Rongomatau : An Indigenous Philosophy and Methodology for Improving Research Process and Outcomes

The intention of this paper is to advance thinking on the role that attention to emotions of the researcher has in the research process and outcomes. Traditional Western philosophies of knowledge creation have tended to disregard emotions as capable of producing genuine knowledge. However, Indigenous communities have not marginalised their feelings from generating knowledge, and have paradigms that reflect emotions and their interpretation into knowledge. The paper provides an insider account of my own emotional experiences of research. I offer a philosophy and method stimulated by a Maori, Indigenous context, called rongomatau which translates to ‘feeling the knowing’. I identify a methodological process and three capabilities for other researchers to utilise. I locate these experiences within an Indigenous paradigm and epistemology. The paper demonstrates how Indigenous concepts and language can be utilised to bring new perspectives to emotions in research. These methods are designed to pragmatically help researchers understand and interpret their emotions in research. Although acceptance of emotions is increasing, methodologies that help researchers interpret and give meaning to their emotional experience remain largely unavailable. This paper begins to address that gap. Full paper available at https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2019.14433abstract