Relational Research

Working with a relational approach will be essential; building relationship with communities, people, the more-than-human, environment in a respectful and collaborative way that recognizes the need for reciprocity (Wiebe, 2019:20). The design of my research idea will need to incorporate space for cocreating the design based on the needs of the participants. My idea was to have participants respond to the glaciers through writing, painting, a community engagement art making event. Since reading this article I am starting to think, how could this be documented? Maybe, like Wiebe’s project, film might capture the community art response as well as the story telling about Indigenous relationships with glaciers both historical and contemporary, while inviting community collaboration. Wiebe explained how the researcher acts as witness, to learn, to envision, and to bring about change through their work in relationship with a community. Traditionally researchers have acted as translators, but through mixed media arts, space can be made for the voices themselves. Wiebe emphasizes the importance of appropriate, invited, and collaborative participation in Indigenous communities as part of the research process of engagement. The importance of reciprocity between researcher and community is a shared experience co created over a long time period. I will need to think of ways that the projects can give back and continue in relationship with the communities and participants. Wiebe’s writing also made it clear the need to then use research to speak back to oppressive policies towards people and environment. This part of the design process could be open to cocreation from the participants and in response to the needs identified by the people with the intention of reciprocity. Wiebe’s research project incorporating the mixed media arts and storytelling, is a clear call for encouraging the building of counternarratives to dismantle the dominant narratives that exist. In her inspiring recounting of her action-based research project, she outlines the importance of relational research; building relationship and collaborating with communities instead of practicing extractivist methods of research. She emphasizes stories in research can be used as, “radical tools of change for social and environmental justice” (Weibe, 2019:19). The researcher acts as witness, to learn, to envision, to bring about change through their work in relationship with a community. Traditionally researchers have acted as translators, but through mixed media arts, space can be made for the voices themselves. Weibe being non-Indigenous emphasizes the importance of appropriate, invited, and collaborative participation in Indigenous communities as part of the research process of engagement. The importance of reciprocity between researcher and community is a shared experience co created over a long time period.

Her research methods were built upon in part from Kovach’s key components of relational research methods and further developed a creative method for the collaboration and community engagement. This engagement included the humans and the “more-than-human environment” (Weibe, 2019:25). When collaborating with a marginalized community and environment that has been victim to oppressive policies, a sensing policy can be considered to place value on situated knowledge, giving space for voices, offering multilayered analysis, while being grounded in community. Above all, her advice to acknowledge the positionality of all involved and remaining open to community direction and feedback inspires an openness of research possibilities.

Wiebe, S. M. (2019). “Just” stories or “just stories”? Mixed media storytelling as a prism for environmental justice and decolonial futures. Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning, 5(2), 19–35.