Editorial of "International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies Volume 2, Number 2, 2009"

This edition of the International Critical Indigenous Studies Journal, our second for 2009 takes alternative understandings as its theme. All four articles in this edition attend to citizenship and Indigenous sovereignty though in different ways...

Editorial of "International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies Volume 3, Number 1, 2010"

The articles in this edition of the International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies engage collectively with how different epistemologies and cultural values inform power relations in different locations, situations and contemporary contexts. As a group, these articles demonstrate, over varying facets, how meaning, communicative intent and interpretive effect are constitutive of power relations between Indigenous people and non Indigenous people. Jackie Grey discusses the labour of belonging as played out in a dispute over Indigenous fishing rights in a small New England town of Aquinnah, located on Noepe Island the traditional lands of the Wampanoag in the United States of America. She reveals the ways in which the jurisdiction of non Indigenous belonging operates discursively and materially to preclude Indigenous rights and self determination. Grey's analysis highlights the incommensurability of Indigenous and non Indigenous belonging that are played out in power relations born of colonisation.

Editorial of "International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies Volume 3, Number 2, 2010"

In this of the International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, the articles reveal how competing economies of knowledge, capital and values are operationalised through colonising power within inter-subjective relations. Writing in the Australian context, Greg Blyton demonstrates how tobacco was used by colonists as a means of control and exchange in their relations with Indigenous people. He focuses on the Hunter region of New South Wales, Australia, in the early to mid-nineteenth century to reveal how colonists exchanged tobacco for food, safe passage and Indigenous services. Blyton suggests that these colonial practices enabled tobacco addiction to spread throughout the region, passing from one generation of Indigenous people to another. He asks us to consider the link between the colonial generation of Indigenous tobacco consumption and addiction, and Indigenous mortality rates today whereby twenty percent of deaths are attributed to smoking.

Editorial of "International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies Volume 4, Number 1, 2011"

This special edition of the International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies highlights the work of emerging scholars in the field of Indigenous Studies. The five featured authors were all finalists for the prize awarded by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) to the best post-graduate student paper at the NAISA meeting held in 2010 in Tucson, Arizona. While the breadth of scholarship encompassed by the term ‘Indigenous Studies’ and the global representation of Indigenous peoples at NAISA mean that the topics and approaches vary widely, a common thematic of fraught post-colonial relations can be discerned within all five articles.

Editorial of "International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies Volume 5, Number 1, 2012"

The first two articles of this edition of the journal testify to the lengthening reach of the discipline of Critical Indigenous Studies that is, remarkably, still in its nascence. Emiel Martens examines the development of Maori filmmaking since the 1980s and takes the opportunity to explore this Indigenous cinema in the context of developments in the New Zealand film industry generally. Shifting from cultural production to renewable energy, Steven M. Hoffman and Thibault Martin remind us that in the effort to satiate the demands for energy, it is often Indigenous peoples who bear adverse consequences. Using a social capital framework, the authors examine the impact of the development of hydroelectric power upon a displaced Aboriginal community and conclude that displacement has resulted in an erosion of cohesive social bonds that once ensured a sustainable way of life.

Editorial of "International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, Volume 5, Number 2, 2012"

This edition is marked by a strong Antipodean focus. The first three articles bring a critical Indigenous perspective to areas previously cosseted by Western understandings. Robyn Moore, using critical discourse analysis, takes Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s 2011 ‘Closing the Gap’ speech to task for naturalising Indigenous Australia’s position on the wrong side of the social and economic ‘gap’. She argues that, far from accepting white culpability, Gillard instead polishes cultural deficit understandings of Indigenous disadvantage by framing the social and economic divide in meritocratic terms. In so doing, Moore further argues, Gillard casts a benevolent light upon white Australia.

Editorial of "International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, Volume 6, Number 1, 2013"

This edition of the International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies marks the tenth since the journal’s launch in 2008. During that time, over forty articles and eleven book reviews have been published, which is testament to the continuing upward trajectory of Critical Indigenous Studies. Although there continues to be an increasing range of areas of Indigenous research to which a critical focus is brought to bear, a consistent issue for many of the journal’s contributors has been the delineation and application of Indigenous methods and methodologies in social research. The present edition is no exception, with two articles focussing on Indigenous-centred research. The first, by Krystal Summers, reflexively explores the author’s experiences as an undergraduate student undertaking Indigenous-centred research in Peru. As an Indigenous First Nations woman, Summers was mindful that her research practice was faithful to the ethics and protocols outlined in her original project proposal. Her subsequent ‘journey of critical reflexive understanding and storytelling’ supports the proposition of current literature in Indigenous research methodologies that a properly critical Indigenous ethnography will naturally enjoin with Indigenous epistemologies and methodologies.

Editorial of "International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies Volume 6, Number 2, 2013"

The International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies (IJCIS) now complements the recently launched National Indigenous Research and Knowledges Network (NIRAKN) in its efforts to build Indigenous research capacity. In this context the journal provides a platform for the research of Indigenous postgraduates, early- to mid-career researchers, and senior scholars. Indigenous scholars are therefore encouraged to submit their articles to future editions of the IJCIS, an ‘Excellence in Research for Australia’ (ERA) ranked journal.

Editorial of "International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, Volume 7, Number 1, 2014"

This edition testifies to the broad international reach of the journal, with contributions variously concerned with Arctic Indigenous communities, the Métis of Canada, Native Hawaiians and Māori of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Two articles stress the need to work collaboratively and respectfully with Indigenous populations whilst conducting research. The first, by Gwen Healey, notes the increased interest in health research in the Arctic, particularly with Inuit populations. Healy seeks to add to the growing body of literature concerned with Indigenous ways of knowing by highlighting Inuit concepts that inform an effective Arctic research model. The second, by primary author Peter Hutchinson and a range of co-contributors, highlights the ways in which Métis collaborators working in health developed a participatory Indigenous research method that was unique in that it foregrounded Métis relationships and relationality. In so doing, the researchers were able to give substance to otherwise staid policy statements about the need for good ethical research conduct.

Editorial of "International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, Volume 7, Number 2, 2014"

This edition scales the merlons and embrasures that mark the epistemological barriers that contemporary colonising power continually puts in place. Each article harnesses a critical Indigenous perspective in order to challenge conservative approaches or positions, be they concerned with reconciliation, Indigenous-led research, research tools or the nature of Aboriginal being. The first article, by Barry Judd and Emma Barrow, examines reconciliation discourse within the higher education sector and highlights the ways a normative Anglo-Australian identity militates against genuine ‘whitefella’ attempts to ‘reconcile’. The authors stress the importance of inclusive, institutional practice that serves to decentre Anglo-centrism and which, in turn, brings Indigenous peoples more fully into the fold of Australian university life.

Editorial of "International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, Volume 8, Number 1, 2015"

This edition includes a diverse range of contributions that collectively illustrate two elevated concerns of critical Indigenous studies: First, an interest in establishing ways and means of conducting ethical research with Indigenous communities; and second, critically engaging with constructions of Indigeneity. The first article, by Craig Sinclair, Peter Keelan, Samuel Stokes, Annette Stokes and Christine Jefferies-Stokes, examines the increasingly popular use of participatory video (PV) as a means of engagement, in this case with children in remote Aboriginal communities as participants in health research. The authors note that, whilst not without methodological disadvantages, the PV method, with its flexibility to respond to community priorities is particularly well suited to research with remote Aboriginal communities.

Editorial of "International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies Volume 4, Number 2, 2011"

This special edition of the International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies focuses upon the work scholars within the growing discipline of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health studies. The lamentable state of Indigenous health in Australia is reflected in Indigenous populations elsewhere, especially where settler colonialism has left an indelible mark. This special edition therefore speaks to where Indigenous health outcomes and the efficacy of remedies are causing concern. Common to all is the demand that Indigenous people are placed front and centre of all attempts to improve health outcomes and that improvements are sought in culturally sensitive ways. Terry Dunbar presents findings from a research study that set out to investigate the Indigenous experiences of health and family services in the Northern Territory, Australia. The study asserts that cultural security is an integral and vital element of any policy that will impact upon Indigenous peoples. Dunbar concludes by arguing that in seeking positive change with regard to cultural security or otherwise, the most vociferous champions of that change are likely to be the Aboriginal communities affected. The article by Bronwyn Fredericks, Karen Adams, Sandra Angus and Melissa Walker also highlights the need to involve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, in this case women, in the design and development of strategies affecting their lives. Utilising routine communication methods such the ‘talking circle’ and the process referred to as ‘talkin’ up’, where women ‘talk back’ to one another about issues of personal importance, the article argues that the health strategy which emerged through these consultation approaches was more accurately informed by and responsive to women’s health need. Indeed, the resulting strategy reflected the women’s sense of themselves and the clear direction they felt their health services and polices should take.

The White Possessive : Property, Power and Indigenous Sovereignty

The White Possessive explores the links between race, sovereignty, and possession through themes of property: owning property, being property, and becoming propertyless. Focusing on the Australian Aboriginal context, Aileen Moreton-Robinson questions current race theory in the first world and its preoccupation with foregrounding slavery and migration. The nation, she argues, is socially and culturally constructed as a white possession. Moreton-Robinson reveals how the core values of Australian national identity continue to have roots in Britishness and colonization, built on the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty. Whiteness studies are central to Moreton-Robinson’s reasoning, and she shows how blackness works as a white epistemological tool that bolsters the social production of whiteness—displacing Indigenous sovereignties and rendering them invisible in a civil rights discourse, sidestepping issues of settler colonialism. Throughout this critical examination Moreton-Robinson proposes a bold new agenda for critical Indigenous studies, one that involves deeper analysis of the prerogatives of white possession within the role of disciplines.

Critical Indigenous Studies: Engagements in First World Locations

With increasing speed, the emerging discipline of critical Indigenous studies is expanding and demarcating its territory from Indigenous studies through the work of a new generation of Indigenous scholars. Critical Indigenous Studies makes an important contribution to this expansion, disrupting the certainty of disciplinary knowledge produced in the twentieth century, when studying Indigenous peoples was primarily the domain of non-Indigenous scholars. Aileen Moreton-Robinson's introductory essay provides a context for the emerging discipline. The volume is organized into three sections: the first includes essays that interrogate the embedded nature of Indigenous studies within academic institutions; the second explores the epistemology of the discipline; and the third section is devoted to understanding the locales of critical inquiry and practice. Each essay places and contemplates critical Indigenous studies within the context of First World nations, which continue to occupy Indigenous lands in the twenty-first century. The contributors include Aboriginal, Metis, Maori, Kanaka Maoli, Filipino-Pohnpeian, and Native American scholars working and writing through a shared legacy born of British and later U.S. imperialism. In these countries, critical Indigenous studies is flourishing and transitioning into a discipline, a knowledge/power domain where distinct work is produced, taught, researched, and disseminated by Indigenous scholars.