Indigenous Research Is a Journey: An Interview with Bagele Chilisa

Bagele Chilisa is a Professor at the University of Botswana where she teachers research methods and evaluation courses. Her recent books include Educational Research: Towards Sustainable Development, Research Methods for Adult Educators in Africa, and Indigenous Research Methodologies. Indigenous Research Methodologies is the first textbook that situates research in a larger, historical, cultural and global context and draws on Indigenous knowledge from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Asia. Her research focuses on the development of research methodologies that are relevant, context specific and appropriate in African contexts and other culturally complex communities. She writes about and practices research methodologies that make visible the voices of those who continue to supper oppression and discrimination on the basis of sex, race/ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, or social class. Bagele Chilisa can be contacted c/o CHILISAB@mopipi.ub.bwThe interviewers were Cheryl White and David Denborough.In this interview, Bagele Chilisa, introduces key themes relating to Indigenous research methodologies and the ways in which Indigenous scholars are transforming understandings of research and knowledge creation. Professor Chilisa also offers messages of suppor t to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars.Keywords: Indigenous research methodologies, decolonising practice, Indigenous ethics, knowledge systems.Cheryl: Bagele, we love your book, Indigenous Research Methodologies! In fact, when I came across it, I couldn't put it down, and this is not a common experience for me in relation to research texts! It is already inspiring and challenging us ... so firstly, than you for your book ...Bagele: That is beautiful. Thank you for inviting me to talk to you, to get to know you. I'm very thankful. Let me start with a story of myself.I was born in a very small village in Botswana. The nearest school was over a hundred kilometres away. My father decided I should go to school, however, so I stayed far away from home with my uncle who was a teacher until I finished primary school. I was lucky then, because my father wanted me to continue my education at a good school. He sent me to a public Catholic school and it was there that I learned how to pray. In our village there was no church, but at this school we all had to pray and to be baptised. When you were baptised in this Roman Catholic denomination, you were given a new name, a Christian name. During the school holidays, I told my father that I was going to be baptised and I asked my parents to give me an English Christian name. That was when my father told me, 'The name I gave you, Bagele, is the name we shall always know you by'. He explained that this name located me in a network of relationships and histories and that if my name was changed it would start a chain of other changes of names and would require the community to figure out new relationships with him and with me.At the time that we were growing up, there was also a skin lightening cream that women and men were applying to their faces so that they could be lighter. I remember my father warning me, 'I'm sending you to school but you must come back with the same skin colour. Should I see any change in your skin colour, I will not allow you to enter the gates of my compound.'David: I have read that these were some of the ways in which your father first introduced you to concepts of decolonisation ...Yes. While my father didn't call it decolonisation, as I ventured into university and studied the history of colonisation and the continuing colonisation that is currently occurring, I realised then that my father had always been against Africans losing their identity. He was always against one adopting everything that is white and replacing everything that is African.Replacing my name for a Christian name would have been to replace what was known, what was cultural, what was African. …

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