Decolonizing Methodologies

Research and Indigenous Peoples

Linda Tuhiwai Smith

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781350346086
• eBook ISBN: 9781786998163
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
• Index: Social Sciences

To the colonized, the term 'research' is conflated with European colonialism; the ways in which academic research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory. This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth.' Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being. Now in its eagerly awaited third edition, this bestselling book includes a co-written introduction and features contributions from indigenous scholars on the book's continued relevance to current research. It also features a chapter with twenty-five indigenous projects and a collection of poetry.

Chapter 1

Imperialism, History, Writing and Theory

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house

Audre Lorde¹

Imperialism frames the Indigenous experience. It is part of our story, our version of modernity. Writing about our experiences under imperialism and its more specific expression of colonialism has become a significant project of the Indigenous world. In a literary sense this has been defined by writers like Salman Rushdie, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and many others whose literary origins are grounded in the landscapes, languages, cultures and imaginative worlds of peoples and nations whose own histories were interrupted and radically reformulated by European imperialism. While the project of creating this literature is important, what Indigenous activists would argue is that imperialism cannot be struggled over only at the level of text and literature. Imperialism still hurts, still destroys and is reforming itself constantly. Indigenous peoples as an international group have had to challenge, understand and have a shared language for talking about the history, the sociology, the psychology and the politics of imperialism and colonialism as an epic story telling of huge devastation, painful struggle and persistent survival. We have become quite good at talking that kind of talk, most often amongst ourselves, for ourselves and to ourselves. ‘The talk’ about the colonial past is embedded in our political discourses, our humour, poetry, music, storytelling and other common sense ways of passing on both a narrative of history and an attitude about history. The lived experiences of imperialism and colonialism contribute another dimension to the ways in which terms like ‘imperialism’ can be understood. This is a dimension that Indigenous peoples know and understand well.

In this chapter the intention is to discuss and contextualize four concepts which are often present (though not necessarily clearly visible) in the ways in which the ideas of Indigenous peoples are articulated: imperialism, history, writing, and theory. These terms may seem to make up a strange selection, particularly as there are more obvious concepts such as self-determination or sovereignty which are used commonly in Indigenous discourses. I have selected these words because from an Indigenous perspective they are problematic. They are words which tend to provoke a whole array of feelings, attitudes and values. They are words of emotion which draw attention to the thousands of ways in which Indigenous languages, knowledges and cultures have been silenced or misrepresented, ridiculed or condemned in academic and popular discourses. They are also words which are used in particular sorts of ways or avoided altogether. In thinking about knowledge and research, however, these are important terms which underpin the practices and styles of research with Indigenous peoples. Decolonization is a process which engages with imperialism and colonialism at multiple levels. For researchers, one of those levels is concerned with having a more critical understanding of the underlying assumptions, motivations and values which inform research practices.

Before moving forward let me refer to the words of Audre Lorde that open this chapter. It is easy to think of the tools that the master created being generic and unbiased tools such as education, government, democracy and so forth. Not only are these terms not innocent but it is important to recognize that imperialism and colonialism enabled the design of specific tools tailored especially to deal with Indigenous Peoples. The Doctrine of Discovery was a specific tool designed by the Catholic Church that ultimately became and still exists as a principle of discovery enshrined in law that will probably apply if humans choose to colonize a new planet. As Steve Newcomb argues, the Doctrine of Discovery was ‘premised on the idea that any Christian people, nation or state had a right of domination over the “discovered” lands and lives of non-Christians’. The colonizer did not simply design an education system. They designed an education especially to destroy Indigenous cultures, value systems and appearance. Those systems were called Indian boarding schools, residential schools, village day schools. They designed social policies designed especially to break down Indigenous families. These systems resulted in the stolen children in Australia, the removal of thousands of Indigenous children from their parents and communities, who were then placed in the homes of white families. The master’s tools of colonization will not work to decolonize what the master built. Our challenge is to fashion new tools for the purpose of decolonizing and Indigenous tools that can revitalize Indigenous knowledge.²

Imperialism

There is one particular figure whose name looms large, and whose spectre lingers, in Indigenous discussions of encounters with the West: Christopher Columbus. It is not simply that Columbus is identified as the one who started it all, but rather that he has come to represent a huge legacy of suffering and destruction. Columbus ‘names’ that legacy more than any other individual.³ He sets its modern time frame (500-plus years) and defines the outer limits of that legacy, that is, total destruction.⁴ But there are other significant figures who symbolize and frame Indigenous experiences in other places. In the imperial literature, these are the ‘heroes’, the discoverers and adventurers, the ‘fathers’ of colonialism. In the Indigenous literature these figures are not so admired; their deeds are definitely not the deeds of wonderful discoverers and conquering heroes. In the South Pacific, for example, it is the British explorer James Cook, whose expeditions had a very clear scientific purpose and whose first encounters with Indigenous peoples were fastidiously recorded. Hawai’ian academic Haunani Kay Trask’s list of what Cook brought to the Pacific includes: ‘capitalism, Western political ideas (such as predatory individualism) and Christianity. Most destructive of all he brought diseases that ravaged my people until we were but a remnant of what we had been on contact with his pestilent crew’.⁵ The French are remembered by Tasmanian Aborigine Greg Lehman, ‘not [for] the intellectual hubbub of an emerging anthrologie or even with the swish of their travel-weary frocks. It is with an arrogant death that they presaged their appearance….’⁶ For many communities, there were waves of different sorts of Europeans: Dutch, Portuguese, British, French, whoever had political ascendancy over a region. And, in each place, after figures such as Columbus and Cook had long departed, there came a vast array of military personnel, imperial administrators, priests, explorers, missionaries, colonial officials, artists, entrepreneurs and settlers, who cut a devastating swathe, and left a permanent wound, on the societies and communities who occupied the lands named and claimed under imperialism.

The concepts of imperialism and colonialism are crucial ones which are used across a range of disciplines, often with meanings which are taken for granted. The two terms are interconnected and what is generally agreed upon is that colonialism is but one expression of imperialism. Imperialism tends to be used in at least four different ways when describing the form of European imperialism which ‘started’ in the fifteenth century: (1) imperialism as economic expansion; (2) imperialism as the subjugation of ‘others’; (3) imperialism as an idea or spirit with many forms of realization; and (4) imperialism as a discursive field of knowledge. These usages do not necessarily contradict each other; rather, they need to be seen as analyses which focus on different layers of imperialism. Initially, the term was used by historians to explain a series of developments leading to the economic expansion of Europe. Imperialism in this sense could be tied to a chronology of events related to ‘discovery’, conquest, exploitation, distribution and appropriation.

Economic explanations of imperialism were first advanced by English historian J. A. Hobson in 1902 and by Lenin in 1917.⁷ Hobson saw imperialism as being an integral part of Europe’s economic expansion. He attributed the later stages of nineteenth-century imperialism to the inability of Europeans to purchase what was being produced and the need for Europe’s industrialists to shift their capital to new markets which were secure. Imperialism was the system of control which secured the markets and capital investments. Colonialism facilitated this expansion by ensuring that there was European control, which necessarily meant securing and subjugating the Indigenous populations. Like Hobson, Lenin was concerned with the ways in which economic expansion was linked to imperialism, although he argued that the export of capital to new markets was an attempt to rescue capitalism because Europe’s workers could not afford what was being produced.

A second use of the concept of imperialism focuses more upon the exploitation and subjugation of Indigenous peoples. Although economic explanations might account for why people like Columbus were funded to explore and discover new sources of wealth, they do not account for the devastating impact on the Indigenous peoples whose lands were invaded.

By the time contact was made in the South Pacific, Europeans, and more particularly the British, had learned from their previous encounters with Indigenous peoples and had developed much more sophisticated ‘rules of practice’.⁸ While these practices ultimately lead to forms of subjugation, they also lead to subtle nuances which give an unevenness to the story of imperialism, even within the story of one Indigenous society. While in New Zealand all Māori tribes, for example, lost the majority of their lands, not all tribes had their lands confiscated, were invaded militarily or were declared to be in rebellion. Similarly, while many Indigenous nations signed treaties, other Indigenous communities have no treaties. Furthermore, legislated identities which regulated who was an Indian and who was not, who was a metis, who had lost all status as an Indigenous person, who had the correct fraction of blood quantum, who lived in the regulated spaces of reserves and communities, were all worked out arbitrarily (but systematically), to serve the interests of the colonizing society. The specificities of imperialism help to explain the different ways in which Indigenous peoples have struggled to recover histories, lands, languages and basic human dignity. The way arguments are framed, the way dissent is controlled, the way settlements are made, while certainly drawing from international precedents, are also situated within a more localized discursive field.

A third major use of the term is much broader. It links imperialism to the spirit which characterized Europe’s global activities. MacKenzie defines imperialism as being ‘more than a set of economic, political and military phenomena. It is also a complex ideology which had wide-spread cultural, intellectual and technical expressions.’⁹ This view of imperialism locates it within the Enlightenment spirit which signalled the transformation of economic, political and cultural life in Europe. In this wider Enlightenment context, imperialism becomes an integral part of the development of the modern state, of science, of ideas and of the ‘modern’ human person. In complex ways imperialism was also a mode through which the new states of Europe could expand their economies, through which new ideas and discoveries could be made and harnessed, and through which Europeans could develop their sense of European-ness. The imperial imagination enabled European nations to imagine the possibility that new worlds, new wealth and new possessions existed that could be discovered and controlled. This imagination was realized through the promotion of science, economic expansion and political practice.

These three interpretations of imperialism have reflected a view from the imperial centre of Europe. In contrast, a fourth use of the term has been generated by writers whose understandings of imperialism and colonialism have been based either on their membership of and experience within colonized societies, or on their interest in understanding imperialism from the perspective of local contexts. Although these views of imperialism take into account the other forms of analysis, there are some important distinctions. There is, for example , a greater and more immediate need to understand the complex ways in which people were brought within the imperial system, because its impact is still being felt, despite the apparent independence gained by former colonial territories. The reach of imperialism into ‘our heads’ challenges those who belong to colonized communities to understand how this occurred, partly because we perceive a need to decolonize our minds, to recover ourselves, to claim a space in which to develop a sense of authentic humanity. This analysis of imperialism has been referred to more recently in terms such as ‘post-colonial discourse’, the ‘empire writes back’ and/or ‘writing from the margins’. There is a more political body of writing, however, which extends to the revolutionary, anti-colonial work of various activists (only some of whom, such as Frantz Fanon, actually wrote their ideas down) that draws also upon the work of black and African American writers and other m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction to the Third Edition
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Imperialism, History, Writing and Theory
• Chapter 2 Research through Imperial Eyes
• Chapter 3 Colonizing knowledges
• Chapter 4 Research Adventures on Indigenous Lands
• Chapter 5 Notes from Down Under
• Chapter 6 The Indigenous Peoples’ Project: Setting A New Agenda
• Chapter 7 Articulating an Indigenous Research Agenda
• Chapter 8 Twenty-five Indigenous Projects
• Chapter 9 Twenty Further Indigenous Projects
• Chapter 10 Responding to the Imperatives of an Indigenous Agenda: A Case Study of Māori
• Chapter 11 Towards Developing Indigenous Methodologies: Kaupapa Māori Research
• Chapter 12 Choosing the Margins: The Role of Research in Indigenous Struggles for Social Justice
• Chapter 13 Getting the Story Right, Telling the Story Well: Indigenous Activism, Indigenous Research
• Reflections
• Index
• Copyright