Sankofa: Storying as method and analysis across indigenous cultures Sankofa: Storying as method and analysis across indigenous cultures Edited Book proposal under review for possible publication with Routledge Editors: Araba A. Z. Osei-Tutu aazosei-tutu@ug.edu.gh, Alankrita Chhikara achhikar@purdue.edu, and Jake Burdick burdics@purdue.edu Brief Description and Rationale Until the lions have their storytellers, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter (African Proverb) Every culture has stories that they tell- stories about animals and fables, stories about family and migration/immigration, stories about trauma, about fears, morals and values, histories, and fiction. However, over centuries, colonialism has been instrumental in adulterating, and in some cases erasing the stories of many indigenous cultures, sometimes in an attempt to obscure colonial violence (Chatterjee, 1993; Cox, 2012; Dirks, 2001; Olney, 2015, Spivak, 1988). In Africa, for example, many cultural norms, stories, beliefs, and worldviews were touted as barbaric or demonic, with languages indigenous to the continent lost or endangered (Masaeli, 2021; Onwubie, 2016). In like manner, stories, and worldviews of indigenous, (Native peoples across the globe), Latina/o, and Asia, have either been marginalized, discounted with the colonial narratives dominating (Nakhid, 2021: Osei-Tutu, 2021). Particularly within the academy and research spaces, such indigenous ways of knowing, knowledge sharing and theorizing are ignored, illegitimized, or assessed as not rigorous (Chilisa, 2017; Patel, 2015; Osei-Tutu, 2022). By this rhetoric, many indigenous peoples’ cultures, ways of knowing and sharing knowledge, as well as theorizing, have been forced to the peripherals of western lenses and methodologies. To address this issue and as a form of resistance, many indigenous peoples (indigenous used here refers to Native peoples, Africans, Latino/a, Caribbean and South-Asian origins) through decolonial lenses and actions, have taken up spaces where their stories and ways of knowing and sharing knowledge are centralized. Understanding the role that stories play in such cultures, it is problematic to see that even in spaces like narrative inquiry, indigenous ways of storying are not legitimized unless they are discussed through extant literature – without which it is considered mere stories and not analysis (Osei-Tutu, 2021; 2022). This edited book is a journey to make visible multiple ways of being academic, particularly when we center indigenous voices towards decolonization. As a mode of critique, we offer multiple examples of storytelling that have been informed, shaped, and birthed by and in cultural knowledge and meanings that depart from the totalizing force of western hegemony as it amplifies decolonial discourses through praxis. These examples stand as instances of resistance by virtue of their very existence in the world in what we are terming polytextual evidence as critique. This book is a practical response to the need to take a retrospective look at epistemologies, axiologies and meanings that marginalized peoples in academia possess through their cultural and linguistic heritage. It is the megaphone that sounds through illustrating what is possible when indigenous peoples bring cultural and linguistic understanding to their experiences, hence the adoption of the Akan philosophical concept of Sankofa. Sankofa translates literally as “go back and get it”. It is represented by a bird with its head turned backwards, feet facing forward, carrying an egg. It symbolizes reaching back to the past to reclaim knowledge that will pave way for new paths in the present and future (OseiTutu, 2021, 2022). Therefore, the concept of Sankofa as reflected in the title of this book is symbolic of how retrieving, re-visiting, re-centering and re-knowing through storying indigenously can provide alternative methodological avenues for researchers. To bring understanding to the story we set out to tell in this edited book, we take a break to discuss the abakoasɛm1 of storytelling across the indigenous peoples whose methods and analysis are shared in this book beginning with the theoretical foundations. Intersection between Decolonial Theory and Methodology “The cognitive empire is that form of imperialism which invades the mental universe of its victims, in the process imposing particular knowledge systems, displacing others and consequently shaping the intellectual consciousness of its victims.” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2021, n.p.) Imperialism poses a complex challenge for epistemology, particularly when indigenous epistemologies are concerned. This form of coloniality embedded in research and knowledge sharing has resulted in many calls for decolonization; the call for centering African knowledge systems (the philosophical, theoretical, conceptual and methodological thinking from Africa) in learning, teaching, research, and community service (Bekele et al., 2023b; Bekele, 2024; Chilisa, 2017); the decolonization of research methods (Smith, 2012); resisting the cognitive empire (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2019) and “similar ideas expressed by other African scholars and writers, such Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s “metaphysical empire’ and ‘colonization of the mind,’ V.Y. Mudmbe’s ‘colonial library,’ Robert Gildea’s ‘empire of the mind,’ Ashis Nandy’s ‘intimate empire/ intimate enemy’ and Aníbal Quijano’s ‘coloniality of power’ and the work of other Latin American scholars on the coloniality of knowledge” (McInerny, 2021). In centering narrative as a methodology 1 History informed by decolonial theory /euro western push back activist route, this edited book adopts and adapts Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s (2019) conceptualization of decolonization; Besides identifying modernity/colonialism as the fundamental problem, decolonization/decoloniality challenges the present globalization and its pretensions of universalism, which hides the reality of the Europeanization and Americanization of the modern world. While colonialism and imperialism embarked on an aggressive destruction of existing diverse worlds, they were also equally aggressive in denying common humanity as they invented and created all sorts of pseudo-scientific discourses to divide people racially across the planet and notions of stages of developmentalism to push other human beings below the invented “human line” (Fanon Wretched), (p. 203). In that spirit of challenging globalization, Europeanization and Americanization in research methods and sharing, this edited book posits that utilizing indigenous theoretical frameworks and philosophies inform the development of indigenous research methodologies (Love, 2019; Osei-Tutu, 2022), thus engendering the sharing and place of indigenous epistemology in organizational [identifying organization in context of this work as academia] research (Ruwhiu & Cone, 2010). Therefore, as “a much more profound activity and process than simply obtaining political independence; [Sankofa: Storying as method and analysis across indigenous cultures] … is
