It is clear that the way to heal society of its violence… and lack of love is to replace the pyramid of domination with the circle of equality and respect. —MANITONQUAT Elder of the Assonet Band of the Wampanoag Nation

Anti-Oppressive Research

Participatory Action Research Aims at 3 types of change

• development of critical consciousness of both researcher and participants
• improvement of the lives of those involved in the research process
• transformation of fundamental societal structures and relationships

Anti-oppressive practices starts with a position of power, and challenges researchers to continually question his or her location in terms of beliefs, values, identity, and power, as well as to identify ways in which he or she perpetuates those power imbalances. This is a highly subjective practice, and one rooted in vulnerability, honesty, and care.

Anti-oppressive research, thus, requires continuous reflexivity on the part of the researcher.

As Rossi Brandotti asserts, “Self-reflexivity is, moreover, not an individual activity, but an interaction process which relies upon a social network of exchanges.”… The imperative for researchers, thus, is to take a critically active stance that takes into account (and accounts for) multiple histories and traces diverse trajectories that give shape to various meanings, authorities, power, and ways of knowing.” (133)

By engaging with a politics of location and positionally, which is both fixed and inevitable fluctuating, Anti-oppressive researchers are better equipped to engage with ambiguity, complexity, and multiple subjectivities and truth.

“By situating ourselves in history and the contexts of our own multiple locations, we can move toward working through and with differences based on multiple subjectivities. These differences help us uncover the dissimilar and/yet overlapping positions, potentially allowing us to forge solidarity on grounds that reject essentialist categories and demarcate the multiple sites of struggle.” (136)

Reflexivity requires a resistance to theoretical generalizations and monolithic truth claims.

“Reflexivity serves as necessary part of political positioning, where we attempt to “know”, but recognize that knowing and knowledge is tentative and tenuous. Reflexivity, then, would be characterized as a skill or practice whereby we “interrogate the truthfulness of the tale, and provide multiple answers.” (136)

Indigenous Research Methods

Aboriginal research methodologies represent an anti-opressive practice that centers self determination and community transformation.

• experience as a legitimate way of knowing
• Indigenous methods, such as storytelling, are a legitimate way of sharing knowledge
• receptivity and relationship between researcher and participants as a natural part of the research “methodology”
• collectivity as a way of knowing that assumes reciprocity to the community ( 28)

If the context does not allow people to move in their world to discover as much about themselves as they can, then such a context is artificial. As aboriginal researchers locate themselves, the context from which they come becomes validated. Contextual validation makes our reality, experiences, and existence as Aboriginal peoples visible. (117)