Paper short abstract:

Challenges and opportunities to contribute new/old methods of inquiry, methodologies, and reporting emerge through indigenizing research at all levels. Storying NAI experiences are one culturally aligned way to share understanding within the research world. One story is presented here.

Paper long abstract:

Research is most often situated in academic institutions, which can be far distanced from the “real” world of Native American and Indigenous (NAI) peoples. Often, NAI researchers are situated in academic institutions for a limited time, and with a specific goal. When the ultimate goal is to return home and work on behalf of the people, then anticolonial methodologies are at the forefront of planning and executing graduate research projects. Research projects that are sensitive to indigenous experiences and responsibilities, quickly reveal intersections of necessary and thought-provoking decisions that require heart and spirit. Then as careers evolve separate from academic institutional structured support for research (IRB’s, grant funding, student assistants, co-researchers, status as research base), new challenges and opportunities to scholarly contributions emerge. The author will story nsuxʷn’eʔ (manaʻo/thoughts and understanding) of graduate research, early career experience in community, Tribal sensitivities to alignment of inquiry and reporting methods, research on behalf of tribal goals and for collective use, and expansion of colonial ideas of knowledge production in the “research” world through methodologies grounded in indigenous thought.