Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith

Author:Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781848139534
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: 2012-05-09T16:00:00+00:00

Community Research

The idea of community is defined or imagined in multiple ways: as physical, political, social, psychological, historical, linguistic, economic, cultural, and spiritual spaces. For colonized peoples many local communities have been made through deliberate policies aimed at putting people on reserves that are often out of sight, on the margins. Legislation and other coercive state practices have ensured that people stay within their own community boundaries. Communities have also made themselves, however, despite policies aimed at fragmenting family bonds and separating people from their traditional territories. Indigenous communities have made even their most isolated and marginal spaces a home place imbued with spiritual significance and indigenous identity. In North America, the term ‘Indian Country’ defines one sense of community, a named nation such as the Navaho Nation defines another sense of community, a named reserve defines yet another sense. In Australia the term ‘mob’ is used to identify and distinguish different levels and organizations of community.

Some writers refer to these multiple layers of belonging as ‘nested identities’. Gerald Alfred, for example, conceptualizes Kahnawake identity as including ‘localized Kahnawake, national Mohawk, broader Iroquois, and pan-Native’.1 He says, ‘Thus people of Mohawk descent who live in Kahnawake have a multi-layered identity which incorporates each one of the “communities” he or she has inherited, and which also includes the broader Native – or the more common “Indian” – identity flowing from their racial affiliation and identification as the indigenous peoples of North America.’2 In describing Chicano communities in the United States, Irene Blea argues that

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