As Unangax̂er, Eve Tuck knows how education can harm and alienate indigenous communities.
She has noticed how the elders in her network at St. Paul’s Island, Alaska, communicates about painful reports with non-Indigenous researchers, where they felt betrayed and confused.
Tuck has been an instructor for over 15 years. Many other people have coached her over the years and have asked her how the best researchers know indigenous communities.
“I never sought to propose a style that is a universal way of doing research, because indigenous communities are so varied around the world. . . Our wisdom comes from the specificity of those places,” he told CTVNews. ca in a telephone interview.
Recognizing that indigenous wisdom is multidimensional and global, Tuck, who is an associate professor of racial critical studies and indigenous studies at the Ontario Institute of Education Studies at the University of Toronto, sought to make vital studies of the world run through scholars and indigenous communities.
That’s why he led the creation of the Collaborative Indigenous Research Digital Garden, a platform that was unveiled Tuesday with the help of other Uof T scholars. Made in indigenous communities worldwide.
“I tried to create a position where we could show the diversity of kinds of moral studies that other people have created for themselves, as a result of this other kind of colonial and destructive studies,” he said.
Dr. Eve Tuck and members of the Tkaronto CIRCLE lab who created the virtual turf (provided through the University of Toronto)
More and more responses are multiplying around the world on how to improve technical studies on indigenous communities and evolving methodologies, rather than in a one-size-fits-all way, he said. That’s why the platform is called turf — it’s evolving, he said.
In Canada, there is a long history of studies and educational activities that have harmed indigenous communities. For example, nutritional experiments were conducted on indigenous youth in residential schools in the 1940s, where researchers denied the youth nutrition to see if it had an effect on health. body.
A 2018 report through the Federal Research Ethics Board noted that Indigenous peoples in Canada have been conducted primarily through non-Indigenous people.
Imperfect approaches have contaminated dating among educational and indigenous communities, according to the report.
In indigenous communities around the world, each position has another dating back to colonialism and the history of how the studies were conducted, Tuck said. That is why the desires of each of the networks can be different, and the approaches of the studies want to be different. She explained.
Another purpose of lawn is to make these types of studies accessible, as writing and educational studies can be alienating and use language too complex to impress seriousness, when in fact it prevents other people from understanding the work, he said.
“The way other people percentage their studies is by creating a study profile in the virtual garden. It’s faster than a publication in a newspaper that can take many years, from presentation to actual publication,” he said.
It’s more applicable for searching for users, he said.
Users can enjoy virtual lawn by searching for express topics that interest them. There are also extensible fields on the platform where a user can learn more about the studies and method and how the studies were approached.
And Tuck expects the grass to grow with months and years.
“The most important thing is that users can bring their own studies. There is a form of contribution that other people can download and work with their collaborators,” he said.
Tuck said Indigenous scholars can feel isolated in academia and that their paintings are unfairly examined or classified as defense because they paint alongside Indigenous communities to mitigate harm.
The turf is a way for those researchers to feel connected and supported, he said.
“My hope is that other people will see that this is already an established set of practices, and that it continues to grow, and the invitation encouraged other people to take action on the harm caused by the research,” he said.