ON TRICKY GROUND Researching the Native in the Age of Uncertainty Linda Tuhiwai Smith

04-Denzin.qxd 2/7/2005 9:28 PM Page 85 4 ON TRICKY GROUND Researching the Native in the Age of Uncertainty Linda Tuhiwai Smith 2 INTRODUCTION epistemological approaches, and challenges to the way research is conducted. The neighbors are In the spaces between research methodologies, misbehaving as well. The pursuit of new scientific ethical principles, institutional regulations, and and technological knowledge, with biomedical human subjects as individuals and as socially research as a specific example, has presented new organized actors and communities is tricky challenges to our understandings of what is scien- ground. The ground is tricky because it is compli- tifically possible and ethically acceptable.The turn cated and changeable, and it is tricky also because back to the modernist and imperialist discourse of it can play tricks on research and researchers. discovery,“hunting, racing, and gathering” across Qualitative researchers generally learn to recognize the globe to map the human genome or curing and negotiate this ground in a number of ways, disease through the new science of genetic engi- such as through their graduate studies,their acqui- neering, has an impact on the work of qualitative sition of deep theoretical and methodological social science researchers. The discourse of understandings, apprenticeships, experiences and discovery speaks through globalization and the practices, conversations with colleagues, peer marketplace of knowledge. “Hunting, racing, and reviews, their teaching of others. The epistemo- gathering” is without doubt about winning. But logical challenges to research—to its paradigms, wait—there is more. Also lurking around the practices, and impacts—play a significant role in corners are countervailing conservative forces that making those spaces richly nuanced in terms of seek to disrupt any agenda of social justice that the diverse interests that occupy such spaces and may form on such tricky ground. These forces at the same time much more dangerous for the have little tolerance for public debate, have little unsuspecting qualitative traveler. For it is not just patience for alternative views, and have no interest the noisy communities of difference “out there” in qualitative richness or complexity. Rather, they in the margins of society who are moving into are nostalgic for a return to a research paradigm the research domain with new methodologies, that, like life in general, should be simple. 2–85 04-Denzin.qxd 2/7/2005 9:28 PM Page 86 86–2–HANDBOOK OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH—CHAPTER 4 It is often at the level of specific communities in In some countries, such as China, there are many the margins of a society that these complex cur- different indigenous groups and languages. In rents intersect and are experienced. Some indige- other places, such as New Zealand, there is one nous communities are examples of groups that indigenous group, known as Mâori, with one have been historically vulnerable to research and common language but multiple ways of defining remain vulnerable in many ways, but also have themselves. been able to resist as a group and to attempt to There are,of course,other definitions of indige- reshape and engage in research around their own nous or native peoples, stemming in part from interests. This chapter applies indigenous per- international agreements and understandings, spectives to examine the intersecting challenges of national laws and regulations, popular discourses, methodologies,ethics,institutions,and communi- and the self-defining identities of the peoples who ties. It is a chapter about arriving at and often have been colonized and oppressed (Burger, 1987; departing from commonly accepted understand- Pritchard,1998;Wilmer,1993).The category of the ings about the relationships between metho- native Other is one that Fanon (1961/1963) and dology, ethics, institutional demands, and the Memmi (1957/1967) have argued is implicated in communities in which we live and with whom we the same category as the settler and the colonizer. research. Rather than a story of how complex the As opposing identities, they constitute each other world is and how powerless we are to change it, as much as they constitute themselves.Rey Chow this chapter is framed within a sense of the possi- (1993) reminds us, however, that the native did ble, of what indigenous communities have strug- exist before the “gaze”of the settler and before the gled for, have tried to assert and have achieved. image of “native” came to be constituted by imperialism, and that the native does have an existence outside and predating the settler/native identity. 2 INDIGENOUS RESEARCH AND Chow (1993) refers to the “fascination” with the THE SPACES FROM WHICH IT SPEAKS native as a “labor with endangered authenticities.” The identity of “the native” is regarded as compli- Indigenous peoples can be defined as the assembly cated,ambiguous,and therefore troubling even for of those who have witnessed, been excluded from, those who live the realities and contradictions of and have survived modernity and imperialism. being native and of being a member of a colonized They are peoples who have experienced the impe- and minority community that still remembers rialism and colonialism of the modern historical other ways of being, of knowing, and of relating to period beginning with the Enlightenment. They the world. What is troubling to the dominant cul- remain culturally distinct, some with their native tural group about the definition of “native” is not languages and belief systems still alive. They are what necessarily troubles the “native” community. minorities in territories and states over which they The desires for “pure,” uncontaminated, and once held sovereignty. Some indigenous peoples do simple definitions of the native by the settler is hold sovereignty, but of such small states that they often a desire to continue to know and define the wield little power over their own lives because they Other, whereas the desires by the native to be self- are subject to the whims and anxieties of large and defining and self-naming can be read as a desire to powerful states. Some indigenous communities be free, to escape definition, to be complicated, to survive outside their traditional lands because they develop and change, and to be regarded as fully were forcibly removed from their lands and con- human. In between such desires are multiple and nections.They carry many names and labels,being shifting identities and hybridities with much more referred to as natives, indigenous, autochthonous, nuanced positions about what constitutes native tribal peoples, or ethnic minorities. Many indige- identities, native communities, and native knowl- nous peoples come together at regional and inter- edge in anti/postcolonial times. There are also national levels to argue for rights and recognition. the not-insignificant matters of disproportionately 04-Denzin.qxd 2/7/2005 9:28 PM Page 87 Smith: Researching the Native Mâori–2–87 high levels of poverty and underdevelopment,high L. T. Smith, 1999). The history of research from levels of sickness and early death from preventable many indigenous perspectives is so deeply illnesses, disproportionate levels of incarceration, embedded in colonization that it has been and other indices of social marginalization experi- regarded as a tool only of colonization and not as enced by most indigenous communities. a potential tool for self-determination and devel- There are some cautionary notes to these defi- opment. For indigenous peoples, research has a nitions, as native communities are not homoge- significance that is embedded in our history as neous,do not agree on the same issues and do not natives under the gaze of Western science and live in splendid isolation from the world. There colonialism. It is framed by indigenous attempts are internal relations of power, as in any society, to escape the penetration and surveillance of that that exclude, marginalize, and silence some while gaze while simultaneously reordering, reconsti- empowering others. Issues of gender, economic tuting, and redefining ourselves as peoples and class, age, language, and religion are also strug- communities in a state of ongoing crisis.Research gled over in contemporary indigenous communi- is a site of contestation not simply at the level ties. There are native indigenous communities of epistemology or methodology but also in its in the developed and in the developing world,and broadest sense as an organized scholarly activity although material conditions even for those who that is deeply connected to power. That resistance live in rich countries are often horrendous,people to research, however, is changing ever so slightly in those countries are still better off than those as more indigenous and minority scholars have in developing countries. There are, however, still engaged in research methodologies and debates many native and indigenous families and com- about research with communities (Bishop, 1998; munities who possess the ancient memories of Cram,Keefe,Ormsby,& Ormsby,1998; Humphery, another way of knowing that informs many of 2000; Pidgeon & Hardy, 2002; Smith, 1985; Worby their contemporary practices. When the founda- & Rigney, 2002). It is also changing as indigenous tions of those memories are disturbed, space communities and nations have mobilized inter- sometimes is created for alternative imaginings to nationally and have engaged with issues related to be voiced, to be sung, and to be heard (again). globalization, education systems, sovereignty,and The genealogy of indigenous approaches to the development of new technologies. research and the fact that they can be reviewed in Indigenous peoples are used to being studied this chapter is important because they have not by outsiders; indeed,many of the basic disciplines simply appeared overnight, nor do they exist—as of knowledge are implicated in studying the Other with other critical research approaches—without and creating expert knowledge of the Other (Helu a politics of support around them or a history of Thaman, 2003; Said, 1978; Minh-ha, 1989; Vidich ideas.

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