Abstract Critical human geography has paid special attention to Indigenous geographies, advancing understanding through various qualitative methods. Research in an intercultural Indigenous context requires more relevant and contextualised instruments, adapted to the territorial reality of each population. Despite this, the construction of instruments such as interviews and debates, and the modifications introduced during their development and application in the field, is not very transparent. The article addresses these issues, explaining the process by which interviews are constructed in an intercultural Indigenous context, while proposing interdisciplinary debate between teams, the application of pilot co‐validation from critical perspectives, and the co‐construction of questionnaires to reformulate questions that are more relevant to the local Indigenous reality. Empirically, the article is based on a project carried out with Mapuche teachers and professionals in intercultural bilingual education (IBE) in the Maule Region, Chile, where long histories of dispossession and denial have transformed everyday practices and led to the near extinction of Mapuzungun (the Mapuche language), complicating the “standard” imaginaries of the Mapuche. The aim is to construct and strengthen the interview using an intercultural approach to broaden our understanding of the Indigenous world. We conclude that interdisciplinary discussion, pilot co‐validation, and the co‐construction of questions during interview implementation strengthened the instrument’s social and cultural relevance and reduced essentialist assumptions about Indigenous peoples. By making these processes transparent, the article offers a transferable methodological contribution to international geographers working in Indigenous and intercultural contexts.
Peña‒Cortés et al. (Mon,) studied this question.