The indigenous researcher an uncommon breed...

 This weekend I am teaching in my Indigenous Research class and I realise how far I've come from my early days of being in my 20's and having completed my Masters course at Auckland University, I wanted to become a researcher so that I could discover/uncover important information that needed to be known.

I now know that there is certainly a big difference between being a "Western" researcher being schooled in Western research methodologies as opposed to the indigenous researcher who is, what I have written in the graphic, as "an uncommon breed".

If you wanted to know more information then you might have to join my classes and discover what my students have learnt and it's created a big mind shift for me in terms of the way that I now view and consider research.

It has been an amazing privilege to have been able to teach this class and even moreso to have learnt some important principles about indigenous research and in being an indigenous researcher. It's sad to think that the information that I now know needs to be shared alongside practicing mainstream teaching although it most probably won't see light the day as there are so many pressing curriculum units that needs to be taught first in most classrooms yet it could change the face of teaching should the practices be upheld in today's classes.

In reflecting on the research journeys that the students in my class have taken, I feel very privileged as they shared important parts of their lives with me, through their stories, their dreams, their fears and their visions for the future.

It has also made me reflect on my first major research project that took me back to Samoa in my first Masters fieldwork study that has now taken me to write books about the treasures that I learnt back then about indigenous knowledge that was slowly being forgotten as the older generations passed on.

I now know that the indigenous researcher is much needed in classrooms all over in advocating for our younger generations to learn and pass on important indigenous knowledge. They are "uncommon" but are the chosen ones...