Search

In this article, the author seeks a middle path through which to traverse the "tricky ground" of Indigenous research; a middle path that will hopefully find "in-between spaces" open to new epistemological pathways, through which new voices and ideas can be heard within the social sciences and, in particular, within geography. This middle path would afford space through which to include his own perspective and acknowledge that he looks at the world through a pair of tinted spectacles, but it will more importantly include and acknowledge past and present research companions and friends. He hopes he can help create this middle path by incorporating a myriad of voices and narrative forms to show how Indigenous geography can move closer to that which it studies. This article begins with the author's own story as a mixed-race Native American, a geographer, and an academic. The story is one about his research work in Aotearoa (New Zealand), what motivated this research, how he has attempted to construct an indigenist methodological framework for this research, and how his own Indigenous identity has influenced his research relationships. Because the research the author discusses in this article took place in Aotearoa, he starts by giving a "mihimihi" or genealogical introduction. He concludes by reflecting on his successes and failures in negotiating the tricky ground of Indigenous research. (Contains 41 notes.)

Multiculturalism has been offered as an answer to the civil rights claims of a wide variety of ethnic and national minorities within liberal democratic settler-states. This article adds to the critiques of the appropriateness of multiculturalism in answering the self-determination claims of indigenous populaticns by investigating biculturalism in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Indigenous groups continue to demand greater recognition not only of sui generis claims to land and resources but also to the acceptance of indigenous philosophies and perspectives in the management of land and resources. As indigenous populations have been forced toward the edge of the state, they have been forced to reassert their cultural values in order to fundamentally reinvent the relationship between colonizer and colonized. This "reinvention" of society, coming from the edges, propelled by indigeneity, is beginning to challenge the construction of the white settler-state. These challenges occur in places, not within arbitrary, theoretical space. They also vary in scale, from the single individual acting on behalf of her community to vast land claims by indigenous peoples. This article discusses how the exercise of indigenous self-determination, observed in specific places, is beginning to transform Aotearoa/New Zealand society into a bicultural and binational partnership, altering the meaning of citizenship for both Māori and whites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]