Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

2 introduces writer and civil rights
Chapter
Audre Lorde’s metaphor that “the
activist
tools will never dismantle the
master’s
house” (Le Guin 2004). The tools and
master’s
of knowledge production have been,
methods
in some cases are still being, deployed
and
Indigenous Peoples in damaging
towards
Consider, for example, the colonial and
ways.
history of Indigenous Peoples as
imperial
subjects or informants, and the body
research
knowledge produced to describe and explain
of
cultures, behaviour and customs.
Indigenous
this history, what would it take
Given
the tools and processes of knowledge
for
and dissemination to do justice
production
Indigenous Peoples? How do Indigenous
to
and researchers engage with the
scholars
production practices in mainstream
knowledge
Chapter 2 we see Le Guin build on Lorde’s
In
with the question: what other tools
metaphor
we have to make the house we want to live
do
This section explores not only the methods
in?
tools that have been used to produce and
and
claims about Indigenous Peoples,
legitimize
also the methods and tools developed by
but
Peoples to understand and explain
Indigenous
don’t need anyone else developing the tools
We
will help us to come to terms with who we
which
We can and will do this work. Real power lies
are.
those who design the tools—it always has. This
with
in this chapter we discussed how
Earlier
idea of coming to know things shapes
the
perspectives. But it is not as
Indigenous
Indigenous Peoples only produce and
if
knowledge in a single way, whereas
acquire
researchers have a range of tools
academic
methodologies that produce evidencebased
and
claims. Linda Tuhiwai Smith argues that
perspectives are often excluded from
Indigenous
research because Indigenous Peoples
academic
historically been the object of research.
have
suggests that by reducing Indigenous
Smith
to objects of study, non-Indigenous
Peoples
have excluded their participation in
researchers
an inanimate object can’t contribute to
research;
research.
need to be controlled and studied,
Objects
allowed to influence the study. And
not
Indigenous knowledge, technologies
thus,
ethical codes, developed over
and
were“discovered” by Western
millennia,
beginning in the 17th century and
science
as property belonging to the
“commodified
archive andbody of knowledge of the
cultural
so to reclaim the processes of knowledge
And
that happens under the name
production
Indigenous scholars have engaged
“research”,
“researching back” in a parallel of the empire
in
back”, which we discuss in the context
“writing
post-colonial literature in Chapter4, II.3.
of
result of Indigenous research methods
The
knowledge from a position of Indigenous
is
as both subject and researcher, which
researcher
Indigenous experiences and world
centres
and “talks back” to colonial and imperial
views,
traditions in an academiclanguage.
knowledge
III. Methods and tools
III. Methods and tools
I I I . M E T H O D S A N D T O O LS
academicfields?
West” (Smith1999).
the world.
III.1 Indigenous research methods:
Research as a relational activity
power is ours.
(Irwin 1992)
123