Reconciling Positionality: An Indigenous Researcher’s Reflexive Account

Abstract

As researchers, we take the subjectivity we have formed over time into each research project. These subjective traces are a product of our lived experiences, gradually shaping our perceptions and interpretations of the world. Despite being an Indigenous scholar, my lived experience has not primarily occurred within Indigenous settings, resulting in biased subjectivities emerging while researching First Nations communities. This paper describes my subjective traces and reflects on the biases I uncovered while researching Indigenous communities. The reflection consists of three main sections: a personal background, a description of experiences in the research sites, and a discussion of what the reflections mean to the decolonization of academia. Overall, I hope that the insights in this reflection go beyond the mere recognition of Indigenous voices and encourage Indigenous researcher activism toward advancing and diversifying academia.

Keywords

• indigenous
• reflexivity
• positionality
• qualitative research