Story-listening as methodology: a feminist case for unheard stories

AbstractIn light of the ongoing practice of non-Indigenous researchers conducting studies on Indigenous lands, new opportunities are needed for creative alternatives to fieldwork, along with an honest conversation about ethics, intent, and practices of place-based collaborative methods in Indigenous studies. In this paper, I explore the notion of story-listening as a creative methodological alternative to extractive methods for settler scholars in Indigenous communities. Through personal reflection, I argue that decolonizing research strategies should involve practices which minimize settler presence in, and demands on, Indigenous communities. A storied approach to research points to academic expectations of knowledge-production, which contribute to silencing Indigenous voices, while paradoxically setting Settler researchers as a privileged audience of Indigenous stories. Looking for told-but-unheard stories, I argue, is one way to find answers and guidance in research while respecting storytellers’ agency and challenging colonial origin stories. Methodological ideas for unheard stories are explored in three phases: hearing, listening, and sharing. All stages of story-listening involve care and respect for the storyteller.Keywords: Anti-colonialfeminist standpoint theoryIndigenous researchmethodologystorytelling AcknowledgementsI am grateful to Astrid Johanne Nyland for her helpful comments on the first version of this paper. I also want to thank Caroline Desbiens, Julia Christensen, and Eleanor Stephenson for their support, feedback, and revisions.Disclosure statementThe author reports there are no competing interests to declare.Funding detailsThis work is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.Additional informationNotes on contributorsArielle FrenetteArielle Frenette is a PhD candidate in geography at Université Laval in Québec City, Canada. Her work focuses on neo-colonial imaginaries surrounding climate change, environmental conservation and animal rights in the Arctic, as well as counter-discourses to these narratives. Her research interests include the intersections between critical northern geography, media studies and feminist methodologies, as well as questions regarding Indigenous rights and self-determination.