Níksókowaawák as Axiom: The Indispensability of Comprehensive Relational Animacy in Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, Being, and Doing

This paper outlines a proposal, based on Blackfoot worldview, for a collective method to stand alongside Western qualitative and quantitative methods and highlights the value of collective methods in collaborative social-ecological research. Neither qualitative nor quantitative methods are adequate to disclose a world where all things are alive, where “objects” are subjects—agentive beings in their own right. Most Indigenous cultures understand and experience the world as a network of living beings, a collective, with whom they are interrelated/connected and therefore, any efforts to collaborate with Indigenous peoples must acknowledge comprehensive relational animacy. Applying coproduction principles in concert with Blackfoot ways of knowing and being, the authors collaborate to articulate and advance a collective method wherein the many and diverse collective methods of Blackfoot and other Indigenous peoples might find quarter. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 29 March 2022 Accepted 28 January 2023

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