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Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples,
2nd edition
by Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999/2012)
Introduction
Linda Tuhiwai Smith writes the book from two intersecting perspectives: as a
scholar/researcher and as an indigenous and colonized Maori woman; she deliberately privileges
the latter. From the outset, Tuhiwai Smith challenges conventional epistemology/ontology and
Western research methods, suggesting that research has traditionally favored imperialistic ways of
knowing. She asserts that the word research “is probably one of the dirtiest words in the
indigenous world’s vocabulary” (p. 1).
The Introduction lays bare Tuhiwai Smith’s motivations for writing the book, which can be
divided into two primary parts. The first part of the book deconstructs Western scholarship,
sharing indigenous histories and stories of research and being researched. The second part
wrestles with ways indigenous communities might interrupt the political and social systems and
attitudes that perpetuate poor conditions for their own people. Tuhiwai Smith suggests that
indigenous peoples have acquiesced to imperial definitions too long, but she hopes to re-define
marginalized people and places as “spaces of resistance and hope” (4). The second part of the
book also examines approaches researchers might use that are more “respectful, ethical,
sympathetic, and useful” (p. 9).
Part One
Chapter 1: Imperialism, History, Writing and Theory
The modern indigenous experience is framed by imperialism. Literary scholars had already
been articulating well the effects of colonialism on language, culture, landscape, and story, but
when Tuhiwai Smith composed the first edition of Decolonizing Methodologies in 1999, she felt
imperialism, though disrupted in literature, was continuing to hurt indigenous peoples elsewhere.
The talk of the colonizers among the colonized, she writes, infiltrated every aspect of colonized
cultures, from politics to humor, but imperialism’s influence persisted even among its critics.
Chapter 1 contextualizes four common (but often invisible) ways the ideas of indigenous peoples
are expressed: imperialism, history, writing, and theory. Tuhiwai Smith chose these four concepts
because they tend to be the most problematic for indigenous peoples and they underpin the
practices of researchers working with indigenous cultures. She aims to bring the underlying
assumptions and motivations of researchers to the fore.
Imperialism
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Christopher Columbus isn’t the first or only figure, but he is the most prominent to
represent an imperial “legacy of suffering and destruction” (p. 21). In imperial literature, explorers
and conquerors are celebrated as heroes. Indigenous peoples, however, record a different
experience. The explorer James Cook, for example, is known among indigenous Pacific Islanders
for bringing disease, capitalism, Christianity, predatory individualism and colonizing settlers into
the South Pacific and into a culture better off without the military, imperial administrators, and
missionaries Cook’s “discovery” brought to the islands. Privileging and valorizing explorers
dismisses the dehumanizing effects of conquest.
Imperialism is used in at least four ways: as economic expansion; as subjecation of ‘other’;
as an idea or spirit with various forms of realization; and as a discursive field of knowledge (p.22).
History
Critiquing their status as Other, indigenous peoples have in recent decades aimed to
rewrite and reright their position in history, understanding the have been excluded, under-
represented, and/or misrepresented in various historical accounts. In self-determined and
restorative efforts, indigenous peoples are telling and recording their own versions of their stories
with their own ways of naming and knowing. Postmodernism has helped give credence among
non-indigenous researchers to contested histories, a long-held tradition among indigenous
peoples. Still, indigenous histories are held hostage or suspect in a Western system that values a
particular way of history-making and history-telling, so that indigenous histories are demoted to
“oral traditions rather than histories” (p. 34).
Writing
While Tuhiwai Smith acknowledges that many of the ways of knowing—reading, writing,
talking, observing, experimenting—are as valued among indigenous peoples as academics, at least
one Maori writer, Patricia Grace, submits that ‘Books are Dangerous’ because they don’t reinforce
indigenous peoples’ values, they suggest indigenous people don’t exist when they only tell of non-
indigenous peoples; they may include accounts of indigenous peoples that are untrue; and they
may be negative or insensitive to indigenous peoples and values. Tuhiwai Smith supports Grace’s
claims saying that her experience is that she doesn’t recognize her people in the accounts of them
in academic writing.
Writing Theory
“Research adds to, is generated from, creates or broadens our theoretical understandings.
Indigenous peoples have been, in many ways, oppressed by theory” because traditional research
theories have unsympathetically oppressed or distorted the indigenous experience (p. 39).
However, Tuhiwai Smith finds hope in anthropological theories that aim to understand and
validate all experience within a culture, including, for example, farmers and sick people. She sides
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with Kathie Irwin who believes that theoretical tools for understanding indigenous peoples needs
to be developed by the people who understand what it means to be an indigenous person.
Indigenous people must appropriate power over themselves, and “Real power lies with those who
design the tools—it always has” (p. 40).
Chapter 2: Research through Imperial Eyes
Western research privileges empirical and positivist ways of knowing, reducing
understanding to measurable units. From an indigenous perspective, academic research (read:
white, outsider) is more than positivist, often exploitative, and insensitive to different cultural
orientations and values. Academic research is embedded in “highly specialized forms of language”
and “structures of power” (p. 44).
Tuhiwai Smith argues that Western research “draws from an ‘archive’ of knowledge and
systems” that go beyond Western science into a system now called “the West,” which Stuart Hall
says classifies societies into categories; condenses complex images of Other through
representation; makes comparisons through a normative or standard model; and ranks societies
through evaluation criteria. In this way, societies and cultures can be easily coded.
Tuhiwai Smith demonstrates ways that Western language and understanding of language
problematizes translations and interpretations of indigenous language, particularly in
understanding gendered and racial issues. Furthermore, Western concepts of time and space are
significantly different from indigenous concepts, which are often lost in translation (not just
linguistic renaming, but also the material, social, political, and practical [mis]interpretations).
Chapter 3: Colonizing Knowledges
Imperialism isn’t simply a matter of invading peoples and places, conquest also involves
raiding. Much like colonizers might extract raw materials for their own benefit, colonizers also
loot, appropriate, and distribute knowledge for their own benefit. The Enlightenment (aka
modernity) facilitated the search for new knowledges and organized systemic means for
“representing” and “researching” (cataloging) indigenous experience, commodifying knowledge
(p. 62) and giving the colonizers what Edward Said calls “positional superiority” (p. 61).
Indigenous peoples and the places they inhabited were simply thought to be un-
discovered by explorers, as though to be ‘known,’ a thing had to be known by the Western elite
and intellectually reasoned or scientifically classified into being. Indigenous experience, then, was
nothing more than fragmented artifacts that were reported (read: objectified and authored)
according to Western terms and systems. After all, objects of science do not have voices and
therefore can neither contribute to nor contest the scientists’ understanding. Thus, any discovery
observed and catalogued becomes the intellectual property of the researcher, belonging then to
the “cultural archive and body of knowledge of the West” (p. 64). Writing of ethnography, James
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Clifford noted that experience observed is temporal, even susceptible to decay or loss, but
experience recorded, arranged, and archived endures (p. 64), a concept that privileges the
Western archive over lived experience. We house ‘collections’ of indigenous artifacts (whether
stolen, given, or found) in museums, galleries, and libraries, often giving credit to the collector and
usually without sensitivity or attribution to the ‘collected.’
Tuhiwai Smith discusses other ways knowledge is colonized, especially in academic
disciplines where compartmentalization and boundaries prevail despite the inter-connectedness
of disciplines. The intellectual colonized are a special group she deals with, examining the ways
they operate within and between cultural boundaries.
Chapter 4: Research Adventures on Indigenous Lands
Western travelers were often called adventurers according to their own use, but
indigenous peoples observed that travelers were less interested in adventure and more
interested in fulfilling some particular mission (usually religious, scientific, or economic).
However, the retelling seemed quite adventurous, exciting, daring, and even gallant as if to inform
as well as entertain Western audience, supporting, along the way, the notion that white
experience is privileged experience (Tuhiwai Smith points to the romanticized story of Pocahontas
to illustrate this point).
Over time, informal systems for collecting information became more formal and
institutionalized as a way of giving the systems—and those designing and operating them—
authority and influence. And, the more authority and influence travelers and researchers had, the
more they used their data to perpetuate colonizing systems. For example, religious missionaries
reporting home about the horrendous evils they saw, the more funds they could collect to do
God’s work. Worse, the language of good and evil became so embedded in systems (religious,
military, economic, literary, etc.) that we take for granted now the influence of early adventurers.
Tuhiwai Smith acknowledges the varied and sometimes complicated relationship adventurers had
with indigenous peoples, sometimes revered and sometimes reviled by their home countries.
Some researchers “had a deep sympathy towards the Maori people as an ideal while being hostile
towards those Maori who fell short of this construct” (p. 86).
Tuhiwai Smith discusses the influence the explorers Abel Tasman (first to record
observations of Maori; claimed they were bloodthirsty savages) and James Cook (funded by Royal
Society to conduct scientific research). Cook’s crew conducted research, recorded by Joseph
Banks, which imposed and reinforced a sense among her people of ‘the imperial gaze” (p. 83).
While Westerners valued Banks’ vast knowledge, he could only record his findings of what he
didn’t know by comparing it to things he did know. Tuhiwai Smith problematizes the very
definition of knowledge, prompting the reader to consider how one describes what is unfamiliar
except by using the language of the familiar.
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Tuhiwai Smith records the complicated relationship Elsdon Best had with the Maori,
especially the Tuhoe, whom he studied meticulously. Best was a New-Zealand-born colonial official
(working as a land surveyor) whose primary research was conducted in the late 1880s and early
1900s. She discusses his research practices, which were valued by Westeners and sensitive to
indigenous groups. Much of his research is published and his detailed notes are archived, and, as
Tuhiwai Smith notes, Westerners valued the knowledge because they could attribute it to Best, as
though the researcher’s knowledge trumps the knowledge/experience of the researched. On the
other hand, Best himself was generous about admitting his mistakes, open to discussions, and
protective of the subjects of his research. In return, the Maori (for the most part) were patient
with his intense questioning.
Tuhiwai Smith discusses the rhetorical nature of the indigenous ‘problem,’ which often
resulted in colonizers relocating indigenous peoples to reserves or sweeping efforts to acculturate
indigenous peoples to colonial ways.
Chapter 5: Notes from Down Under
Tuhiwai Smith acknowledges that many would say European imperialism is in the past,
having learned lessons from our mistakes, the world is a better place; however, she also
acknowledges that human rights abuses still abound and centers of power still oppress. That isn’t
to say that oppression is never met with resistances—many indigenous people are trying to
reclaim power over themselves and their lands—but the term post-colonialism belies the current
condition for the colonized and falsely suggests colonialism has ended or disappeared.
Decolonization will be—must be—a deliberate, enduring process of divesting colonial power.
Tuhiwai Smith describes the present conditions of her iwi (tribe), a Maori community
inundated with Western influences, especially religious churches and missionaries, American
entertainment and apparel, and multinational customs and corporations. “The geography of
empire has been redrawn” (p. 101). While we have changed the terms—e.g., replaced imperialism
with globalization—the effect on culture is much the same: communities and individuals,
languages, customs, traditions, identities, and local economies—become fragmented and lost.
But indigenous peoples have changed too; they are mobilizing alliances and strategically
reclaiming their rightful position to speak for themselves about themselves, often with new
language that resists colonial terminology. In this, Tuhiwai finds hope, but she is still troubled by
those who fall prey to “the games and machinations of a world they only partly understand” (p.
102).
Tuhiwai Smith cites several indigenous projects that demonstrate imperialism—whatever
we call it—still exists, and local knowledge is more at risk than ever before as governments,
industries, science, and medicine make invisible alternative options until the one they present
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seems the only one to exist. These indigenous ‘indigenous projects’ include taking and patenting
cell-lines, farming umbilical cord blood, commodifying indigenous spirituality, constructing virtual
culture as authentic culture, Americanized food consumption, food dependency, safety
dependency in a world of global terrorism, and more (see pp. 103-107).
For Maori, the period of time when night transitions to day is an important time when the
rituals are performed to ensure a peaceful day; Tuhiwai describes the 500 years since Columbus as
the night, and this period of time we live in now as the important transitioning phase. The rituals
performed now will determine how settled or unsettled the future is.
Part Two
Chapters 1-4 explained why indigenous peoples distrust research and researchers.
Chapter 5 demonstrated a shift from colonizing to decolonizing (rather than post-colonizing)
practices among indigenous peoples. The following chapters focus on developments in research
that have been conceived and carried out by indigenous researchers working among indigenous
communities, research that privileges indigenous concerns, practices, and participation.
Chapter 6: The Indigenous Peoples’ Project: Setting a New Agenda
The indigenous peoples’ project recognizes the primary focus of indigenous peoples for the last
500 years has been survival, both physical and cultural. But recent movements have
prompted/promoted efforts to decolonize. This chapter discusses two aspects of this project: the
social movement of the 1960s and the new agenda that includes indigenous research concerns.
The Maori social movement of the 1960s and ‘70s was primarily led by the younger
generation resisting and challenging the dominant hegemony, which began underground and
gained attention across “multiple sites of education, health, development, government policy and
of the non-indigenous society generally” (p. 113). Tuhiwai Smith cites several dates and events of
particular significance in the social uprising, noting that while protests are important for change,
they need to parallel the advancement of initiatives and cultural revitalization projects. Australian
Aborigines, for example, didn’t gain landowning and voting rights until the late 1960s, which
required consistent and severe direct action. Protests for indigenous peoples’ rights were taking
place across the globe: Spain, Norway, Moddle East, Africa, the Americas, India, Asia, and the
Pacific. This global movement provided a shared experience of sorts across cultures, an
international language of common concern, which gave impetus to “revitalization and
reformulation of culture and tradition; an increased participation in and articulate rejection of
Western institutions; and a focus on strategic relations and alliances with non-indigenous groups”
(p. 114). Social and constitutional changes cannot occur without indigenous alliances and non-
indigenous supporters.
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The themes that emerged during the social movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s “constitute an
agenda for action” (p. 120). The decolonizing agenda must pay attention to its “processes,
approaches and methodologies, […] critical elements of a strategic research agenda” (p. 120).
Tuhiwai charts an example of an indigenous research agenda using oceanic tides—a life-giving
force in Maori culture—as a metaphor. The four major tides are survival, recovery, development,
and self-determination. The other terms describe distinct approaches and goals of an indigenous
peoples research project/program (see Fig. 6.1, p. 121). While research as traditionally been
disempowering for indigenous peoples, a new self-determined agenda will make research
empowering.
Borrowing from Kaupapa Maori practices, Tuhiwai Smith offers an ethical code of conduct for
indigenous research, translated: respect people; present yourself face-to-face; look, listen, speak;
share and host generously; be cautious; don’t trample over the mana of people; don’t flaunt your
knowledge.
Chapter 7: Articulating an Indigenous Research Agenda
Research is highly institutionalized, so it’s difficult to articulate a large-scale decolonizing agenda
let alone execute it. Simply put, self-determination requires indigenous peoples’ active
participation.
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Research among indigenous peoples is often called ‘projects’ for two reasons: first, ‘research’ is a
dirty word with a dirty history, and second, ‘research’ connotes scholarly expertise, but ‘projects’
is more vernacular, inviting contribution of knowledge at a variety of levels, which is a core tenant
of an indigenous worldview (what Westerners call collaborative research, Maori call ‘Kaupapa
Maori or Maori-centered research).
The indigenous research agenda is advanced in two ways: 1) community action projects and local
initiatives; and 2) gaining space for indigenous research/studies in institutions. Tuhiwai shares
some examples of ‘toxic’ experiences in the academy, but also shares successful indigenous
research that can be modeled. Done well, these two approaches are complementary rather than
contemptuous. While counter-intuitive to turn to institutions for decolonizing efforts, many in the
academy are proven sympathetic and resourceful allies.
Tuhiwai Smith offers several examples of successful approaches to community projects and
academic research, noting that processes should enable, heal, educate, be self-determining, and
be informed by and respect the community. “This is a significant challenge across the globe in
terms of development as so many communities are held hostage to expert research from the West
and to models of development that negate local and indigenous knowledge” (p. 131).
Tuhiwai Smith distinguishes between insider and outsider research and offers sound advice to
‘insiders’ doing research projects as a community member: build research-based support systems,
define clear research goals, define ‘lines of relating,’ define closure, know when it’s best for the
project to say yes and no, be ethical and critical, don’t assume personal experience is
representative, don’t take for granted views of the community, and situate research in the broader
indigenous agenda. She offers her own experience as a Maori mother and language revitalization
advocate researching Maori mothers and children who had formed a ‘language nest’ (see pp. 139-
140).
Chapter 8: Twenty-five Indigenous Projects
The struggle for indigenous peoples to reclaim their cultures is one that requires a strategic and
ambitious research program, made of distinct projects with common goals. Chapter 7 briefly
discusses 25 such projects—or what we might call methodologies—with themes of survival,
healing, restoration, self-determination, and social justice. The 25 projects aren’t exhaustive by
any means, but together they demonstrate the array of possibilities in and about indigenous
research. The 25 projects can be isolated, paired, or combined. Tuhiwai Smith explains the
purpose and possible path(s) for each approach.
While a summary cannot get into each project, their names alone are quite telling: Claiming;
Testimonies; Story telling; Celebrating survival—survivance; Remembering; Indigenizing and
indigenist processes; Intervening; Revitalizing and regenerating; Connecting; Reading; Writing and
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theory making; Representing; Gendering; Envisioning; Reframing; Restoring; Returning;
Democratizing and indigenist governance; Networking; Naming; Protecting; Creating; Negotiating;
Discovering the beauty of our knowledge; and Sharing.
Tuhiwai Smith writes of the 25 projects (methodologies), “The naming of the projects listed in this
chapter was deliberate. I hope the message it gives to communities is that they have issues that
matter, and processes and methodologies that can work for them” (p. 163).
Chapter 9: Responding to the Imperatives of an Indigenous Agenda: A Case Study of Maori
Chapters 9 and 10 present a case study in indigenous research, bringing together the research
concerns and approaches raised in previous chapters. The case also represents the shift from
Maori as victim or object of research to Maori as researcher.
This chapter is divided into three distinct parts: 1) examination of the favorable conditions that led
to research involving Maori priorities, namely Western critiques of Western research (e.g. white
feminism and positivism) ; 2) discussion of relationship between Maori research and ways research
is presented as ‘truth,’ with further discussion about alternative Maori claims of knowledge, views
about ‘knowing,’ and assumptions about research as an extension of knowledge; and 3)
exploration of the value and limits of the Western approach to ‘culturally sensitive research’ of
Maori.
Non-indigenous researchers can play important roles in indigenous projects, but boundaries are
important. Indigenous peoples should be involved in key roles, with the non-indigenous research
‘experts’ serving as mentors or assistants. Increasingly, there is demand for indigenous research to
be conducted only by indigenous peoples (earlier in the book, Tuhiwai Smtih discussed a Maori
movement to have 500 Maori earn PhDs in 5 years, an ambitious goal they achieved).
Chapter 10: Towards Developing Indigenous Methodologies: Kaupapa Maori Research
Research is implicated in the dehumanization of Maori, so what happens when Maori become
researchers? Their efforts are threefold: 1) they have had to convince Maori of the value of some
research in a cultural temptation to reject all research; 2) to convince disparate institutions for the
need to include Maori priorities and involvement in research; and 3) develop indigenous
methodologies that account for without limiting the legacies and possibilities of research (now
referred to as Kaupapa Maori research or Maori-centered research). The concept of Kaupapa
Maori is a far-reaching concept in Maori, of which research is only one aspect.
Borrowing from Graham Smith, who writes about Kaupapa Maori initiatives, Tuhiwai Smith offers
four guiding principles of Kaupapa Maori research, saying it 1) is related to ‘being Maori’; 2) is
connected to Maori philosophy and principles; 3) takes for granted the validity and legitimacy of
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Maori, the importance of Maori language and culture; and 4) is concerned with ‘the struggle for
autonomy over our own cultural well-being’” (p. 187).
Kaupapa Maori research shares some of the tenants of other emancipatory and identity-centered
critical approaches, but also has Maori-specific elements that are difficult to translate because
some of the concepts are unique to Maori tradition and culture. For example, whanau is a political
unit, a social unit, a family unit, an organizing principle, a collection of ideas, and a verb meaning
‘to be born’). This concept of whanau one of the foundational aspects of Kaupapa Maori research
unique to Maori culture. The broad view here is that all indigenous cultures have unique aspects
that should come to the fore in decolonizing methodologies.
Tuhiwai Smith sets out eleven specific priorities for a strategic plan for Maori researchers
researching Maori issues (p. 194-195). These include self-critique and reflection, discussions of
ethics, and accountability to and outcomes for Maori.
Chapter 11: Choosing the Margins: The Role of Research in Indigenous Struggles for Social Justice
The struggle for social justice in New Zealand is “simultaneously celebratory and demoralizing,
hopeful and desperate” (p. 198). This chapter follows suit, showing the good, bad, and ugly of
researching the margins. Chapter 11 is divided into two primary sections, first revisiting the
concept of struggle as a tool for decolonization, and then discussing researchers who work in
struggling indigenous communities.
Struggle is often seen as a “blunt tool” that often reinforces hegemony; however, participation in
struggle is a precursor to a raised consciousness. Transformative awareness of struggle cannot
merely be academic, but must come from struggle or solidarity with one who struggles. This
awareness helps people make sense of power relations and find the intersection between the
academy and the community, between theory and mobilization.
Tuhiwai Smith outlines five conditions that frame the struggle for decolonization: 1) conscious
awakening from the slumber of hegemony; 2) reimagining the world and one’s position in it; 3)
understanding of intersecting ideas; 4) resisting and disrupting hegemonic tendencies through
tactical strategies; and 5) understanding institutional structures and power relations (see p. 201).
As African American writer bell hooks notes, many people choose to live in the margins,
understanding that there’s richness there. Many researchers, too, choose the margins as rich sites
of inquiry. “Participatory action research, Kaupapa Maori research, oral histories, critical race
theory, and testimonio” are examples of research methodologies emerging from research at the
margins (p. 205). Researchers who research the margins are often marginalized themselves,
especially in highly contested societies; however, they are often rewarded with more interesting
possibilities. To do “good” research, they must be guided by clear principles and rigid adherence to
indigenous priorities.
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Research expands knowledge, but “research for social justice expands and improves the conditions
for justice; it is an intellectual, cognitive and moral project, often fraught, never complete, but
worthwhile” (p. 215).
Chapter 12: Getting the Story Right, Telling the Story Well: Indigenous Activism, Indigenous
Research
Activists might do research and researchers might be activists, but research and activism are
different activities, so they require different tools and different discourses. However, researchers
and activists can—perhaps must—collaborate to advance indigenous interests. And, of course,
they must collaborate with indigenous peoples. However, many are suspect of change, so not all
indigenous peoples are cooperative in advancing their own interests, which can make
collaboration difficult.
Researchers aiming to decolonize communities forget to decolonize the academy and, in effect,
succumb to or perpetuate the very power structures they aim to dismantle. To overcome this,
researchers can be critical of their own motives, making sure to always align their agenda with the
larger indigenous peoples’ project discussed earlier chapters.
There are no neutral spaces for research or activism—they exist within power structures.
