Keywords

We explore the introductory chapter of Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s influential text, which ‘draw[s] 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’ (2012, p. 21). Tuhiwai Smith argues that scholars need a ‘more critical understanding of the underlying assumptions, motivations and values which inform research practices’ (Smith, 2012), paying particular attention to understanding the impacts of imperialism and colonisation, and the past and continued damaging, unethical practices of non-Indigenous academics researching Indigenous peoples. This requires a reflection on power positioning, place and space. In this chapter we discuss our experiences of using Indigenous theories and methodologies as an Indigenous researcher (Gulwanyang) and a non-Indigenous researcher (Amani).

Amani and Gulwanyang: Diary Entries and Desire Lines

We have structured this chapter in the form of diary entries, inspired by Kelly’s account of a day in higher education (Kelly, 2015). The entries are based on our notes, recollections, emails and conversations. The entries are not dated and are not necessarily sequential.

Alongside using a diary format, we have mainly cited scholars who are Indigenous and/or women, and/or from the global South, challenged by Sara Ahmed’s act of not citing white men. She explains this citation practice as a way of paying tribute to feminists who have come before ‘including work that has been too quickly (in my view) cast aside or left behind, work that lays out other paths, paths we can call desire lines, created by not following the official paths laid out by disciplines’ (Ahmed, 2017, p. 15).

We have adopted this political act to showcase scholars who are other than the usual suspects, the superstars. There is a wealth of scholarship that is produced by women, Indigenous people and those from the global South. There are many ideas from these scholars to sit with, to learn from, to challenge and be challenged by, and yet they are sometimes relegated to the margins and neglected in favour of the big names.

Amani

I am not Indigenous. I am not attempting to speak for Indigenous researchers; I am speaking perhaps to others like me who are trying to navigate this tricky space. Although I have an ethnic and religious minority background, that does not mean I can relate to the experiences of Indigenous peoples. I am wary of drawing on my own experiences of ‘otherness’ too much.

Gulwanyang

I am a proud Indigenous Birrbay and Dhanggati woman and I do not attempt to speak on behalf of all Indigenous researchers; at the same time, I expect much of what I share in this reflective space resonates with other Indigenous researchers and highlights the importance of reflecting on power, place and space for non-Indigenous researchers working with Indigenous peoples and their epistemologies, axiology and ontologies. Linda Tuhiwai Smith reinforces the importance of this reflective practice within the context of research.

Amani

During one of Sydney’s several lockdowns, which have all blurred together now, my world shrank to a five-kilometre radius in which we were allowed to exercise. A friend told me about an Aboriginal carving that is only a few hundred metres from my back gate. Encountering this carving—which is deliberately not signposted in order to protect it—is a humbling experience. Someone has encircled the carving with branches to encourage people to maintain a respectful distance. The lines are faded but it is clearly a male kangaroo or wallaby; on early morning bushwalks I have seen these wary animals bounding away from me. The carving was first recorded by colonisers in 1898 (Hiking the World, n.d.), though of course it is likely to be far older, even thousands of years old (National Museum of Australia, 2022). Walking to the carving is a reminder: this always was and always will be Aboriginal land. This is home to the world’s oldest living culture. How does that shape my work in academia, my personal life?

Gulwanyang

I sit cross-legged on country in my final weeks of pregnancy. This is my fourth baby. I am in the bush on the sacred and shared country of Birrbay and Dhanggati peoples, my bloodline identities, and like thousands of women before me, I am here to birth my baby into country. Country to which my baby will be inherently tied for the rest of their life in both blood and spirit, their very first kinship relationship earthside. It is important that I am here in this space and place. Dawan (the pied butcherbird) comes to visit me here. Dawan is my childhood totem, an identity gifted to me at birth, and kin I have direct responsibilities for, responsibilities that are reciprocated by Dawan: we are entered into a two-way relationship of responsibility, we call this kinship. The mullet have been running, it is starting to get colder and the wattle is getting ready to blossom. I know Dawan will be laying eggs soon and will be raising new babies as my baby comes. When Dawan rears its babies, I like to catch small insects and mice and gift them to Dawan for feeding. Dawan is very smart, territorial and good at looking after their families.

I feel I embody some of the traits of Dawan, maybe bar their amazing singing voices, although I do feel I go alright in the shower. I get bored easily if I am not doing more than one thing. I have always had a bit of an issue with mental stimulation, requiring more than what is offered just being in environments or any one project or in any one space. I have turned this into a strength. I like to do the doing and keep busy, putting my mind to work. There are some territories in which I best like to do this, the domains of cultural advisory, research and education. Like Dawan I care about my family and being present for them, whilst doing the doing in my nominated territories.

One of my favourite domains mentioned is research. Many Indigenous peoples globally tend to have historical trauma with the word research, having had knowledge systems, bodies and identities pilfered and rebranded, invalidated and exploited in the interests of ‘science’ or the academy (Smith, 2012). It has been a violent relationship here for the last 200 years, and colonialism continues to be a permeating force here in so-called Australia.

What the academy and those that subscribe to it often forget is that we are the world’s oldest researchers and have been asking the questions of ‘what if’ with intention, of the natural environment and the way we behave in relationship with it, since the dawn of time. As researchers we mapped the movement of the stars, the sun and the moon, of all things in the environment. We intervened on the natural environment to yield mutually beneficial relationships and we developed sophisticated technologies that supported in creating symbiotic relationships with country (Pascoe, 2018). Our ways of knowing, doing and being we embody as Aboriginal peoples, that I embody as a Birrbay and Dhanggati woman, are drawn from the collective research of thousands of people before me. It is accumulated knowledge that can never be attributed to a single person.

Our education system is non-linear, and there is a constant circling back that occurs and is very deliberately practiced. Rather than a circle, however, it looks more like a spiral, where foundational knowledge is acquired through a meaningful and situational transfer of knowledge that considers place and space. Learning never stops in our cultures, and we pride ourselves on good knowledge acquisition. I love learning. An opportunity presented itself to be engaged as a research assistant in the higher education research space; as I waited to birth baby, I thought why not, and applied. I was bored by maternity leave, and the opportunity meant odd hours of work interviewing students locally and abroad about their experiences of online placements amidst the COVID pandemic in 2020. This seemed a good opportunity to keep busy while rearing a sleepy newborn that would be keeping me up all hours anyway. I received an email back, and a date was set to meet with Amani Bell from Sydney University.

Amani

I first encountered Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s work when I became involved in a Worldwide Universities Network about ‘First in the Family’ students succeeding at university, which was led by Ema Wolfgramm-Foliaki and Lorri Santamaria, both then at the University of Auckland. We had our first meeting in Sydney in March 2014, with researchers from Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, Australia and the USA, and at the time I reflected:

A meeting like no other I’ve had before! We opened the meeting with singing… and then whakawhanaungatanga (establishing relationships) where people shared their background, vision and challenges. People shared their cultural backgrounds, spoke in different languages—it’s clear that together we had a wealth of experience to bring to this new project. When it was my turn to introduce myself, I spoke a few words of Arabic and described a bit about what it was like growing up in predominantly white suburb of Sydney as a young mixed-race and (then) Muslim kid. A calm feeling pervaded the meeting and it felt like a safe space to share things.

The project team wanted to take a strengths-based approach to exploring the experiences of students who were first in their family to attend university across several countries, including those who were Māori and Pasifika (Aotearoa New Zealand), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Australia) and Black (South Africa). We also wanted to understand the experiences of students who were not first in family and how students’ varied identities and life experiences intersected to influence their journeys into and through university.

We discussed the possible theoretical and methodological framings for our project. As a newcomer to this type of research, some of the other project team members recommended some essential reading for me: Smith (2012), Chilisa (2019), Mbembe (2016) and Airini et al. (2010) among others. We discussed and agreed that both the methodology and the way the project team worked together would involve whakawhanaungatanga (establishing relationships), respectful beginnings, relationship building, transparency, being strengths-based and being student focused, and later we wrote about how we enacted these principles (Bell et al., 2015). I left the two-day meeting excited to get started with reading and then preparing an ethics application.

Gulwanyang

My sense of Amani was a woman who was able to reflect critically about power within research. Amani was compassionate in how she presented herself and demonstrated this through her leadership on the project. The research role was to primarily act as a support and gather qualitative data through interviewing ‘othered’ peoples or, rather, equity cohorts. The research was titled Exploring Benefits and Challenges of Online Work Integrated Learning for Equity Students (Bell et al., 2021).

As Aboriginal peoples we are not exempt from reflecting on power, place and space. When conducting these interviews, I came from a position of privilege. I was a researcher getting paid; they were a participant from an ‘othered’ background getting a voucher. While the project and its approach focused on strategies of power reduction, I was still acutely aware of power imbalances. When interviewing I found ways to be able to break down perceived power even further and build rapport quickly with the students being interviewed.

Establishing effective relationships, being transparent and taking a power-conscious and strengths-based approach really is key in working effectively with others in research spaces. To be able to do this, it comes back to reflection of power, place and space. What real or perceived power do I hold within this space? How do I reduce that when navigating this space? How do I contribute to creating a safe space? This inevitably comes back to place. Am I best placed to be speaking on this? Am I best placed to be doing this, exploring this? How am I occupying this space? What is my place?

Amani

My next step was to read what the research team had recommended as essential reading, and one of these texts was Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies (Smith, 2012). Linda Tuhiwai Smith is a Māori scholar from Aotearoa New Zealand, and her book, first published in 1999 and now in its third edition, is well known and influential, with over 30,000 citations to date according to Google Scholar. Here I will focus on the introductory chapter, though I recommend reading the entire book. The chapter starts with the powerful statement: ‘“research” is probably one of the dirtiest words in the Indigenous world’s vocabulary’ (2012, p. 1).

Smith describes the harm that research has caused to Indigenous peoples and its inextricable links with colonisation. She questions the taken-for-granted assumption that research is beneficial and shows us ‘the history of Western research through the eyes of the colonized’ (Smith, 2012, p. 2). Smith goes on to state that the aim of the book is not simply to deconstruct Western scholarship but to explore ‘spaces of resistance and hope’ (Smith, 2012, p. 4) and that the book is ‘addressed… to those researchers who work with, alongside and for communities who have chosen to identify themselves as Indigenous’ (Smith, 2012, p. 5).

Linda Tuhiwai Smith explores the complexities that Indigenous researchers encounter in navigating between their own communities and Western research/education institutions and paradigms—the insider/outsider quandary—and says that ‘If I have one consistent message for the students I teach and the researchers I train it is that Indigenous research is a humble and humbling activity’ (Smith, 2012, p. 5). She then provides a series of critical questions that ‘communities and Indigenous activists often ask’:

  • Whose research is it?

  • Who owns it?

  • Whose interests does it serve?

  • Who will benefit from it?

  • Who has designed its questions and framed its scope?

  • Who will carry it out?

  • Who will write it up?

  • How will its results be disseminated?

  • (Smith, 2012, p. 10, presented here in list form for emphasis)

Smith follows on to say that:

What may surprise many people is that what may appear as the ‘right’, most desirable answer can still be judged incorrect. These questions are simply part of a larger set of judgements on criteria that a researcher cannot prepare for, such as: Is her spirit clear? Does he have a good heart? What other baggage are they carrying? Are they useful to us? Can they fix up our generator? Can they actually do anything? (Smith, 2012, p. 10)

As the chapter progresses Smith describes her early interactions with research as her father’s helper in museums, her academic background in health and education, and that she found nothing in the literature that addressed ‘particular issues I faced as an Indigenous researcher working with Indigenous research participants’ (Smith, 2012, p. 12). Although she discusses some positive bicultural research/partnership initiatives, the chapter finishes with the reminder that ‘the present work has grown out of a concern to develop Indigenous peoples as researchers. There is so little material that addresses the issues Indigenous researchers face. The book is written primarily to help ourselves’ (Smith, 2012, p. 18).

Gulwanyang

Many non-Indigenous peoples seem to be oblivious of the concepts of place and space. There is often a sense of entitlement to take up space, I’ve seen this a lot with linguists working with languages revitalisation, granting themselves speaking rights, without asking themselves the question: am I the best placed to speak on this First Nations language, and on behalf of the First Nations people it relates to? This can be exampled at several Australian language conferences and forums where a lone non-Indigenous linguist presents on knowledge they acquired of a First Nations language from First Nations individuals and often not always within an ethical manner or partnership. Often this is taken out of the cultural context within which it should sit, and I wonder if the First Nations people know how much cultural meaning was lost on this linguist. I often sit in the audience wondering what remuneration they had received having given up so much of their cultural intellectual property. Do they know this non-Indigenous linguist is receiving so much social capital, so much clout, having had the privilege to work on their language? Yet should I ask the question that is often implied—should I just be grateful a linguist is interested in working with a ‘dead’ language?

Often I reflect on experiences within the academy as another day in the colony (Watego, 2021). I have faced many negative experiences as an Indigenous researcher. I have five degrees, and I can recall experiences of conflict with lecturers, tutors and so-called experts over how I wanted to show up as a proud Birrbay and Dhanggati woman wanting to make a difference to how my knowledge systems were treated and perceived in the academy. These lecturers, tutors and so-called experts forgot their place.

Only last month I was speaking to a non-Indigenous linguist who suggested that white linguists still need to lead in the space of language revitalisation in Australia because First Nations Peoples were lacking in the skills. I am often reminded in these moments of the important work of Dr Aileen Moreton-Robinson on talking up to the white woman (Moreton-Robinson, 2000). I was quick to respond that this was not the case and as a proud Birrbay and Dhanggati woman working in languages revitalisation, I was trained in aspects of applied linguistics through my languages education degree. Many universities are empowering us to work in hands-on ways with our languages in revitalisation and therefore this idea that we do not have the necessary skills or expertise is now being viewed as a reluctance to give up power to those that have never had it. Who else than the oldest living researchers on the planet? Who else than those that carry the memory of those languages in our veins, in our being, who connect with those languages every day when navigating our cultural landscapes, when practicing our cultures? Who else should be taking the lead on our own languages?

Luckily things are starting to shift in the academy, and our knowledge systems, our ways of being and doing are starting to move from being of little to no value to now a significant contribution of knowledge and praxis within many schools of thought and industry. Ethics groups are starting to hold researchers accountable on both place and space within any given research project, research that would have easily snuck through without this lens 20 odd years ago.

Amani

After my preliminary reading and discussions with the ‘First in the Family’ project team, I submitted an ethics application for the University of Sydney part of the research. The feedback I received from the ethics committee was helpful in pushing me along in being more explicit about my approach to the research. The committee requested further details about my consultation with key Indigenous staff and students at the university and more thorough engagement with the literature. The committee also asked more about my intentions in employing an Indigenous research assistant:

How will this research assistant be found and what will the selection criteria be? Their faculty area or their Indigenous background? …Will there be opportunities for the proposed Indigenous research assistant to work ‘alongside’ the researcher and there will be an opportunity for co-authorship of a paper? Are they a researcher or not?

At that point I was still in the process of appointing the research assistant. The questions that the ethics committee asked were ones that I had already thought through—yes, they would be a co-researcher and co-author—but I realised that I had not made these things clear in the application. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Student Support Coordinator at the university had sent out the position description and selection criteria to honours, Master’s and HDR students. From this process, I received an expression of interest from Matt Benton, who was then a Master’s student at the university. As a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation and first in his family to attend university, Matt was a welcome and essential addition to the project team.

The experience of preparing the ethics application and receiving and responding to feedback from the committee helped me realise the importance of ethics committees in challenging researchers to make sure that they have fully considered and explained their approach to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research and in ensuring researchers follow the appropriate practices (e.g. AIATSIS, 2020; NHMRC, 2018).

Gulwanyang

Amani had obviously thought through my role on her research project. There was shared power in decision making and allowance of my own agency to determine how I structured and approached the tasks at hand. Being able to co-author the research and be acknowledged for my role in the research gave me much appreciation for her and how willing she was to share power. Amani listened to me thoughtfully and respectfully, even when I suggested we better consider power positioning within the language we were using in the write up of the research. This was something I had not experienced before to this degree when working so closely with someone attached to the academy. There was no push back, just genuine compassion and understanding of what it was I was articulating. I did not have to fight to be heard or respected. This is how it should be.

Amani

When it came time to conduct the focus groups—two with Indigenous students and two with non-Indigenous students—Matt and I discussed how these would run. We decided that Matt would run the focus groups with Indigenous students, with me in attendance, but sitting back and just listening and learning. One of the main things I noticed was the way Matt connected with the focus group participants by starting with connections to country (AIATSIS, n.d.). As a student himself, Matt could readily relate to the students’ experiences and could understand the issues raised in ways that I as an outsider (in many ways—non-Indigenous, not a student, not young) could not. When we were writing up the findings (Bell & Benton, 2018), Matt was particularly attuned to issues of power, place and Indigenous student empowerment and resistance to the knowledge presented in academia.

Gulwanyang

What Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s work can offer to the non-Indigenous researchers in higher education working with different groups of people is to think critically about power, place and space. In our cultures if you do not have a bloodline or law connection to countries, you don’t get speaking rights for the lands, peoples or cultures. Often you will be afforded sitting rights if you have lived there for some time, but the final stop when it comes to governance sits with those that have the bloodline or law connection. This is despite how much you may have invested in that area, those peoples, that community or how entitled you feel to speak in the space. Much can be learnt from Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, and much of this relates back to being able to conduct critical enquiry within yourself and act with humility.

Amani

Today the critical theory reading group met to discuss Smith’s introductory chapter (2012). We sat in a seminar room in the Education building, the desks a bit awkwardly crammed together to make a rectangle. I always feel a bit awestruck by this group and how au fait they are with discussing theory. I still have so much to learn—the downside of having a background in science rather than the humanities! Below I present some fragments of our conversation, as a kind of poem:

  • Another epistemology is possible

  • Shut up and listen and learn

  • Feel the intense grief

  • of colonisation

  • The world before postcoloniality

  • A time when we talked in different ways

  • Remember that there have been other worlds before

  • and other worlds in parallel to this

  • Remember…

  • Like hearing echoes of many different conversations

  • Be careful

  • Be critical

  • Be aware of the way you think

  • A call, a reminder

  • An invitation

  • A manifesto

Amani

I emailed the abstract of this chapter to Remy and Suzanne, the co-editors of this book, for their feedback. Remy replied: ‘I was just listening to this precise Kendrick Lamar song on the way to work today’. For those not familiar with the song HUMBLE, the chorus’ repeated refrain is ‘Be humble/Sit down’ (Lamar et al., 2017). It is a catchy song, with a minimal yet insistent and dissonant keyboard riff. The song is not without issues (see, e.g. Rosewarne’s, 2017, article about its ‘false feminism’), but I chose to add the lyric to this chapter’s title to express one of the ways that working with Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s ideas makes me feel.

I have found cultural humility to be a useful concept. First arising in the health professions as a process in which ‘individuals continually engage in self-reflection and self-critique as lifelong learners and reflective practitioners’ (Tervalon & Murray-Garcia, 1998, p. 118), cultural humility has since been adopted within higher education (Nomikoudis & Starr, 2016), though it has long been practiced by Indigenous peoples. Elder Roy Bear Chief (Blackfoot, Siksika Nation) explains that:

We all need two-eyed seeing or we are stuck in our own perspective—this is beyond Indigenous/non-Indigenous ways—this is not about polarity, but rather about respect, humility, wisdom and responsibility… We need to respect the traditional lands where we are living, working and raising our families. How do we sit in humility with traditional knowledge holders to develop understanding? (Kennedy et al., 2022, p. 432)

I have also found it heartening to see the flourishing of Indigenous scholars—there is a wealth of knowledge and guidance now available on many topics, including how best to decolonise libraries (Sentance, 2018; University of Sydney, 2022), learn about Indigenous astronomy (Noon & De Napoli, 2022), find a ‘third space’ in architecture (Mossman, 2021) and make university spaces genuinely inclusive (Smith et al., 2021)—to name just a few. Non-Indigenous academics need to make time to read, engage with and cite these valuable resources; this is a lifelong journey of learning.

Amani

This year I have had the opportunity to work with Gulwanyang on a research project. Drawing on my earlier experiences of working with Matt, I knew it was so important to engage an Indigenous researcher on this new project, which was exploring the experiences of students from diverse backgrounds undertaking online placements (Bell et al., 2021). Gulwanyang brought such a depth of wisdom to the research. She was excellent at relating with the students she interviewed and at interpreting the findings. I have learned so much from Gulwanyang, from listening to her during our many Zoom meetings—of being on country, of her work in education, of her much deeper understanding of our state’s flooding disasters. There is a profound connection to country, culture and language that I am in awe of—sit down, be humble.

Our Suggestions

We conclude with a summary of our suggestions for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers. For non-Indigenous researchers—engage with, cite, co-author, hire and mentor Indigenous scholars. It’s not enough to leave the door open for Indigenous researchers to walk through: turn around, offer a hand back and lead from the side or behind. Think about the accessibility of your research and who it benefits. Think critically about your place, your proximity to the knowledges, to the topic that you are working with. Think critically about power positioning and how you can reduce this to create safe spaces. And most of all, sit down, be humble, listen and learn. Stay with the difficulty.

Indigenous researchers, show up in all your Blackness, all your glory, be unapologetic in the value you add to each and every space within the academy. Claim it as your space, demand your safety and lean on your fellow First Nations scholars. We have been researchers since the dawn of time, it is in our blood memory, it is who we are and we excel in it. We have the accumulated knowledge of thousands of ancestors that came before us and that is far less than what the academy currently has. For too long our voices have been left out, and they have some catching up to do. It is our time, and we have far too much to offer not to be here.