As Indigenous community-based and community-engaged scholars, scholarship often gives rise to questions about the role and voice of community in research. Furthermore, we contemplate how this form of research changes our assumptions about what research is, how we do it, and what our responsibilities are as scholars. This Graduate Workshop in Research Methods will examine the relationship between archives, community, and senses of place through three essential questions: 1) How does engaging archives empower communities? 2) What does it mean for an archive to be place-based, and how is the relationship between archive and place mediated by community? 3) How does understanding community as part of the archive change our conception of archives?
At this Graduate Workshop in Research Methods, Leola Tsinnajinnie Paquin and Maia Rodriguez will host NCAIS graduate students at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, where they explore these central questions through discussion, practice, and building relationships. We will further develop our seminar discussions and research presentations through travels, visits, and gatherings that nuance our understandings of how place-making and community-building inform one another, what the responsibility of an archive is to the places and communities it relates to and affects, and the different ways archives can serve and strengthen communities. Some examples
of such topics, themes, and critical conversations that will emerge from the activities will include: the ethics of archives and the importance of community awareness, access, and input; understanding archives beyond “the archive”; politics of refusal and recognition in archival and community-engaged research; and how archival and community-engaged research can honor the sustained spirit of community transcendent of time and physical boundaries.
One student from each NCAIS institution may participate in the three-day workshop as part of an introduction to critical methodologies in American Indian and Indigenous Studies. Housing will be provided and participants will be reimbursed up to $750 for travel. Leftover funding will be used to lessen the travel costs of students whose travel costs exceed $750.
Interested students should apply directly to their NCAIS Faculty Liaison by November 1, 2024.