Becoming Other Vista
“if research hasn’t changed you as a person, then you haven’t done it right” (Wilson, p.135).
Although seemingly self-explanatory within Indigenous research paradigms, such a statement requires explanation in western academia. And its meaning was far from obvious for me as I visited the communities I ended up working with, for the first time.
In fact, the concept of "becoming other" remained an elusive concept - alongside the idea of "being with-" that I carried with me, almost to the last weeks of my community-based research. Rather than defining "becoming other" here, I pass the concept on to you, to take along and consider as an as aspirational state to attain, and its meaning to be acquired as it comes to matter.
Return to the main cut, to keep going.