Learning to Research in a Good Way: Reframing Academic Frameworks

Cassie Hill
Mar 17
4 min read

For a long time, I tried to be the kind of researcher my programs seemed to expect: clear categories, polished methodology chapters, and careful distance from the people I was writing about.

But as an Indigenous scholar, that distance never felt honest.

This piece is about the moment I stopped trying to force myself into Western methodological boxes and started naming what I was already doing: researching in a way that is relational, story‑driven, and accountable to community.

When “methods” don’t fit your heart

Most graduate research training starts from the same three pillars: qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods. You’re taught to pick, justify, and stay within those frames.

But where do you go if your own knowledge comes from ceremony, land, story, and community rather than from those categories? Where do you place visiting, sharing circles, or wampum teachings in a standard methods chapter?

In my case, the more I learned about mainstream approaches, the more I felt the quiet pressure to leave parts of myself at the door:

my spiritual life
my responsibilities to community
my sense that story is not “data,” it is law and relationship

This critique started as an assignment, but really, it was a refusal. A refusal to keep pretending that Western methodology is the only way to do good research with Indigenous peoples.

Sitting with two Indigenous methodologies

In this piece, I put two works into conversation:

Darren Thomas’s Haudenosaunee methodology, OGWEHOWENEHA, grounded in teachings like One Dish, One Spoon and the practice of visiting.
Tachine, Yellow Bird, and Cabrera’s Sharing Circles, offered as an Indigenous methodological approach distinct from Western focus groups.

Both respond to the same problem: research has caused real harm in Indigenous communities. People are tired of being studied, extracted from, and written about without consent, reciprocity, or benefit.

Instead of tweaking Western methods, these authors build from Indigenous law, protocol, and story.

Thomas shows how a Haudenosaunee methodology can guide research in an Anishinaabe community—carefully, slowly, and with deep attention to differences.
Tachine and colleagues show how Sharing Circles foreground protocol, safety, and relational time over efficiency and tight agendas.

Reading them, I realized I wasn’t alone in feeling that mainstream methods were too small for the work we need to do.

Focus groups vs. Sharing Circles: time, trust, and truth

On paper,

can look similar: a group of people, a topic, a facilitator, a conversation.

In practice, they move in very different ways.

Focus groups are built for:

short, structured sessions
clear lists of questions
efficient “data collection”

Sharing circles are built for:

ceremony and protocol (food, openings, closings)
story as the central mode of knowing
lingering, sometimes hours longer than planned

In the study Tachine and colleagues describe, students shared deeply personal experiences of transition, grief, and survival in post‑secondary spaces. That vulnerability did not appear in spite of the slowness of the method. It emerged because of it.

The research design chose relationship over rush. And that choice shaped the knowledge that became possible.

Visiting as method: more than “interviews”

Thomas’s work adds a distinctly Haudenosaunee dimension through visiting.

Visiting is not just “doing interviews in people’s homes.” It is a whole way of being in relationship while gathering knowledge:

showing up over time, in multiple kinds of spaces
allowing trust and familiarity to grow before asking questions
sharing, not just taking, in those encounters

For Western methods, this looks inefficient. For Haudenosaunee and many other Indigenous frameworks, this is ethics. This is validity.

Visiting acknowledges that our presence in community has consequences. We cannot just appear with a recorder, extract what we want, and disappear.

Rethinking “validity” and “limitations”

Standard methodology language asks about:

reliability
validity
replicability

Those are not useless concepts, but they don’t fully fit what’s happening in Indigenous‑led research.

Both Thomas and Tachine et al. name “limitations” that, from an Indigenous view, are actually signs of integrity:

The work takes a long time because relationships take a long time.
The method might not be easily replicated somewhere else because context and Nation‑specific protocols matter.
Ethics involve communities and Nations, not just university review boards.

Instead of asking, “Can this be replicated in any setting?” I’ve learned to ask:

Did this work honour the people and lands involved?
Did it support decolonization, repair, or resurgence in some way?
Are we accountable to those who shared their stories with us?

If the answer is no, then it doesn’t matter how “rigorous” the methods section sounds.

What this changed in how I write and research

Engaging deeply with these two methodologies shifted how I show up as a researcher.

Some of the biggest shifts:

From extraction to reciprocity - I no longer see participants as sources of data. They are relatives, knowledge holders, and co‑learners. The work must give something meaningful back.
From studying to visiting - I think about time in communities differently. Relationship‑building is not a prelude to the “real” research. It is the research.
From neutral observer to accountable relation - I do not pretend to be outside the story. My own positionality—as a Haudenosaunee woman, a student, a future ancestor—is part of the method.
From Western benchmarks to Indigenous purposesA project can be perfectly designed and still harmful if it doesn’t serve liberation, healing, or restoration for the people involved.

Research as ceremony, not just paperwork

In my course, this was officially “Assignment Two: Methodological Critique.”

In my life, it felt more like a small ceremony of alignment.

It helped me see that I’m not simply adding a bit of Indigenous “flavour” to Western frameworks. I’m part of a larger movement insisting that:

research with Indigenous peoples must have decolonizing intent
methods must be grounded in Indigenous law and protocols
story, visiting, and ceremony are not extras—they are core

This blog version is shorter and plainer than the original academic paper, but the heart is the same:

I want to do research in a way that my ancestors would recognize as respectful.
I want my work to be something my community could stand beside without flinching.

I want to be able to look back and say: