Pulling together: Participatory modes and Indigenous roads to enact anticolonial responsibility in social studies research

ABSTRACT

Researchers and practitioners in social studies education have not often taken up responsibilities to Indigenous communities on whose Lands they work and live. Drawing on Indigenous research methodologies, along with specific Indigenous stories and artwork, four authors of varied positionalities, contexts, and regions offer conceptual and methodological insight into disrupting settler colonial research habits and sustaining commitments with Indigenous Communities. Through vignettes describing our own research practices, we propose three attributes of anticolonial participatory research responsibility in social studies. We emphasize the need for Indigenous leaders to drive research processes and planning; integrated, relational views of theory, practice, research, and policy to transcend binary understandings and colonial outcomes of social studies education; and long-term, reciprocal partnerships with community members, to center Indigenous community practices and Knowledges in order to expand possibilities for social studies education. The article explores these features, their demands, and implications for all readers as educators on Indigenous Lands.

KEYWORDS:

• Epistemology
• Indigenous education
• Indigenous research methodologies
• Indigenous studies
• participatory research
• qualitative research
• social studies education

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to all the Indigenous Communities and individuals with whom we have been fortunate to collaborate. To protect identities of and relationships with those who have helped us learn, we are unable to name every person or community in these acknowledgements. Dr. Leilani Sabzalian (Alutiiq) offered particular support as the discussant for our 2022 American Educational Research Association symposium and pushed us to learn more about Anishinaabe Knowledge traditions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Each of us learned of the Anishinaabe Seven Fires prophecy through Lindstrom’s (2020) picture book, a valuable text for early social education. In our conversations, we identified connections to Indigenous Knowledges in our own contexts and a consensus that our field faced a similar choice between paths. We are grateful to Dr. Leilani Sabzalian (Alutiiq) who encouraged us to deepen our relationship and ground our accountability with the prophecy through guidance from those with direct connections, particularly Anishinaabe scholars and leaders (e.g., Benton-Banai, 1988; Kimmerer, 2013; Simpson, 2008, 2017).

2. Consistent with many Indigenous scholars (e.g., Styres, 2019; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015) and American Psychological Association’s 7th edition manual, we capitalize Indigenous Peoples, Knowledges, Nations, and Lands, recognizing their roles as teachers, political entities, and/or relatives. Like many Indigenous and critical scholars, we use lower case for white racial identification to avoid unintentionally reifying white supremacy.

3. Rather than a comprehensive overview, this list offers examples of scholarship primarily from Turtle Island/North America. We acknowledge its limitations given the complexity of social, political, and geographic contexts that readers inhabit, as well as the breadth of social studies content areas.

4. Information about the Turtle Island Social Studies Collective can be found at https://www.turtleislandsocialstudies.com/home.

Additional information

Funding

Jenni Conrad’s research was supported by the National Council for Social Studies’s CUFA-FASSE Social Justice Social Studies Research Grant, PEO International, and the University of Washington Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies.