ABSTRACT
Music education researchers have long called for the meaningful embedding of non-Western musics in K–12 educational settings (Abril 2013, Akiwowo 1999; Bradley 2006; Goble 2010; Hess 2015; Schippers and Campbell 2012) and for culturally responsive pedagogical practices to support it (Dunbar-Hall 2009; Locke and Prentice 2016; Lum and Marsh 2012). Moreover, in some jurisdictions, current curriculum documents requiring such embedding also promote teaching the distinctive cultural worldviews that inform those musics in order that students can learn the meanings ascribed to them (e.g. British Columbia Provincial Government 2015). Drawing from Wright’s (2014) notion of a fourth sociology of integration, we argue in this chapter that research in the field of music education and its applications of sociological theory must also be informed by the knowledge systems of the specific societies that have produced those musics. Specifically, we demonstrate how a sociology informed by local Indigenous perspectives could make possible a more ethical sociological investigation of the embedding of local Indigenous musics in school settings. We draw upon writings of scholars from several First Nations and use data from a recent federally funded study – in which we examined the embedding of local Indigenous cultural practices in music classes in seven British Columbian communities – to show how terms commonly used in social theories (i.e. society, relationships, reciprocity, identity, agency) are understood differently by many Indigenous peoples, including those in whose territories the study took place (McAllan 2012; Watts 2013). In drawing distinctions between Indigenous and conventional (i.e. Western European) understandings of sociological terminology, it may become possible to develop new, syncretic understandings (Atleo 2011; Butler-McIlwraith 2006) and bi-directional (Akiwowo 1999) terms for use in the fields of both sociology and music education.
