ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores her qualitative research on the performative power of vocality which has been significantly informed by the project “Honoring Cultural Diversity through Collective Vocal Practice,” funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Indigenous epistemologies therefore mandate establishing respectful relations of reciprocity with non-human agents, and Cree scholar Shawn Wilson, who foregrounds the agency of knowledge, states in his book Research Is Ceremony that: “If research doesn’t change you as a person, then you haven’t done it right”. Indigenous scholars who critically engage with current academic debates about materialism and posthumanism are opening up possibilities for much-needed cross-cultural dialogue. The Indigenous ethical principles of relationality, reciprocity, and responsibility bind human and other/more-than-human agents to each other through a performative ethics of reciprocity that participates in, and is accountable to, what Wilson describes as a continuous process of co-creation.
