Ceremony, Relationships, Reciprocity and Respect: Learning Methodologies for Indigenous Research 

Author: MaryAnn Wagner

Already contributing to the greater Indigenous community as a faculty member of Northwest Indian College (NWIC), Aissa Yazzie is also active as a researcher and member of the Navajo Nation and Diné community. In a conversation with her we explore lessons that her work offers our Indigenous Aquaculture Collaborative Hub, of which Aissa is a valued partner. 

Aissa Yazzie

“The whole process of research is the process of defining reality, but as we get to live out our own paradigms, we are better able to shape and define our destinies and have a voice,” says Aissa, speaking of the importance of Indigenous methodologies.

As a Diné woman, a scientist and a teacher, Aissa integrates many of the teachings she grew up with into her work. Her early experiences in science motivated her to pursue this path. She observed that research often becomes a difficult encounter between Western views and the “other.”  She recalls that, “In earlier experiences in the sciences, I found that there was a need to heal for both myself and for my community because often science is conducted in a way that excludes the communities involved. I needed to bring science and community together. And I needed to fall in love with science again.”

To do this, Aissa went home. Home is St. Michaels, Arizona on the expansive Navajo Nation lands where her she was born. She went there to assess past, present and future water sources within the Cho’ho’tsoi Valley, asking the question: How had sacred and scarce water resources changed between the previous generation and today’s?  

Aissa in Monument Valley

In the process of developing her research, Aissa created a pathway for others working in native science to follow. She developed what she calls a Diné Methodology. This framework helped her to determine how, as a Diné woman, she would conduct scientific research in her own community in alignment with community ethics and values. Broadly, it asks: “how must research be conducted within an Indigenous community?” Her answer: It must be conducted mindfully, acknowledging Indigenous views, knowledge, and realities throughout the process, while striving to honor the social, historical and political contexts that shaped Indigenous experiences. Other questions that Aissa asks herself as she is conducting research:

  • How can she help the community?
  • How can she develop respectful relationships?
  • What is my role as a researcher?
  • Am I being responsible to the topic at hand and those involved?

Influenced by the work of Indigenous scholar Shawn Wilson, the paradigm that Aissa developed refocuses the scientific approach on relationships that form a mutual understanding of reality and away from isolated “fact finding”. Her Indigenous research paradigm integrates four R’s of research: respect, relevance, reciprocity, and responsibility. The focus is on the positive effects of maintaining and transmitting an Indigenous way of doing and being in the research process, as outlined below: 

  • Ontology (nature of reality): What is real, what it means to exist from a community focus, encompassing world views, creation stories, language and knowledge
  • Epistemology (thinking & knowing): World views, spiritualities, place in the world
  • Methodology (how we gain knowledge): The pathways for finding the information we are seeking as scientists with reciprocity at the heart of the methodology
  • Axiology (ethics, values and morals): this is about being accountable to the idea of upholding relationships.

Aissa then applied her Diné teachings to develop a specific Diné Methodology for guiding her work further.

Diné Methodology

 

Ceremony is a central aspect of Aissa’s Diné Methodology, playing a critical role in her daily work and in her personal experience. It also provided a way to uphold her values throughout the research process. “I wanted to conduct myself in my research in the same way I would conduct myself in ceremony,” she explains.  As a result, Aissa wove ceremony into the very fabric of her research at every opportunity.

The project unfolded while responding to the emerging needs of the community. Throughout, Aissa strove to hold herself accountable as a researcher, often applying her paradigm by spending time giving back as a tribal member. She identified what she was responsible for in her relationships with her people and this included relating respectfully as a researcher and continually checking in to ensure reciprocity, relational accountability and respectfulness. 

The framework Aissa has developed allows native historical and cultural knowledge to be included in research so that the community benefits. “Aissa’s framework can influence other communities like the one we are currently building within the Indigenous Aquaculture Collaborative Hub (Collaborative Hub),” observes Social Scientist Melissa Poe, the Washington Sea Grant lead for the Hub. 

The Collaborative Hub is evolving naturally, according to Aissa, because the communities have a say in what they want for their community. “When we share mele oli and other chants,” she reflects, we are actively participating and employing features similar to what Aissa outlined in her Diné Methodology, and these features include prayer, protocol, storytelling, knowledge transmission, and giving back. 

“We had an excellent example of this last February at the Gathering in Oahu,” says Aissa. “The  land and spaces allowed us to develop a community of practice in an intimate setting that integrated reciprocity, sharing of knowledge, respect and ceremony, which allowed us to focus on the ‘process of creating,’ and not just on outcomes.”

Melissa agrees, saying that, “In Indigenous aquaculture, it is not simply the product, but the process that matters because it allows us to have that relational accountability to each other. The intention behind sharing stories and making observations through metaphors in order to restore a fishpond is that these bring ceremony into the process,” she says. 

Some of these Indigenous cultural features, such as clam gardens and fishponds, are not always visible to the eye but are culturally and historically valuable. Through ceremony and restoration, we are able to reconnect with our ancestral practices,” says Aissa.

Photo credit: Alisha Jefferson

 

This is certainly true for a rock wall around a pond. Being together in ceremony as a community, whether rebuilding the wall, sharing stories and skills, and with good intention as we go, allows us to see that rock wall differently. The fishpond and the wall that holds the pond become a metaphor for the collaborative process. 

As Melissa says, “we appreciate Aissa’s framework,” which offers us lessons applicable to Indigenous aquaculture research and brings home the importance of respect, reciprocity and responsibility in the process of conducting research and carrying out restoration.