Keeoukaywin: The Visiting Way - Fostering an Indigenous Research Methodology

Abstract

Decolonizing research methodologies are increasingly becoming the forefront of research with, for and/or by Indigenous peoples. This paper aims to highlight an Indigenous research methodology that emerged from a Metis researcher’s relation with Omushkego people from Moose Cree First Nation (Moose Factory, Ontario, Canada) during my doctoral research from 2012 to 2016. The contents of the article represent a decolonizing process of doing research with a broader research aim to make links between land-based pedagogy and milo pimatisiwin (good life). It is with the Omushkego people of Moose Cree First Nation and how the community itself led me to remember, to reclaim and to regenerate what I came to identity as Keeoukaywin meaning the Visiting Way. With relationality at its core, the Visiting Way - Keeoukaywin - re-centers Metis and Cree ways of being as a practical and meaningful methodology to foster milo pimatisiwin, living and being well in relation. The study shows how an Indigenous research methodology promotes self-recognition in relation to the land, history, community and values and demystifies our own epistemic relation to historical truths.