ABSTRACT

How might a researcher use Indigenous African knowledge systems to develop a

decolonial dance education research paradigm and scholarly writing? What Indigenous
African knowledge systems can anchor dance education research? These questions have
been critical in framing the decolonial dance education research and writing paradigm
that the author uses as a researcher. In this chapter, the author draws on his
autoethnographic reflections to critically examine how he has developed and applied the
African philosophy of Ubuntu as a hermeneutic phenomenology to frame the ethics,
agenda, logic, conceptualization, spirit, contextualization, and vision of his research
projects in Indigenous dance practices. The analysis unpacks the author’s reflexivity and
positionality as being-in-the-world and being-with-others-in-the-world of fieldwork.
Moreover, the article dissects how the Kiganda tradition of okuluka omukeeka (weaving
the mat) provides a methodological formula, logic, and creed that the author has
employed to conduct fieldwork, analyze data, and write scholarly works. These
decolonial paradigms, which confront, decenter, and critique the existing hegemonic
Anglo-European research and writing canons, reveal the complex possibilities and
pathways that are available for dance researchers to engage Indigenous knowledge
systems as valuable and valid markers in the process of decolonizing academic research
and writing in dance education.