- [Narrator] Indigenous Ways of Knowing:
Considerations for Researchers Working
in Indigenous Communities.
Sovereignty, presented
by the Center for Native Child and Family Resilience.
- [Ethleen] I think knowing the protocols of the community,
the nation, the village, wherever we're going into,
I think that's really important.
And I think that would really speak to respect
and honor for the people.
- [Narrator] Recognizing and honoring Tribal sovereignty
is one of four essential IWOK knowledge areas.
In the context of research and evaluation,
it is vitally important that researchers
and evaluators understand, acknowledge,
and honor Tribal autonomy and Tribal jurisdictional issues.
- [Ethleen] One of the things that I think about
is John Neihardt came to our people
and asked to speak to somebody that knew our grandfather,
Crazy Horse, our great leader,
and he wanted to interview them.
And so somebody sent him to one of the relatives,
an Elder named Black Elk.
And he asked him if he knew of him
and he could interview him and he said,
"I've been waiting for you.
You're going to tell my story."
He said, "You're going to tell my vision."
So, he said, "But I can only",
and this wasn't just right away, this was over time,
"And I can only tell you if you're related to me
because this is my vision," he said.
So he adopted him as a son and he prayed about it,
they filled the sacred pipe,
and they prayed and he shared his vision.
So that vision is now Black Elk Peaks,
and it's translated into hundreds of languages.
People are really take to his story and his vision.
But what if he walked away and said,
"No, I wanna speak to somebody
about the grandfather, Crazy Horse."
Or, "No, I don't wanna be adopted."
That would have been lost.
It was meant to be.
It was meant to be that way.
So I think about the things
that the research and evaluation
that's being done in our communities,
and it really has to be prefaced by knowing the protocols,
and I guess being open to them and to following them,
even if it conflicts with our own ways of understanding.
- [Narrator] As researchers, it is important to respect
and honor cultural protocols such as cultural adoptions.
As evaluators, it is critical for your work
to understand community engagement,
Indigenous wisdom and Indigenous practices
as our people have been doing this since time immemorial.
- Oftentimes as evaluators,
we had to come in once a program had been developed.
And here we are saying honor Indigenous knowledge,
work on issues of importance of context and community,
the importance of engagement,
the importance of having a cultural metaphor
to kind of represent your program
rather than just a logic model,
but a metaphor built off of that,
the importance of having consultation across departments
or across elements of the community
and not see yourself as we've got a grove of trees.
It's just not one tree in a grove, that's a community.
But all of those things are important
when you're developing programs.
And I think we are very much able,
as we articulate what is important
in Indigenous research and evaluation
to share that that is wisdom that's important,
even when we're developing our programs
so that it's a natural marriage between
what a program is about
and how it's gonna build in evaluation practice.
I just hope that we can,
from my perspective as evaluators caring
about Indigenous practice,
help people become more embracing of Indigenous practice
when they're developing proposals
and pushing against some of the some of the requirements
in a proposal that don't quite fit
in an Indigenous community.
- [Narrator] When a non-Tribal member enters Tribal land,
they must learn and have great respect
for traditional Native ceremonies.
If you don't know about Indigenous ceremonies,
ask a Tribal member from that Tribe
for direction, guidance, and understanding.
- [Lisa] That's where a lot of times we open the door
for the ceremonial things that are taking place.
A program like this has no working in...
With monetary fund's passing back and forth
really don't have any business in a Sundance or in a...
Just trying to get to know
what a Native American church ceremony is like or,
participate in some of these other ceremonies that we have.
That's not what we're saying here.
We're saying it really has to be organic
and it has to come from the heart
and everybody has to really engage
that relationship building process,
and it takes time.
- [Narrator] The Center for Native Child
and Family Resilience was funded by the Children's Bureau,
Administration for Children and Families,
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
under cooperative agreement No. 90CA1853.
The contents of this product are solely the responsibility
of JBS International, Inc.
and do not necessarily reflect the official views
of the Children's Bureau.