Reflections on researching dispossession and genocide as Indigenous and Black graduate students


Joanis Sherry, Carleton University; Jaclyn Tompalski, Carleton University

This presentation offers a unique perspective on the experiences of two graduate students, one black and one indigenous, serving as research assistants analyzing French and English archival texts for evidence of terra nullius in the Pontiac region. This project argued that the industrial development of the Pontiac region cannot be understood outside of a political economy of dispossession. In this presentation here, we argue conducting research related to settler colonialism, as black and indigenous graduate students, is deeply personal and at times traumatizing work that requires further reflection in order to ensure the sustainability of researchers throughout the research process. Throughout our engagement with archival documents, we were confronted with frequent instances of anti-indigenous and anti-black racism. Through regular dialogue between ourselves and the primary researcher on the project, we unraveled the layers of racism and colonialism embedded within the historical texts, and the ways this ‘historic’ racism operates in the present when re-read. These discussions provided a space to critically examine our positionality within the research project (as researchers and black and indigenous co-conspirators) and consider how this kind of community engaged research can be improved to support future black and indigenous student researchers. Drawing from black feminist, indigenous feminist, and decolonial frameworks, we explore the emotional, intellectual, and ethical challenges we encountered while researching historic accounts of dispossession in the Pontiac region. Our reflections illuminate the complex relationship between working with archival data, identity, and the ongoing impact of racism while researching in the settler colonial university. Most prominently, we reflect on the various affects and emotions evoked by reading accounts of genocide in the Canadian context. These emotions stimulate further discussions about the emotional and physical labour required to engage in research work related to genocide and dispossession. While this work was done in exchange for a wage, the emotional labour required to efficiently complete the project as per project and grant timelines often raised questions about the limitations of financial compensation for such deeply traumatizing work. Rather than call for the discontinuation of such critical work altogether, we offer recommendations to make this kind of research more sustainable for black and indigenous students. This includes a reflection on the opportunities for solidarity building between black and indigenous students, as well as faculty, within and against settler colonialism. In full, we suggest it is both the work done as researchers and our time spent away from the project itself that informs a more robust research practice. The continuous negotiation of our identities as black and indigenous researchers who ourselves also experience the effects of settler colonialism demands the undoing of neat boundaries between researcher and focus of study, and calls us into a deeper relationship with the goals and aims of our research project, namely, decolonization. This presentation provides an opportunity for researchers to contemplate the caring relationships that sustain research projects. We invite folks to consider how they care for themselves, those impacted by their research, and those with whom they research. How might a deeper reflection on grief, sadness, and joy allow for more engaged research? How might these reflections create the conditions for co-resistance? Lastly, how might these reflections allow for the transformation of researchers?

This paper will be presented at the following session: