Qualitative Research: An Introduction to Methods and Designs

Summary

According to Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999), “From the vantage point of the colonized … the word ‘research’ … is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world's vocabulary” (p. 1). This is because research invokes, for indigenous communities, past and present incidents of abusive, exploitative research practices. Yet many indigenous scholars, although recognizing the reasons for why indigenous communities remain distrustful of researchers, argue that research can serve beneficial purposes when it is driven by community interests and undertaken with attention paid to the complexity, resilience, contradiction, and self-determination of these communities. For this reason indigenous scholars have been calling for indigenous ...