qʷəd: "Track[ing]" Rather Than Extracting - Part I of My Methodology

One of the best foundational ways I can describe my methodology is this: I do not understand research as an extract. Actually, I reject that framing; rather, I understand it as “tracking.”

In my opinion, that distinction matters. Much academic research on Indigenous peoples has been widely extractive. A core part of my methodological approach in my doctoral studies hinges on an idea that Gaudry (2011) defines as “insurgent research.” This is a stark contrast to “extractive research” – namely, an approach where “researchers” remove the knowledge from the original context and translate it for “usable” knowledge, which is typically within the academy, government, or other forms of bureaucracies. I digress; however, this manifests in a plethora of methods, such as positivist and interpretive frameworks, ethnographic and historical frameworks, and, yes, even critical theory. The issue is not necessarily the methodologies therein… It’s the epistemological posturing that is behind them.

Going back to my original point. I embrace “tracking” as an element of a methodological approach because it is not one mired by possession. No, it is one that comes from attention. In this context, the holism of this is hunting as an Indigenous research paradigm. In this case, a tracker learns to recognize signs, move carefully, how to return to a place, how to notice patterns, how to laser-focus on a specific “object”, and is disciplined enough not to rush past what actually matters when hunting. In this case, tracking requires humility and relationship. Because if we simply hack our way through the bushes, we will scare off what we are hunting.

This is much closer to the work I am doing.

Tracking is a more accurate mechanism for describing Indigenous historical research. It’s not simply mining the archive or random primary documents for individual, isolated facts. It follows the signs on the records that might be damaged or might not make sense at a quick glance. It reads for continuities. For example, hunting for a cougar? Don’t forget to make sure that track isn’t a double-elk hoof imprint in the snow - keep following the track and look for the continuity. Or following a blood trail? Keep following that little red dot until it becomes much...bigger. Check for the continuities before giving up.

In Indigenous historical research, let’s examine placenames, land ties, allotments, and kinship connections over time. Got a spelling one way and that same “object” or “thing”, spelled a different way depending on the source? A family name appears connected to one place in one affidavit, but then reappears in a census elsewhere?  That contradiction that emerges between administrative records and how that person may have understood their own belonging? This isn’t simple “data” - it’s a trail.

This changes how I think about fragmentation, partiality, and contradiction in my own life. In extractive research, fragments appear as a deficiency: gaps in data, barriers to the “truth”, problems to overcome. In tracking, however, fragments are expected. Trails rarely appear all at once. A small sign might not mean much in isolation - it gains meaning when placed by another sign, and another, and another. Similarly, contradictions are not necessarily always failures of “evidence.” Often, they may simply reveal something deeper: a mismatch between Indigenous and settler systems of classification (I call this an epistemic mismatch). They may show where colonial archives have distorted what they claim to record.

So when I say research is tracking, I mean many different things at once. I mean that knowledge is followed, it isn’t seized. I mean that the researcher must read the signs, rather than impose a conclusion in haste. It means that there is some degree of patience, humility, restraint, and accountability, and that they are not secondary ethics added onto research to pass the Ethics Application for the Human Subjects Review Board, the Institutional Review Board, or even after the fact. It is actually the method itself.

For me, this is what matters most, because my work concerns my ancestors, family, extended family, villages, and lands, not some abstract “subject.” They are living relations. To research them responsibly means refusing a logic that treats that knowledge as a possession to hoard or use as some sort of anchor for “prestige” or “career advancement.” It means that I must carefully follow, interpret honestly, and carry what I find in a way that is accountable to the people and the histories from which it comes. That is why I say my research is tracking rather than extraction.

Tracking is the first element that Precedes Return and Teach. Tracking is a metaphor.

-a tired dad