The Research Was Always Here

Nanaboozhoo was the first teacher and researcher. Learning from what the land offered, he gifted the Anishinaabek lessons about the seasonal research calendar, dreams as methodology, animals as research faculty, beadwork as dissemination. He was not cited, but his observations and lessons formed the research tradition of the Anishinaabek, which was always complete on its own terms. The Anishinaabek have been observing, testing, refining, transmitting, and governing knowledge with the rigour that only survival demands.

The Research Was Always Here demonstrates that, long before any university, ethics board, or grant cycle, research was central to Anishinaabe life. The university interfered, first excluding Indigenous knowledge, then demanding that it prove itself worthy.

In this trenchant treatise that builds on the vigorous critiques of the academy by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Shawn Wilson, Margaret Kovach, Kathleen Absolon, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Glen Coulthard, Amy Shawanda reminds Indigenous scholars of the intellectual traditions that refuse to be subordinated to colonial standards. After all, the decision to place Western research on a pedestal was never about the quality of the evidence. It was about the politics of who was allowed to produce it.

The Research Was Always Here is a declaration of the power of Indigenous thought and knowledge, a book for Indigenous researchers advised to work with a methodology that wasn’t from their own knowledge tradition and seeking a path back to what they know.