Doing Storywork: Lessons Learned from Adopting a Storytelling Approach to Research in a Settler-Colonial State

Abstract:Storytelling has been identified as a powerful tool for articulating experience, generating understanding across barriers, and contributing to advocacy. Furthermore, storytelling is a topic with a rich tradition of analysis within Western and Indigenous scholarly traditions. This article shares conclusions about the use of storytelling as a research method developed during an in-depth study into the school experiences of Indigenous young adults in living in the inner city. These conclusions offer insights on preparing for storytelling research, story listening, and story interpretation. They draw on a synthesis of the principles of Indigenous storywork with the growing field of storytelling research.