“It’s a Powerful Thing”: Arts-based Community Research on Intergenerational Learning in Indigenous Textiles

Working on an arts-based community research project to explore intergenerational learning about textiles in Indigenous communities of practice provided original and unexpected results about knowledge transfer among generations of weavers and beaders. The arts-based, story-telling methodology employed, both engaged intergenerational adult learners in discussions about their lives, and produced examples of healing, resilience, and knowledge sharing that were community-based and socially complex. This research on intergenerational learning and knowledge transfer in Indigenous textile arts production was a multidisciplinary project that intersected with adult learning in transnational contexts between Chile and Saskatchewan; and with examples from women who identified as Cree, Dene, Metis and Mapuche. The participants gathered in their perspective countries (and communities) in story-telling discussion circles to share knowledge and testimonies about their work in beading and weaving. Significant to the study was the use of academic and community collaborators along with the arts-based Indigenous methodologies used when the women gathered to tell stories as part of the research process. Among other things, this included considerable efforts building relational networks with Indigenous communities of practice, developing ethical and appropriate frameworks, and drawing upon postcolonial methodologies (Chilisa, 2012; Green, 2007; Tuhiwai-Smith, 1999). The methodologies also included using artifacts to draw out memories, stories and testimonies about intergenerational learning. The results demonstrated how textile production among Indigenous women was both historically- and culturally-constructed, and how contemporary politics of globalization have created intergenerational shifts in the meaning and understandings of the work for the people involved in it. Understandings were particularly different for young women and elders. The research mobilization phase of the research involved the study participants deciding how they wanted to share the results of the research. In Saskatchewan, this included an art gallery exhibit of beading; in Chile efforts to write a book. Several unexpected outcomes surfaced, in addition to exposing the work of the Indigenous women (ages 24-95 years) to a wider audience – academic, community-based, collectors, artists and the public. Context was also a factor in outcomes that demonstrated both similarities and differences in the sites of the study.

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