We want to open up a space for conversation around topics such as land, identity, space, and time without confining ourselves to, or upholding, the concepts of objectivity and neutrality as being the default of learning and understanding within academia. Within these conversations, we seek to be present in the now, to engage through active listening, and implement protocol that seeks to create a space of respect and grounding that then allows everyone to enter into.
We utilized methods informed by Critical Race Methodology (CRM) and Pacific Research Methodologies (PRM) in order to explore how different scholars approach the link between theory and praxis in their own work, as well as the relevance of certain terms such as identity, space, land, and time. CRM challenges dominant ideologies within academia in a way that is committed to social justice; centers people of color’s lived experiences and views them as valid, meaningful and necessary forms of data; and challenges ahistoricism and the unidisciplinary nature of research (Solórzano and Yosso 2002). A common CRM is the counter-story, which (1) builds off of traditional ways of sharing knowledge and (2) allows the lived experiences of those who are often on the margins to be included within academia (Solórzano and Yosso 2002).
This is similar to talk story, a common phrase we use with other Pacific Islanders, which can be defined as, “a method of sharing the incidentals that shape daily existence” (Steele 2012:39) and is a casual, mutual way to exchange knowledge. In common experience, it refers to a way we are in relation with one another, where we make space and time for oral, experience sharing. Talk story, although a common day to day practice, is also an example of a Pasifika-informed methodology that researchers use as a way to answer the calls made by Pasifika researchers about the applicability of Western methods when studying Indigenous groups.
Another established Pacific research methodology that relates to storytelling is a Tongan concept called talanoa. Talanoa – relationally mindful story dialogue – is a prominent research methodology applied across the Pacific (Tecun (Daniel Hernandez) et al. 2018). Vaioleti (2006) explains that talanoa allows for more authentic information to be expressed than data derived through other research methods insofar as talanoa “creates and requires closeness rather than distance within an assumed objectivity that is commonplace in dominant Western research practices” (Tecun (Daniel Hernandez) et al. 2018:158). Utilizing CRM and PRM as a guiding process to ethically engage in research that is reciprocal, not extractive, is important to us because we, too, are finding ways for theory to impact praxis.
It is vital here to take a minute to discuss research and the broader power structures that research sits within. As Smith (1999) says, “the word itself, ‘research’, is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary” due to the violent ways that research has historically been conducted. Despite the small scope of this final project, we believe that we must be intentional about all of the ways we move and interact within academia. We can broadly classify our theoretical homespace as informed by decoloniality and Indigenous resurgence. We borrow the term re-existence (Achinte 2008) from decolonial scholars to frame how we are approaching this project. We seek to center the ways that scholars are re-existing (or existing, and not just resisting) within academia, as we believe that these stories speak to the emancipatory and revolutionary power within academia. For Indigenous Pacific Islanders, there is a deep history of wayfinding, or navigating and being in relation with one another across the ocean. We think of this project as similar to this: we are navigating cross-currents and waters to map topographies of re-existence within academia that we know to exist.
Practically speaking, we are planning to talk story with five scholars in various disciplines and stages of their career. We have a short conversation guide that we will use as a starting point for our conversations. After receiving permission from the person we are speaking with to record, we will use an external recording device and the zoom recording feature to capture the visual and audio knowledge we are entrusted with. For the audio files, we will use Otter.ai to produce written transcripts of the and then split up the files between us to go through to check the transcription. Due to the informality of our conversations, the size of our sample (n=5), the low risk of those involved, and that we are not aiming to produce generalizable knowledge, we do not need IRB approval for this project. If an individual does not want to be identifiable in the end project, we will change their name and any identifying information, as well as one of us will read the transcript out loud on video for the sake of the end visual product. Additionally, if someone we talk to does not want us to record the conversation, we will take hand-written notes instead.
Indigenous peoples know that sounds/noises/voices are infused into the land. We are of the land. And the land is of us. This is fact.
In indigenous Pacific Islander culture for example, the beach— the realm between the land and the sea— is often thought of as a transitory space, a place where ecosystems start and end. The shore is thus a place of in-between-ness, a place where indigenous people first arrived and asked permission to form relationships with new lands, and where colonizers first docked their ships and claimed land through battles and bloodshed.
A place of hope. And desolation. And sounds that carry whispers of the now time.
As we seek out these ancestral sounds through story, it then becomes possible to unravel a history that our physical bodies weren't a part of. Poet Valzhyna Mort states that when we imagine the past, it is best that we imagine not what it was like, but what it felt like. To reckon with the ways we are all attempting to navigate how we acknowledge land, we must first listen with and through our bodies to address the legacy of silence, violence, and revolution that exist between these ideals— where they clash at shore, vying for voice. A place of re-membering, re-listening, and re-imagining trauma. In the article “Homi Bhabha's Third Space and African Identity,” Fetson Kalua interrogates Bhabha’s concept of the third space in terms of identity: “liminality, is a response to and a real moment of intervention in people's daily lives as they try to grapple with the cosmic eddies of change around them. Because of such change, the notion of culture is not defined holistically but as enunciation,” suggesting that this Third Space is one that allows people to transcend their cultures (Kalua 25).
This idea of the Third Space is where we might envision this collection of voices in attempt to reckon with the tensions that develop with acknowledging the self in relation to land— to exist in liminality would “[give] rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation.” In this ““in-between” space, new cultural identities are formed, reformed, and constantly in a state of becoming” — where we can begin to renegotiate and work through these stories to create a space of healing and room for understanding the question that we keep circling back to: who we are, and where we come from (“The Third Space: Cultural Identity Today”).
The rationale for the creation of a video mirrors this transient space which seeks to explode traditional Western disseminations of knowledge: to tell stories that transcend language by allowing the viewer to experience connections between the stories, the self, and the land via the power of oral storytelling. This aesthetic intervention serves as a mode of resistance to the ways stories are often confined to category/canon— one in which indigeneity does not sit comfortably within. What video enables, is the ability to collage/blend voices together to tell a larger story— perhaps one that has been exiled into silence. The intent thus, is to situate these experiences in a way that suspends them on the shore— to exist as they are, with minimal intervention.
The goal for the visuality of this mini archive then, is to implore the listener to take in and digest the thoughts and feelings that are connected to ancestral lands, and process them in nourishing ways. It also acknowledges how an active listening of stories works to re-collect, re-member, and project a future of healing for all peoples.
As we (the creators) have discussed during the creation of this project, recuperation between Indigenous and Western peoples has to start with the self— to acknowledge lineage, place, names, etc. is lifelong work that takes time to seek out and implement. It is our hope that through this multimedia project, these stories and voices will echo and reverberate throughout various spaces of our lives, encouraging all of us to forge connections with the land(s) they exist on in a way that always circles back to the aboriginal self.
By listening and taking on these stories, they then become a part of us: we thus can begin to hear, metabolize ,and listen to the intertwining legacies of native and colonial paradigms that have washed up, and continue to clash on the shores of history.
Achinte 2008
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