colonisers,
scientists and travellers, say are less relevant
than those based on who were friends and who were
not. We see this in discussions on '"the
indigenous problem"', a recurrent theme about how
to deal with indigenous peoples, found within all
the wider discourses of dealing with the Other. It
is a fertile area for discussion and research,
beginning as a militaristic or policing concern,
managing rebellions, discrediting leaders. This
goes on today with indigenous activists, even with
passive resistance. In New Zealand, indigenous
peoples were sometimes rounded up and put on
reserves, and eventually social policies were
developed to remedy the problem, based
increasingly around notions of cultural
deprivation or deficit, with its own supporting
academic discourse. There is now a turn to
cultural diversity but even here the indigenous
can be perceived as a problem, as many are
'"inauthentic"' or 'ungrateful'. There is still
'deeply held fear and hatred of the Other' (92).
This seems to be a natural link between the terms
indigenous and problem, still, with research often
assuming the problem lies with indigenous
communities themselves. Indigenous people do
sometimes blame themselves and become hopeless. It
is not surprising that research and problem also
become linked and as a result,people switch off
when met with research: 'the word research is
believed to mean, quite literally, the continued
construction of indigenous people as the problem'
(92).
Chapter 5
[I find myself embarrassed that my PDF
version has a page missing -- serves me right for
being a cheapskate. It seems to describe life on a
contemporary New Zealand Maori settlement, and
ends with Smith discussing whether or not anything
has changed from the old colonial realities. She
thinks not, that Maori are still suffering from
poverty, the impact of multinational business, the
impact of missionaries and traders and the
struggle against them. She is describing a tribe,
an iwi, but 'not exactly the generic
indigenous tribe' (97)]
There is now a new language of imperialism, based
on marketisation, concepts of potential and
diversity. There are still evangelicals and
traders, and adventurers, but mass media as well.
The United Nations still offer imperial armies
defending 'freedom, democracy and the rights of
capital' (98). There are still notions like
'"empty land"' seen in policies to ship toxic
waste into the Pacific. There are some new
realities, social identities and power alliances.
One new term is 'post-colonialism'.
However this implies that colonialism is finished,
that the colonisers have left. Even if this is the
case literally, the institutions and legacy have
remained, however. Indigenous people have changed,
learned and are now mobilised around new
alliances. They have the collective memory and
'critical conscience of past experiences' and new
hope and possibilities. They do sometimes talk
about negotiating, reconciling and settling on
open dialogue with their rulers. There are also
new indigenous elites, which 'still protect the
interests of the big Western power blocs' (99) and
other indigenous leaders have drifted away from
their own indigenous values system, examples of
still successful divide and rule.
Scientific and technical advances still place
indigenous people and other oppressed groups at
risk, the search for cures for diseases, for
example, or some other life-saving technology.
This threatens the fundamental belief that 'the
earth is a living entity' there are certain
projects that are particularly threatening, like
building dams, destroying rainforests, poisoning
the land or the water, pursuing sectional
interests threatening indigenous knowledges or
appropriating them. Specifically:
1. 'Having
genealogy and identity (cell lines) stolen,
patented copied' via the Human Genome Diversity
Project and similar projects to patent genetic
material. One concerns an attempt to patent an
individual in Papua New Guinea. Representing
this scientific knowledge just dehumanises the
theft, since even genes are dehumanised (100)
2. Farming 'the umbilical
cord blood of aborted babies', against the
belief of many indigenous people, including
Maori, that the placenta and afterbirth are
still active and taboo, not recognised until
recently by hospitals. [any 'good' side to
this?]
3. 'Having your cultural
institutions and their rituals patented' either
by non-indigenous or indigenous individuals, as
in an attempt by 'a nonindigenous new age male
to patent the North American Indian sweat lodge
ceremony', apparently because the natives were
not performing it correctly, but clearly in
order to profit. Indigenous beauty products is
another example.
4. 'Scientific and political
reconstruction of a previously extinct
indigenous people' (101). She thinks this is
possible using genetic material from corpses or
mummies, producing 'experimental pure
populations'. [Where the hell did this come
from?]
5. 'Dying and then coming
back to life as a flock of sheep or variety of
tomatoes'. That follows from genetic
engineering, and already in NZ there has been an
attempt to breach sheep with human genetic
material in their make up [and it reminds me of
Barad's stuff about goat milk with spider silk]
to produce milk with genes resistant to
emphysema. [any 'good' side to this either?]
6. 'Commodifying indigenous
spirituality' (102) already happening with New
Age [why hasn't she noticed this before, and how
does she know this is inauthentic compared to
indigenous experiences?]
7. 'Creating virtual culture
as authentic culture'. That is virtual reality
instead of actual travel or viewing art
collections, a form of farming aboriginal
culture, risking stereotypes and
dehumanisation.[No 'good 'side again
--preserving actual sites, increasing access?]
8. 'Feeding consumption,
tuberculosis of the marketplace'. Through
television to export American tastes and
American culture, so that the young in NZ have
become keen on American sports or rap stars,
they desire more and more things and have
developed the 'autonomous choice' of the
consumer.
9. 'Creating sovereign
reservations for the elite' (103). This goes
against the right to self-determination and
establishing sovereign nations within tribal
territories. The very wealthy in the West now
escape their own urban jungles by moving into
their own security zones [and other forms of
withdrawal] to disengage from the Other.
10. 'Denial of global
citizenship'. Indigenous people are already
denied humanity and citizenship, and new global
political identities make participation even
more difficult in the global world order.
There is still optimism, associated with the new
millennium, and the possibility of new
international alliances, but there is also a
pessimistic view that the legacy of indigenous
peoples will be obliterated. One response is 'the
renewed focus on warrior traditions' (104) and the
need to fight on, to become activist. There are
still sites of struggle, maybe no longer over
recognition, perhaps more control over 'our own
forms of knowledge' [a real displacement I think],
over cultural and intellectual property rights.
Authenticity is important here [a very flimsy
concept to base claims on, as she recognises
herself earlier on].
Indigenous people still have their naturalistic
worldviews and some of these are being
incorporated into things like restorative justice
programs, healing circles, community health
initiatives, government consultation models, group
collaboration[again, easily enough incorporated as
private cultural concerns].
Chapter 6
Some indigenous people have carried out research
of a particular kind — a 'modernist resistance
struggle' (107) developing the priority of
survival of colonisation into projects such as
decolonising the mind and developing various
social movements.
There have been radical Maori organisations,
originally developing underground, associated with
generational struggle focused on education
government policy and nonindigenous society. They
have organised land marches, occupations,
disruptions of rugby tours and conferences. Key
cultural concepts include sovereignty, extended
family sub tribal groupings and tried, Maori
language and cultural customs. Organisation around
the Treaty of Waitangi provided an organising
framework.
In Australia, struggles over land rights began
before the Second World War and operated together
with campaigns for citizenship rights at a federal
level. The constitution was changed in 1967.
Direct action was pursued including 10 embassies,
silent protests and eventually the Mabo court
decision which overturned the idea of terra
nullius. Retrenchment by Conservative
government has also taken place.
Other protests over land rights and language
include the Sami, the Basque, and various
indigenous peoples in the Middle East Africa,
South and Central America, Asia and the Pacific.
There is a common theme of self-determination but
also more dynamic and complex elements. Culture
and tradition have been revitalised and
reformulated, Western institutions rejected. There
is an interest in a shared international language
or discourse [for example negritude?]. It is
politicised. There have been struggles over what
counts as traditional and how the community should
be represented. Several grassroots initiatives
have been developed including ones that develop
education and cultural revitalisation. Legal
challenges have been mounted and sometimes
constitutional ones which 'have deeply disturbed
the colonial comfort of some states' (111). Some
have challenged the very basis of treaties and
original settlements.
There have been 'often uneasy alliances with other
marginalised groups in society — white feminists,
socialists, communists, anti-racists, church
activists and labour unions'. Sometimes it
involved a quiet replacement by fears of white
hegemony and lack of trust. There were parallels
with activism around civil rights women's
liberation student protest anti-war movements in
the USA, and some international links
There have been some international linkages
bringing together different indigenous groups
including some from Latin America, Canada USA
Australia and New Zealand through world
conferences. Some of these international relations
are claimed to go back 'both prior to and after
contact with the West' (112 via trade links and
strategic alliances. Empire was taken seriously by
some New Zealand activists who appealed direct to
the Queen. Indigenous activists sometimes visited
each other and organised international meetings.
Other organisations such as the International
Labour Organisation also adopted indigenous
populations.
An indigenous research agenda can be represented
in a metaphorical chart of ocean tides [classic
vagueness] (116) with four directions based on
Maori, representing movement, change, life,
decolonisation healing and mobilisation as
processes, but also survival, recovery,
self-determination. Not sequential of course she
tells us [shifty vague open-ended circles 117] .
She claims that what makes them specific things
like healing decolonisation spiritual and recovery
which are 'at odds with the research terminology
of Western science', politically interested rather
neutral and objective [but she said that was as
well].
Indigenous peoples were initially very negative
about research, even about its ethical guidelines,
and still are if they still refer to Western
individuals and individualised property, whether
intellectual, cultural or physical. Instead they
have stressed collective rights to intellectual
and cultural property, participation in the
management of projects, control over their own
knowledge and an insistence on consent. This has
led to several Declarations. In New Zealand
they've identified a number of responsibilities
which researchers have, based on the code of
conduct for anthropologists, referring to
protection for the rights of the people being
studied. These have been further specified when
researching Maori: 'respect people, present
yourself to people face-to-face; look listen and
speak; share and host people, be generous; be
cautious; do not trample over the mana of
people; don't flaunt your knowledge' (120). [a
note claims that older women are apparently the
gatekeepers here 'as they watch, very keenly, what
people are doing'] There are other proverbs and
sayings which are relevant. Respect is
particularly important, and there is a need to be
in harmony with yourself and other members of the
animal kingdom and elements of nature to show
respect. [Sounds like Western liberals then].
[what does this collective ownership stuff look
like in practice I wonder]
Chapter 7
[Opens with diary notes, supposedly on
articulating an indigenous research agenda at a
conference of indigenous people]
Research is highly institutionalised in the
Academy and is integrally political. There's a lot
of money spent on it most research has been
trained and socialised. It's hard to think what
indigenous research might look like, so we have to
imagine it.
An alternative is currently being articulated.
There are distinctly different ways of thinking,
although they may not be referred to as research.
There is a restrictive practice involved where
only experts with qualifications and specialist
skills can be called researchers, while
communities carry out little projects. Indigenous
communities even use special terms such as 'Maori
centred research' (125). There are community
action projects and there are indigenous research
centres and study programmes. University
researchers can be important since they 'work
within the protection of such notions as academic
freedom'.
Community is 'defined or imagined in multiple
ways'. Notions have been contaminated by
colonisation to mean living on reserves or staying
within boundaries, although they can still retain
spiritual significance. There can be multiple
layers, nested identities involving belonging to
various communities, some of them spiritual,
united by song as much as territory, locating
yourself in a geographical area. This is not the
same as the anthropologists' field.
Community projects or action research are aimed at
self-help or making a positive difference, solving
specific problems. There may be broader
communities of interest such as indigenous women.
Some communities may have 'a strong suspicion of
the outsider… Formal membership… Various language
and dress codes' (127). There might be
international influences, say with Western
feminism. Process, 'methodology and method', is
often more important than outcome. The need to be
respectful healing and educative means leading by
a small step towards self-determination [seems
terribly tricky to me].
The term 'tribe' can be used for Maori to describe
a larger political entity of several smaller
groups 'linked closely by genealogy and shared
customary practices' (128). There is tribal
research at the moment in issues such as resource
management, economic development, education,
family and children, traditional knowledges.
Sometimes tribes have their own research centres
doing archival and historical research or social
impact analysis, gathering oral histories. One is
managed by the tribal Council and employs several
young people with academic qualifications. It has
even established a tribal University. Another
tribe is in the same process of establishing
research centres and graduate scholarships. One
interest is in mounting a Treaty claim. There is
some evidence that tribes engage in contests with
each other over Treaty claims, but this is 'a
consequence of being driven by the government
agenda for settlement at any cost rather than a
reflection of traditional practices' (129).
Lots of indigenous staff and students find
universities 'to be toxic'. It is hard to join
research groups. Maori have formed their own
groups, largely within anthropology or through
Maori academic centres in faculties such as
education, medicine, law, art history. Maori still
constitute 15% of the total population of New
Zealand, although their participation rates in
universities 'have been extremely low': however
where they have participated they have been very
successful.
A Research Unit for Maori Education was formed in
1988 University of Auckland to promote indigenous
research to make a difference for Maori and to
influence educational policy, to develop and train
Maori researchers and to disseminate. It took a
long time to establish it in the University and
there were many challenges about how appropriate
it was. Struggles are often expressed in terms of
maintaining standards. Eventually, appropriate
methodologies, curriculum, and suitable graduate
programs were developed. Major research contracts
have been gained and international conferences
attended [still no examples of what they actually
did]. The Unit grew and gained the University
support. It became an Institute, although it still
faced resistance.
'It is possible to see many of the barriers and
glitches which occurred as examples of
institutional racism' (133). This can be related
to the ways in which 'academic knowledge is
structured as well as to the organisational
structures which govern the University'. The
insulation of disciplines, the culture which
supports disciplines, and systems of management
and governance protect privileges already in
place. Ways of thinking about knowledge can
provide a rough passage for any new development
[so what makes it racist specifically?] Pressures
from the Maori community via the Treaty seem to be
important here
They want to train indigenous researchers but
without 'destroying people's indigenous
identities, the languages, values and practices…
It can be an alienating and destructive
experience' (134), as a disillusioned student is
quoted as saying — she still met white cultural
supremacy. Indigenous students needed to employ
various strategies like 'becoming as invisible as
possible' or the opposite. Many indigenous
researchers are self-taught although there are now
a number of programs for them, emphasising action
research and collective work with staff as an
attempt to create a definite 'Maori research
culture' (135). Many are encouraged to pick their
own topic, use their own bicultural skills if they
have them, and to work from strength.
It is recognised that they may need emotional
support and reassurance, assistance to reconnect
with their own communities, ways of managing
'protocols of respect and practices of reciprocity
— the relatively simple task of gaining informed
consent can take anything from a moment to months
and years' (136) and can involve a great deal of
travel to gain trust. Even asking for an interview
can be seen as 'quite rude behaviour in some
cultures'. Some indigenous elders expect
reciprocal storytelling. Sometimes they just play
the game. Negotiating entry can be daunting and
sometimes researchers have to listen to 'the whole
ugly history of research on indigenous people'.
Many of these issues are addressed in terms of
insider and outsider research. Feminist research
has made 'insider methodology much more acceptable
in qualitative research', but for indigenous
researchers there are multiple ways of 'both being
an insider and outsider' (137). There is a
constant need for reflexivity thinking critically
about processes, relationships and the data.
Insiders also have to live with the consequences
on a day-to-day basis and so they need particular
support systems and relationships. They have to
have clear research goals and lines of relating,
to define closure and have the skill to say no.
One of her own experiences involved a community of
Maori mothers and children; she was a part of the
group, an insider as a mother herself. She had
some links to some of the mothers through tribal
relationships, but was also an outsider as a
graduate student as a teacher and a professional
and car owner. She was met with formal cultural
practices when she interviewed — homes were 'extra
spotless' (138) and food had been specially
prepared, kids were ready for bed, signs of
respect appeared suitable for strangers. She was
asked to keep some matters confidential. She feels
she never did these women justice but she learned
a lot about research. Insider research has to be
humble and the expert role is problematic,
especially as an '"official insider"'.
It is particularly difficult to test your own
taken for granted views about the community and it
can lead to unsettling beliefs and values or even
'the knowledge of different histories… Stories of
grave injustice… Discoveries which contradict the
image that some idealistic younger researchers
sold of elders' (139).
You can build support structures, working with a
particular guardian elder, for example, practising
with already validated research instruments. It is
important to be honest and to express open good
intentions, including spelling out the limitations
of the project. Generally, the whole thing
requires 'energy commitment and protocols of
respect'(140) and it can be 'bothersome and
tiring'. It is a highly political activity and it
can be threatening. Researchers may meet
exclusionary devices to manage challenges,
including criticisms of research as not robust,
not valid, or particularly relating to indigenous
criteria — not useful not friendly.
Chapter 8
The main theme seem to be about survival of
people, culture, languages, become self
determining, take back control of destiny and
research can help if it is strategic and
relentless in pursuing social justice. A large
number of projects which intersect have been
pursued, some by indigenous lawyers and
constitutional experts, others by women, health
workers or social workers and policy analysts.
She's going to mention 25 different ones. She's
not claiming they are 'entirely indigenous or to
have been created by indigenous researchers'
(142). Some are based on social science
methodologies. Some are multidisciplinary. Others
have arisen out of indigenous practices. Some are
empirical research, but 'not all' (143) — some
theorise indigenous issues and set out spiritual
beliefs and worldviews. There is little that
focuses on natural sciences or technology [hardly
surprising]. She uses Harding's distinction
between methodology and method, where the first is
a theory about what research does and method is a
technique for gathering evidence. For indigenous
research, methodological debates concern
themselves with politics and strategic goals and
it's there that researchers need to clarify and
justify their intentions. There is often a mix of
existing methodological approaches and indigenous
practices. Researchers are often trained within
the Academy and they use their common sense
understandings as well.
The projects [very briefly described in about a
paragraph each]
Claiming. Methodologies have been developed,
including intensive research on nation, tribe and
family histories to establish legitimacy of
claims, often 'constructed around selected
stories' (143). Different audiences are addressed,
often nonindigenous ones like the court, so some
teaching is going on as well. Histories are often
rewritten around other priorities
Testimonies, involving oral evidence, often
connected with claiming. They sometimes are formal
and connected to revealing the truth under oath.
They sometimes concerned painful events. They
offer a voice of witness. They can take the form
of monologue and public performance. The sense of
immediacy often appeals to many indigenous
participants. Testimony can structure the
responses and offers 'silencing certain types of
questions and formalising others' (144
Storytelling, now an integral part. Individual
stories can contribute to a collective one
[groupthink?]. They often refer to injustice,
racism and mistreatment and are designed to pass
down particular cultures to new generations, and
to connect the past with the future and the land
with the people. They can represent a diversity of
truth [hmm]. They often focus on 'dialogue and
conversations among ourselves', and maintain oral
traditions that are still important. They can
feature 'humour and gossip and creativity' (145)
and can tell of love, sexual encounter, war and
revenge, via familiar characters and motifs
[stereotypes?].
Celebrating survival, sometimes in story form,
sometimes in popular music, sometimes as an event.
Resistance is celebrated and identities affirmed.
Personal struggles are detailed. There may be
spiritual sharing in a diversity of forms.
Remembering, especially of a painful past and the
responses to it, often punctuated with silences
and intervals. There may be no collective
remembering if communities were ripped apart. They
may be unconscious or conscious obliteration
'through alcohol, violence and self-destruction'
(146), ignored by white society. Healing and
transformation become crucial strategies in such
remembering.
Indigenising, first to re-centre the landscapes,
images, languages and stories in the indigenous
world, while disconnecting with the secular
society, and secondly, deliberately building upon
traditions, bodies of knowledge and values,
indigenous identity and cultural action as
deliberate alternative views, countering negative
connotations. There is a link with feminist
research and critical approaches.
Intervening, being proactive, becoming involved in
change both structural and cultural, for example
intervening in Maori education policies, designing
new programs and training staff.
Revitalising, indigenous languages through
education broadcasting and publishing, as the
Welsh language has been. Maori has followed a
similar pattern. There may however be several
languages. In some areas most of them might be on
the verge of extinction as in British Columbia,
and there is often little coordination or support,
say in literacy campaigns. Indigenous language is
'often regarded as being subversive to national
interests and national literacy campaigns' (148)
Making connections, both with other people and to
the land and other places in the universe, and to
animals, maybe to stolen children as in Australia
after forced adoption programs. Restored rituals
and practices may involve reconnection to the
land, as in burying the afterbirth in the land in
New Zealand. Reconnecting with agencies and
individuals including researchers is also
important.
Reading and rereading of history and colonialism
including new forms, including origin stories to
replace the usual account of 'important white
imperial figures adventurers and heroes'(149
Writing, as in '"the empire writes back" project.
There is now a five volume anthology of Maori
literature, an anthology of native women's
writings in North America, new poetry, plays,
songs, often interconnected. Maori newspapers,
local publishing houses in Gaelic, new accounts
addressing nonindigenous persons, new audiences of
indigenous people.
Representing, both in the political sense and more
generally as a form of voice and expression. The
old paternalism is still present, and
representation is sometimes minimal: minority
groups are often collected together. There has
been a growth in indigenous artists, writers,
poets and filmmakers to counteract dominant
images, including some by Maori.
Gendering, to redress the 'destructive effect on
indigenous gender relations' produced by
colonisation (151) as traditional families and
life were disordered. It was apparently
colonialism 'which positioned its own women as the
property of men'. Indigenous women 'claim an
entirely different relationship… embedded in
beliefs about the land and the universe… the
spiritual significance of women… the collective
endeavours that were required', so their
traditional roles 'including full participation in
many aspects of political decision-making and
marked gender separations which were complementary
in order to maintain harmony and stability' (151 –
2) [bit Panglossian?]. An analysis of colonialism
is still crucial for indigenous feminists who
demand a restoration of traditional roles, rights
and responsibilities, and some did respond to an
address on the impact of colonialism at a
conference.
Envisioning, where people imagine a future based
on the confidence that they have survived and can
go forward, they have achieved their dreams in
some ways, for example, have achieved some redress
under the Treaty. Certain slogans make their
spirits soar. They borrow from other indigenous
peoples, and 'sayings have acted like resistance
codes' (153)
Reframing of indigenous issues, relating them to
history adequately, for example and redefining
them, including things such as 'mental illness,
alcoholism and suicide' and their connections to
'colonisation or lack of collective
self-determination'(153). One initiative for young
children insists 'it is not a childcare centre but
a language and culture initiative' and this
affects funding and also connects it with other
initiatives. Redefinition has led to differences
with Western feminists and the way they locate
women and discuss patriarchy — it's essential to
include imperialism and racism. There's also been
resistance to seeing indigenous culture or
indigenous men '"as a group"'. The problem-solving
focus has led to more cooperation with men.
Restoring, to combat 'disproportionately high
rates of imprisonment, suicide and alcoholism',
which is seen in some quarters as 'the
continuation of a war' and white domination, and
associated with things like high rates of black
deaths in custody among aborigines, high rates of
morbidity and mortality. The restoration of
well-being has produced a range of initiatives
like healing circles, victim restorations, new
adoption policies and ways of dealing with
children which have 'co-opted indigenous
practices', holistic approaches 'in terms of the
emotional, spiritual and physical nexus' (155)
healing, restoring individuals and collectives,
sometimes public shaming, but only to provoke an
'individual accountability and collective
problem-solving'. She compares these favourably to
things like the Human Genome Project.
Returning, which overlaps with claiming, and means
returning lands to original owners, and artefacts
and other materials stolen and taken overseas. One
issue is 'all tattooed Maori heads' which
'apparently number in the hundreds' in museums
over the world. There is also a campaign to return
traditional food gathering sites or to repatriate
people, including adopted children.
Democratising. Many contemporary indigenous
organisations were formed after states and
governments got involved and so are 'colonial
constructions' (156). They have often privileged
particular families and elites and males.
Networking [getting really repetitive now]
building relationships on a face-to-face basis
[does not mention electronic stuff. Doesn't
mention how networks are limited by tribes and
other social relations]
Naming as in naming the world, pretty much the
same as writing above. Using original indigenous
names, as in insisting on Maori names, undoing
some of the damage by Christian practices. Maori
names are often long and include ancestors.
Protecting people, community languages and so on.
Requires alliances, staying alive, staying off
booze, protecting sacred sites although some of
become tourist spots [so the usual dilemmas?]
Creating, not just artistic endeavour but using
your imagination, dreaming new visions and so on.
It can be collective, it might be problem focused.
It used to be really good before colonialism. It
still has something to offer the nonindigenous.
Communities still 'know the answers to their own
problems' (159).
Negotiating, that is 'thinking and acting
strategically' [as well as all that spiritual
stuff?], Being patient, going for long-term
survival, there is a lot of 'dignity and
acceptance of a specific reality' even though
there was also a lot of force and little choice.
There should be lots of respect and self respect.
Negotiation has long been part of trading
practices and basic communication. It is
ultimately based on 'faith in the humanity of
indigenous beliefs values and customary practices'
(160).
Discovering, especially Western science and
technology and making it work for indigenous
development. There are still few indigenous
scientists who have remained in indigenous
communities. Many indigenous students have
struggled with Western science which has been seen
as traditionally hostile to indigenous ways of
knowing. In schools especially. There is now
debate about Constructivism, and developments such
as 'ethno-science' and this might 'interest
indigenous peoples' especially if it applies to
environmental management or biodiversity and helps
them engage with what seems to be most relevant.
Sharing [lots of repetition again] which
acknowledges the collective needs, networks, costs
and community. Local newspapers and radio stations
are important, and help compensate for the failure
of educational systems. The results of research
can be shared although community gatherings can be
'a very daunting forum in which to speak about
research… Often the audience need to be involved
emotionally with laughter, deep reflection,
sadness, anger, challenges and debate…
[Requiring]… A very skilled speaker' (161).
This is not a definitive list there are lots of
other collaborative projects with nonindigenous
people and these help to develop a trained
workforce there are also more standard types of
research and methodology, summing critical
ethnography. This collection might give the
message that there are certain issues that matter
and processes and methodologies that can work.
Chapter 9
A case study. Maori people began their own
research initiatives in response to Waitangi,
because the language revitalisation movement Te
Kohanga Reo [TKR] and because of the development
of more critical and reflective approaches in
social science partly based on feminist and
critical theory. [Looks pretty much like a PhD
thesis]
The cultural archive in the West does enable self
critique, although researchers claims to be
objective, value free and scientific 'is taken for
granted by many social scientists' [who did she
have in mind?], Positivists (164). Debates have
raged about methodology and method, concerning the
validity and reliability, aims and the role of
research. In the 1960s critical theory developed,
as did social movements in Civil Rights,
anti-Vietnam, feminism and student unrest. The
same went for indigenous peoples including
protests over the Treaty of Waitangi, land
marches, tent embassies and petitions in the case
of the Maori. This was indigenous activity rather
than Marxism but similar questions were being
asked, about knowledge and power, research and
emancipation. Imperialism, education and
development were being examined together with the
struggles for self-determination.
Feminist and other radical theories took on
positivism in particular, but white feminism was
challenged by WOC and indigenous women, denying
that women shared universal characteristics and
that there was universal oppression. Issues of
voice and visibility were raised at international
conferences. Critical theory was rebuked for
failing to deliver emancipation for particular
oppressed groups, especially in not recognising
patriarchal practices in the Academy. This led to
what Lather has called post positivism [pretty old
stuff here] designed to emancipate and deconstruct
not just understand, but even this leaves out
organic and indigenous approaches to research.
These often derived from Freire, which might still
be seen to be Western.
Other women, including black women have suggested
oppression takes different forms and that there
are interlocking relationships with race, gender
and class which may not be understood by people
without experiencing it — Collins is one of these
arguing for a unique standpoint for black women
[US ones though?]. This intersects with Maori
attitudes and has been used for Maori women.
The Waitangi Tribunal provided a concrete focus
over colonialism and helped develop research
programs to inform claims, often dependent
initially on retired persons or a few skilled
researchers, often without university
qualifications and operating with limited funds.
Research originally required archival material,
land records, oral histories, and later, ownership
of lands and state assets. The Crown was hardly
neutral in these efforts. Maori language and
cultural knowledge was also crucial and this was
enhanced by TKR, building on the notion of the
extended family rather than the tribe. A national
administrative centre was established, and
research was discouraged at first in favour of
autonomous problem-solving, one of which included
information gathering.
Maori resisted social science research because
they were disadvantaged by it and this led them to
challenge it and its presuppositions, and led to
useful connections with the other challenges to
European superiority. Ethnocentrism distorted
Maori social reality and produced 'ideologically
laden data' (170). It left Maori people
disconnected from their oral traditions and lived
reality, especially when research became 'part of
a body of common knowledge that is taken for
granted' [the examples show how European
conceptions even seem to have penetrated origin
myths, which were Christianised and gendered, and
became part of common sense]. This 'most
accessible material was not written by Maori'
(172) [the sources seem to be material written for
schools]. Recently Maori organisations have
carried out their own research.
Earlier voyagers including Cook were impressed by
the sophistication of Maori thought including
their spiritual concepts, and one of her own early
research projects established that knowledge was
specialised, but also essential to collective
well-being. Colonisation was 'a stripping away of
mana (our standing in our own eyes)' and the
'right to determine our destinies' (173), one
aspect of which was defining legitimate knowledge.
A hostile and negative attitude to research among
the Maori has followed. They are now asking
questions such as who defines the research
problem, who finds it worthy and relevant, what
knowledge the community gains, what the researcher
might gain, what the positive outcomes might be in
and the negative ones, how the negative ones
can be eliminated, to whom is the researcher
accountable, and what processes are in place to
support all concerned. Above all, why should
individual researchers have an inherent right to
knowledge and truth and should we just allow them
to claim that they can pursue it rigorously?
Because Maori people have to move into schools or
health systems, researchers have had a point of
entry. They've often been engaged in crisis
research 'supposedly solving Maori problems' (174)
which is often involved in making 'huge
inferential leaps in generalisations' about the
rest of Maori society. Individual informants may
not be at all typical however: informants may be
unwilling to reveal too much, neither admitting
lack of knowledge but also not prepared to assert
influence or dominance, unable or unwilling to
explain Maori knowledge as such.
There have been many ethical abuses of research,
many scandals, such as those involving
experimental treatment of cervical cancer in NZ in
the 1980s, or experiments on a black male prison
population in the USA. Many social science
research projects still show little concern for
the people who participate, and fail to improve
the conditions. Many still appear to be stealing
knowledge. Many have had to distance themselves
from experimental control research models.
Research does have a power dynamic. The
interpretive framework may be both overtly
theoretical and covertly ideological, containing
'assumptions, hidden value judgements, and often
downright misunderstandings' (176). Maori often
insist that researchers inform the research about
themselves, that they respect people, or keep out
of researching Maori issues, and this is required
alternative ways of thinking about projects:
Researchers may
have to avoid dealing with the issues with
Maori; learn Maori language attend meetings,
become more knowledgeable; consult with Maori to
seek support; make space to bring more Maori
researchers and voices into the organisation.
There may be positive and negative consequences.
Other models have been suggested: the mentoring
model 'in which authoritative Maori people guide
and sponsor the research'; the adoption model
where 'researchers are incorporated into the
daily life of Maori people and sustain a life
long relationship; 'a "power-sharing
model"...where researchers "seek the assistance
of the community to meaningfully support the
development of the research enterprise"'; 'the
"empowering outcomes model" which addresses the
sorts of questions Maori people want to know'
(177).
Even here, researchers can still exercise
intellectual arrogance, evangelical or
paternalistic practices, even if they are
following qualitative or ethnographic methods
because the assumptions behind them can still be
problematic. They can also follow bicultural
partnership research involving both indigenous and
nonindigenous researchers, sometimes with a
division of labour, sometimes with more complex
structuring, but here careful negotiation is
required.
All the models assume involvement by indigenous
people, 'in key and often senior roles' (178), but
increasingly indigenous communities have demanded
exclusive involvement, limiting non-Maori to
training and empowering Maori researchers —
Kaupapa Maori [KM] research.
Chapter 10
Western research has had an unfortunate history
for Maori and they have to be convinced of the
value of it. There is a new approach called
Kaupapa Maori [KM], where Maori people,
communities of the research and of the researchers
are engaged in dialogue about research, its
priorities policies and practices.
KM has other applications too [teaching for
example]. You may have to be pro-Maori. It's not
so easy to decide if you can be non-indigenous and
non-Maori — some might say you can if you position
yourself properly. One characteristic is that it
is '"culturally safe"' (184) guided by the
mentorship of elders and Maori researchers,
although it also has to be rigourous research. It
has to be culturally sensitive, and stemming from
a Maori worldview, rejecting ideologies of
cultural superiority. It has to relate to
provisions within the Treaty which allow for Maori
control over education. Nonindigenous people have
an obligation to support it as partners and they
should also be useful allies and colleagues. The
Maori should be empowered control their own
investigations.
KM is based on an alternative conception of the
world, an alternative code, based on the concept
of Whanau [extended family], which will also
affect the organisation of handling research as
well as the conception of knowledge. It must
relate to being Maori, connecting to philosophy
and principles, the importance of Maori language
and culture and the struggle for autonomy.
Most of the discussion also refers to 'critique,
resistance, struggle and emancipation', and is
rooted in anti-positivism which props up existing
power structures and inequalities through concepts
of common sense and facts. Some spokesmen have
linked this to debates by Ellsworth and Giroux
about critical pedagogy and emancipatory goals [in
the context of the failure of critical pedagogy,
apparently]. However, KM is a more local
positioning, a more specific context rather than
the general debates about the emancipatory project
and its idealism, emancipation as a universal
recipe. This implied that Western notions had to
be followed to the letter. Political projects in
real life are characterised by '"dirtiness"' and
sometimes violence, complexity and contradiction,
strategic positioning.
Identity is important, identifying as Maori, but
this does not rule out being systematic, ethical
and scientific. Again the debate has been
developed best in terms of feminist research,
which maintains a focus on gender but has moved
away from the idea that only women can carry it
out — that was essentialist. KM may be heading in
the same direction. If whanau is central, as a way
of organising a research group and a way of
debasing ideas, it also has a 'pragmatic function'
(187) in distributing tasks while keeping Maori
values central, and it is here that nonindigenous
people can be involved.
The revitalisation of Maori language has
revitalised forms of knowledge as well. However
the modifying concept kaupapa suggests a way of
framing and structuring Maori knowledge,
reflecting on it and also critically engaging with
it and its different constructions, leading, for
example to a new questioning by Maori women of the
accounts of Maori society provided by men,
although still keeping a distance from white
feminism. There are implications for the funding
of research, which in New Zealand is still largely
directed through the state via separate
foundations, ministries and departments which tend
to emphasise government objectives. Recently a
shift towards neoliberalism has had profound
implications, not least of which is a
're-inscription of positivist approaches' (189).
A reconciliation between positivism and KM seems
impossible, which has led to wider debates through
the Treaty to win space from both the government
and from the 'community of positivistic
scientists' (189) and the common sense of the rest
of society. KM is marginalised. It does have some
obvious applications such as the development of
Maori health research. Conventional approaches
have failed, as they have in educational research,
and there is a need for more culturally sensitive
approaches, some of it within a KM framework. The
focus is on achieving the task, with the choice of
methods secondary, although positivist research is
better at attracting funding.
Overall, KM research may not have its own
distinctive paradigms, and it may be unwise to
assert one, engaging comparisons with Western
science. At the moment it seems content to offer a
field of study defining what needs to be studied
and suggesting questions and possible values and
knowledge which might be valuable. It's eclectic.
It engages in struggle. It is selective in its
focus, not interested at the moment 'in nuclear
physics but we are becoming interested in genetic
science' (191). [see the comments
on decolonising the curriculum in NZ]
KM thinks that research should make a positive
difference for the research, unlike the research
of the past. It must address issues like respect
and sharing, networking and whanau, shared control
maximum participation [I bet this is really
difficult in practice]. Some tribes have rigourous
processes and variable relations with outside
researchers. The involvement of young Maori
researchers has helped. There are support systems
in some cases and variable training.
She has raised a list of priorities at a
conference — determining research needs and
priorities, training researchers, discussing
ethics, developing culturally sympathetic methods,
reviewing the literature, educating the wider
research community, producing reflection and
evaluation of Maori research. This list was
apparently taken back for further debate and led
to further discussion on strategic plans for Maori
health research. KM has at least provided a space
for dialogue in several other disciplines. It has
also helped Maori researchers investigate the
'fear and antagonism by indigenous peoples
generally, and by Maori in particular' (193) and
by further understanding how research can help,
have questions might be framed differently
priorities ranked differently how people might
participate differently.
Conclusion
Maori concerns were summarised in a paper for the
National Research Advisory Council a top policy
body. In the same year she did her first
postgraduate research on Maori women, known to her
personally. She had found little help in the
standard methodology books, very little relevant
discussion of cross-cultural issues, assumptions
that the researcher belonged to the dominant
group, little discussion of problems for women
researchers, romantic accounts such as those in
National Geographic. The idea was that you needed
special skills to be culturally sensitive and gain
entrance. There were few critics of methodological
approaches and those that were were primarily
about African-American scholars. Other research by
Maori seemed problematic because they were written
as if they were outsiders and they were all men.
She soon discovered an anti-research and cynical
discourse among Maori. People were interested in
talking about their lives and finding out what
people who were just like them thought. She was
entrusted with information including highly
personal material. She was already acquainted with
the need to be careful, respectful and discreet.
Later, as an admin coordinator, she was readily
accepted, but did not get involved in politics.
She was able to explain the intricacies of both
sides, and noted that the community used
completely different frameworks from the officials
and this caused official exasperation. Communities
on the other hand were able to 'deconstruct
official talk with ease' (198) and were far more
likely to be positive and optimistic and believe
in themselves. They wanted positive answers rather
than endless concerns, answers to their questions.
She began to think about the role of research for
Maori. She began increasingly to define herself as
Maori. She realised that 'the common sense
practices' which she had encountered 'needed to be
talked about and privileged as processes that were
important' (198). Other indigenous people she has
met came to the same conclusions. They were
alienated by tertiary education, not stimulated,
many chose to remain or go back, to be proud of
their identity and have taken part in small
initiatives to provide indigenous people with
space. Research is not just something which
anthropologist do — 'our questions are important.
Research helps us answer them' (199).
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