CAIR Conceptual Fingerweaving Explained

Let's talk about conceptual fingerweaving!

On a basic level, conceptual fingerweaving is a metaphor underpinning the theoretical and methodological orientation to our research.

Conceptual fingerweaving ensures that each of the different projects under the CAIR network are interconnected.

Inspired by the rich traditions of fingerweaving in many Indigenous cultures...

we see conceptual fingerweaving as a helpful approach for guiding the CAIR grant. Each of our projects touch on diverse research methods from a variety of different disciplines, but still aim to answer the same question of: what contributions does Indigenous relationality make towards knowledges and societies?

Fingerweaving is the skilled craft of intertwining numerous different threads into an intricate pattern, and is the traditional method of creating a Métis sash. As a result, it presents itself as a strong analogy to what the CAIR project intends to do—incorporate seemingly separate projects (threads) and bring them into a greater whole (sash).

Through one of our other main research methodolgies—visiting—we learnt of . . .

Dr. Shalene Jobin’s late aunt Laura McLaughlin who was an accomplished Métis weaver. She passed down both teachines and the finer points of her art. The conceptual fingerweaving method draws on her work to provide a visual metaphor to inform building connections between the projects unfolding in the CAIR grant.

Great crafters like Laura McLaughlin had to show both mental and physical dexterity as master weavers, keeping track of the threads and the order of the intertwining to create the correct pattern, while maintaining the right balance of tension and slack in the threads. Either too much tension or too much slack would disfigure the pattern and weaken the integrity of the sash. The lessons passed on by Laura McLaughlin are the foundation of both the methodology and the orientation of this project grant.

CAIR is supporting 24 research projects.

Imagine that instead of stand alone projects, we have instead 24 threads. The role of the PI and directors is to take those individual threads and intertwine them together in service of creating a larger whole that can be seen only by weaving the threads carefully and purposefully. The 24 threads are divided into three colours, seven purple threads, nine red threads, and eight blue threads—each thread colour corresponding to one of the thematic groupings of the PG. Staying consistent with the fingerweaving metaphor, threads that contribute to theorizing and transforming Indigenous governance systems are purple; threads that are linked to critical, local, and global approaches to Indigenous relationality are red; and threads that support honouring our elders and training our youth through intergenerational knowledge transfer are blue. The 24 distinct threads are woven together vertically along their colour grouping.

Part of the exciting work of the grant over the next number of years will be to get each of those 24 “threads” woven together with like colours, but also horizontally with threads from one of the other colours or themes. Taken together we hope this approach will produce a final project in which things that, at first glance, appear to be disconnected are instead an integral part of a larger whole.

We see the importance of incorporating Indigenous traditions within the scope of research methods used in academia.

As humanity continues to face unprecedented crises at both local and global scales, we see the fundamental need for Indigenous-led research that aligns with Indigenous ways of knowing. Part of this necessitates the ongoing, further development of Indigenous research methodologies that are grounded in or connected to Indigenous traditions. We hope that conceptual fingerweaving is utilised again in the research sphere.