Decolonizing Methodologies
Research and Indigenous Peoples

Linda Tuhiwai Smith

‘No budding researcher should be allowed to leave the academy without reading this book.’ Bob Morgan, Centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, University of Technology, Sydney

From the vantage point of the colonized, the term ‘research’ is inextricably linked with European colonialism: the way in which scientific research has been implicated in the worst excesses of imperialism remains a powerful remembered history for many of the world’s colonised peoples. Here, an indigenous researcher issues a clarion call for the decolonisation of research methods.

In the first part of this critically acclaimed book, the author critically examines the historical and philosophical base of Western research. Extending the work of Foucault, she explores the intersections of imperialism, knowledge and research. The second part meets an urgent demand: people who are carrying out their own research projects need literature that validates their frustrations in dealing with various Western paradigms. In setting an agenda for planning and implementing indigenous research, the author shows how such programmes are part of the wider project of reclaiming control over indigenous ways of knowing and being.

Contents

Introduction
1 Imperialism, History, Writing and Theory
2 Research through Imperial Eyes
3 Colonizing Knowledges
4 Research Adventures on Indigenous Lands
5 Notes from Down Under
6 The Indigenous People’s Project: Setting a New Agenda
7 Articulating an Indigenous Research Agenda
8 Twenty-five Indigenous Projects
9 Responding to the Imperatives of an Indigenous Agenda: A case study of Maori
10 Towards Developing Indigenous Methodologies
Conclusion: A personal journey

Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith is Pro Vice-Chancellor Maori at the University of Waikato. Previously she held a chair in Education at the University of Auckland and was director of the National Institute of Research Excellence in Maori Development and Advancement at the university.

Book details

Postcolonial studies, Research methodologies
ISBN 1 877133 67 1, 978 1 877133 67 1, paperback, 215 x 135 mm, 208 pages, $39.95
Co-published with Zed Books Ltd: 1999
Australasian rights only

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