ABSTRACT
The authors present what they have learned about relational ethics from working alongside others in their narrative inquiries and from their narrative inquiry with Aboriginal youth and families. In narrative inquiries departures seem an appropriate metaphor for endings, endings that allow them to continue to live out the relational ethics that live at the heart of narrative inquiries, endings that allow them to take up questions around what it means to live in relational ways. The authors draw on the experiences of Vera, Sean, and Jean, experiences that are recreated in part from detailed field texts of the study and, in part, from their shared memories. At the end of a research study, narrative inquirers, as do all researchers, attend to the institutional markers that signify a clear ending. The authors write research reports and articles and books. However, as narrative inquirers, they find themselves in ways that allow them to consider relational ethics as shaping processes of departure.
