Books

Books

• Caroll, Clint. 2015. Roots of Our Renewal : Ethnobotany and Cherokee Environmental Governance. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 

Highlights the complexities for indigenous Americans of governing a state while caring for the environment. Although their forced relocation of the late 1830s had devastating consequences for Cherokee society, the reconstituted Cherokee Nation west of the Mississippi eventually cultivated a special connection to the new land. In Roots of Our Renewal, Clint Carroll explores the interplay between tribal natural resource management programs and governance models that the Cherokee people have developed, showing how modern state forms can articulate alternative ways of interacting with and “governing” the environment.

• Geniusz, Wendy Djinn. 2009. Our Knowledge Is Not Primitive : Decolonizing Botanical Anishinaabe Teachings. 1st ed. Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press.

Traditional Anishinaabe (Ojibwe or Chippewa) knowledge, like the knowledge systems of indigenous peoples around the world, has long been collected and presented by researchers who were not a part of the culture they observed. The result is a colonized version of the knowledge, one that is distorted and trivialized by an ill-suited Eurocentric paradigm of scientific investigation and classification. In Our Knowledge Is Not Primitive, Wendy Makoons Geniusz contrasts the way in which Anishinaabe botanical knowledge is presented in the academic record with how it is preserved in Anishinaabe culture. In doing so she seeks to open a dialogue between the two communities to discuss methods for decolonizing existing texts and to develop innovative approaches for conducting more culturally meaningful research in the future.

• Lambert, Lorelei A. 2014. Research for Indigenous Survival : Indigenous Research Methodologies in the Behavioral Sciences. Pablo, Montana: Salish Kootenai College Press.

Members of four indigenous communities speak about what they expect from researchers who come into their communities. Their voices and stories provide a conceptual framework for non-indigenous researchers who anticipate doing research with indigenous peoples in the social, behavioral, or environmental sciences. This conceptual framework created by indigenous stories similarly provides a framework for hope and empowerment as indigenous communities endeavor to pass on their values and stories to future generations.

• Nicholas, G.P. (editor). 2010.  Being and Becoming Indigenous Archaeologists. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA.   http://www.lcoastpress.com/book.php?id=277

What does being an archaeologist mean to Indigenous persons? How and why do some become archaeologists? What has led them down a path to what some in their communities have labeled a colonialist venture? What were are the challenges they have faced, and the motivations that have allowed them to succeed? How have they managed to balance traditional values and worldview with Western modes of inquiry? And how are their contributions broadening the scope of archaeology? Indigenous archaeologists have the often awkward role of trying to serves as spokespeople both for their home community and for the scientific community of archaeologists. This volume tells the stories—in their own words-- of 37 indigenous archaeologists from six continents, how they became archaeologists, and how their dual role affects their relationships with their community and their professional colleagues. Sponsored by the World Archaeological Congress

• Ross, Anne, Kathleen Pickering, Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, Henry D. Delcore, and Richard Sherman. 2011. Indigenous Peoples and the Collaborative Stewardship of Nature : Knowledge Binds and Institutional Conflicts. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

Involving Indigenous peoples and traditional knowledge into natural resource management produces more equitable and successful outcomes. Unfortunately, argue Anne Ross and co-authors, even many “progressive” methods fail to produce truly equal partnerships. This book offers a comprehensive and global overview of the theoretical, methodological, and practical dimensions of co-management. The authors critically evaluate the range of management options that claim to have integrated Indigenous peoples and knowledge, and then outline an innovative, alternative model of co-management, the Indigenous Stewardship Model. They provide detailed case studies and concrete details for application in a variety of contexts. Broad in coverage and uniting robust theoretical insights with applied detail, this book is ideal for scholars and students as well as for professionals in resource management and policy.

• Wilson, Shawn. 2008. Research Is Ceremony : Indigenous Research Methods. Black Point, N.S.: Fernwood Pub.

Indigenous researchers are knowledge seekers who work to progress Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing in a modern and constantly evolving context. This book describes a research paradigm shared by Indigenous scholars in Canada and Australia, and demonstrates how this paradigm can be put into practice. Relationships don't just shape Indigenous reality, they are our reality. Indigenous researchers develop relationships with ideas in order to achieve enlightenment in the ceremony that is Indigenous research. Indigenous research is the ceremony of maintaining accountability to these relationships. For researchers to be accountable to all our relations, we must make careful choices in our selection of topics, methods of data collection, forms of analysis and finally in the way we present information. I'm an Opaskwayak Cree from northern Manitoba currently living in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales, Australia. I'm also a father of three boys, a researcher, son, uncle, teacher, world traveller, knowledge keeper and knowledge seeker. As an educated Indian, I've spent much of my life straddling the Indigenous and academic worlds. Most of my time these days is spent teaching other Indigenous knowledge seekers (and my kids) how to accomplish this balancing act while still keeping both feet on the ground.

• de Sousa Santos, B., 2015. Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. Routledge. 

This book explores the concept of 'cognitive injustice': the failure to recognise the different ways of knowing by which people across the globe run their lives and provide meaning to their existence. Boaventura de Sousa Santos shows why global social justice is not possible without global cognitive justice. Santos argues that Western domination has profoundly marginalised knowledge and wisdom that had been in existence in the global South. She contends that today it is imperative to recover and valorize the epistemological diversity of the world. Epistemologies of the South outlines a new kind of bottom-up cosmopolitanism, in which conviviality, solidarity and life triumph against the logic of market-ridden greed and individualism.

• Brown, L. (2015) Research as REsistance: Revisiting Critical, Indigenous, and Anti-Oppressive Approaches

"Intended as a senior undergraduate and graduate text, Research As Resistance brings together the theory and practice of critical, Indigenous, and anti-oppressive approaches to social science research. The book pursues some of the ontological and epistemological considerations involved in such research, including theorizing the self of the researcher and offers exemplars across a range of methodologies, including institutional ethnography, narrative autobiography, storytelling, and participatory action research. This is a unique text in that it describes both theoretical foundations and practical applications, and because all of the featured researchers occupy marginalized locations. It is also firmly anchored in the Canadian context.​​​​​​

• Connell, R.W. (2007) Southern Theory: Social Science and the Global Dynamics of Knowledge

Beginning with an examination of the hidden assumptions of modern general theory, Southern Theory looks to the 'southern' social experience and the theories that have emerged from Australia, Indigenous peoples, Latin America, India, Africa, Islam and other post-colonial societies, as sources of important and vital contributions to world social science. These myriad theories offer valuable perspectives so crucial to the application of social theory in the contemporary world, having the power to transform the influence of the metropolitan hegemony on social thought by mutual regard and interaction.

Southern Theory is a major new work in social theory, drawing on anthropology, history, psychology, philosophy, economics and cultural studies, with wide-ranging implications for the social sciences in the 21st century.

• Chilisa, B. (2012) Indigenous research methodologies 

"Responding to increased emphasis in the classroom and the field on exposing students to diverse epistemologies, methods, and methodologies, Bagele Chilisa has written the first textbook that situates research in a larger, historical, cultural, and global context. With case studies from around the world, the book demonstrates the specific methodologies that are commensurate with the transformative paradigm of research and the historical and cultural traditions of third-world and indigenous peoples."

• Smith, L.T. (2012) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous People​​​​​​

To the colonized, the term 'research' is conflated with European colonialism; the ways in which academic research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory. This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth.' Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being."

• Kovach, M.E. (2010). Indigenous Methodologies 

"What are Indigenous research methodologies, and how do they unfold? Indigenous methodologies flow from tribal knowledge, and while they are allied with several western qualitative approaches, they remain distinct. These are the focal considerations of Margaret Kovach's study, which offers guidance to those conducting research in the academy using Indigenous methodologies."

• Lambert, L. (2014) Research for Indigenous Survival: Indigenous Research Methodologies in the Behavioral Sciences

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for the Salish Kootenai College Press Lori Lambert (Mi'kmaq/Abenaki) examines the problems that researchers encounter when adjusting research methodologies in the behavioral sciences to Native values and tribal community life. In addition to surveying the literature with an emphasis on Native authors, she has also interviewed a sampling of indigenous people in Australia, northern Canada, and Montana's Flathead Indian Reservation.

Members of four indigenous communities speak about what they expect from researchers who come into their communities. Their voices and stories provide a conceptual framework for non-indigenous researchers who anticipate doing research with indigenous peoples in the social, behavioral, or environmental sciences. This conceptual framework created by indigenous stories similarly provides a framework for hope and empowerment as indigenous communities endeavor to pass on their values and stories to future generations.

• Posey, D. A., and G. Dutfield. 1996. Beyond Intellectual Property: Toward Traditional Resource Rights for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. International Development Research Centre, Ottawa.

For indigenous peoples’ groups, activists and policymakers in intellectual property, and all those concerned with the preservation of our planet’s biological and cultural diversity, Beyond Intellectual Property provides an invaluable and eye-opening look into one of the most provocative and explosive issues of this century and likely the next: the patenting of life

• Walter, M. & Anderson, C. (2013) Indigenous Statistics: A quantitative Research Methodology

​​​​​​​In the first book ever published on Indigenous quantitative methodologies, Maggie Walter and Chris Andersen open up a major new approach to research across the disciplines and applied fields. While qualitative methods have been rigorously critiqued and reformulated, the population statistics relied on by virtually all research on Indigenous peoples continue to be taken for granted as straightforward, transparent numbers. This book dismantles that persistent positivism with a forceful critique, then fills the void with a new paradigm for Indigenous quantitative methods, using concrete examples of research projects from First World Indigenous peoples in the United States, Australia, and Canada. Concise and accessible, it is an ideal supplementary text as well as a core component of the methodological toolkit for anyone conducting Indigenous research or using Indigenous population statistics

• David-Chavez, D.M., and M.C. Gavin. 2018. A global assessment of Indigenous community engagement in climate research. Environmental Research Letters 13:123005. DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/aaf300
• Golan, J., S. Athayde, E. A. Olson, and A. McAlvay. 2019. Intellectual Property Rights and Ethnobiology: An Update on Posey’s Call to Action. Journal of Ethnobiology 39:90–109. DOI:10.2993/0278-0771-39.1.90
• Kukutai, T. and J. Taylor, 2016. Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Toward an Agenda. Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, no. 38. Australian National University.
• Reo, N.J. 2019. Inawendiwin and Relational Accountability in Anishnaabeg Studies: The Crux of the Biscuit. Journal of Ethnobiology 39:65–75. DOI:10.2993/0278-0771-39.1.65
• Tengö, M., E.S. Brondizio, T. Elmqvist, P. Malmer, and M. Spierenburg. 2014. Connecting diverse knowledge systems for enhanced ecosystem governance: The multiple evidence base approach. Ambio 43:579–591. DOI:10.1007/s13280-014-0501-3
• Tuhiwai Smith, L. 2012. Decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. 2nd edition. Zed Books, London.
• Wheeler, H.C., F. Danielsen, M. Fidel, V. Hausner, T. Horstkotte, et al. 2020. The need for transformative changes in the use of Indigenous knowledge along with science for environmental decision-making in the Arctic. People and Nature 2, 544-556. DOI: 10.1002/pan3.10131
• Woodward, E., Hill, R., Harkness, P. and R. Archer (Eds) 2020. Our Knowledge Our Way in Caring for Country: Indigenous-led Approaches to Strengthening and Sharing our Knowledge for Land and Sea Management. Best Practice Guidelines from Australian experiences. NAILSMA and CSIRO.