{"id":54285,"date":"2026-07-09T10:44:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T14:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?post_type=cu_story&p=54285"},"modified":"2026-07-14T08:58:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T12:58:29","slug":"kahente-horn-miller-is-reshaping-research-one-story-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/story\/kahente-horn-miller-is-reshaping-research-one-story-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Reshaping Research, One Story at a Time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Reshaping Research, One Story at a Time\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

This story was originally published in the 2026 Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Research Review<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Kahente Horn-Miller<\/a> approaches research as something lived, not separate from practice. As an Indigenous woman, mother, grandmother, educator, and longhouse knowledge keeper, her work is grounded in community, relationship, and lived responsibility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s my form of activism,\u201d she says. \u201cThrough education, through research, through storytelling.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Carleton\u2019s Associate Vice-President of Indigenous Teaching, Learning and Research<\/a>, and a professor in the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies<\/a>, Horn-Miller is steadily redefining what research can be. Her work centres Indigenous storytelling not only as a mode of knowledge, but as a rigorous, embodied methodology, one that opens new forms of scholarly inquiry while insisting on care, interdependence, and self-authorship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her current book project and long-term research trajectory trace back to her 2009 PhD dissertation, \u201cSky Woman\u2019s Great Granddaughters: A Narrative Inquiry into Kanien\u2019keh\u00e1:ka Women\u2019s Identity.<\/a>\u201d Grounded in the stories of eight women from the Kahnawake Mohawk community, the dissertation examined how colonial systems, the Indian Act, liberal state frameworks, and even certain strands of socialism and feminism shape and constrain Indigenous identity. Through critical reflection, the women in her study reclaimed self-authorship, grounding their identities in community, kinship, and Kanien\u2019keh\u00e1:ka ways of knowing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the heart of that work was Horn-Miller\u2019s reimagining of the Sky Woman creation story, an origin narrative from Haudenosaunee oral tradition in which a woman falls from the Sky World and helps bring the earth into being. Horn-Miller voiced the story in the first person, embodying Sky Woman as both an ancestral figure and a methodological intervention that challenged dominant academic conventions around voice, authority, and distance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Dr.
Dr. Kahente Horn-Miller, whose research centres Indigenous storytelling as a form of knowledge, research, and community responsibility. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What began as a narrative method in her doctoral research has since evolved into a powerful solo performance piece that Horn-Miller presents in academic and community spaces. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about telling our stories,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s about telling them our way, on our own terms.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The performance deconstructs the boundaries between theory, story, and self, demonstrating how Indigenous storytelling can function simultaneously as research, pedagogy, and an assertion of intellectual sovereignty. Speaking from within the story, rather than about it, laid the foundation for Horn-Miller\u2019s broader research, which asks how Indigenous narratives can reawaken relationships to the natural world and shape a different kind of academic practice, one rooted in responsibility, reciprocity, and resonance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cResonance,\u201d she explains, anchors much of her current thinking. Drawing on the work of German sociologist Hartmut Rosa, Horn-Miller explores how people in modern societies have become disconnected from land, memory, and one another, and how certain stories, ceremonies, and experiences can help reattune those relationships. <\/p>\n\n\n

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“When people experience our stories, they feel it. I\u2019ve had people cry after Sky Woman performances. Something gets remembered. A connection to the land, to their grandparents, to being in the backyard.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Horn-Miller is now extending that work through immersive technologies designed with the same ethic of care. Recent pilot projects, including Wa\u2019\u00f6t\u0161i\u2019gwa:t\u00f3, a 360-degree longhouse experience, and Tsi tewateriweiast\u00e1kwa, a virtual reality Indigenous learning space, invite participants into stories in multisensory ways. \u201cFaculty who\u2019ve experienced them say things like, \u2018I felt it,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cAnd just like with the Sky Woman story, that\u2019s the point. When done with care, and in a safe, intentional way, VR can enable that same resonance. It can help us remember what we already know.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This commitment to care, especially for future generations, runs through everything Horn-Miller does. Her work is guided by the Haudenosaunee principle of the Coming Faces, often expressed in Algonquin communities as the seven generations. The philosophy urges long-term, forward-looking decisions rooted in intergenerational accountability. \u201cWhether it\u2019s pedagogy, research, policy, or technology,\u201d she says, \u201cI\u2019m always thinking: how will this benefit our children\u2019s children\u2019s children?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That principle also shapes her institutional leadership. From her role in developing Carleton\u2019s Collaborative Indigenous Learning Bundles<\/a> to her contributions to the university\u2019s 41 Calls to Action<\/a>, Horn-Miller works across disciplines and structures to bring Indigenous knowledge into the academy on its own terms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She is also clear-eyed about the tensions that mark contemporary academic and public conversations around Indigenous identity and appropriation. At recent conferences, she has observed the pain, mistrust, and call-out culture that can dominate these spaces. Her response has been to create room for dialogue and applied thinking. In fall 2025, her office hosted the Ojig\u00ecjowewin Legal Symposium<\/a>, a gathering focused on applying Indigenous legal traditions in contemporary contexts. \u201cI want to bring people together to talk about Indigenous law not just conceptually, but practically,\u201d she says. \u201cHow do our traditions guide us through conflict, belonging, and adoption? What does it mean to move with compassion and diplomacy?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That same approach informs her next community-based project, a new mapping initiative at Kitigan Zibi modeled after the Mohawk Atlas. Through a series of workshops, Algonquin youth will be supported in gathering place names, stories, and ecological knowledge, often in their own language. \u201cThese tools aren\u2019t just maps,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re invitations for young people to ask their parents and grandparents, \u2018Can you tell me about this place? What do you remember?\u2019 They\u2019re also a way to preserve the language that describes those spaces, and to make sure that knowledge isn\u2019t lost.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Horn-Miller, the work is not only about recovering what was disrupted, but about forward-facing remembering. Her research weaves contemporary tools such as VR, cartography, and curriculum design with ancestral knowledge to create continuity across generations. In doing so, it challenges linear models of innovation, showing that some of the most future-ready forms of research are rooted in the oldest relationships, between people, land, language, and story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With each project, she asks how we might carry what matters most into futures we cannot yet see, but that we are nevertheless responsible for shaping. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Dr.
Immersive storytelling technologies used in Horn-Miller\u2019s research invite participants into Indigenous stories in multisensory ways. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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