In short, Tuhiwai Smith begins to articulate research practices that arise out of the specificities of epistemology and methodology rooted in survival struggles, a kind of research that is something other than a dirty word to those on the suffering side of history." - Patti Lather, Professor Of Educational Policy and Leadership, Ohio State University and author of "Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy With/In The Postmodern" (Routledge, 1991) and "Troubling The Angels: Women Living With HIV/AIDS," with Chris Smithies (Westview, 1997) "Finally, a book for researchers working in indigenous context.
Using Kaupapa Maori, a fledgling approach toward culturally appropriate research protocols and methodologies, the book is designed primarily to develop indigenous peoples as researchers. Informed by critical and feminist evaluations of positivism, Tuhiwai Smith urges researching back and disrupting the rules of the research game toward practices that are more respectful, ethical, sympathetic and useful vs racist practices and attitudes, ethnocentric assumptions and exploitative research. The book is particularly strong in situating the development of counter-practices of research within both Western critiques of Western knowledge and global indigenous movements. Looking through the eyes of the colonized, cautionary tales are told from an indigenous perspective, tales designed not just to voice the voiceless but to prevent the dying - of people, of culture, of ecosystems. "This book is a counter-story to Western ideas about the benefits of the pursuit of knowledge. This book sets a standard for emancipatory research, brilliantly demonstrating that 'when indigenous peoples become the researchers and not merely the researched, the activity of research is transformed.'
Now in its second edition, this book critically examines the bases of Western research, while also suggesting literature which validates one's frustrations in dealing with western methodologies, all of which position the indigenous as 'Other.' The author explores the 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, explicitly in terms of how the west has consistently incorporated the indigenous world within its own web.
Here, an indigenous researcher issues a clarion call for the decolonization of research methods in an attempt to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being. To the colonized, the term 'research' is conflated with European colonialism the ways in which scientific research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory for many of the world's colonized peoples.
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