About Shawn

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 Indigenous researchers are knowledge seekers who work to progress Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing in a modern and constantly evolving context. In Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods, Shawn describes a research paradigm shared by Indigenous scholars in Canada and Australia, and demonstrates how this paradigm can be put into practice. Relationships don’t just shape Indigenous reality, they are our reality. Indigenous researchers develop relationships with ideas in order to achieve enlightenment in the ceremony that is Indigenous research. Indigenous research is the ceremony of maintaining accountability to these relationships. For researchers to be accountable to all our relations, we must make careful choices in our selection of topics, methods of data collection, forms of analysis and finally in the way we present information. 

 In this collection edited by Shawn Wilson, Andrea Breen and Lindsay DuPre, leading scholars seek to disrupt Eurocentric research methods by introducing students, professors, administrators, and practitioners to frameworks of Indigenous research methods through a lens of reconciliation.

The foundation of this collection is rooted in each contributor’s unique conception of reconciliation, which extends beyond the parameters of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to include a broader, more global approach to reconciliation. More pointedly, contributors discuss how effective research is when it is demonstrated through acts of reconciliation.

Encouraging active, participatory approaches to research, this seminal text includes a range of examples, including a variety of creative forms, such as storytelling, conversations, letters, social media, and visual methodologies, that challenge linear ways of thinking and embrace Indigenous ways of knowing and seeing. This collection is a go-to resource for all disciplines with a research-focus, including Indigenous studies, sociology, social work, education, gender studies, and anthropology. 

The Academic Family Gathering will create a knowledge exchange space for Indigenist researchers to consider the unique challenges and possibilities of knowledge mobilization in relation to Indigenous research. Beyond just talking about Indigenous research issues, the Academic Family Gathering will provide a space for enacting Indigenous concepts of relationality and relational accountability within a framework of Academic Kinship (AK).

This five-day gathering will take place in  Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN) and will be hosted by the Wilson/Wassenas family (Shawn, Alex, Jamie, Stan and Peggy). Invited participants include other PhD holders from OCN and current or former mentees/graduate students of the hosts. After the Opening Welcome Feast, OCN community members and guests will have an opportunity to Visit to discuss how local knowledge has informed their relationships with Indigenous epistemology and their approaches to research and mentorship.

Coming August 2024