Shared Ground: Identifying Common Values to Support Cross-Cultural Education Collaborations

Values in normative academic collaborations are often assumed, disregarded or sidelined. In contrast, Indigenous-­ led collaborations with/in academia consider values as foundational for partnerships. This article presents an example of centring and enacting values in a partnership between an Aztec dance group and western researchers. The values of prayer/spirituality, transformation, family/community, reciprocity/abundance, tradition, respect, welcoming and caring were identified by the partners. The project aimed to co-­ produce an informal, holistic, education model weaving Indigenous and western Earth and environmental knowledges, called Land Engagements. In this article, Land Engagements are the context in which we embodied and made visible all of our values. Community engagement sought to share decision power between Indigenous and western partners through governance and epistemological pluralism, enacting the values of respect, welcoming and transformation. We present our analyses through a collaborative and relational form of writing that is also a reflection of the values being discussed. In this article we (1) discuss community engagement models and their crossroads with Indigenous research methods in academia (2) define and analyze the values orienting our partnership and (3) enact the values through our collaboration and writing process. Rather than strictly writing, community researchers expressed their knowledge in multimedia, following Indigenous science approaches and enacting the values of prayer/spirituality, abundance and caring.