What's the big deal about Indigenous Research...

Auckland museum set among reserves and parkland with Auckland city in the background

What's the big deal about Indigenous Research? you might ask. It's really about decolonising our thought processes and allowing for Indigenous world views to be taken into account when discussing, theorising, researching where indigenous communities reside or in relation to.

I remember in my undergraduate days of almost falling asleep in some of my rather 'boring' mundane lectures but when it came to discuss things about culture particularly in anthropology or geography, I woke up and would be really interested in things.

Today, I start my second cohort class for Semester A of teaching in the Certificate of Indigenous Research space with 30+ students and I feel privileged to have this opportunity of not only learning but also teaching the various aspects, principles and objectives of what it means in relation to research and indigenous peoples.

It's also assisted me in considering what I want or need to do in my own research, which as it stands is slowly progressing whilst I ponder on the direction of where to go with this new understanding. What I do know is that I no longer look at education with the same lens that I did when I first graduated from Uni and that's the beauty of still continuing in my studies.

It's interesting to note now that when listening to senior professionals discussing western research worldviews that have always been prevalent and taken for granted as being of high regard that I don't particularly hold that same high regard in that it does put me in a different viewpoint alongside other professionals in understanding things differently now. I won't hold it against them ha ha.

But I will challenge those viewpoints when necessary and ask the questions that need to be asked as those dominant views often need to be challenged and to be accountable for many of the understandings that are quite oppressive to indigenous peoples and to their descendants and that's why Indigenous Research is important to make oppressive ideas transparent so that those views can be challenged and then we can move from those ideals to create creatives solutions for moving forward...