Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples

'A landmark in the process of decolonizing imperial Western knowledge.'
Walter Mignolo, Duke University

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 second edition, this bestselling book has been substantially revised, with new case-studies and examples and important additions on new indigenous literature, the role of research in indigenous struggles for social justice, which brings this essential volume urgently up-to-date.

'This new, extended and updated version of the book brings the reader to the core of the matter, at the same time as it pays homage to indigenous ways of transmitting knowledge and promotes this knowledge's transforming power. What used to be the voice in the margin is growing to become the decisive subject in the cosmopolitan research world.'
Harald Gaski, Associate Professor in Sami Literature at the University of Tromsø, Norway.

'Our recognized, not-to-be-messed-with standard of excellence ... we thirsted for more of the same.'
Margaret J. Maaka, Professor of Education and Director of Ho'okulaiwi Center for Native Hawaiian and Indigenous Education, University of Hawai'i at Manoa

'Thirteen years of influence later, with updates and additional chapters, the second edition will secure and expand the place of this book as a classic in articulating the field of indigenous methodologies, "talking back" to imperialist research and building capacity in indigenous communities.'
Professor Patti Lather, Ohio State University

'In its first edition, this book claimed space for Indigenous research through critiquing western knowledge creation as a monocultural enterprise and by affirming Indigenous knowledge systems in research practice. In its second edition, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, the preeminent voice in decolonizing research, considers the current landscape of Indigenous research -- its complexities, intersections, and transformative potential -- from the position of someone who has been there. It remains persuasive, evocative, and enduring.'
Margaret Kovach, Assistant Professor, Educational Foundations/Educational Administration, University of Saskatchewan

'Linda Tuhiwai Smith encourages and challenges those involved in indigenous research to "get the story right and tell the story well". In this revised edition, Smith shows us how to get the story right and how to tell it well in thoughtful, thought-provoking, and inspiring ways. Indigenous research demands no less.'
Jo-ann Archibald, Associate Dean for Indigenous Education, University of British Columbia

'Linda Tuhiwai Smith's great mana again confers on us knowledge to work with and think through by consolidating and extending the work of the first edition. She equips indigenous scholars with a series of methodological and political strategies for developing research that is enabling and empowering. Emerging scholars who want to link their research to pursuits for indigenous sovereign justice will be inspired by the way Tuhiwai Smith discusses and examines the metaphorical terrain of struggle that shapes and informs indigenous research. More than anything this book provides an understanding of why indigenous methodologies and research matters.'
Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Indigenous Studies Research Network, Queensland University of Technology, and Deputy Chair, Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council

'A text of broad intellectual reach and political depth, fifteen years ago this book transformed the fields of educational research and critical epistemology. Since that time, Tuhiwai Smith's brilliant analysis has survived over time, perhaps even more provocative today, as neoliberalism colonizes the definition and production of science. The book rapidly became a critical classic and has migrated into prison studies, (im)migration studies, disability studies, feminist theory, queer theory and has fundamentally disrupted the broad landscape of social science. Insisting that researchers resist the hegemonic stance of objectivity, trouble notions of validity and generalizability and attend deeply to ethical and political questions of For whom? By whom? and Toward what form of social justice? Linda Tuhiwai Smith offers us a radical liferaft for sailing through treacherous waters of colonial science; at once a radical manifesto and a sweet delicate text that can carry new (and old) researchers forward to a radical vision of social research as it must be.'
Professor Michelle Fine, City University New York

'Announces the obsolescence of Western old ways of methodological thinking. It shifts the geography of reasoning and puts the horse back in front of the cart, using anthropology, history, and education to liberate Maori people rather than using Maori people to advance the disciplinary goals of anthropology, history and education. The brilliant and powerful argument cuts to size and takes away the self-attributed privileges and exceptionalism of Western epistemology; it shows that the house of knowledge has many rooms and that no one any longer has the master key; it dispenses with a long-lasting salvationism entrenched in Western ways of thinking and being from which people around the globe need to be helped because they are epistemologically deficient and ontologically inferior. I have included the book for many years now in my graduate seminars, generally composed by students of different ethnicities and nationalities. It is always revealing to see in the discussions who is feeling empowered by the book and who is feeling threatened and bothered. The significance of the argument for the worlds to come is enormous. The decolonizing move of history and anthropology shows that knowledge it is not only constructed, but it is constructed by certain types of bodies and certain types of local histories, including the local histories and bodies of Saint Thomas or GWF Hegel. Linda T. Smith's book is a landmark in the process not only of decolonizing methodology but of decolonizing imperial Western knowledge and ways of knowing.'
Walter Mignolo, William H. Wannamaker Professor of Literature and Romance Studies, Duke University

'Has become a 'must have' book for almost all research students in post-colonial settings as well as others in mainstream higher education institutions. Since its first arrival on the research scene, it has empowered so many staff and students in universities around the world, to look to the source of their identities and knowledge systems with pride and commit themselves to theorising their own education and re-searching their own theories and ways of knowing and thinking. This revised edition will no doubt continue this important life enhancement work as well as further contribute to the global research agenda.'
Professor Konai Helu Thaman

Praise for the first edition:

'This book is a counter-story to Western ideas about the benefits of the pursuit of knowledge. 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. 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. 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. Using Kaupapa Maori, a fledgling approach toward culturally appropriate research protocols and methodologies, the book is designed primarily to develop indigenous peoples as researchers. 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 and Troubling The Angels: Women Living With HIV/AIDS, With Chris Smithies

'A book like this is long overdue. It will be most useful for both indigenous and non-indigenous researchers in educational and non-educational institutions. It will empower indigenous students to undertake research which uses methods that are culturally sensitive and appropriate instead of those which they have learned about in Research Methods courses in universities which assume that research and research methods are culture-free and that researchers occupy some kind of moral high ground from which they can observe their subjects and make judgements about them.'
Konai Thaman, Professor of Pacific Education and Culture, and UNESCO Chair of Education, University of the South Pacific

'Linda Tuhiwai Smith is the leading theorist on decolonization of Maori in New Zealand. This book opts for a dynamic interpretation of power relations of domination, struggle and emancipation. She uses a dual framework - the whakapapa of Maori knowledge and European epistemology - to interpret and capture the world of reality for a moment in time. Thus the search for truth in complex human relations is a never-ending quest.'
Ranginui Walker, formerly Professor of Maori Studies Department and Pro-vice Chancellor, University of Auckland

'We have needed this book. Academic research facilitates diverse forms of economic and cultural imperialism by shaping and legitimating policies which entrench existing unjust power relations. Linda Tuhiwai Smith's powerful critique of dominant research methodologies is eloquent, informed and timely. Her distinctive proposals for an indigenous research agenda are especially valuable. Decolonization, she reminds us, cannot be limited to deconstructing the dominant story and revealing underlying texts, for none of that helps people improve their current conditions or prevents them from dying. This careful articulation of a range of research methodologies is vital, welcome and full of promise.'
Laurie Anne Whitt, Professor of Philosophy, Michigan Technological University

'A brilliant, evocative and timely book about an issue that serves to both define and create indigenous realities. In recent years, indigenous people, often led by the emerging culturally affirmed and positioned indigenous scholars, have intensified the struggle to break free from the chains of colonialism and its oppressive legacy. In writing this book, Linda Tuhiwai Smith makes a powerful and impassioned contribution to this struggle. No budding researcher should be allowed to leave the academy without reading this book and no teacher should teach without it at their side.'
Bob Morgan, Director, Jumbunna Caiser, Centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, University of Technology, Sydney