Smith has demonstrated that, although indigenous epistemologies do not follow the ‘scientific method,’ they are no less rigorous and worthy of respect. In response, Smith calls for ‘decolonising methodologies’: a demand that research with indigenous peoples and communities should both serve the needs of those communities and also be directed by those communities. From extractive research like bio-prospecting that appropriates and commodifies the knowledges of indigenous communities, to the structural and specific marginalisation of indigenous knowledge and processes and protocols of indigenous knowledge production, to actual bodily appropriations by medical researchers in a position of power with respect to indigenous individuals, exploitation and exclusion remain startlingly common. Combining analyses of colonialism and the academic process, Smith shows how indigenous communities continue to be exploited by mainstream scholarship. Smith’s analysis is not simply historical, though, as she traces how scientific racism has remained foundational to academic knowledge and research practices.
Deeply rooted in these racist and colonial ideologies, the findings of much scholarly research on or involving indigenous peoples have served to support the dehumanisation of indigenous life. Rooted in practices such as these, Smith traces the evolution of the scientific process along a trajectory premised on indigenous peoples being less than human, which rendered indigenous bodies as raw materials for scientific discovery, as well as indigenous lands as open for exploration and exploitation.
Smith explains how researchers would steal the bodies of indigenous dead and experiment on them, including filling the skulls of indigenous peoples with beans to ‘prove’ their smaller cranial capacity. She connects disciplines such as biology and anthropology to now discredited practices such as phrenology as examples of fields of study that evolved through the exploitation of indigenous people.
One of Smith’s most important efforts is to link the history of European conquest and colonisation to the development of scientific thought, hinged on the dehumanisation of and appropriation from indigenous peoples around the world. Re-released in 2012, this book launched a wave of indigenous-led critiques of academic power and proposals for indigenized methodological interventions. Here, Smith traces the history of scientific knowledge as it developed through racist practices and the exploitation of indigenous peoples, and asserts a challenging vision for how research and education can be used to confront colonialism and oppression. She is best known for her groundbreaking 1999 book, Decolonizing Methodologies. Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Ngāti Awa and Ngāti Porou, Māori) is a scholar of education and critic of persistent colonialism in academic teaching and research.
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