decolonizing methodologies research and indigenous peoples

She sketches the history of `the Western gaze on the Other' from Hegel to Foucault. Tuhiwai Smith argues that colonialism is far from being a 'finished business.' `Decolonization' is a euphemism that only describes the formal handing over of the instruments of government, when in reality it must be a long-term process involving the cultural, linguistic and psychological divesting of colonial parameters. Imperialism also dominated the mental universe of the colonized and has continued to do so long after independence was gained. The title of the book echoes Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's 1986 'Decolonizing the Mind.' It builds on the Kenyan writer's thesis that colonialism did more than impose control over peoples' lands and resources through military conquest and political dictatorship. As she indicates, 'The book is written primarily to help ourselves.' The reader may think that this is an `anti-research book on research,' but Tuhiwai Smith's main concern is to inspire indigenous peoples as researchers.

The book is fueled by anger in addition to a thorough knowledge of the literature on which rests the Western tradition of classifying and representing the other. An indigenous woman, the daughter of a Maori anthropologist, she grew up in a world in which science and Maori beliefs and practices coexisted. Tuhiwai Smith is an Associate Professor in Education and Director of the International Research Institute for Maori and Indigenous Education at the University of Auckland. The author describes the devastating effects of such research on indigenous peoples and articulates a new Indigenous Research Agenda which aims to replace former Western academic methods.

In 200 pages she presents a cogent critique not only of anthropology, but of the cultural evolution of the entire Western concept of research. In this important book, Linda Tuhiwai Smith meets a formidable challenge.

Decolonizing methodologies research and indigenous peoples