Finding “the center point”: decolonial and indigenous methodologies in education historical research

Purpose This paper centers a decolonial and Indigenous methodological approaches to educational history research. This research offers how Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples by Linda Tuhiwai Smith impacts one education historian’s scholarship alongside conversations of historiography concerning the Lumbee people and how their education history becomes contextual and reclaimed through decolonial and Indigenous methodological approaches. Design/methodology/approach Leaning on epistemological questioning and historical research with decolonial and Indigenous methodologies to provide a needed approach to historical education analysis. Findings This research demonstrates how history and epistemology work together to decolonize educational histories by understanding the impacts of settler colonization and recenters histories with Indigenous (Lumbee) voices. Originality/value This approach to qualitative historical research provides space for Indigenous epistemology and decolonial and Indigenous methodological approaches to education history that critically examines history told from a European/Western epistemological lens as a way forward to center Indigenous communities.