The Authentic Dissertation

Alternative Ways of Knowing, Research and Representation

Donald Trent Jacobs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135265809
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Authentic Dissertation is a road map for students who want to make their dissertation more than a series of hoop-jumping machinations that cause them to lose the vitality and meaningfulness of their research.

Students and tutors are presented with practical guidance for the kind of alternative dissertations that many educators believe are needed to move Doctoral and Master's level work beyond the limitations that currently stifle authentic contributions for a better world.

Drawing on his Cherokee/Creek ancestry and the Raramuri shamans of Mexico the author explores how research can regain its humanist core and find its true place in the natural order once more. Four Arrows provides a degree of "credibility" that will help graduate students legitimize their ideas in the eyes of more conservative university committees. This inspiring book will also help academics who sincerely want to see these alternative forms but are concerned about the rigor of "alternative" dissertation research and presentation.

The featured dissertation stories tap into more diverse perspectives, more authentic experience and reflection, and more creative abilities. They are, in essence, spiritual undertakings that

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• Honour the centrality of the researcher's voice, experience, creativity and authority

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• Focus more on important questions than on research methodologies per se

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• Reveal virtues (generosity, patience, courage, respect, humility, fortitude, etc.)

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• Regard the people's version of reality

The goal of this book is not to replace the historical values of academic research in the western tradition, but to challenge some of these values and offer alternative ideas that stem from different, sometimes opposing values.

Part 1
Day one

Indigenous ways of knowing

It is our opinion that one of the most fundamental principles of Aboriginal research methodology is the necessity for the research to locate him or herself … We resist colonial models of writing by talking about ourselves first and then relating pieces of our stories and ideas to the research topic.

(Kathy Absolon and Cam Willet in Research as Resistance, edited by Leslie Brown and Susan Strega, 2005, p. 99)

1st presentation
“Brilliant or bullshit!”

Four Arrows’ story

with Manulani Aluli Meyers, Warren Linds, and Gregory Cajete

• Autobiographical (relating one’s own life story or a portion of it)
• Phenomenology (the study of consciousness)
• Critical methodology (being critical of dominant assumptions that lead toward oppression)
• Auto-ethnography (about the self as part of a different culture to help explain differences)
• Theoretical inquiry (an attempt to explain and organize so as to draw assumptions and predictions for future benefit)
• Story telling (a narrative of events, real or imagined, that conveys meaning)
• Ethno-methodology (the study of how people understand their daily lives)
• Indigenous approach (valuing visions)

(Editor’s note: Transcript begins at 08:30, after opening prayer and sage ceremony)

Runner: Mitakuye pi. Mi chante ata wo wogala ke, na nape chiusu pelo. My relatives, I speak from my heart and offer each of you a warm handshake. For the rest of our time together, I will go by my nickname, Runner, although my full name translates in English to “Fast Runner Who Comes from the Water.” I am Oglala Lakota from the Tetuwan Oyate. I am a mother and a grandmother. I grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation near the town of Porcupine. I am also a retired university professor, so I think I understand a little of the world most of you live in now.

Before I introduce my respected friend and colleague, Dr. Samson, someone asked if I would translate the opening prayer I offered in the Lakota language this morning, before the transcribing of our sessions together began. In essence I was saying that each of us, as well as all of those in our communities, have important contributions to make in putting our world back into balance. I said that we have come to a time and place of great urgency. The global environment is being destroyed by the ignorance of human misdirection. I offered that the fate of future generations is in our hands. I said that we must use our minds, our hearts, our intuitions, and our spiritual awareness all together. I explained that it is expected that what we were given in life we can use in positive ways for the health of all the People, which includes not only us two-legged, but all of that which exists with spirit, from the rocks on Mother Earth to the birds in Father Sky. I talked about seeing ourselves as part of the universe, both the visible and the invisible universe, and that we as humans are not better or not worse than the trees, the grasses, the animals, or the stars. I ended by reminding us that we are all related.

Now it is my honor to introduce Dr. Carl Samson, a distinguished professor and author of numerous texts on research methodologies. Carl will serve with me during our week together as sort of a co-facilitator. His perspectives, which are based on traditional “Western” academic values, are sure to challenge those of us with different views to defend the validity of our ideas.

Dr. Samson: Thanks Runner for sharing with us the meaning of the beautiful Lakota words you spoke to us this morning. I must say though, that I am not all that comfortable with prayers in this or any other academic setting. I also want to say to everyone, and I think it may be relevant to our reasons for being here, that I do not think things are quite as dismal as Runner’s prayer seems to imply. Frankly, and I know I am to be frank in these dialogues, I also resent the idea that a rock is as “important” as a human. I hope talking to rocks will not be part of the alternative dissertation agenda (laughing).

Runner: It is not the talking to the rock so much but the listening that would be important for dissertations (laughing). Anyway folks, as you can see, it won’t take much to get the two of us arguing, but I do want to remind everyone that our arguments in these sessions are not competitive, but cooperative. In other words, we hope they will be dialogical and open for continued learning as opposed to attempting to win a particular position. Oh, and I will be the first to admit, not all of the rocks can talk, only some (smiling).

Dr. Samson: (Laughing with the audience) OK. Well, let’s move on. For the sake of readers who will want to use this transcript as a resource, we have tried to organize the presentations according to some kind of logical structure. We will begin with a number of Indigenous presenters.

Runner: We will open each presentation with the presenter’s name and the title selected for the talk. We’ll make available a brief list of concepts, approaches, or methodologies (established or new) that may be applicable to the particular dissertation. So let’s get started with our first presenter, who also happens to be the organizer of this event. Please give Wahinkpe Topa, Four Arrows, a welcome.

Four Arrows: Thank you and welcome to everyone! I want to talk to you a little about my own dissertation for the Curriculum and Instruction doctorate, with a cognate in American Indian worldviews, which I received from Boise State University in 1999. I believe it is a good example of how Indigenous scholars see personal experience and introspection as a major source of authentic authority.

This is also why it is important for me to say a little about my personal experience and ancestry as a beginning. Although I now go by my Lakota name, “Four Arrows,” Wahinkpe Topa in Lakota, I have no Lakota blood. On my mother’s side, I am Creek and Cherokee, related to the Stewart and Bumpass Cherokee lines from the Southeast territory of the U.S. On my father’s side I come from the Wallace line, located on the border of Scotland and Ireland. Any pride in my Native heritage was largely suppressed by my family, apparently for my own protection, but after a stint in the Marine Corps during Vietnam, I began to question the wisdom of my anti-Indian prejudice. I wound up living and working on the Pine Ridge Reservation eventually. I became a Lakota Sun Dancer and during a vision quest I saw the things that ultimately resulted in my being given my Lakota name. Years later, on the day the U.S. invaded Iraq, another vision guided me to start going by this name publicly. This has not been an easy journey nor very good for my “career,” but that is a story for another time. However, I think the reason I was guided to do so is because my “Indian” name offers opportunities to begin relevant discussions about the importance of Indigenous ways of knowing for our times. In any case, I wanted to mention the relevance of the vision in connection to my name because the vision is considered to be a legitimate source for new knowledge in Indigenous cultures and a vision was the centerpiece of my own dissertation.

Before telling my story, I want to say that, in one sense, I believe all people are all ultimately “Indigenous.” We come from ancestors who once lived according to the rhythms of a particular place. We have in our DNA the potential to recall the harmony and balance of life that we understood from living and observing in that space. We can tap into this knowing to again bring about right relationships with all of creation. I do not intend that we should not pay special attention to contemporary Indigenous peoples or that we should not try to stop genocide and oppression and injustice against them. Nor do I want to suggest that anyone can easily access Indigenous wisdom. I only suggest that to be “Indigenous” goes beyond race, tribal affiliation or even the teachings that stem from observing a specific geographical place. All of us can learn, and I believe it would be in all of our best interests to learn as much as we can, from the Indigenous worldviews practiced by today’s Indigenous Peoples who still are able to remember and act according to them.

I’ve titled my short presentation “Brilliant or Bullshit,” because these were the actual words that my dissertation committee chair wrote on the bottom of my cover page after he finished reading it. Although disappointed and a bit confused about what would happen next, I was not really surprised. I was fifty-four years of age and pursuing my second doctoral degree, the first obtained more than twenty years previously. I was not a stranger to the “ivory tower.” I would have been the first to admit that my dissertation might have been difficult for a Western academic to accept right off.

I was also not surprised because my dissertation proposal had not prepared anyone for the final product, including myself! It had merely explained that I would return to live with and research the Raramuri Indians of Mexico (also known as the Tarahumara). The proposal was also supposed to be an ethnographic study about how the cultural wisdom of their shamans can be a model for transformative learning and for the kind of critical thinking and situated action that can overcome educational hegemony in schools.

My proposal was not completely forthcoming, however. I did not mention the two most important reasons I wanted to return to the remote Raramuri lands. One was that I wanted to do something to help stop the Fontes drug cartel’s murderous treatment of the Raramuris. The second related to my wanting to better understand a powerful vision I had fifteen years earlier, several days after Mexico’s Rio Urique had nearly drowned me during an attempt to be the first to successfully kayak down it. The Raramuri Indians had saved my life and the life of my companion. During our incredible climb out of the eight-thousand-foot steep canyon, I had a vision that I had been reflecting on for many years. It related to a mountain lion and a fawn and it had been life transforming for me. It led me to ideas about the role of trance states, fear, authority, language, and nature in the process of transformative learning, although framing it in these ways was a result of my new dissertation studies. At the time of my dissertation work, I wanted to better understand the vision and how it had seemed to affect my life and what could be gleaned from it that would have an application in the field of education.

I said nothing about my vision in my dissertation proposal for two reasons. First, I did not know for sure if it would actually play a role in my final dissertation or not. Second, even if I thought it might play significantly into my dissertation, I knew that my committee would not have accepted a vision as a basis for my research hypothesis. Somehow, I thought, I would just deal with the information that related to the vision, without mentioning this source for it. I guess I was guided by the old saw that says it is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

Of course, the vision wound up being the mainstay of my dissertation. I wrote partially as autobiographical story of how the vision and my life subsequent to it had helped me learn a new theory of learning. From the vision of a dead fawn, and the letters in the word, I explored how the constructs of fear, authority, words, and nature are understood differently in traditional Indigenous cultures than in traditional Western ones.

In spite of my chair’s initial reaction, I managed to convince him and others on my committee that the work was not “bullshit.” Ultimately, I successfully defended my research in front of a formidable audience. The next year, my dissertation was published in book form by Inner Traditions International with the title, Primal Awareness: A True Story of Survival, Awakening and Transformation with the Raramuri Shamans of Mexico. I have collected many letters from people who say it impacted their lives in good ways. I continue to grow and learn from the work and just last year was invited to present on it, more than ten years after its publication, at the University of Arizona’s Center for Consciousness Studies.

I hope my short dissertation story will give new doctoral students the confidence to use their own dreams and visions as a “valid” source of knowledge. Conclusions can still be triangulated for validity with more traditional research of course, but until scholars are allowed to give credibility to their dreams and visions, the academy will continue to stifle possible solutions to the many problems that face our world.

Thank you.

Dr. Samson: Well, Four Arrows, you have asked me to be bold and forthright in these proceedings so I may as well start now. What concerns me is, well, that you may be advocating that people not be clear about the research during the proposal stage, or worse, that they be deceptive.

Four Arrows: If one is unsure of what will emerge during a research project, it seems that attempting to predetermine the structure or focus can block the emergence of creative material. Also, although visions and dreams are well established in Indigenous cultural research, they are not seen as appropriate sources of knowledge in the academy. The academic research on dreams and visions at the time that would have supported them as sources of knowledge was mostly anecdotal. So what choice did I really have? I do not want people to be deceptive, of course. The purpose of this conference is to create a climate whereby doctoral candidates can be forthcoming about things such as basing a dissertation on a vision or dream. Finally, there is a cultural or a worldview issue here. Although the Western academy may not put much stock in visions, from my Indigenous perspective it makes more sense for me to rely on a vision than to rely on, say, factor analysis.

Dr. Samson: I think, since we have a little extra time before the next presenter, that it would be good at this point to talk a little about what “research” is and is not. Runner, do we have time?

Runner: We do.

Dr. Samson: The best definition I have found comes from Chris L.S. Coryn of Western Michigan University’s Evaluation Center. He says that research is a “truth-seeking activity which contributes to knowledge, aimed at describing or explaining the world, conducted and governed by those with a high level of proficiency or expertise.” (For those of you who would like to read his entire article or who need to cite this reference, his online piece is entitled, “The Fundamental Characteristics of Research.” I’ll write the Web site on the board. It is:

http://evaluation.wmich.edu/jmde/content/JMDE005content/Definitions%20of%20Research.htm.)

I’m sure we will all agree with this definition and that we should proceed to evaluate the dissertation examples you all have brought to share with us in the light of it. And I would ask you to consider whether talking about a personal vision meets the idea of conducting research with such expertise.

Runner: I can see by the expressions on many faces that there is some disagreement with the definition. I’m also a bit uncomfortable with the use of the word “expertise.” I know, I know, a “doctorate” is about being an expert, you will say. It is about giving authority to a person’s knowledge in a particular field. In my culture we do have medicine persons who have special gifts that are recognized by the community. Still, there is something about the term “expert” that does not resonate. I can’t help but think of the definition I once heard that an expert is anyone who has a slide show and travels further than twenty miles from his or her house. There is also the one about an expert being anyone who knows enough in their field to be scared. And I also remember a bumper sticker that read, “There is one person in every organization who really knows what is going on. That person must be fired,” meaning that even the person with the most knowledge if not “officially” deemed the expert will be dismissed.

I think there is a system in place that prevents a certain kind of knower from being accepted as an “expert,” and this kind of knowing might have much to offer the world. Kuhn and others have argued that the scientific community is comprised of people whose common beliefs and values create a uniformity that can prevent such new ideas from coming forth. This is why paradigm shifts often come from people outside of the area of research. For example, did you know that a mortician invented the direct dial telephone upon learning that his competitor’s wife was the local telephone operator?

Dr. Samson: We are talking about doctoral level research. Are you saying we should just give doctorates to anyone who has proficiency in something or comes up with a new invention or wants to tell a story about a dream they had? Look, can we at least agree that research should contribute to new knowledge?

Runner: Unless you believe there is “nothing new under the sun.” My culture believes that we were placed on earth last so we could learn from those put on it before us. So maybe it is not so much “new knowledge,” but new ways of understanding and applying existing knowledge. But I’ll go along with your definition if there is no one in this group who wants to jump in and challenge it, then let’s proceed.

Dr. Samson: OK. Then can we also agree that it is about describing or explaining the world?

Runner: I would want to include, no, emphasize, the concept of interpreting the world instead of explaining it. Actually, I think that is all we can do.

Four Arrows: I would like to ask one of our honored guests to say a few words about Runner’s point here. Many of you know Manulani Aluli Meyer of the University of Hawaii at Hilo and her wonderful work in education, sustainability, transformation, and Indigenous epistemology. Manulani?

Manulani: Runner’s idea about interpreting rather than explaining is important. It is about moving from intelligence to interpretation. From fragmentation to wholeness. From status-quo objectivity to radical/conscious subjectivity. This work helps lead us toward a different way to approach literacy, research, energy, ideas, data collection, sustainability, and all collaborations.

Dr. Samson: Are you saying we should move away from epistemology, away from a ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction
• PART 1 Day one: Indigenous ways of knowing
• PART 2 Day two: Creative story telling
• PART 3 Day three: Poetic inquiry and visual art
• PART 4 Day four: Documentary film and photographs
• PART 5 Day five: Drama, dialogue, and performance
• PART 6 Day six: Autobiography/autoethnography
• PART 7 Day seven: Participant’s voices
• Bibliography