Mellon Tribal College Research Journal – Volume 2 Nora Antoine
well over ten years ago I was encouraged to develop a course to better equip students to manage conflict in the workplace. As such, Conflict Management has been a required business course that the majority of students rate valuable, relevant, and highly useful. Regarding my connections to TCUs, I am a long-time faculty member and, therefore, must admit my obvious bias for TCUs generally and for other TCU faculty colleagues, specifically. As a tribal member, my pride for my cultural background takes a prominent role as a researcher and, consequently, my culture serves to guide my professional aspirations (2013): Due to these cultural and family influences, my career as an educator is focused, in part, on sharing and perpetuating Native values through higher education for many years though I am also mindful of other Indigenous rights and beliefs and consequently find myself in alignment with other similar, underrepresented groups. This somewhat protective stance may be a natural instinct given our collective tumultuous histories with dominant peoples and their impulses. As such, my current research efforts with other TCUs are another extension of my beliefs about doing good work with other Native people and organizations. (Antoine, p. 2)
Methodology In investigating the ways in which TCU academic communities address issues of conflict, I employed an Indigenous methodological approach. Bentz and Shapiro (1998) contend the primary functions of scholarly inquiry are to: “1) provide personal transformation; 2) improve one’s professional practice; 3) generate knowledge; and 4) build appreciation for the complexity, intricacy, structure and beauty of reality” (p. 68). Reiterating, due to its adamancy of legitimizing Indigenous knowledge and perspectives, an Indigenous methodology approach is utilized and, according to Kenny, Faries, Fiske, and Voyageur (2004),
34