Insurgent Research

Access Provided by University of Victoria at 05/26/11 6:29AM GMT Insurgent Research A d a m J. P. G a u d r y S A W I C A Z O SPRING 2011 esearch is often an extractive process. In the contemporary academic environment, research and publishing expectations drive researchers to take deeply meaningful information, often from a marginal or “underresearched” community, and present it to a third party. This third party is usually a highly educated academic audience or government bureaucracy, both of whom have little staked on the preservation of the integrity of that extracted knowledge. Rarely are the people who participate in the research process as participants or “informants” considered to be the primary audience when it comes time to disseminate the research. This type of research functions on an extraction methodology. Lost in this extractive process are the context, values, and on-theground struggles of the people and communities that provide information and insight to the researcher. Furthermore, few researchers are willing to acknowledge a major responsibility to the communities that they study. Instead, their responsibilities are oriented toward the academy: either toward academic colleagues or toward some abstract notion of “truth” (while failing to account for many other versions of this truth). It is fair to say that the dominant trend of research in the academy tends toward extraction. Although similar critiques arise concerning almost any marginalized community, research is especially alienating when the “objects of research” are Indigenous peoples.1 Research on Indigenous peoples tends to reproduce tired colonial narratives that justify occupation and R E V I E W R 113 oppression. It also effectively renders the validity of Indigenous cultural knowledge meaningless through its appropriation and translation by knowledge-extraction industries such as anthropology, sociology, policy studies, and law. The extraction approach to research involves removing knowledge from its immediate context and presenting it to a highly specialized group of outsiders. In most academic settings, applying this model constitutes “good academic research” and is usually rewarded with degrees, jobs, tenure, and research funding. Consequently, community-based research projects that do not direct their final products at either academics or bureaucrats are devalued. As a Métis scholar, I feel I have a particular responsibility to fight intellectual colonialism, as all critical Indigenous academics do. We have a specific responsibility to our communities, friends, and families that often outweighs academic considerations. This article, then, proposes a refocusing of research methodology in a way that recenters the community in the research process; it advances an approach that I call insurgent research. Insurgent research is rooted within existing Indigenous methodologies in three ways: (1) by explicitly employing Indigenous worldviews; (2) by orienting knowledge creation toward Indigenous peoples and their communities; and (3) by seeing our responsibility as researchers as directed almost exclusively toward the community and participants. I will expand on these three points as key elements of the insurgent research paradigm. There is also a fourth element that differentiates insurgent research from most other academic methodologies: promoting community-based action that targets the demise of colonial interference within our lives and communities. In addressing these four elements of research, this article will apply the principles of insurgent research to some future projects that could emerge within an insurgent research paradigm. SPRING 2011 114 W I C A Z O S A R E V I E W EXTRACTION RESEARCH Despite the increasingly vocal presence of Indigenous researchers and their allies in the academy and other research organizations, the bulk of research on Indigenous peoples works from within an extraction model. In this model, outsider academics conduct research on Indigenous peoples for the purpose of learning about certain aspects of their lives that they find personally interesting or intriguing or that may serve colonial processes (such as Western models of “healing” that reinforce Indigenous victimhood). In the extraction model, communities rarely participate in the development of research questions or are entitled to determine the validity of research “findings.” However, increasing Indigenous awareness of these types of researchers has caused some communities to institutionalize research protocols to prevent further research exploitation in these communities. For example, the R E V I E W S A W I C A Z O SPRING 2011 Government of Nunavut, an Inuit territory in the Eastern Arctic, requires researchers to apply for a research license in order to conduct research in the territory.2 Extraction research, in terms of output, is primarily oriented toward non-Indigenous outsiders. Because it targets outsiders, researchers almost always translate their research findings into the dominant culture’s worldview. Policy research projects produced for (and often commissioned by) government agencies are especially guilty of these offences. As an example, the non-Native Canadian-based Institute on Governance issued a seventy-three-page report titled “Exploring Options for Métis Governance in the 21st Century” that imagines Métis governance in a distinctly liberalized form. Suggestions include “better integrating the growing range of Métis program delivery vehicles” and “building checks and balances among Métis governments.”3 These arguments remove traditional Métis governance principles (autonomy, consensus, and self-sufficiency) from the Métis worldview and instead locate Métis politics within the “good government” principles of Canadian liberalism. Omnipresent in these research projects is the assumption that researchers need to justify and explain Indigenous knowledges according to a universalized Western worldview. These studies only deem Indigenous histories, governance systems, and other forms of knowledge as legitimate when validated within the West’s hegemonic knowledge system. Much academic research, then, serves as a method of translation: seeking to legitimize Indigenous worldviews through demonstrating parallels with scientific, liberal, or capitalist practice. Although often used to defend Indigenous interests, this translation also reinforces the colonialist assertion that Indigenous knowledges are not valuable in their own right or defensible on their own terms. Accordingly, Linda Tuhiwai Smith writes, “ ‘Authorities’ and outside experts are called in to verify, comment upon, and give judgments about the validity of indigenous claims to cultural beliefs, values, ways of knowing and historical accounts. Such issues are often debated vigorously by the ‘public’ (a category which usually means the dominant group), leading to an endless parading of ‘nineteenth century’ views of race and racial difference.”4 Because extraction research is intended primarily for consumption by outsiders within their own value systems, the ideal outcome for the extractive researcher is the kind of loaded “public debate” Smith describes. This means that extraction research, rather than affirming and validating Indigenous worldviews, instead judges them by the standards of the dominant culture (often confirming that they are dated and obsolete). The result (or, as Smith would argue, the purpose) of such debates is the silencing, fragmentation, and marginalization of “those who speak for, or in support of, indigenous issues.”5 Since the highest goal of extraction research is public debate 115 R E V I E W S A W I C A Z O SPRING 2011 116 by non-Indigenous people, it is becoming increasingly obvious that through this approach we inevitably lose control of our Indigenous knowledges. It is a rigged system. What is just, right, responsible, and valuable are all defined by non-Indigenous value systems and standards. As Indigenous researchers in the academy, we remain bound to these foreign values by a plethora of structures designed to constrain our work and thought while silencing dissenting voices. Ethics reviews are explicitly clear that we are, above all, responsible to the university for our research outcomes. Similarly, the finished results in many cases belong to the university as intellectual property, rather than belonging to the people from whom the knowledge originated. Contemporary ethics review guidelines are motivated primarily by a fear of lawsuits directed at the university. However, underlying these legal concerns is a reminder that the academy is footing the bill and has certain expectations, expectations that determine our success and ability to conduct future research. Likewise, we need to publish if we want to work, earn money, and continue our research careers. The most sought-after publications are articles in peer-reviewed journals, whose gatekeepers pressure us to write in jargon-laden prose, so that if a regular person were to pick up the journal, the density and self-referential nature of the articles would make them incomprehensible to anyone without a graduate-level degree. Without the peerreviewed publication credentials, however, few universities would be willing to hire us. With these structures in mind, we must accept that to some degree we are all engaging in the academic parasitism of extraction research, taking someone else’s knowledge for the benefit of our careers and reputations. However, what makes an insurgent researcher different from an extractive researcher is that we do not let this kind of research define us.6 We play the game but do not get lost in it. Insurgent researchers operate from within a completely different set of values, values determined primarily by our relationship to Indigenous communities, as members or allies, and by an ethical motivation in search of more egalitarian and autonomous social, political, and economic relations. Partly in response to extractive research methodologies and partly because of a reawakening of Indigenous political movements, a growing number of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers are challenging the academy’s taken-for-granted assumptions about how to conduct research. Many are deconstructing methodological approaches that reinforce existing power relations, thus transforming the ethics and responsibilities upon which research projects are evaluated. This new movement to Indigenize research has been busy articulating anticolonial worldviews that are grounded in Indigenous knowledges and producing overtly political research, challenging colonial domination and occupation of Indigenous homelands. In many ways, this form of research is quickly becoming the ideological grounding for grassroots action in Indigenous communities. INSURGENT RESEARCH Insurgent researchers function on an entirely different set of principles than their extraction-minded counterparts. The articulation of an Indigenous research paradigm has been part of a broader movement of Indigenous resurgence and decolonization.7 There are a number of reasons for an Indigenous insurgency within the academy. An important factor is that we are, as Leanne Simpson says, “the first generation of Indigenous scholars who have access to established Indigenous scholars to nurture, inspire, inform and support us.”8 The resurgence movement Simpson identifies within the academy corresponds with a more broad-based, grassroots movement in Indigenous communities that Waziyatawin describes as S A W I C A Z O 1. Research is grounded in, respects, and ultimately seeks to validate Indigenous worldviews. 2. Research output is geared toward use by Indigenous peoples and in Indigenous communities. 3. Research processes and final products are ultimately responsible to Indigenous communities, meaning that Indigenous communities are the final judges of the validity and effectiveness of insurgent research. 4. Research is action oriented and works as a motivating factor for practical and direct action among Indigenous peoples and in Indigenous communities. SPRING 2011 The grounding for insurgent research, then, is situated within a larger Indigenous movement that challenges colonialism and its ideological underpinnings and is working from within Indigenous frameworks to reimagine the world by putting Indigenous ideals into practice. Insurgent research is firmly grounded in an Indigenous resurgence ideology, and as a methodological paradigm it is rooted in this movement. It embodies four key principles: R E V I E W challenging the academy from the outside. Those who have lived their lives from a position of struggle, who have led resistance efforts in their own communities, understand clearly how our traditional knowledge and language have been subjugated by the dominant society. As Indigenous communities become more forceful about exerting their own decolonizing agenda, new ways will be devised to regain control over our history and language.9 117 These principles ground Indigenous research in Indigenous communities in a substantive way. Using this model, researchers are bound to the community by a sense of responsibility. Webs of close personal relationships and even kinship make them directly accountable to the community. This ultimate accountability to community makes researchers responsible for their actions during the research process and for the final products of their research projects. Insurgent research therefore embodies an ethical commitment to Indigenous communities, going well beyond university-based standards, that is a useful guidepost for Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers alike. Because these four principles differentiate insurgent research from extractive research models, the next sections will examine individually each of the four concepts in insurgent research practice. RESEARCH IS GROUNDED IN, R E S PECTS , A N D VA LI DAT E S SPRING 2011 118 W I C A Z O S A R E V I E W INDIGENOUS WORLDVIEWS Because it is oriented toward an outside “public debate,” extraction research does little to support the validity of Indigenous worldviews. In fact, by constantly holding Indigenous knowledges up to the scrutiny of modern liberal thought, extraction research has done much to under mine the positive perception of Indigenous knowledges both inside and outside of Indigenous communities. Insurgent research challenges these perceptions and evaluates Indigenous knowledge according to Indigenous standards, thus validating knowledge from within the context of its own worldview. In Kaupapa Maori research, for example, Graham Hingangaroa Smith asserts that Indigenous research must “take for granted the validity and legitimacy” of Indigenous knowledges as a starting point.10 This, of course, means that Indigenous knowledges are not subjected to foreign standards of scrutiny, nor do they require justification from within a Western worldview, nor for that matter any other knowledge system. Insurgent researchers start with the assumption that Indigenous knowledge is a self-validating system. They view the people’s oral tradition, creation stories, cultural values, and cosmology as coherent, matter-of-fact truths. Insurgent research does not need to seek approval from Western mainstays such as scientific rationalism or liberal morality; instead, it allows the stories of our peoples and nations to “stand on their own.”11 A significant amount of extraction scholarship “done on” Indigenous peoples is responsible for the construction of misleading, and downright racist, narratives about Indigenous peoples. Based in a Western worldview, extraction research often involves extensive discussions about Indigenous nations with little or no regard for how Indigenous peoples understand themselves. By ignoring Indigenous R E V I E W S A W I C A Z O SPRING 2011 worldviews and self-understandings, extractive researchers assume control over Indigenous histories and knowledges. Seemingly without fail, the Western interpretation of Indigenous histories and worldviews results in the marginalization and deauthoritization of Indigenous voices on their culture and history. The result is that we lose control of our own knowledge bases. Insurgent researchers respond to this threat by causing a fundamental shift in the debate. As Indigenous voices in research become more numerous, they increasingly force extraction-minded scholars to confront these histories on Indigenous terms. By shifting the debate to one grounded in Indigenous knowledge, it becomes increasingly difficult for colonialist researchers and academics to marginalize and dismiss Indigenous ways of thinking.12 Jennifer Nez Denetdale, in her study of Diné history, exemplifies this approach. Responding to the common claims of American historians that Diné are “cultural borrowers” and “late arrivals in the Southwest,”13 Denetdale presents a thorough analysis of Diné history according to Diné people. She reasserts the authority of Diné people to tell their own histories without the need to situate them within the Western disciplines of history and anthropology. The disingenuous claims made and remade by scores of white researchers have led many Americans to “see Navajo claims to land as less valid than those of other tribal people in the region and somehow ‘less traditional’ than other Natives.”14 Denetdale’s purpose, rather than confronting these disingenuous historical narratives head on, is to shift the focus of the debate. Refusing to confront white historians on their terms and thus validate their claims, Denetdale takes the offensive and forces these historians to engage Diné history on Diné terms, from within the Diné worldview. She begins her argument with the observation that, despite persistent myths about being cultural borrowers and late arrivals, the Diné “perceive their own past differently.”15 Their history through the oral tradition tells of how the Diné came into this world and how their travels through many other worlds before their arrival in this world contributed to their cultural development as a people. By focusing on what matters—the Diné history of the Diné— she is placing the Diné worldview at the center of any discussion of Diné history. Diné knowledge becomes much more valuable than non-Diné knowledges in this context. Rather than dignify the cultural borrower and late arrival myths with a response, Denetdale instead chooses to discuss how Diné people understand themselves, and what their knowledge system has to teach them. While many historians continue to write off oral histories, Denetdale instead points to their continuing relevance both for recounting the past and its lessons and for teaching people to live as Diné. The purpose of her writing is to restore the centrality of the Diné worldview in discussions about the Diné people. She writes, 119 for the Diné, evoking creation narratives, the events and the beings who act in them, provides lessons for life, allowing listeners to reflect on how hózhó [balance] can be regained. Events that took place during the creation and the journey to the present world still take place. We also learn from the stories what can happen when we do not follow directives set down during primordial times.16 Insurgent researchers, like Denetdale in this quotation, use the knowledge of their peoples as the starting point. Moving away from the need to engage in tired debates with colonial historians, we can instead demonstrate the continuing relevance and validity of their cultural knowledge to our own peoples, refocusing the debate entirely. Indigenous knowledge is valid on its own terms and is capable of standing on its own. Insurgent researchers have the important task of reminding all of us of this truth. RESEARCH IS INTENDED FOR SPRING 2011 120 W I C A Z O S A R E V I E W INDIGENOUS PEOPLES According to Linda Smith, the precursor of anthropological research is the traveler’s tale, which “represented the Other to a general audience back in Europe.” The writers of these stories were almost exclusively white men whose “interactions with indigenous ‘societies’ or ‘peoples’ were constructed around their own cultural views of gender and sexuality.”17 Like travelers’ tales, written by men who sought to extract Indigenous knowledges for fame and fortune back home, extractive research continues to operate with these same thinly veiled goals. Most research output is not directed at Indigenous peoples or communities. Instead, the audience remains highly educated non-Indigenous people, government agencies, and a growing number of political and service organizations funded by government agencies. Recognizing the dearth of available research that is both directed at and accessible to Indigenous peoples and their communities, a growing trend for insurgent researchers is doing Indigenous research by and for Indigenous peoples. Insurgent research must be an important part of grassroots movements aimed at reclaiming Indigenous knowledges and asserting them as valid. It must be increasingly directed at the Indigenous reader and written by an Indigenous author in a language that people can understand. Its strategic use of “we” and “us” goes beyond simple rhetoric and comes to symbolize commonality, solidarity, and a respect for our common situations. It is a way of speaking to people directly. I have highlighted examples in the following passages. Waziyatawin notes, “Our oral tradition helps us to reclaim our past for ourselves and stands as a body of knowledge to be differentiated from that body of knowledge written and understood by the dominant society.”18 Similarly, Shawn Wilson writes, “We can get past having to justify ourselves as Indigenous to the dominant society and academia. We can develop our own criteria for judging usefulness, validity or worth of Indigenous research or writing. We can decide for ourselves what research we want and how that research will be conducted, analyzed and presented. . . . It is for you and other Indigenous people that these ideas are expressed.”19 Finally, Taiaiake Alfred writes, S A W I C A Z O SPRING 2011 Although it would be easy to discount the choice of pronouns as a simple rhetorical flourish, in truth, it signifies much more. The use of “we” lets readers know that the researcher is talking to them as Indigenous people and that there is a common understanding of our colonial predicament by both researcher and readers. The act of research, and the reading of that research, creates a kind of intellectual bond: we recognize our commonality, and if inspired, both reader and writer are committing to doing something about it. Each of these authors also notes (both explicitly and implicitly) the existence of a “them.” This is not to create some simplistic usversus-them dichotomy but to serve as a counterpoint to the bogus colonialist claims that “we are all the same” and that being Indigenous is somehow less meaningful than being Canadian or American. “Them” also recognizes a common adversary, someone who has exploited and marginalized us, and likewise this recognition creates a bond, between reader and writer, to confront this adversary for our mutual emancipation. Most important, insurgent research directs itself at the grassroots and the people there. It shows respect not often found in other types of research, allowing people to read research writings and theory and to make their own decisions on the relevance, validity, and applicability to their lives. Rather than assisting in the production of further bureaucracy and social control by addressing itself to government employees, insurgent research speaks directly to the people and compels us to produce change, however we desire it, in our own lives. Leslie Brown and Susan Strega remind us that forms of research “that empower research make a contribution to individually and collectively changing the conditions of our lives and the lives of those on R E V I E W The journey is a living commitment to meaningful change in our lives and to transforming society by recreating our existences, regenerating our cultures, and surging against the forces that keep us bound to the colonial past. It is the path of struggle laid out by those who have come before us; now it is our turn, we who choose to turn away from the legacies of colonialism to take on the challenge of creating a new reality for ourselves and our people.20 121 the margins.” This process is powerful because “it challenges existing relations of dominance and subordination and offers a basis for political action.” 21 The focus of insurgent research is just that, an insurgency— a collective challenge to the oppressive status quo. Insurgent research is a process carried out at the grassroots and is in opposition to the bureaucratic pathways to so-called empowerment that the state offers to us. Insurgent research is about people, not organizations, and therefore it directs its efforts at reaching the individuals who will be most likely to produce real and lasting change. RESEARCH IS RESPONSIBLE TO INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES Waziyatawin presents us with a provocative standard for responsibility in research: SPRING 2011 122 W I C A Z O S A R E V I E W Imagine a scholar sitting before a room full of elders from the culture he has been studying after his first book on them has just been published. Imagine him having to be accountable for his methodology, his translations, his editing, his terminology, his analysis, his interpretation, and his use of their stories. While a discussion like this between a scholar and his subjects of study may never occur in this formal forum, the dialogue will occur somewhere.22 Responsibility in research is an ill-defined concept. In traditional forms of extraction research, the focus is primarily on the ethical responsibility to give an honest depiction of one’s research subjects. Honesty, in this case, is judged by other university-affiliated intellectuals through peer-review processes, conferences, and the dissertation or thesis defense, not by the people who made the research possible. Rarely does the situation Waziyatawin describes come about in practice, and rarely do extractive researchers return to their community of study to defend their research “findings” to those who live there. Part of this reluctance to engage with research participants in a meaningful way is the arrogance of the expert status assumed by academic researchers. The other half of this reluctance to engage is arrogance’s ever-present partner, fear. Specifically, researchers fear that the community actually knows more than the “expert” does. In many cases, academic researchers are more open about their research and conclusions with their colleagues than with their research participants and communities of study. In fact, it is highly unlikely that most extraction-minded researchers would make the same claims in the community that they make in the academic settings they seem most comfortable in. Within an extraction-research mindset, it is impossible to imagine that the Indigenous community R E V I E W S A W I C A Z O SPRING 2011 (and not the research “community”) is where the most important responsibilities lie. This combination of arrogance and fear means that researchers often fail to engage the communities they research in with the same respect and openness that they engage other academics. Insurgent researchers reject the idea that their primary responsibility is to the academy and invest themselves instead in their responsibilities to the community. By its very definition, insurgent research bases itself in Indigenous communities and Indigenous knowledges, both of which are, at their cores, relational. Shawn Wilson notes that in an Indigenous worldview “reality is relationships.” 23 He goes on to say that research responsibility is grounded in a type of “relational accountability.” Relational accountability means that research is both “based in a community context” and “demonstrate[s] respect, reciprocity, and responsibility . . . as it is put into action.”24 Because a central component of insurgent research is a community-focused approach, presumably many researchers are also community members or their allies, in it for the long haul. For Indigenous researchers, our positions within our communities mean that we have a responsibility to listen to the multitude of voices that speak there. While it is doubtful that any kind of consensus will emerge in terms of political, social, and economic relations with the settler society in the near future, our community-based relationships nonetheless require us to pursue more harmonious and empowering relations among our people. Insurgent researchers consider it our responsibility to work toward creating more harmonious relationships in our communities and to fight further dysfunction, strife, and social suffering. This does not prevent us from being critical or challenging the unjust system that dominates us. Far from it. Since there is an obvious lack of harmony and cultural grounding in most of our lives and communities, insurgent research has a special role to play in bringing forward and reinforcing Indigenous truths. Wilson is adamant that research should focus on putting “point[s] of view forward in a positive way” rather than leveling a predominantly negative critique at other people’s ideas.25 Although Wilson is skeptical about criticizing anyone, there is often a real necessity for leveling a powerful and disabling critique at the colonialist system. We need to strip away the democratic and egalitarian pretensions of the imperialistic state and demonstrate that it holds few answers for us other than assimilation, exploitation, and domination. Powerfully negative critiques can be eye-opening. However, Wilson’s point is that negativity alone is not effective at unifying people, nor is it effective at producing real action that may lead us to remedy the situation. There is a fine line between critical scholarship—in which strong criticism can generate space for creative ideas to emerge—and overly negative criticism that is intended to dismiss, destroy, and dominate oppositional voices. Focusing exclusively on negative criticism can, as Wilson says, 123 “give more power to disharmony.” 26 By instead focusing primarily on what our cultures have to offer in terms of creative and anticolonial alternatives, we can work toward something new and positive. Insurgent research, then, often possesses a powerful capacity to critique and undermine colonialism by deconstructing its misleading and disingenuous claims, but it is nonetheless a predominantly creative undertaking. Qwul’sih’yah’maht’s description of a witnessing methodology exemplifies this creative approach. Looking to her traditional Lyackson culture to create harmony, Qwul’sih’yah’maht develops a radical and anticolonial response to the violence and intergenerational trauma caused among her people by residential schooling. She bases her research methodology on the traditional responsibilities of witnessing, sacred ceremonies in which “representatives from different communities are called upon to witness an event.” These witnesses are given “a huge responsibility, because you are asked to pay attention to all the details” of the ceremony. The role of the witness, like the role of the researcher, is important because “if there were concerns over what took place . . . we could ask any of the witnesses. They will know this information because it was their responsibility to pay attention to all the details.” 27 Sharing knowledge in this way allows Indigenous communities to build important bonds with one another and, in the battle against colonialism, to develop ways of exchanging experiences and knowledge of resistance. Qwul’sih’yah’maht writes, SPRING 2011 124 W I C A Z O S A R E V I E W Certainly stories of residential school tell the other story— the story of colonization and genocide—but so do many other stories that First Nations have to tell: The stories of land dispossession; the stories of the sixties’ scoop. These are all resistance stories because they validate the lives and times of our people. They tell stories that have been accurately documented in a new way.28 This notion of “witnessing” and sharing knowledge between Indigenous communities is an essential part of insurgent research, as researchers act as witnesses to everything from historical traumas to traditional medicine knowledges to contemporary anticolonial Indigenous resurgence movements. Coast Salish witnesses bear responsibilities similar to insurgent research practices: knowledge originates in the community, and the community calls upon the researchers to share the information with the community, with Indigenous peoples, and when needed with the dominant culture. While research involves sharing knowledge, in witnessing, as in insurgent research, the community and its members hold all knowledge, not the researcher. Relational responsibility means that insurgent researchers must mind their relations; they must use the knowledge in the respectful way that it was told to or witnessed by the participants. Researchers already embedded in Indigenous communities and conducting research within their own communities have no other option, as their families and their fellow community members will inevitably hold them accountable for their actions as researchers. More peripheral individuals, people like me, must take special care to build these relationships and be willing to invest ourselves in these relationships, to adopt a responsible position within the community. Through the indoctrination of schools and the threat of violence from police, our voices are silenced. This society, this way of life, has been imposed upon us. Behind every advertisement—a baton; behind every corporate office—a S A W I C A Z O SPRING 2011 Whereas the output of extraction research is usually seen as an end in itself, the goal of insurgent research is creating space for the selfdetermination and empowerment of Indigenous peoples. Whether the intent is to inspire direct action, to propose an alternative means of supporting people suffering the harmful effects of colonialism, or to reimagine traditional forms of governance in Indigenous communities, insurgent researchers intend their research to yield practical results inside and outside of the academy. It is this fourth principle— action— that puts the insurgency in insurgent research. Being oriented toward action is what ultimately defines insurgent research; it is a component often overlooked in other research approaches. Research reports, even if inflammatory, damning, or enlightening, do not in and of themselves create action, and researchers often assume that knowledge creation and community-based action are the same thing. Insurgent research assists in renewing the connection between Indigenous knowledge creation and social action in the community. According to Margaret Kovach, research and “the power politics of knowledge” are intricately connected to “the process of taking control of education, health, and social welfare.” 29 The primary goal of insurgent research is that the project will produce a better and freer life for community members, study participants, and Indigenous peoples in general. There are numerous ways of accomplishing this goal. Some insurgent researchers use propagandistic writing styles to inspire and motivate young people to decolonize their minds. Magazines, websites, zines, and pamphlets have become successful ways to reach young Indigenous people and encourage them to empower themselves by developing critical consciousness. For example, in the Dakota radical newspaper Án˛paó Dúta, there are numerous articles encouraging direct action. One such article provides information on the skills necessary to carry out an anticolonial graffiti campaign. It states, R E V I E W RESEARCH IS ACTION ORIENTED 125 SPRING 2011 126 W I C A Z O S A R E V I E W canister of tear gas. . . . We are only given two official options: speak their language or shut up. In colonialism our voices are silenced. . . . Every revolutionary movement has its own message and its own propaganda to speak. Graffiti is only one way to express our struggle.30 Insurgent research, as an action-based methodology, is increasingly embracing alternative forms of dissemination. Researchers recognize that few Indigenous people read academic journals and that young people are craving information— on how to live an Indigenous life within an Indigenous worldview, how to practice an anticolonial existence, and how to engage in direct-action tactics—all in an accessible format. In fact, what I am calling insurgent research has long existed outside of the academy. Within academic institutions, insurgent researchers can challenge the terms of acceptable publications, with the goal of creating space within the academy for communicating different types of knowledge and different experiences. This is not to exclude academic publications from insurgent research, as many researchers still use classic styles to articulate radical approaches to decolonization and Indigenous empowerment. Books, especially by smaller publication houses that target Indigenous grassroots community leaders, are appearing in greater numbers. An excellent example is Jim Silver’s In Their Own Voices, an action-oriented research project undertaken with the Indigenous community in the Spence area of downtown Winnipeg, Manitoba. It utilizes what Silver calls the “Participatory Community Building Model.”31 The writing of the book seems to be a parallel concern, alongside the creation of an Indigenous community network. One of the research project’s outcomes is the creation of an Indigenous-focused community group to combat the hostile and gentrifying force of a local homeowners’ group, the Spence Neighbourhood Association (SNA). Central to the research project and community organization is “community development.” Community development here loses its conservative and economic orientation; it instead becomes “the process by which a people in a neighbourhood participate collectively in solving problems that they themselves have identified . . . the collective undertaking of whatever tasks and . . . pursuit of whatever goals the community itself may identify.”32 The research process was designed to get community members in a room talking about the issues affecting their lives, particularly the SNA’s attempts to gentrify and displace their community. The researchers note, “in Spence neighbourhood, our interviews suggest strongly an absence of connections and networks in the Aboriginal community. In fact, our evidence suggests that the Aboriginal community [in Spence] is disconnected, disjointed, and fragmented.”33 Rather than sticking to a simple description (and one that could probably be written before research began), the focus of the research project is building community connections in order to facilitate community organizing and, more important, community building. Exploratory interviews by the research team “provide[d] strong evidence that there was a great deal of interest” in building the community around “Aboriginal cultural activities.”34 When the project held focus groups, it loosely structured the topics for discussion around how those involved could work together after the focus group and research project were completed. They asked questions like these: S A W I C A Z O SPRING 2011 As a result of building relationships, discussing issues facing their individual lives, diagnosing the problem as lack of community connections, and realizing the commonality of their circumstances, community members and research participants decided to take action. The result was “a new and energetic Aboriginal neighbourhood residents’ group, called I- CAN (Inner- City Aboriginal Neighbours),” which arose “in large part out of the participatory research approach.” I-CAN is “pulling previously socially isolated Aboriginal people in Spence neighbourhood together around Aboriginal cultural pursuits and other initiatives of Aboriginal peoples’ choosing.”36 For the In Their Own Voices research project, a major focus was on developing community relations, and it included a significant action component. While there are already many Aboriginal organizations in Winnipeg, building relationships between Indigenous people in a marginalized neighborhood is a big step in Indigenous mobilization and creates a new space for Indigenous empowerment. Building lasting relationships through research is a central component of insurgent research methodologies. By focusing on community building and political radicalization, insurgent researchers can be indispensable partners in terms of developing the potential for grassroots community action. Insurgent researchers can act simultaneously as researchers, propagandists, community organizers, socially conscious vandals, and political leaders. Especially for Indigenous insurgent researchers, there is great promise in merging our family and community relationships with our research projects. Insurgent research is fundamentally action oriented. Its target is R E V I E W What kind of obstacles to community involvement did you personally face? How did you overcome these obstacles and become actively involved in the community in Winnipeg’s inner city? What do you consider appropriate forms of community development? And what would you like to see happening in the future in Winnipeg’s urban Aboriginal community, or what is your conception of an appropriate form of community development for the urban Aboriginal community?35 127 not to create yet another academic journal article for the researcher’s curriculum vitae but to reach Indigenous people, especially youth. Although many other academic research projects are starting to respect Indigenous worldviews and include notions of community responsibility and community orientation, getting involved in community struggles is something many researchers seem loath to do. Maybe some of this is the residue of research objectivity, being overworked, or not wanting to get their hands dirty. Yet proper insurgent research involves some degree of personal investment within the community, even if that investment requires great personal sacrifice and self-marginalization. Responsible research must embody an action component. Talk alone changes little but rather sinks back into a liberal discourse in which existing organizations are trusted to produce social change, which ironically reinforces systems of authority that exist to prevent any real change from occurring. DOING INSURGENT RESEARCH SPRING 2011 128 W I C A Z O S A R E V I E W IN THE ACADEMY Insurgent research, when put into practice, entails a series of responsibilities. As insurgent researchers disseminate their research, they utilize methods rooted in the knowledges of the peoples. Engaging with both the academy and Indigenous peoples forces us to engage with two distinct ways of knowing the world. While there are certain constraints placed on us by the academy, such as ethics review processes and peer review for publications, we cannot be distracted from our ultimate responsibility to our communities. Ultimately, the university, as a colonialist institution, will not be the salvation of Indigenous peoples, but it is a tool that can be used in the struggle— and, as the guardian of intellectual legitimacy, it can be a valuable tool indeed. Participation in academic institutions can produce interesting possibilities and allow researchers to access research monies that make new and dynamic projects possible. Nonetheless, the academy and its various gatekeepers also work to constrain what we are capable of, and research boards limit what research is deemed worthy of funding. In these cases, being grounded in community relations is infinitely more valuable than research funding, as this allows us to remain focused on what matters in the real world and what remains important in our communities, whether or not it is going to get funded. There is also a risk to writing off the academic world entirely, as it is a powerful tool for articulating Indigenous worldviews and struggles. Insurgent research projects can push the boundaries of what is acceptable in the academy and challenge what counts as legitimate knowledge and research dissemination. It is this understanding of responsibility that makes research important to real people and relevant to the lives of Indigenous peoples. Research that has a real-world impact, what I have called insurgent research, offers a powerful alternative to colonizing discourses present in other projects of knowledge collection and extraction by many less-responsible people. Regaining control of the research agenda and processes is a major step in the reclamation of Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous control over those knowledges. Insurgent research is grounded in an Indigenous worldview, is responsible to the community where research is undertaken, is intended to be read by Indigenous community members, and, most important, is used to further the possibility of community action. In comparison with extraction research, the entire insurgent research process revolves around the community, with most of the actual research process— from framing the research question, to collecting data, to presenting that data—taking place there. Given the emancipatory potential of this type of research, insurgent researchers can help enliven the struggle for real decolonization and real freedom. Because of increased understanding of researcher responsibilities in the research process and knowledge of how to conduct research from within an Indigenous worldview, new and exciting research projects are possible. Some important insurgent research projects could include the conceptual use of Indigenous languages and a focus on Indigenous “liberatory praxis.” LANGUAGE AND CONCEPTS S A W I C A Z O SPRING 2011 It is no secret that most Indigenous languages in North America are in danger of being lost forever, nor do we kid ourselves that the hegemony of the English language is anything but responsible for this. There is a well-developed body of Indigenous research that demonstrates the centrality of Indigenous languages in understanding an Indigenous worldview. For example, Waziyatawin writes that knowledge of one’s Indigenous language will “deepen understanding” of one’s culture and “enhance the interpretations of Indigenous history.”37 Noenoe Silva likewise argues that the kaona, a type of Hawaiian poetry, is crucial in creating a language of resistance in Hawaii. The preannexation kaona, she writes, was important in “maintaining national solidarity against the colonial maneuvers of the U.S. missionaries, the oligarchy, and the U.S. politicians. Without knowledge of the cultural codes in Hawaiian, foreigners who understood the language could still be counted on to miss out on the kaona.”38 Similarly, Ngũgı̃ wa Thiong’o attests that language is “the collective memory bank of a people”; it is the “carrier of the history and culture” of a people and is “built into the process of communication over time.”39 While all three writers acknowledge that Indigenous languages are important in terms of Indigenous knowledge R E V I E W IN INSURGENT RESEARCH 129 R E V I E W S A W I C A Z O SPRING 2011 130 and scholarship, learning these languages, Waziyatawin writes, “requires a lengthy, if not a lifetime, commitment.”40 Given the scarcity of language resources and a general lack of commitment on the part of many Indigenous academics, few can honestly say that they have functional knowledge of their language or the language of the people they study (or study with), including me. There are also few opportunities to use this language in disseminating the research results, as the language proficiency in most Indigenous communities is exceedingly low, especially among young people. This reality can serve to further justify the avoidance of publishing in Indigenous languages. However, as Ngũgı̃ wa Thiong’o so eloquently describes, Indigenous writers have a responsibility to work within our own language, to support its contemporary development, and to protect it against erosion. He argues that the Indigenous writer who writes only in English accepts that through this medium “he can manage to express his humanity adequately.” By relying exclusively on English as a mode of thought and expression, however, the writer “gives nothing, absolutely nothing back to his language” and instead relies on European-derived means of communicating his own culture. Ngũgı̃ describes Indigenous literary production in terms similar to capitalist production in Africa: “In the area of economics and geography, it is the raw materials of gold, diamonds, coffee, tea, which are taken from Africa and processed in Europe and then resold to Africa. In the area of culture, the raw material of African orature and histories developed by African languages are taken, repackaged through English or French or Portuguese and then resold back to Africa.”41 Ngũgı̃’s point is clear: that we have become reliant on the colonizer’s language to communicate our ideas, even the traditional ones. Furthermore, this process of “repackaging” by the English language fundamentally alters the meaning of many central Indigenous concepts. It transforms relationships and teachings, and in many ways it displaces older meanings and asserts more European concepts. For example, in arguing against the predominance of a European-based rights discourse, Jeff Corntassel argues that the concept of “rights” is inappropriate for articulating Indigenous understandings of community relationships and responsibilities: “A responsibility-based movement enacts powers (versus rights) of sustainable self-determination and emphasizes diplomatic and trade relationships with other indigenous nations. To a large degree, the challenge is to make indigenous communities the central focus and take state recognition/involvement away from our everyday struggles as much as possible.” Rather than using the language of rights, Corntassel opts instead to use the Tsalagi concept of Gadugi, which means “our responsibilities to our natural laws and communities that govern us.”42 Rights, as a body of freedoms given to Indigenous peoples by a foreign and colonizing government, do not translate well into Indigenous languages and Indigenous knowledge systems. It is tell- R E V I E W S A W I C A Z O SPRING 2011 ing that most Indigenous languages do not have a word for rights but instead conceive of these relationships as something different. Yet the hegemonic presence of rights discourse, in our dealings with the state, marginalizes our ability to put forward our own worldviews. Instead, English words are translated and absorbed into Indigenous languages, in a kind of linguistic colonization. Indigenous-derived concepts, like Gadugi, are subordinated to English-derived concepts, like rights. Similarly, in the era of “reconciliation,” highly Christian notions of confession, apology, and forgiveness are invoked as goals for the colonialist society to help rebuild relationships with Indigenous peoples. However, given that in the Dakota worldview there is no word that equates with sorry, there is ultimately “no way to apologize for bad deeds or words. It is understood as a Dakota, it is important to think carefully before acting or speaking so that there is no need for an apology . . . once something is spoken, it cannot be taken back.”43 Like talking about rights, being sorry does not translate, especially given that little action ever backs up either of these concepts in practice. There is clearly a need for a revival of Indigenous languages, but even insurgent researchers who speak their language face the daunting task of being unable to communicate with large numbers of Indigenous people who are unilingual English speakers. This is somewhat of a vicious circle, one in which “languages suffer from a lack of a strong tradition, creative and critical,” in that much of the theoretical and conceptual knowledge is conceived in English, using an English frame of reference and English definitions.44 Our constant use of English to make our writings accessible to wide audiences results in the continued disuse of our languages and their increasing separation from English-language scholarship. Although writing an article or book in an Indigenous language is not possible for most insurgent researchers, including me, there is still an opportunity to develop and use conceptual thoughts based in the Indigenous language. This requires close work with knowledgeable elders, activists, and language speakers to ultimately “establish a natural give and take relationship to the rich heritage of orature.”45 This tactic will allow us to write in our most comfortable language, usually English— and so reach the largest audience possible— but still to have conceptual roots in Indigenous culture and language. If we are unable to write in our Indigenous language, the least we can do is to work to understand the concepts and ways of thinking that are rooted in the language and to mobilize a range of Indigenous-rooted concepts that can represent key characteristics of our worldviews to an English-language audience. Since so few Indigenous research projects focus on developing and using concepts from the languages of our people, much can be done for the development of Indigenous-languagebased concepts that better articulate ways of being Indigenous and ways 131 R E V I E W S A W I C A Z O SPRING 2011 132 of combating colonialism than those that English offers. This type of language use, even if it is only the development or articulation of certain concepts, allows insurgent researchers to give back to their language by reviving central knowledges that may have fallen into disuse. Rather than relying on external forms of decolonization, conceptual language use allows Indigenous peoples to conceive and develop forms of action rooted in their culture’s own worldview. A significant obstacle in current anticolonial writing is a lack of a suitable vocabulary to discuss decolonization and resistance. Much work has to be done to reclaim conceptual knowledge and put it to use in reframing the debate around Indigenous nationhood. Reclaiming language allows Indigenous peoples to determine what is of political value, rather than relying on a plethora of dead European liberals whose conceptual hegemony frames the options available to us. There are distinct Indigenous values that remain central to our lives as Indigenous peoples that can only be imperfectly articulated in the colonizer’s language. Reclaiming and reframing language, then, should be an important part of any insurgent research project. This is not to deny the importance of the English language. Language, and its use in research, is an important way to articulate an Indigenous worldview, one not constantly in opposition to the Western conception of the world but always distinct from it. Albert Memmi reminds us of this when he writes, “bilingualism cannot be compared to just any linguistic dualism. Possession of two languages is not merely a matter of having two tools, but actually means participation in two physical and cultural realms.”46 Not only does language allow us, as researchers, to participate in our cultural realm in a truly meaningful way, but it also articulates a way of conceiving the world outside of the dominant system. Insurgent research has the responsibility of articulating a liberatory praxis, demonstrating both the practices that the project generated through the research process and the practices that those reading the final research product can undertake in different communities. These responsibilities necessitate the accessibility of both terminology and worldview, meaning that it is readable and understandable to everyday people. LI BE RATORY PRA XI S I N RE S EARCH Research is always a political process, as it always advocates some sort of political program—whether it is supporting the current one or advocating reform or a radical departure from the present, often exploitative, state of things. Although many extractive researchers claim an objective, neutral, or unbiased stance, this type of conservatism has served only to mystify the workings of a reactionary and oppressive R E V I E W S A W I C A Z O SPRING 2011 colonial system. Often, those who most strongly assert claims of neutrality need to be confronted on their conservatism and need to have their political orientation laid bare. Insurgent research should make no effort to hide a liberatory orientation. In fact, this outlook is one of the main things that differentiates it from other more extractive methods. As insurgent researchers, our sense of responsibility toward community liberation and challenging the colonial system sets us apart from other researchers. Indeed, liberatory praxis is one of the strengths of this approach. A central part of articulating a liberatory praxis is developing a realizable alternative to the oppressive and exploitative colonial status quo. While many researchers have become quite adept at critiquing the imperial situation, many fail to articulate meaningful alternatives outside of the colonial system. A failure to do so lends support to the liberal argument that there is no workable alternative to our subordination. As Indigenous researchers, the prospect of articulating alternative ways of existing is easier for us than for non-Indigenous researchers, because there is in many cases a living memory of another way of being. In order to articulate viable alternatives to the violent exploitation and ethical poverty of liberal capitalism, we need only look to our ancestors and learn from the values and knowledge they possess. Expressing similar views, Waziyatawin writes, “Decolonization concerns a simultaneous critical interrogation of the colonizing forces that have damaged our lives in profound ways, coupled with a return to those ways that nourished and sustained us as Indigenous Peoples for thousands of years.”47 Research is a powerful tool in fighting colonial domination, and it usually embodies a kind of propagandistic tendency. The rhetoric and type of argumentation present in many insurgent research projects mirrors that of a militant call to action; it aims to inspire and provoke rather than giving in to calls for a false and impossible objectivity in research. In truth, all research is propaganda— so why not make it openly so? Insurgent researchers can direct their writing at people who can benefit from the articulation of a liberatory praxis, and if they are interested, they can absorb this knowledge into how they live their lives. The ultimate goal of any liberatory praxis is to help revive the knowledge of what it means to be Indigenous among everyday Native people, to articulate how it remains relevant in terms of decolonization and emancipation. A firm belief that research should be both inspiring and accessible motivates this goal. Research should motivate people to action, not repel them through endless technical discussions of methodology. Methodology, like all parts of the research, is created throughout the research process, and the writing and language of the final product can, and should, reflect the real lives of research participants. If the goal is to reach the people, to participate in a grassroots 133 R E V I E W S A W I C A Z O SPRING 2011 134 movement, then research should speak to those same people, should use language they can understand and relate to, and should reinforce common Indigenous values. Given the primacy of the written word in the colonialist society that has imposed itself upon us, written research can be a vital component of Indigenous self-validation. It tells the colonialist society what we think and believe, in a method of communicating that is a legitimizing tool in Western thought. In this line of thinking, to write something down is to make it true. Researching and “writing back” can mount a challenge to the apparatus of colonization and rally the people behind a coherent representation of their voice. If we are to take our task seriously as writers and propagandists, we have a responsibility to align ourselves, our thoughts, and our interests with the people and the people’s knowledge; that is ultimately where all our power and authority as writers reside. Ngũgı̃ reminds us that it is “the people: their economic, political, and cultural struggle for survival” that motivates us as writers, researchers, propagandists, and activists. For it is ultimately our task to “rediscover the real languages of struggle in the action and speeches of [our] people, learn from their great heritage of orature,” and come to understand that human beings have a great capacity to “remake the world and renew themselves.”48 That is not to say that all Indigenous people will remember these things. Colonialism has been a tremendous force in making us forget our own power to change the conditions that affect our lives, but the insurgent researcher has a significant responsibility to remind the people of their own power. It is our job to challenge, to motivate, and to remind everyone of our collective power to change things. Research and writing by itself will not change the world, but it can motivate people to do so. That is what insurgent research is about: creating the conditions for social change, showing that it is possible, and dissecting the colonialist conditions that marginalize us all, both materially and intellectually. Researchers are responsible for both listening and speaking. Research has a profound ability to amplify the voices of marginalized communities, but it has also been used to assert the values of external revolutionary or reactionary political programs on people—the new wave of neoliberal economic development being the most recent addition. As insurgent researchers, our writing should embody the culture and language of the people in their strongest forms and should respect the cultural grounding of the people. The simple act of writing as an Indigenous person will likely be seen by outsiders as representing all Indigenous peoples, regardless of how forcefully we articulate that this is not the case. Therefore, a great deal of responsibility comes with writing as well as a great deal of power to inflict harm through misrepresenting and distorting Indigenous knowledge or history. We all have a responsibility to speak with the people. N O 1 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (New York: Zed Books, 1999), 61. 2 Nunavut Research Institute, “Licensing Process,” http://www .nri.nu.ca/lic_process.html. 3 Jason Madden, John Graham, and Jake Wilson, “Exploring Options for Métis Governance in the 21st Century” (Institute on Governance, Ottawa, September 2005), 21. 4 Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 72. T E S (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 240. 10 Quoted in Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 185. 11 Waziyatawin, Remember This!, 12. 12 See Noenoe K. Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004), 2–4. 13 Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007), 7. 5 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 8 Leanne Simpson, “Oshkimaadiziig, the New People,” in Lighting the Eighth Fire, ed. Simpson, 13–21. 9 Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, Remember This! Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives 16 Ibid., 40. 17 Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 8. 18 Waziyatawin, Remember This!, 35; emphasis mine. 19 Shawn Wilson, Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods (Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2008), 14; emphasis mine. S A 21 Leslie Brown and Susan Strega, “Transgressive Possibilities,” in Research as Resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and Anti- Oppressive Approaches, ed. Brown and Strega (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2005), 10. R E V I E W 20 Taiaiake Alfred, Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Freedom and Action (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2005), 19; emphasis mine. W I C A Z O 7 For an excellent cross-section of young Indigenous people carrying out anticolonial research, see Leanne Simpson, ed., Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence, and Protection of Indigenous Nations (Winnipeg: Arbiter Ring Press, 2009). 15 Ibid. 22 Waziyatawin, Remember This!, 37. 23 Wilson, Research Is Ceremony, 73. 24 Ibid., 99. 25 Ibid., 106. 26 Ibid. SPRING 2011 6 The concept “insurgent research” is similar to Jeff Corntassel’s concept of “insurgent education.” Corntassel writes, “Insurgent education about indigenous histories and culture has to be provided to indigenous citizens as well so that people can be in a position to educate others . . . these educational opportunities offer indigenous peoples tools to counter the influences of colonialism in their communities and put forward strategies for community regeneration.” Jeff Corntassel and Richard C. Witmer, Forced Federalism: Contemporary Challenges to Indigenous Nationhood (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 147. 135 N O 28 Ibid., 242. 37 Waziyatawin, Remember This!, 26. 29 Margaret Kovach, “Emerging from the Margins: Indigenous Methodologies,” in Research as Resistance, ed. Brown and Strega, 23. 38 Silva, Aloha Betrayed, 8. 32 Jim Silver, Joan Hay, and Peter Gorzen, “In but Not Of: Aboriginal People in an Inner-City Neighbourhood,” in In Their Own Voices, ed. Silver, 40. 33 Ibid., 53. 34 Ibid., 54. S A R E V I E W 35 Jim Silver, Parvin Ghorayshi, Joan Hay, and Darlene Klyne, “Sharing, Community and De- W I C A Z O S 36 Silver, “Building a Path to a Better Future,” 37. 31 Jim Silver, “Building a Path to a Better Future: Urban Aboriginal People,” in In Their Own Voices: Building Urban Aboriginal Communities, ed. Silver (Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2006), 32. SPRING 2011 E 27 Qwul’sih’yah’maht, Robina Anne Thomas, “Honouring the Oral Traditions of My Ancestors through Storytelling,” in Research as Resistance, ed. Brown and Strega, 244. 30 Án˛paó Dúta, Ptanyetu (Fall) 147 After Exile, Granite Falls, Minnesota, 2009. 136 T colonization: Urban Aboriginal Community Development,” in In Their Own Voices, ed. Silver, 135. 39 Ngũgı̃ wa Thiong’o, Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms (Oxford, England: James Currey, 1993), 30. 40 Waziyatawin, Remember This!, 26. 41 Ngũgı̃, Moving the Centre, 20. 42 Jeff Corntassel, “Towards Sustainable Self- Determination: Rethinking the Contemporary Indigenous Rights Discourse,” Alternatives 33 (2008): 122. 43 Waziyatawin, Remember This!, 65. 44 Ngũgı̃, Moving the Centre, 21. 45 Ibid. 46 Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), 107. 47 Waziyatawin, Remember This!, 1. 48 Ngũgı̃, Moving the Centre, 74.