Paper long abstract:

Our soon to be realised book 'Indigenous women’s voices: 20 years on from Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies' celebrates the impacts of Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s seminal work 'Decolonizing methodologies: research and Indigenous peoples', through recent work by emerging black women researchers. In 1999, 'Decolonizing Methodologies' streaked across the Indigenous sky to ignite a passion for research change that respected Indigenous peoples and knowledges . Here, finally, was an Indigenous viewpoint that represented the daily struggle to be heard and to find a place in academia for us as Indigenous peoples . Twenty years on, we celebrate the positive, shifting ground and demonstrate a breadth and depth of how Indigenous women writers are shaping the post-colonial research worlds . We give voice to Indigenous women, caught at the intersections of race and gender, and how our research is impacting change within institutions and organisations. These essays, in honour of Professor Smith, draw on both nuanced and blunt views in how women are not only engaging in traditionally patriarchal fields of expertise, but also shaping general methodological practice that highlight Indigenous ways of knowing. We showcase Indigenous female decolonizing research that makes central and core our narratives and culturally frames the process of legitimising our epistemologies. We show the richness and resonance in black women’s work and why it matters.