Keeoukaywin: The Visiting Way-Fostering an Indigenous Research Methodology

Abstract

Decolonizing research methodologies are increasingly at the forefront of research with, for, and by Indigenous people. This paper highlights an Indigenous research methodology that emerged from my relationship with the Omushkego people, the Moose Cree First Nation (Moose Factory, Ontario, Canada), during my doctoral research. It presents a decolonizing process of doing research, with a specific research aim of drawing links between land-based pedagogy and milo pimatisiwin (the good life). Through this process, the community and my own experience led me to remember, reclaim, and regenerate what I came to recognize as keeoukaywin, the Visiting Way methodology. With relationality at its core, keeoukaywin recentres Metis and Cree ways of being, and presents a practical and meaningful methodology that fosters milo pimatisiwin, living and being well in relation. This article shows how an Indigenous research methodology inspires social values, kinship, an understanding of women's contribution, and self-recognition in relation to the land, history, community, and values. Such a methodology further unsettles historical hierarchies of knowledge and inaccuracies about Indigenous peoples' ways of being, knowing, and doing.