ABSTRACT
Before going further, we would like to address two caveats. First, we are not interested in drawing battle lines between Western and Indigenous frameworks, but rather offer “paradigm proliferation” (Lather, 2006) as a strategy for creatively integrating Western and Indigenous paradigms in producing place-specific constructs, methods, and theories (Chilisa, 2012). Indeed, the authors of this chapter reflect this creative integration of paradigms. Moss is a white settler scholar well versed in Western research paradigms, while Michael is an Indigenous scholar, who has spent his career working to reclaim and integrate Cree knowledge systems into an institutional context that could, at best, be described as “chilly” to such perspectives (see Hart, 2009, 2010). Despite working together on this chapter and other
projects, it is crucial to acknowledge that our relationship is not without power imbalances. This is because, as Cordova suggests, too often Indigenous knowledges and experiences are only considered legitimate as far as they are “granted validity by the European researcher” (Moore et al., 2007, p. 164) and, although we do not have space to speak to this more here, this imbalance is important to keep in mind. Second, we use Indigenous as a term that is “inclusive to all first peoples – unique in [their] cultures – but common in . . . experiences of colonialism” (Wilson, 2008, p. 16). Importantly, we want to avoid sweeping pan-Indigenous assumptions by recognizing the tribally specific differences across Indigenous peoples globally, but we also acknowledge that there are some similarities in worldviews (Chilisa, 2012), as we outline below. With these caveats in mind, we now consider why an Indigenous research paradigm is important to Indigenous physical cultural ecologies, as well as briefly overviewing some of the foundational philosophies of such a paradigm.
