Inner Spirit/Fire and Indigenous Student/Researcher Identity: Differing Spaces from an Ojibway Perspective

• Main Author: Trudeau, Lyn
• Other Authors: Department of Graduate and Undergraduate Studies in Education
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Brock University 2024
• Subjects: Indigenous Autoethnography; Arts-based Research; Etuaptmumk/Two-Eyed Seeing; Storytelling; Epistolary; anishina*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10464/18357

This research explored my personal journey as an Indigenous student traversing a doctoral program in a Canadian university. Contrary to ample literature on Indigenous students portrayed from a deficit standpoint, my research offers an alternative narrative by expounding on areas that kept my Inner/Spirit Fire burning and contributed to my success. In the spirit of reconciling educative spaces, I employed Etuaptmumk/Two-Eyed Seeing (E/TES) as a theoretical framework to bridge and equate Indigenous knowledge with western knowledge in the academy. Honouring oral traditions of the Anishinaabeg, I use Indigenous autoethnography (IA) coupled with arts-based research to tell my story. Gathering data, I engaged in ceremony and used creative images/artwork to convey my truths through lived experiences and realities. I thus employed reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) as it specifically draws from a researcher’s cultural background and personal experience to interpret the data, enabling me to present authentic Ojibway-Anishinaabe perceptions. This research offers insightful threads that cross time and space, acknowledge the power of relationships and story, and recognize other-than human “beings” and realms as part of our Earth Walk. Further, themes indicate educative institutions can become sites of reclamation for Indigenous persons and students in a Eurocentric academic environment. Thus, I situate myself within an Indigenous concept of Seven Forward Seven Back to honour my ancestors and welcome emerging and future Indigenous scholars to support cultural survivance.