Cora Weber-Pillwax

Over the past 10 years, Aboriginal women from a northern Ontario urban community have been gathering to hand drum as a way to revive their culture and support one another. As a member of an Aboriginal women’s hand-drumming circle called the Waabishki Mkwaa (White Bear) Singers, I had a vision of exploring the connection between hand-drumming practices and health promotion, and was the primary researcher for the study described in this article. Adhering to Aboriginal protocols as part of an Indigenous research methodology, I offered traditional tobacco to members of the Waabishki Mkwaa Singers, as an invitation for them to be both co-researchers and participants in the study. In accepting the tobacco, the members agreed to help facilitate the research process, as well as to journal their experiences of the process and of their own hand-drumming practices. Using an Aboriginal Women’s Hand Drumming (AWHD) Circle of Life framework—a framework developed by the co-researchers of the study...

With special acknowledgement to the colloquium presenters and participants who shared their knowledge and expertise, and without whom this would not be possible. The copyright of all formal presentations and slides included in this report remains with the colloquium presenters.

Red  Hope Pedagogy is education for social and political change.  This collection of poems represents an engagement with the Indigenous scholars’ experiences and realities of teaching the truths that need to be told in order for reconciliation to occur.  The writing offers a lens through which the pedagogy of Red Hope is delivered; that very space where transformation occurs, one in which the student and teacher engage in telling the truth regarding the realities of our colonial experiences.  The writing intends to document, in  the expressive format of poetry, the pedagogical experiences of Indigenous scholars as we negotiate the complexities and tensions of teaching the harsh realities of our collective history, and its ongoing  painful legacy.

This paper is the result of coming to know and better understand Indigenous nursing experience in First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities. Using an Indigenous research approach, I (first author) drew from the collective experience of four Indigenous nurse scholars and attended to the question of how Indigenous knowledge manifests itself in the practices of Indigenous nurses and how it can better serve individuals, families, and communities. This research framework centered on Indigenous principles, processes, and practical values as expressed in Indigenous nursing practice. The results were woven from key understandings and meanings of Indigeneity as a way of being. Central to this study was that Indigenous knowledge has always been fundamental to the ways that these Indigenous nurses have undertaken nursing practice, regardless of the systemic and historical barriers they faced in providing healthcare for Indigenous people. The results of this research demonstrated how Indigenou...

My reflections on Participatory Action Research (PAR) have been long and, in many ways, a test of personal endurance in all aspects of my being. In positioning myself as an Indigenous researcher in a world of contemporary academia, however, I need to go back first to my childhood where I lived and learned through an Indigenous research methodology (IRM) or paradigm. It was many years later, after having entered the professional world as a formal educator/teacher, that I ran face first into the concrete realization that my IRM was not effective as a research paradigm when I was engaged in the world of non-Aboriginal mainstream Alberta, Canada. The reasons for this have continued to unfold through the years. In looking back, I see that it was at that moment and with that realization that I was challenged with finding another way to live and work within the institutions of mainstream Canada. It was clear to me that, without a different approach to dealing with the impacts of mainstream...

ABSTRACT Through the voice of a Metis educator, this work addresses the foundations of an Indigenous lifelong education. Lived experiences connect with unfolding personal narrative to demonstrate the ancient flow of Indigenous knowledge, and the continuity and expression of Indigenous being. The narratives implicitly references connections and relationships between people and land as vitally necessary for Indigenous learning and the survival of Indigenous peoples as distinct and whole human individuals and collectives. The concept of ‘blood memory’ is presented as foundational to the narrative and repositions a content that might otherwise align closely with readily accessible and acknowledged renewal within Indigenous education. This work does not speak from within the theoretical canons of education and schooling as these are upheld, adhered to, and promoted by Western intellectual traditions of knowledge. It offers analytical, critical thinking derived from the lived experiences and acquired learning of an Indigenous educator. The narratives demonstrate that lifelong learning is gifted and accepted through intentional individual and collective participation within a flow of knowledge transmission and transformation grounded upon generations of ancestral research in the development, validation, sharing, practice, and renewal of praxes that support everyday living and dying.

The possibility of a defined Indigenous Research Methodology is exciting to indigenous and non-indigenous scholars alike, though probably for different reasons. Present assumptions suggest that such a methodology would determine standards for authenticity of indigenous research, and would enable a more effective critique of research dealing explicitly with indigenous reality. The question of who should participate in the development of an indigenous research methodology is critical since every scholar who has any connection with indigenous research topics or indigenous people will feel directly impacted. Responses to the question will indicate the form or quality of interactions between indigenous and non-indigenous scholars grappling with the political, social, and personal issues that assuredly will arise in any discourse of an indigenous research methodology. Such a concept might be perceived as a threat to existing forms or models of knowledge and knowledge creation. While indig...