Indigenous Knowledge Within Academia: Exploring the Tensions That Exist Between Indigenous, Decolonizing, and Nêhiyawak Methodologies

Over the last few decades the rewriting of Indigenous knowledge and history has been discussed, debated, and rewritten through the fields of Anthropology, History, and First Nation Studies, to name a few. One of the main tensions that exists in this reclamation process is the differences between Indigenous and Western methodological approaches. However, it has yet to be put forward as to what are the tensions that exist within Indigenous methodologies and their practice. This paper will bring forward three methodological approaches utilized within research for and by Indigenous peoples, as we examine how Indigenous, Decolonizing, and Nêhiyawak methodologies challenge and support one another, and how in order to conduct research, specific views must be taken into account to give a better understanding of the philosophical and spiritual foundations in which the research is situated. Specifically, the article will assess what are Indigenous, Decolonizing, and Nêhiyawak methodologies and why there is a need to incorporate specific methodological approaches dependent on the research in question. Yet, in order to understand the importance and relevance of these differing approaches to find knowledge, we must first discuss how early research and ethics impacted what we know about Indigenous peoples and their way of life. I focus on Nêhiyawak methodologies in particular as a member of the Nêhiyaw Nation in the territory of Maskwacîs