Decolonizing Methodologies
Future-building through Indigenous knowledge, relationality, and data sovereignty.
Data Collection is a sacred Indigenous ancestral practice.
It has and always will be part of our traditional ways of being. This short film by the Urban Indian Health Institute, one of IHEI’s key partners, depicts data as a storytelling and gathering practice shared with respect, reciprocity, and intention, guiding IHEI’s model of Health Justice Data Sovereignty.
Indigenous Storywork Toolkit
A decolonizing, relational approach to data & knowledge.
Storying Methodology grounds data in narrative, context, and relationship. It centers Indigenous storytelling as a relational, political, and transformative practice, reclaiming Indigenous knowledge systems as sovereign and living forms of theory and governance.
The Indigenous Storywork Toolkit is a praxis framework for decolonizing health, research, and institutional systems by centering Indigenous storytelling as relational, political, and transformative practice.
Storywork challenges colonial systems that position Western knowledge as superior. It recenters Indigenous epistemologies, validating story as a mode of theorizing, healing, and governing. Through storying, Indigenous peoples restore relational accountability between human and more-than-human worlds, reclaiming the ethics and structures that sustain Indigenous life.
This toolkit supports IHEI’s mission by providing guidance for integrating Indigenous Storywork into institutional frameworks, data governance, and policy. Storywork operates as both a decolonizing method and an Indigenous resurgence strategy, restoring balance, dignity, and self-determined Indigenous futures.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson describes storying as:
“future building; it is how we breathe life into the worlds we want to live in.”
Storywork is therefore not only a practice of resistance but a generative act of resurgence that builds the ethical, relational, and intellectual foundations for Indigenous futures.