Truth in Indigenous Ways of Knowing

Research Start-up Summary and Abstract:

Although research employing quantitative or qualitative methodology is widely accepted, support and understanding of Indigenous research methodologies is less common. Unfortunately, the comparative lack of published research explicating Indigenous ways of knowing tends to maintain the status quo of using western approaches to research. A lack of overall understanding of Indigenous Research Methodology (IRM) and its results continues to colonize Indigenous clients in many service-oriented and agency settings. Without having relevant and timely research that supports Indigenous epistemology, Western research methods will continue to permeate research practices and devalue and ignore Indigenous ways of knowing and doing. Further, without Indigenous ways of knowing being supported in academia, most human-service programs will only continue to provide superficial, inadequate and culturally-inappropriate services to Indigenous people that are often based on western constructs of “best practices”.

• Calgary’s Urban Aboriginal Identity Population (2011, NHS)

  2.8% (33,370) of Calgary’s population identifies as Aboriginal, 3.9% (46,325) report having Aboriginal ancestry.
• 44% are First Nation, 51% are Metis, less than 1% are Inuit and 4.4% report having multiple or other Aboriginal identities.