Decolonizing Ways of Knowing: Heritage, Living Communities, and Indigenous Understandings of Place

Abstract

In “Decolonizing Ways of Knowing: Heritage, Living Communities, and Indigenous Understandings of Place”, we build on the scholarly and artistic practice of deep memory work to present a collection of articles, films, and artwork that contribute critical genealogies from the United States, Africa, and the South Pacific. In this introduction, examples from Antoinette Jackson’s work in the American South and Rachel Breunlin’s work with the Neighborhood Story Project in New Orleans and Western Australia are used to build the special issue’s framework around public scholarship and art. With a particular emphasis on polyvocality, visual ethnography and creative nonfiction, the introduction argues that the work of decolonizing genealogy can be supported by respecting epistemologies that are deeply connected to place. Collectively, the contributors to the special issue demonstrate that creative practices around personal and collective histories can be an important way of reconnecting ties that may have been severed during years of colonialism.

Laugh—cry, eat—drink, dance! Tracing belonging through cartographies of joy

“…They call for ethnographers to pick up pencils, audio recorders, and other tools for crafting multi‐sensory and multimodal ethnographies (Boudreault‐Fournier 2019; Causey 2017; Degarrod 2018; Elliott and Culhane 2017; Kashanipour 2021a, 2021b; Pink 2016; Taussig 2011). Motivated by a desire to decolonize the disciplines and share power with research participants in meaningful ways, anthropologists have championed collaborative methods and asserted the critical power of centering Black, Indigenous, Latinx, queer, and feminist practices (Bejarano et al 2019; Breunlin 2020; Harrison 2008; Jackson 2020; Lassiter et al 2004; Lassiter 2005). Some have created labs, like Elizabeth Chin's Center for Speculative Ethnography, Centre for Imaginative Ethnography, Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab, and the Participatory Media Lab led by David Syring to draw students and faculty into different ways of working together, rethinking ethnographic apprenticeship and generating visions for what ethnography can be and what it can do (Chin 2015; Culhane 2017; Lee 2019; Syring 2019).…”

“…Some have created labs, like Elizabeth Chin's Center for Speculative Ethnography, Centre for Imaginative Ethnography, Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab, and the Participatory Media Lab led by David Syring to draw students and faculty into different ways of working together, rethinking ethnographic apprenticeship and generating visions for what ethnography can be and what it can do (Chin 2015; Culhane 2017; Lee 2019; Syring 2019). In New Orleans, the Neighborhood Story Project harnesses art, photography, and narrative, expanded modes of peer review and co‐authorship to create collaborative ethnographies, exhibits, and events engaging Indigenous, African, and diasporic knowledge and practice (Breunlin 2020; Fi Yi Yi et al 2018; Haviland 2017). This expansion of visual methodologies and multimodal possibilities in teaching and research engages diverse students and invokes specific publics (Culhane 2017; Franzen 2013; Lee 2019; Waley 2015).…”