Customer Reviews

Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Excellent resource for anyone interested in doing research with Indigenous communities. Very readable, yet academic as well. Particularly helpful for non-Indigenous people who want to do research with Indigenous people - reveals much that will be helpful in treating the whole research project, people, community, etc. with respect and caring. I highly recommend this book for anyone working on a Masters or PhD in American Indian Studies or wanting to work with Native communities in their study.

Shawn Wilson's style of writing and getting across the concepts of the indigenous knowledge paradigm is clear and concise.
As a non-indigenous person, I found this book quite helpful to understand indigenous research concepts and the book is a "shelf-book" that I will continue to use as a reference!

This book is essential if a researcher is conducting research either as an Indigenous or in an Indigenous community, or both. Shawn Wilson has walked the path of building respect and relationships while conducting legitimate research. I also felt that this book tempers general Western European paradigms, and thus would be beneficial to those designing research outside the Indigenous communities also.

I am not quite sure what the purpose of this book is. The author explicitly states that he believes that he no longer needs to justify "indigenous research methods" to the "dominant system". Instead, the book seems devoted to outlining an ideology without explaining why anyone else should believe it. Neither is there any explanation of the advantages that indigenous research methods might bring.

The entire methodolgy, says Shawn Wilson, is based on the idea that "there is no one definite reality but rather different sets of relationships that make up Indigenous ontology" (73). Despite the fact that he realises that this is a controversial statement, he does not justify, defend, or attempt to prove this statement in any way. Indeed, the very fact that he is making a singular pronnouncement about reality (that there are, in reality, multiple realities) betrays his argument.

Even the book's title is misleading. There is not a single research method espoused in the entire book. What are social research methods? Surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc. Shawn Wilson does not introduce any 'new' research methods that could be used as alternatives to these methods offered by what he calls the "dominant system". All he offers is unsubstantiated ad-hoc theorizing.