The Tipuna Project: Intergenerational Healing, Settler Accountability and Decolonising Participatory Action Research in Aotearoa

Coloniality is structured by a hierarchy of knowers, knowing and knowledge that violently denigrates Indigenous ways of being in the world. This hierarchy is premised on a figure-cum-standard of the 'human' as one who is separate from flesh, past and cosmos. Countering it therefore requires counter-practices that open-up multiple other forms of being human - including in research, which largely assumes and reproduces the colonial figure of the human even when done in the name of 'decolonisation'.

Two areas of contemporary kaupapa Maori (KM) scholarship hold promise for such counter-practices: (1) an inspirited 'wairua approach' that attends to expressions of the unseen, including ancestors, in research; and (2) intergenerational trauma praxes that approach the harms caused to colonised or enslaved ancestors as inheritable 'soul wounds' healable through inspirited and embodied practices. The successful uptake of these practices within specialist services and international social movements points also to their potential for people with settler ancestors - often either bypassed in decolonial initiatives or engaged through a cognitive approach that again assumes the colonial figure of the 'human' - reproducing hierarchies and triggering 'White fragility'.

The Tipuna ('Ancestor') Project (TTP) is a multidisciplinary Indigenous and non-Indigenous collaboration based in Aotearoa ('New Zealand') aiming to innovate and evaluate research practices that include Indigenous and settler ancestors in order to counter (1) the denigration of Indigenous ways of knowing/being, (2) the historically traumatic nature of the research space for Indigenous peoples and (3) low settler accountability, before translating these counter-practices into local and international decolonising initiatives more broadly. Using participatory action research (PAR) as both a methodology and a case study, we ask: What are the decolonial possibilities and complexities of including ancestors as co-researchers in PAR?

Co-designed through 3.5 years of dialogue, TTP is shaped by a central value of KM, structured by the vision of a nationwide Indigenous-led movement, and supported by six Indigenous networks (representing over 5000 Maori). A co-researcher collective of 5 Indigenous and 5 non-Indigenous decolonial practitioners and their ancestors will conduct a three year, three-phase project to: (1) Titiro ('Look'), innovate ancestral research practices through participant observation with three ancestral experts; (2) Whakarongo ('Listen'), evaluate these counter-practices through one Indigenous and one non-Indigenous bespoke PAR project; and (3) Korero ('Speak'), translate these for decolonial initiatives more broadly through a 7-day multimedia co-creative laboratory of public experimentation. This partnership of Indigenous and non-Indigenous methods will be grounded in the KM methodology of wananga (collective, non-binary 'wise knowledge-transmission' practices/spaces) and woven with the KM method of whitiwhiti korero (local and international 'spiral dialogues'), ensuring the project itself enacts commitments to Indigenous sovereignty, community accountability and global struggles.

Refusing the colonial separation of knowing/being, TTP has some methods as outputs and shares knowledge throughout - both enabling us to be 'response-able' and reciprocal. Thus, in addition to any outputs arising from the two bespoke PAR projects, the above will be accompanied by three free community events, a quarterly student zui (online hui/'gathering') between UK and Aotearoa universities, a 'thought space' wananga (for accelerating the translation of knowledge upstream to agents of the settler-colonial state) and a public website/blog, as well as co-producing academic and community presentations, publications and networks. The reflexive and dialogic nature of these diverse, multimodal outputs will continually strengthen our process, maximising research integrity and impact.