Partnering in place: developing place-based understandings of reciprocal community research

Research Question: What is the role of place in an Indigenous community research partnership?

Christina Morgan

Theoretical Frame

  • Indigenous ways of knowing and being of place

    Cajete and Joanne Archibald

  • Place and power

    Vine Deloria

  • Sense of place

    Basso

Concepts

  • Reciprocal action

    Cajete and Joanne Archibald

  • Personality

    Vine Deloria

  • Sense of place

    Basso

Methodology

  • Sovereignty

    Bryan Brayboy & CDDR

  • Healing

    epistemologies

  • Whole stories

    Program Director

Data Analysis

  • line by line coding

    Saldaña

  • ethnographic fieldnote writing

    Emerson, Fretz and Shaw

  • sense of place

    resonance of place

Movements of resonance in reciprocal partnering-resonance of place-community’s sense of place 

place gives the community their identity. Identity is defined as gifts to the universe because the knowledge and stories that Indigenous peoples inherit from place teach “powerful ways of thought” (Interview, 09/2024), and share uniqueness and vibrancy. Place extends their storytelling beyond oral tradition, such as through clothing, home-building, dancing, song, and prayer. In this sense, where identity is understood as a gift, a community’s sense of place conveys meaning and invokes reciprocal action. Thus, becoming aware of a community’s sense of place helps researchers locate the community's stature of place.

themes of respect and reciprocity permeated our engagement with this place…  The process enacted with place by all those involved, humans and nature, showcased characteristics of reciprocity to learn from. There was no race to the top of the mountain; instead, the youth assisted the young ones on the climb up, taking turns to rest on a rock, respecting the animals, and slowly and carefully capturing scans of the rock art, despite it being tainted with bullet holes and marks. Reciprocity means respecting place as one’s home, helping each other progress to destinations, and being there for one another like family.

Connect to places significant to communities

Fieldnotes observing youth, families, land stewards, and educators at a Workshop

Role of place described by the Program Director interview

 honor places and communities throughout the research process, not just consider what the community and their places will gain from the research once it is completed. To hold ourselves accountable to this rhythm that lives in the timelines of ancestors and the future we cultivate presently, we adopt our partner's way of being that understands time not as good or bad but as a season of place

Honoring the season of place

Collective data to gather the community’s sense of time and incorporate it into the research process

Place mediates our relationship with time, shaping when and how we enact appropriate reciprocal actions and where we pause to savor time, building synergistic energy that helps us connect with the community and the land itself and ultimately prepares us for the next season. 

Educator and Program Director interviews describing the time it takes to trust a research parnter an what the process feels like 

Program Director marks the research as a relative

“…the time that we spent getting to know each other and seeing the work of reciprocity of the give and take of the time spent with our families. That's what I needed to see to really, really see..okay, this is a relative, and I don't have to worry. That was something that was huge for me.” (Native program director, Interview 09/2024)

Program Director spotting relatives

“Our relatives are the trees, our relatives are the rivers, our relatives are brothers and sisters, we have male and female mountains…male and female rain, snow. All these thoughts of these sacred elements and being able to come from a culture that truly still is connected to them, that's profound. That is something I tell my students---we are eons ahead of dominant society.” (Native program director, 09/2024 Interview) 


Educator describes another workshop located by the side of the road and thier experience connecting to ancestral relatives through place

This recount of a place we experienced for the first time implicates healing. As seen, where places that initially appear to have little meaning, hence "land in the middle of nowhere", and then embracing those places as a relative leads us to engage with places more broadly and to holistically understand knowledge and stories with a personality that responsibly respects the particular and powerful relationships existing in places. While the Native educator, as shared in the section above, becomes more connected to their culture, nature, and ancestors, we find that the role of place is also a reciprocal act of healing.

Understanding place as a relative

Discussion

  • Pivoting from haunting stories to resilient stories

    Ginwright

  • Haunting vs. resilient

    Tachine and Niccolazzo

  • Healing in research