From Oceania to North America, indigenous peoples have created storytelling traditions of incredible depth and diversity. The term 'indigenous storywork' has come to encompass the sheer breadth of ways in which indigenous storytelling serves as a historical record, as a form of teaching and learning, and as an expression of indigenous culture and identity. But such traditions have too often been relegated to the realm of myth and legend, recorded as fragmented distortions, or erased altogether. Decolonizing Research brings together indigenous researchers and activists from Canada, Australia and New Zealand to assert the unique value of indigenous storywork as a focus of research, and to develop methodologies that rectify the colonial attitudes inherent in much past and current scholarship. By bringing together their own indigenous perspectives, and by treating indigenous storywork on its own terms, the contributors illuminate valuable new avenues for research, and show how such reworked scholarship can contribute to the movement for indigenous rights and self-determination.
Author
Professor Smith is Pro Vice-Chancellor Maori with responsibilities for Maori development at the University of Waikato as well as Dean of the School of Maori and Pacific Development and a professor of Education and Maori Development. Professor Smith has an academic background in education and research and has a long career as an inter-disciplinary scholar. She is well known for her publications, public speaking and research leadership. Her 1998 book Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples has become a seminal text in indigenous studies. Her other publications canvass a wide range of academic disciplines. She has worked with a number of Maori scholars most notably her husband Professor Graham Hingangaroa Smith. Professor Smith has served on a number of New Zealand's national bodies. She has been President of NZARE the New Zealand Association for Research in Education, a member of the Tertiary Education Advisory Commission, a member of the Health Research Council and Chair of the Maori Health Committee, Chair of the Social Sciences Panel of the Marsden Council and member of the Constitutional Review Panel. She has also been active in establishing Maori educational initiatives from early childhood to higher education, was an inaugural co-Director of the Maori Research Centre of Excellence, Nga Pae o Te Maramatanga, and is currently the Director of the Te Kotahi Research Institute at the University of Waikato. Linda is a daughter, a sister and cousin, a mother and aunt and a grandmother in an extended family.
