Where Inquiry Ends

Abstract

One of the ongoing struggles of indigenous people against colonization is to be able to exercise the fundamental right to represent themselves and to speak to the dominant society with their own voices and words, rather than to be spoken of or about. This essay discusses the mainstream academic peer review process and the suppression of indigenous standpoints by the dominant culture. The essay goes on to analyze the ways in which one mainstream international academic journal accepted and contained the expression of an indigenous standpoint by then inviting a response from a mainstream scholar who largely delegitimized the indigenous voice, at which point the inquiry ended.