Indigenous Qualitative Research in the Neoliberal Public Sphere

Everyone needs to attend to Indigenous inquiry methods not just in the current context of neoliberalism, but always and everywhere because Indigenous inquiry methods have resisted 500 years of colonization and oppression. As Sium and Ritskes (2013) noted, decolonization “has been practiced and engaged and theorized in Indigenous communities in ways that have already yielded rich, complex layers of thought” (p. II). It is time to “value the personal as political, to value Indigenous communities as the loci of decolonization theory” (p. II). Storytelling is central to many Indigenous methodologies because the stories of Indigenous peoples centre their research on their communities and ensure that they benefit the community and the people.