Decolonizing Methodologies Research And Indigenous People By Linda Tuhiwai Smith Analysis

Linda Tuhiwai Smith aim is to provide researchers from Indigenous community with a worldviews and notion for conducting research from an Indigenous perspective. The book “Decolonizing Methodologies Research and Indigenous Peoples” by Linda Tuhiwai Smith basically deals with the native people and the concept of imperialism and colonization the formation of the western research and narrates the example of how research colonized the Maori people of New Zealand. Linda Tuhiwai Smith is an associate professor and Director of the International Research Institute for Maori and Indigenous Education at the University of Auckland. Linda Tuhiwai Smith is the leading theorist on decolonization of Maori in New Zealand. Smith focuses her argument onto …show more content…
Smith analyses how white researchers impose their views on Maori people. It reviews the significance of indigenous perspectives on research and attempts to account for how and why such perspective has been developed. It provides a sense of reality that Indigenous communities have quite valid fear about the future loss of intellectual and cultural knowledge. Linda Smith discusses her use of the term “Indigenous People” and depicts a picture of their survival and how they have struggled from disease, dislocation, language, cultural loss and how the impact of the western researcher affects the identity of this Indigenous community. The indigenous social movement started with the frustration and their motive now shifted from survival to restoration and revitalization, is concerned with issues of sovereignty, education, health and justice, system development, land titles and other politics of self …show more content…
In the introduction Smith discusses that the Indigenous people feel that they are often studied therefore she tries to explore the difficult postion of Indigenous researcher,between an Indigenous community and western researcher. The author demonstrates the complications of the role of “research” within an Indigenous framework and the history of European imperialism or western colonization in using research. The books reveals in particular, how the western researchers steal the idea from the Indigenous people and try to impose power upon the Indigenous people. She also says that the word “Research” is itself one of the dirtiest words among the indigenous people. So, the western researcher should try to improve their way of research and be aware while doing research with the Indigenous people. She shows how the research methodologies based on western discourse has led the Indigenous people i.e the Maori community being colonized.Smith discusses how the western researcher thinks about the Indigenous beliefs and culture in an uncivilised manner. So it basically gives the background for the need to decolonize western methodologies and tries to find out the politics of research. The views of the westerner and Indigenous people differ radically. Smith does not simply make a difference between westerns and Indigenous concepts of powers, but try to interlink