Doing the work, considering the entanglements of the research team while undoing settler colonialism

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the work of three researchers in a self-study on researcher positionality using the reflective practice and pedagogy of correspondence as preparation for future work with mapuche women in Chile. We start from the assumption that research with and on indigenous groups has a historical debt to consider given the ways in which it has historically perpetuated and been complicit in violence against indigenous people. With this is mind we ask: what can a focus on researcher's positionality and epistemologies bring to future work on mapuche women's educational experience? What does it contribute to work that refuses the violence that academia perpetuates on indigenous knowledges and communities? This paper is an invitation to reflect on how we can decolonize our methodologies as a way to work through the historical debt that academia has with and to indigenous groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Decolonizing methodologies
• researcher positionality
• mapuche
• indigenous research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Andrea Lira is currently a doctoral candidate in the Curriculum and Teaching department at Teachers College, Columbia University and working on her dissertation research on initial teacher education and settler colonialism in the south of Chile.

Ana Luisa Muñoz-García is a Doctor in Educational Culture, Policy and Society from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Her focus has been educational research and construction of knowledge in academia within the framework of internationalization policies. Today, she is leading a project on research policies in higher education, and another International Network Project on issues of internationalization, knowledge and gender in academia, both funded by the National Commission of Science and Technology (CONICYT). She is also the President of the Chilean Educational Research Network (RIECH).

Elisa Loncon is part time professor in the Faculty of Letters in Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and she gives a course ‘Mapuzugun and mapuche culture. She is leading a research project about mapuche language: FondecytN° 11180108 ‘Terminología mapuche del ámbito pedagógico: estudio de los neologismos desde las perspectivas lingüística, cultural y política’. And she is co-resercher in two research projects, regular Fondecyt: ‘Diálogo de saberes educativos mapuche y escolar: construcción de una base epistémica intercultural de conocimientos’ (2018–2020) and ‘Educación escolar y familiar: Socialización emocional en Contextos de diversidad cultural’.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially funded by the National Commission of Science and Technology (CONICYT) and supported by FONDECYT Iniciacion grant number 11170171.