Indigenous Methodologies: A Collaborative Painting with Maya Painter Paula Nicho Cúmez

Abstract

The twofold purpose of the present essay and video is to extend and refine my indigenous research methodology based on the work of Smith (2012) and Eldridge (2008), first, by offering new ways to conceptualize the presentation of relational experience in collaborative ethnographic work in academia, and second, by examining what it means for art educators to work with communities over an extended period of time. In this essay and video, I include myself as a participant and mentored student, an intrinsic part of the research process, not something separate. The research process and the mentoring model are intrinsically intertwined, so viewer access to the teaching relationship in the video illuminates the research process. I present this ethnography in art education from the anthropological perspective of lifelong practice that examines subtle differences in art teaching practice and evolving changes in research methodology over time. This video and essay, the third in a series of reflective Visual Culture & Gender (VCG) journal articles about decolonizing and indigenous research methodologies, demonstrates important changes for me that can inform art education about the value of long-term research. My main finding in this essay and video is that the explicit revelation of the relationship between the two participants, Paula Nicho Cúmez and me, is of paramount importance in the representation of such research. Only when the self-aware researcher presents herself in collaboration and revisits the video-documented collaboration can she discover multilevel opportunities for deep reflection about differing definitions of artistic processes, the generation of ideas, and the nuanced dynamics of mentor-based instruction as a research model.