"Indigenous research in social work: The challenge of operationalizing worldview"

Abstract

This paper arises out of a research project that was designed to gather information about how Indigenous researchers incorporate their worldview beliefs, practices, and protocols with western research methodologies and methods. The focus of this paper is to describe the challenges I experienced as I embarked upon a 'western' research project while trying to incorporate my nascent understanding of Indigenous worldview.

The research project was designed to identify the specific descriptions and explications of how indigenous scholars have reconciled worldview issues and integrated these unique ways of perceiving the world within their research methodologies. As a Ph.D. student cognizant of the western standards required in dissertation research, I wanted to find a way to honour my Indigenous roots, and my "Indigenist" ideological stance. An Indigenist stance, according to Churchill (1996), means that one actively strives to hold the rights of Indigenous people as his or her primary political goal, while incorporating his or her traditions in their work. Hence, the need to incorporate Indigenous practices and protocols into a western qualitative research paradigm was the premise upon which the project was designed. The challenges were evident in considering the design of the research, in attempts to weave ceremony and protocol into the various phases of the project, and in considering how to record these elements into the final report. The preliminary findings verified the challenges I faced.