Their stories became accepted as universal truths, marginalising the stories of the Other. Tuhiwai Smith draws on Edward Said's Orientalism to describe how travellers' and observers' representations (formal and informal) of indigenous peoples were encoded as the authoritative representation of the Other, thereby framing the wider discourse and attitudes towards indigenous peoples. Under this Western paradigm, colonisers, adventurers and travellers researched the indigenous Other through their "objective" and "neutral" gaze. She deconstructs the assumptions, motivations and values that inform Western research practices (the methodologies, the theories and the writing styles) through exploring the Enlightenment and Positivist traditions in which Western research is viewed as a scientific, "objective" process. In the first part of the book, Tuhiwai Smith adopts a feminist and critical theory framework. The second part focuses on setting a new agenda for indigenous research.
The first part discusses the history of Western research and critiques the cultural assumptions behind research by the dominant colonial culture. Tuhiwai Smith's book is divided into two parts. However, this review is not intended to negate the views and perspectives of indigenous peoples and offer the "real" review, but rather to offer another reading of Tuhiwai Smith's book from the perspective of a non-indigenous researcher. A review that focuses specifically on whether this book is useful for a non-indigenous researcher could be read as continuing to (re)inscribe a Western "ethnocentric" view: that any work by indigenous peoples can only be identified as "legitimate" and "real" knowledge if it fits within a Western framework and has value for the dominant non-indigenous culture. An important audience for the book would be indigenous academics and researchers who may be developing indigenous research agendas, methodologies and protocols. In a sense this review has a very "ethnocentric" focus.
In particular, what a non-indigenous researcher needs to be aware of when researching with indigenous peoples how non-indigenous researchers can improve their practices with indigenous peoples and, most fundamentally, whether it is appropriate for non-indigenous researchers to be involved in research with indigenous peoples. This review focuses on how Tuhiwai Smith's book can inform non-indigenous researchers who may be involved in research initiatives with indigenous communities. According to Tuhiwai Smith, "decolonization" is concerned with having "a more critical understanding of the underlying assumptions, motivations and values that inform research practices". Tuhiwai Smith's book challenges traditional Western ways of knowing and researching and calls for the "decolonization" of methodologies, and for a new agenda of indigenous research. This line, from the introduction to Linda Tuhiwai Smith's book Decolonizing Methodologies, sets the scene for an extensive critique of Western paradigms of research and knowledge from the position of an indigenous and "colonised" Maori woman. "Research" is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world's vocabulary.
By Linda Tuhiwai Smith, 1999, Zed Books, London
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