A Flight of Imagination Into Temazcal Relationality

Inequities persist in working with Indigenous communities especially with power dynamics and structures. Relationship building and relationality with Indigenous communities in educational research are hindered by these power imbalances. Using an experience of flight of imagination to recenter researchers/community relationship building, this article engages a space for transformation—shifting from the Western academic institutional framing of research and relationship building to Indigenous epistemology of relationality. The article incorporates the Indigenous temazcal or sweat lodge, a space of healing and spirituality, as an approach that posits relationality as spirituality in the creation of safe spaces for learning and interaction of researchers and the communities’ full selves.