Journal of Tribal Intellectual Collective India

ISSN 2321-5437

JTICI Vol.4, Issue 3, No.1, pp. 1 to15, October 2017

Doing Oral History among Indigenous and Oral Communities: Dealing with Rigors and Ethics

Rimi Tadu

Introduction

Postmodern and postcolonial historiography is no more preoccupied with making universal statements or theories. Instead it is integrating itself with multidiciplinary approaches and decentralizing its locations by writing histories for and from different locations. As a result, multiple interpretation and alternative histories are emerging. This is particularly true for history interogations and historiographies that are coming from erstwhile subjugated, suppressed, marginalized, subordinated and non-represented groups of people like indigenous and nativeⁱ people. For instance, Historicism in Anthropology stress on particularism of each community or society as a unique and autonomous historical space (Davis 2011; Geertz 1983) true to their unique historical context. As more and more natives and indigenous people, who are also the insiders, have started contributing to histories by either (re)writing or deconstructing the histories, newer understanding of the past and its multiple locations are coming forth.

However, at the same time when ‘new’ histories are emerging, written from an ‘insider’ perspective, newer sets of questions are also emerging- in relation to agency and ‘voice’ (whose voice), methods and ethics- unique to native or indigenous scholars (Jacobs-Huey, 2002; Marak, nd; Narayan, 1993; Gwaltney, 1976; Jones, 1970) As more and more native scholars, particularly in Anthropology, have started studying their own communities or ‘Going Home Again’ (Gwaltney, 1976) there are more and more sharing or ‘self-confessions’ (Jacob-Huey, 2002) of challenges that they face in the field. The situation is complex because now an insider is trained and have embarked upon ‘studying’ their own community. This is not a simple inversion of gaze, but demands a distancing and a connection both at the same time, not to mention the complex power relation that is integral to research processes in collecting ‘data’ and the representation of voice. In academia particularly, the natives are to conscientiously and beneficially prove ‘How Native is a “Native” Anthropologist?’ (Narayan, 1993). Kirin Narayan (1993) argues for breaking out from the dichotomy of an insider/outsider, native/non-native, observer/observed binary and instead see the multiple and shifting identities of a native researcher. On the other hand as Lanita Jacob-Huey (2002) points out, the common experiences shared by various native scholars across the world for being ‘ghettoized’ within the discipline: for example, native researchers who openly grapple with their positionality or failures in the field are more susceptible to being labeled ‘navel gazers’, axe grinders, politically motivated, ‘hypersensitive’ (Rosaldo 1989; Smith 1999), or, ironically, not native enough. Additionally, native scholars are particularly vulnerable to accusations of having ‘gone native’, a perception that undermines their authority and reinforces a tendency to view native scholars as novices and not experts (Chow 1993; Narayan 1993; Pare- des 1984; Weston 1997). [Jacob-Huey, 2002:799]

As mentioned earlier, these issues and experiences are particularly of the scholars who are native or members of the community, who are studying and are actively disclosing or engages with such identifications. The challenge is complex, and it exists at a very nuanced level, and hence, yet again, I argue, can be experienced only by the native scholars who are trained and exposed to different academic discourses, methodologies and positionalities. In India, however, the political claims and counter claims on indigeneity is old and has become more complicated as assertions from more native locations are emerging. In a recent series of Indian Economic and Social History Research published by Sage, the discourse seem to have taken another turn. In line with Kirin Narayan, the question on the dichotomy of identity distinction has been raised again. In India, particularly in the central or mainland India, the papers on histories argued that identities had been fluid where self-identification and assertion has emerged only within a colonial governmentality and current political equations. Thus, in particular Prathama Banerjee, it questions the crystalized identities, and hence, distinct historical claims and argues for reframing of the entire discourse on the historical engagements with tribes and adivasis. Thus, they urges to see these communities as a continuum and interdependent social system that exchanges their social chromosomes; and, hence, should be taken as an alternative source of reading the history rather than anything distinct or disjunct. Nevertheless, certainly this requires more debate and from multiple positions (that is beyond the purview of this paper), the paper hold that this is unnecessary or too early to dilute the distinctions and possibilities of multiple locations from where the past can be approached or a problem can be understood. New Adivasi and Tribal scholars or intellectuals are putting forwards the arguments for their rights to self-identification, claim for the unique subjectivity and self-expression. Thus, not dwelling further into the debate, this article begins from the premise that Adivasi or tribal pasts should be written from the accounts provided by the community itself and that there are methodological challenges faced by the researchers which are unique to Adivasi and tribal communities. The objective of this paper is to provide a methodological framework to native research scholars in dealing with those unique challenges. Though, this is not to say that non-native scholars will not find it useful, to me, it is still unknown how much actual barriers and ethical dilemmas non-native or an outside scholar must be having and how they have managed to study these communities. For some reasons, across the disciplines, these issues have never yet been explicitly discussed or ‘confessed’ instead there are only discussions and guidelines how to establish one’s legitimacy by overcoming them. Based on the experiences of oral history study conducted in Arunachal Pradesh among the Apatani (‘Tanii’ is how the community identify themselves and henceforth the name will be used as such) tribe, this article discusses various challenges the researcher faced and the approach and methods the researcher applied in addressing them. Just being an insider no more qualifies one to own the stories one is going to tell (Marak,) neither make things easier. The author also advocate for oral history method as one such approach which can be very useful in accessing, analyzing and representing people’s voices, their self-expression, and unique self-identification.

Rigor and Ethics

Rigor is the degree of inquiry to which researchers hold themselves in addressing the challenges of the credibility of a study’s findings (Armour, Rival and Bell, 2009). Rigor, therefore, can refer either or both to methodological thoroughness and precision or criteria used to judge the trustworthiness of the results. But this is not to say that there is an agreement on the criteria for judging the adequacy of the endeavor of qualitative inquiry (Patton, 2002). Many find such preoccupation with rigor, reliability and validity unnecessarily underpin hermeneutics to methods which lead to the risk of fixed standpoint and a solitary horizon of meaning which are again often informed by the background or pre-knowledge of both researcher and the participant (Holroyd, 2007).

Queenbala Marak (nd) in ‘A ‘Native’ and an Anthropologist: Dilemma and Ethics of Doing Fieldwork’ candidly speak about the ethical dilemmas faced by the researcher in not only about losing the meanings in the process of transcription and translation, but also about bringing out the stories that was shared with her as an insider. She emphatically asks ‘Do I own it enough?’ to represent and share them with outside audience. Calling on similar challenges and dilemmas experienced by various native researchers working among their own community list out four areas of challenges:

1. Interrogating the ‘native’ in native anthropology: Rather than easy assumption that the native will have easy access to field, the author talks about the complex dual legitimacy negotiation that the researcher has to do in the field as a member of the community and as a researcher. Furthering, the complexity even the participants may attribute certain identities and roles to researcher for strategic purpose: ‘ “dutiful” (Abu-Lughod 1988) and “prodigal” daughters (Kondo 1986), honored guests (Fahim 1979; Shahrani 1994), “skinfolk” but not “kinfolk” (Williams 1996), and “friends” (Kumar 1992).’ It is interesting to note the culture specific identity attribution of each researcher from different parts of the world and communities, and each are leaded with culture-social meaning. Thus, often native/insider is an insufficient description of the identity negotiations that researchers has to do.

2. Language as means of establishing legitimacy at home: Accounts by various native scholars indicate that the display of communicative competence can sanction one’s identity as both a researcher and a community member (Baugh 1983; Zentella 1997), whereas ignorance can subvert one’s re- search efforts by marking one as culturally challenged or detached (Foster 1996; Rickford 1986). It significantly affect the chances of researcher in establishing trust and rapport, to remove the sense of ‘being studied’ to address the issues of hierarchical relationship that research process establishes. On the other hand the verbal blunders in the early stage of research invokes distrust and disdain among the research participant, and the chances of researcher being labeled as ‘educated fools’.

3. Confession of failure in the field: The author list out the confessions of awkwardnesses and dilemmas the native researchers experienced during their fieldwork in negotiating their identities and researcher-participant relations. As one researcher confesses that he had to come back to his university to regain his perspective as a researcher.

4. Dilemmas of translation beyond the field: In similar like with Queenbala Marak’s predicaments and skepticism experienced by African American respondents as well as the scholars in presenting intimate information for the scrutiny of predominantly white (in our case non-tribal or non-Adivasi or non-native) academic audience.

Unfortunately, the effort to enhance methodological rigor by using predetermined strategies may miss the idiosyncratic threats to rigor that inevitably emerge when a study is examined for its specific vulnerabilities. Those threats can materialize from the context of the research, which includes the unique circumstances that attend each study (e.g. lack of access to an ethnically diverse sample, reactivity of participants because of the stigma associated with the research topic), and the demands of the qualitative paradigm chosen to answer the research question, e.g. grounded theory calls for saturation and theory building (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), critical theory calls for the privileging of a value position, i.e. feminism (Kincheloe and McLaren, 2005). Delmos J. Jones (1970) argues that the problem is not native anthropologist but absence of Native Anthropology. By Native Anthropology he means theoretical framework that is developed from the point of view of ‘tribal, peasant or minority.’ He urges that such framework should necessarily be biased in favor of insider’s social group or towards the representation of their point of view (p.258).

Oral History

The paradigm and methodological and theoretical framework one is choosing is therefore a critical one not only for the purpose of the research but also to be just and legitimate to the community one is studying. Such decisions are also contextual. In my own research among my own community, I experienced several of similar challenges discussed above and further discussed in following sections. I chose to do oral history to write the history of a particular event called the Kure Chambyo among the Tanii, for various strategic reasons. Oral history method is emerging as a significant tool in writing and re-writing the histories of people whose stories are invisibilized in the dominant and nationalist historiographies or historical discourses. Oral histories are the lived stories of people who had the first-hand experience of the certain historical past of the community. In words of Allesandro Portelli, one of the prominent proponents of oral history whose: ‘Oral histories are not speaking and challenging the written and official narratives. It challenges the fixity of written account as a lie.’ Through these stories, one can trace the changes in the life of both the community and in their personal life and also critically engage with ‘the change’ itself.

The Kure Chambyo took place in 1949, during the early establishment days of Indian governance over the region. A large group of Tanii men led an attack at the political and military outpost of Indian government at Kure in the south west of Tanii homeland called Ziro. This was the first and the last consolidated effort by the community to resist and oust the outsider meddling in their internal affairs and life. The event ended with the killing of five Tanii men, burning of a village, unaccounted material losses as repatriation or punishment money, and most importantly the loss of autonomy. The event was either very scarcely recorded or had been suppressed as there is no official record that represented the event correctly. The only dependable source that remained was the oral accounts by the people in the community. But unfortunately very few people were left who had the first-hand accounts of the event and most of them were very old. The memory of the event was blurred for most. However, the most challenging part of the field work was in accessing those narratives and informations.

Not only that the memories of the event among my informants were blurred but event their narration came from a very complex political location. The realities of Taniis are fast changing, the events, struggles, actions and attitudes which were once legitimate and normal might not be so at present. Similarly, under the new government and nation-state of India, my informants felt the narratives of the community revolting against the government might criminalize them and put in a difficult position. As a result they had decided not to speak or commemorate the event, and hopefully forget and let the community forget the event one day. During the first phase of fieldwork getting any information about the event from my speakers was difficult. To start with they were skeptical about why I am researching this subject? There were fear and resistance in some cases while others used their stories as a disclaimer. They used their stories as a means to distance themselves from the event and to reinstate their loyalty towards the government. They would call those Taniis who went for the attack as ‘fool’, ‘uncivilized’, ‘barbaric’, ‘illiterate’, etc., the terms which certainly entered their language pool only in modern time.

Consequently, during my second phase of field work I decided to use oral history approach to gather the stories and information. Oral history approach helped in shifting the focus of the story from the event per se to their life story and journey. It helped my speakers in retelling the stories from different state of mind and gave the agency to its speaker in determining and interpreting their experience and their own story. More importantly, oral history approach turned my attitude towards this historical research from a event oriented subject study to lived reality and organic process. I realized that the narratives of past is not a mere outpouring of memories but rather an exercise of recalling and telling- a complex selective and interpretive process. Oral histories, in this way means acknowledging the fact that, the speakers presents their version of pasts based on their understanding and re-evaluation of their past. It is a meaning-making interpretive process.

In another words oral histories narratives are accumulation of experiences and knowledges which are also molded by various other factors. Thus, they were speaking through their unique socio-political position, cultural and environmental experience, traditions, the semiotics of their language, the communitarian worldview, a state of their mind, years of socialization under governmentality of nation-state and much more. It is these different spheres of their community life which co-created the meaning to their reality- the way of life, attitude, sentiment, and belief. Such information which never makes into the pages of history are crucial indicators of causal forces in the background of events and actions that earmarks the history. One realizes that it is not only the narratives that constitute the meaning of the conversation but the total cultural surrounding and social (and even political) contexts that co-create the meaning.

Addressing the challenges of Rigor and Ethics

The speakers of oral history are all subjective beings. They embodied contingents and layers of meanings thus gathered over the period through their lived reality and experience. Thus, writing and analysing oral history is very much an interpretive exercise of the lived experiences wherein one is trying to understand and interpret the meaning of that experience as well as their narratives.

Thus in the context of oral histories gathered about the Kure Chabyo and the aftermath experiences narratives, the questions that became necessary to address were- What do those experiences mean to the survivors? What was the experience of witnessing and having lived those days? What does it feel to gather back one’s life and to move on? What did it feel like to experience violence, fear, and oppression? What did it feel like to have their valley swarmed and taken over by outsiders and to witness so many changes in their own lifetime? Why would they suppress those memories and experiences and never talk about them? What does it mean to be as a Tanii? And to experience the event from within that location? How they are being a Tanii influence their experiencing, remembering, understanding the experience and articulating it?

The researcher has to bring rigor in their research through self-disciplining, bringing sensitivity and reflexivity in their attitude, and maintaining the objectivity and validity in the method. Here objectivity refers to intellectual honesty, thoroughness in reasoning, and prohibitions against the imposition of projective interpretation, skewed sampling, and omission of negative evidence (Lindström, 1990 cited in Dahlberg et al., 2001: 231). Validity refers to the fact that it is possible to follow the researcher’s logic throughout the study and that the study itself contains no internal contradictions (Dahlberg et al., 2001; Kvale, 1989).

Hermeneutic phenomenology is a framework that provides specified attitudes rather than any methodology (Koch, 1999) towards such interpretive research. It emphasizes on openness in understanding meanings presented by a particular culture, phenomenon and each subjective individual (Heidegger,1998). However, while hermeneutic phenomenology provides the framework assumptions for interpretation but at the same time, it is a method that also exposes it to various vulnerabilities. Armour, Rival and Bell (2009) list out one’s biases, baggages, prejudices, lack of pre-knowledge about the subject and being blinded by all these as some of the problems that can both obscure the understanding of the phenomenon under study. To address these issues based on their own experiences of research they list out checking for four criteria- ‘addressing emotional reactivity of the respondent’, ‘addressing unfamiliarity with the subject’, ‘addressing researcher’s influence’ and ‘addressing unfamiliarity with hermeneutic phenomenology’, so as to bring the needed rigor in research methods in the research studies. Qualitative researchers have been employing various techniques to address each of these problems, however, simultaneously it is also agreed upon that not all techniques are applicable to all kinds of qualitative research. Considering the contextual specificity and the paradigm, here the list has been further developed and extended. Doing research or while writing about any indigenous community is always deeply concerned ethical with the questions of decolonization and representation of lived reality and insider’s articulation. Thus, the larger premise of understanding being that to build the rigor of such study is to deal with and address the ethical concerns of the studies.

1. Using oral history method as a breakthrough for hermeneutic phenomenology:

The oral histories about Kure Chambyo event gathered during the study belong to the last remaining or surviving village members who had first-hand experience of the Kure Chambyo event. They were adults or young adults during the period but during my field work they were already very old and many of them had hearing and vision problems and were physically weak. However, more challenging part were in terms of perspectives or approaches from where the narratives were coming. The socio-political environment within which the event took place and the environment when the narration under this research was taking place has completely changed. The event was about a resistance against the outsiders, the government which is now ruling them. There were inhibitions to speak out, there were denials, there were silences and long pauses, attempts at interpreting and bringing the past into a perspective. In short, the speaking out was difficult and uneasy.

It is here where oral history method came forward to help by taking away the structure of interview design that can be intimidating to a more facilitative mode of sharing. There is a difference in the way one treats the participant- she or he is no more addressed as informant but as a speaker or participant, the one who holds the memory and knowledge. Instead of interviewing the speaker to gather information or interrogate them for factually correct information, in oral history one encourages the speaker to speak about their past and life- as they believed as it happened. It empowers the speaker’s agency in determining and interpreting their experience and their story. For instance, one is no more asking the event and cause directed questions but asks the speakers to share about their life, to which the particular event is also a part of. So usually in oral histories I gathered, for instance, due to re-locating of the narrative from the event stories to their life story, the speakers starts narrating from stories about their growing up in the community among their own people, the family and activities, then about the first visit of the Halyang (non-tribals), about what heard about Halyangs and few Taniis who were working for them, the sub-events and culmination of the main event and the aftermath to their present life. In these stories, the speakers articulate the events as an act of injustice done by the government. The stories of violence and oppression, pain and suffering have more assertion in these narrative than in other versions of the stories where the speakers usually justify the actions of the government as a necessary act to break down the ‘tribal arrogance’.

Oral history approach provided the crucial agency to the speakers by allowing them to speak and interpret their experience. It brought the most needed methodological rigor in collecting the narratives and in understanding the context subjectivity of the speaker for analysing and interpreting the narratives of their experiences as individual as well as the community.

2. Using multiple sources and triangulation: Though the list here is not exhaustive, each of sources and methods is discussed in light of how they are beneficial, with examples from my own research experience. First, using all available written documents and literature; which, however, is helpful but not enough. As mentioned earlier official written documents on the event were very rare, often inaccessible and misrepresenting of the actual event. One has to broaden the search horizon to other secondary documents- namely larger policy documents, Acts, personal records of the officials, reports on tribal relations in the hills, military and political reports, used during this specific study, to understand the larger context where the event culminated. Ironically, it also gave an answer to the absence of documentation of the event. They provided me with names of individuals (both local and outsiders), dates in building the chronological order, the psych of the administrators- their fear, concerns, attitudes, and biases, etc.. These documents provided me with the larger process of colonization of the region, including the Tanii valley.

The second level, meeting and interviewing the people using different or multiple methods, i.e., apart from oral histories, and approached the history from different directions. Trying to understand what were their understanding about these development, about the event and aftermath, the coming of the outsiders and about their present situations. While the informants in this study could not articulate their experiences of various political socialization and loyalty and allegiance building processes by the administrators, but they spoke about the period- the pain, fear, and suffering, that haunted some of them even to date- and then in the same breath justified the government actions. There were several other in-coherencies in the narrative largely in terms of their attitude. I made sure to interview different sets of people from different villages to gather different sets of opinions and narratives. Different age group, different gender, socio-economic groups, association to different power centers, social and political groups- new and old, officials, etc.

Third, using narrative analysis, this is particularly important while doing oral history or any other interviews among the oral communities. By oral communities means communities who were and still are largely dependent on oral mediums for not only communication but also preserving their knowledge systems about traditions, history, etc.. The oral communities have formed complex sets of linguistic systems and oral traditions for the purpose. Their oral traditions and social practices and environment produces their worldview. In short, their culture and traditions embody their oral traditions and vice versa. This means there is a unique processing of knowledge, cognition, grammar rules and oration, true to any linguistic group. Thus, there was a strong influence of oral tradition conventions and linguistics over the narratives and narrative style of the informants. For instance, the oral tradition conventions of Taniis barrs certain oral genres to be heard, learned and orated by women. As a female researcher, it was difficult to convince some of my speakers to share information or stories about certain conflicts or incidences involving death and murders. Such stories are termed as Arr Puyu (evil stories) under the Migung genres (human history) which are to be narrated only by following certain conventions and under the specific context. Simultaneously, the narrative analysis helps in identifying oral tropes, the silences, the semantic structuring and oral tradition conventions whenever they appeared and how the speakers were structuring the entire episodes. It helped me in understanding various meanings of emotions and feelings that were otherwise shrouded by spoken words. The information generated were always cross checked with other informants and even with official records whenever available.

Fourth, photograph, works for various purposes- obvious one is that photographs form part of data, like factual proofs, secondly they work as a memory aid during the interviews for the interviewee or the speakers, third, as a tool for engendering and sensitizing the researcher and the audience of the research about the subject in a unique way. The photos provide a visual ‘picture’ or narratives and add several depths to understanding and imagination. These photos can come from official sources, like in publication and information departments, from personal collections, various other institutional collections such as Cristopher Von Furer Haimendorf’s collection in SOAS and Cambridge University in the UK.

The official photos for this study collected from Information and Public Relation Office in Naharlagun were taken during the early period, in the1950s and 1960, of administrative development in the region. They were taken by various officials, during various official events and activities or trips to interior administrative areas. Here, the main protagonist is the outsiders, the authorities, the photographs are taken from the perspective of the outsider’s view. These photos were the visual maps of power structures and dynamics captured and fixed in a paper. They speak their mind and how they perceive the tribes. The photos range from ethnographic- attires, ornaments, ritual sites, etc., to very political procedures- VIPs passing through the villages, power demonstrations, and benign gift and award distribution. Such experiences were never articulated orally by speakers, for they work at the level of subconscious nuances and feelings. Very often, the community languages lack words or expression for such certain experiences which were never part of their culture. Therefore, photographs can prove to be a unique source, given that the researcher is able to see it.

3. Dealing with vulnerability and distrust: A speaker who is in a vulnerable situation often would distrust the researcher and the research motives. Such situations often compel the informants to present socially desirable and politically balanced responses. Each individual lives in a complex social and political relationship with their immediate as well as extended social and political environment. A woman or even a man would find it difficult discuss certain subjects when they know that is it going to be shared in public domain. There was a long period in the post Kure attack time when a drive to arrest and punish the persons involved in the attack was carried out by the government. People had to hide their friends and relatives or their involvement in the attack. There were many who turned informants and due to which distrusting and betrayal became a common feature. Also, there is a general awareness about the research projects and process among the people. One of my informant shared about his skepticism after a researcher had completely turned the meaning of what he said in his research paper.

Selective and honest disclosure of my own perspectives and background and the objectives of the study helped me in addressing the issue of distrust. I discussed my own personal views on the subject and asked about their opinion. I also selectively shared the research experiences so far I had. It helped in more open interaction or dialogue. This was also important to foreground my own political-emotional reactivity to the subject. This, if not well acknowledged, can affect my judgment and that shows up on the way we carry out the interview. The speaker or the interviewee are also watching and studying us, all the time, remember this.

4. Addressing the Lack of Lived Experience. As already discussed earlier, establishing trust and rapport depends a much on how much she is integrated to the community knowledge systems, language and its signifiyers; lest be labeled as ‘educated fool’. When researchers lack experience with the topic of inquiry, their limited pre-understanding creates vulnerabilities in the research because they may fill in areas of ignorance with conjecture, uninformed attitudes, and preconceived ideas. The researcher should use the self as the primary analytical tool; reading and reflecting on the descriptions of lived experiences and observing the life reality of speakers is the primary analytical activity. Thus self-reflectivity towards one’s attitude and pre-understanding throughout is crucial. Spending the good amount of time with the community and learning the language becomes crucial here, in order to gain or regain the respect.

During my field works one get overwhelming amount of information- stories, gossips, rumours, experiences, folklores about people, trees, spirits, hills, new government contracts, agriculture, food, elections, new religious movements and how villages organize or rallies themselves around certain issue, memories and traditional memories, etc.. Most of them were irrelevant to my own study, as I thought initially, but soon I realized that all these information are contingent to forming the picture of the day-to-day life of the people and the experience of being a Tanii, the ontological reality. Each of these experiences and their experiencing reproduces the entire domain of their very specific belief system, worldview, logic, and all the codes that can help in discerning the traditional mind or ‘craft of mind’ (Madden, 2011:19, quoted in Armour, Rival & Bell, 2009). Learning and understanding them provided me the key to enter into the ontological domain of Tanii life. It is on these grounds that I could make the breakthrough in hermeneutic phenomenology.

5. Self-Reflexivity: Addressing ethical concerns about researcher’s influences. The need to remain open, sensitive and non-judgmental required by the qualitative paradigm was threatened by my own emotional reactivity due to the volatility of the topic and intensity of the interviews. It was important to state this vulnerability first and then work on it. The vulnerability was also reduced by spacing the interviews sessions and writing down my feelings and thoughts during the period to track the influences on and of my own thinking. Consulting other literature expanded the range of possible meanings given to words, which served to refresh and broaden the interpretive possibilities beyond my the depth and breath of my own knowledge. Also becoming aware of the ethical questions of maintaining a balance of inquiring, directing or representing the interview processes. Thus, becoming aware and acknowledging my own political positioning and ‘bracketing’ them was important. Acknowledging and stating one’s political position, accepting one’s socio-cultural ignorance and location as a researcher is important. Maintaining one’s notes or journal on observations as well as of one’s own emotions and thoughts towards them and reflecting at whenever intangible feelings came up. Discussing them with peers, colleagues, discussing them in the field as well, reading, are helpful. These notes over the period helped in self-reflexibility.

6. Methodological Reflexivity. In hermeneutic phenomenology, unrecognized foreknowledge from prior experiences stands in the way of complete openness and therefore is considered a bias or prejudice. There is always a likelihood that researchers will make assumptions about the phenomenon because pre-shaped knowledge reduces their ability to maintain an open and discovering position (Van Manen, 1990, quoted in Armour, Rival & Bell, 2009). Hence, learning can generate bias. While on the other hand, recognized foreknowledge, however, can be selectively used to enhance awareness of intersubjectivity or how the researcher is in the world with others. For example, hermeneutic phenomenology requires bracketing (Husserl, 1970, quoted in Armour, Rival & Bell, 2009) or making explicit the investigator’s understandings, beliefs, biases, assumptions, presuppositions and theories so they can be suspended.

After every meeting make plans for the next interviews and corroborate facts. After listening to the audios I make quick notes on what is the areas I can explore with my speakers? What information are being generated? Which ones were being accounted? Which thread of queries was being pursued? These planning went to an extent that at a point I realized I had unconsciously started controlling the interviews process to an extent that I started directing my speakers. For instance when I am ‘sensitizing’ my speakers from their ‘wrong or inappropriate’ understanding. It was only through my reflexive writing and reading exercise that I realized that I was actually overpowering my research with my own attitudes and beliefs. I had to take a step back and give my speakers the voice of their own. Oral history method gives the steering wheel to the speakers whose stories I was recording.

One has to remain open to intersubjective engagement and relationship with the with the participant or text (Heidigger, 1927/1998). Thus, epistemologically the knowledge is to be co-constructed and in a transactional way (Lincoln and Guba, 2005). Consequently, researchers can more successfully challenge and keep their foreknowledge at bay when they strive to meet the demands of the paradigm.

7. Analyzing the Narrative Text: Transporting senses from tradition to academics. Many of my speakers were sharing about the event and their very personal life experience to a researcher for the first time. These narratives were about pains, joys and some maintained silences while some told the story of recovery and moving on. However, all these stories were told through a very particular narrative style following the conventions of their oral traditions and a unique life experience of a traditional communitarian society. Translating them into an academic language and categorizing them without deforming their original style and meaning and representing them to audiences outside is a real challenge.

Demands of rigor in the research can be the hallmark of the researcher’s commitment towards the field of knowledge creation. This rigor can be brought by establishing validity, reliability, authenticity and ‘trustworthiness’ of the results. Which in turn can be brought through various methodological designs for grounded theory. It encourages reducing the inequity and build a relation between the researcher and the participants so the more authentic and real data can be gathered from the field.

Therefore, it was important for me to build a trusting relation with my informants and climate for authentic engagement. It could come with transparency and self-disclosing about my research interest and even my approach or position. My identification as a learning and struggling insider, exposing my vulnerability of not knowing so much about my own community and even not being well versed in the older and more formal language, initially created little discomfiture but on seeing my sincerity in being open and very interested in learning helped in gaining their respect and endearment as well. Over the period of a year, many saw the improvements I made. It enhanced the seriousness of our engagement from their part as well.

8. Develop strategies to address contextual challenges. It is a common practice to list the challenges and limitations of a study at the end of a presentation so the reader can adequately assess the validity of the findings. Awareness of vulnerabilities is an insufficient response to enhance rigor. Moreover, except for selecting from a predetermined inventory, the challenges, when addressed, provide few details about the rigor with which procedures were applied. Readers, therefore, are constrained in their critiques because they have few tools with which to assess the vulnerabilities in the research, what was done to address them, and their potential impact on the study’s outcomes.We advocate that researchers extend themselves so their responses to the challenges are more considered and thorough. If researchers develop a plan for methodological rigor grounded in the study’s challenges, the strategies will likely result in a novel or non conventional practices. We advise researchers that tailoring solutions to the issues are more difficult and time consuming and probably will require persistence and the ability to think outside the box.

10. Sharing the responsibility of co-creation of meaning. While in the beginning, at one hand I felt that right from choosing the research subject, its purpose, and rational, questions and method designing, everything lies with me as the researcher- the one who should be in control. For example, it was my own subjectivity as a Tanii, academic interest and political positioning, and exposure to the subject through childhood memory and changed the reading of Stuart Blackburn’s article on the event that led me to choose the topic to start with. Yet by my experience during the research in the actual field setting, I realized that how the context and subjectivities and my relations with the participants had influenced my decision making at various places. These subjective certainties of what I want to do and uncertainties about what would be the outcome made me question the reliability and trustworthiness of my study. How am I going to strike the right balance between the ‘authority’ I am trying to bring to the research and complete surrender to the fascinating process of field work and field reality? And how do I know that ‘balancing’ will be the right thing to do?

After much reflecting on the issue and having discussed the matter with my supervisor gradually I understood that my personal experiences could be an asset rather than a liability. Writing down my doubts and reading from the experiences of other researchers I decided how I can address these issues of credibility. I will have to bring the rigor in the research process. I will be using multiple sources of data and information which will provide the evidence for credibility and use “thick description” to support my interpretation.

Conclusion: Co-writing- voices, context and culture

My experience of doing oral history interview with Puna Tada was complex one, though not a unique one as it was a typical experience I had with many in the community. It was only during the transcribing process of the interview records when multiple overlapping domains and layers of meanings became evident. The oral history narration was taking place in a very culturally laden narrative environment/domain.

As an insider, I had the privilege to understand and grasp this domain. Bourdieu (1977) describes his concept of ‘Habitus’ he says it is a day to day practice of body and emersion of mind into the act that one could generate the esoteric meaning of that doing and interpret it. It is an insider, who embodies them, can discern and understand and consciously or unconsciously react and respond to them. And if possible, write down and express the exact encrypted meaning and experience of embodied being. Thus the meanings were being co-created by different variable- the voices of both the informant and researcher, the culture context and the historical context.

Individuals in traditional communities are inscribed into their tradition. Although they live their individual lives, they also bear common values and perspectives inherited from their past. Then, by adding their own stories, they creatively interpret and reinvent tradition and make it alive.

Individual narrators are at the core of oral history, which does not exist independently from them (Cashman, R. Mould, T. and Shukla, P. 2011). Moving away from pre-formulated questions, being aware and sensible to their cultural context and letting her lead us through her narrative strategies instead of imposing the direction and forcing the content of the interview is the way for narrator-centric oral history. Their way of life, traditions, belief and environment co-creates their reality.

On a more positive note, as Jones and Hacobs-Huey (2001) advices, that rather then getting boggled or overwhelmed by the responsibility at hand one can actually use and claim ones identity as an insider, native, indigenous as a tactical endeavour to critical self positioning against the mainstream as an empowering means of self-identification and alignment.

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