Appendix: Guide on Incorporating Talking Circle Practices in Academe

Here, we offer a “roadmap” derived from our own work that includes talking circle protocol and proposed interview questions structured as a talking circle. Remember to be transparent and adapt talking circle protocols to your specific community. Also, please note this is an adaptation; therefore, the facilitator nor participants need to identify as Indigenous. However, the facilitator should be transparent with participants that this is not for spirituality or medicine. This is a brave experiment in decolonizing the interview process through centering Indigenous methodologies (Tuhiwai Smith 1999/2012, Kovach 2021). 

• Only the person designated to talk can talk. If you are conducting the interview virtually and have no talking stick to pass, the facilitator should invite people to speak one at a time, trying to mix up who speaks first and last. 

• All the rest listen to the one designated to talk.

• A person talks until they are finished, being respectful of time and everyone involved.

• The circle talk is complete when everyone has had a chance to speak.

•  A person may pass without speaking if they so wish.

• If desired, the group may go around the speaking circle again.

•  A circle is used to discuss important issues.

•  Talking circles are extremely respectful of everyone as individuals and what they have to say.

•  Ideally, talking circles are confidential; however, with permission and transparency they may be integrated for research. Check in with everyone at the end of the session, and if they wish for anything in the circle to not be shared, please keep it in the circle. Honor everyone present, first and foremost. 

We hope future scholars will find this practice of Indigenous protocol useful for their own practices, and as a means of decolonizing academic practices.