This special issue celebrates the legacies and impacts of Māori scholar, Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Her formative manuscript was first published in 1999 by Zed Books, followed by the second edition in 2012 and the third edition in 2023. Smith’s work has been taken up by scholars around the world. It has crossed disciplinary boundaries and created inroads for Indigenous scholarship to flourish.

Spanning diverse research areas, the contributors to this issue have shown the ways that Smith’s book has shaped their scholarship, informed their research and teaching practices, and considered where the work has taken the field over the last quarter century. Generations of Indigenous scholars have stood on Smith’s shoulders and been empowered to reclaim Indigenous research practices from their own contexts and teachings. Non-Indigenous scholars have also learned what it means to do research with rather than research on Indigenous people. Decolonizing Methodologies has changed research practices unequivocally for the better.

While Smith’s work has transformed research with Indigenous Peoples and opened realms of possibility for research led by Indigenous scholars around the globe, the stories of decolonizing praxis often rest quietly and disruptively in the dissertations, articles, and community connections the scholars have created. This special issue was an invitation for academics to reflect on and share the reach of Decolonizing Methodologies. By gathering the accounts together, readers will gain a sense of how the text has profoundly changed the field of Indigenous research and continues to inform decolonizing efforts in institutions and organizations to this day. The ripples of dialog extend well beyond the academy and reflect the values, knowledges, and experiences of Indigenous Peoples who the acts of colonization sought to erase. Read together, they celebrate the journey and vision where Indigenous-centered and decolonized practices will take research next.

This decolonizing editorial features the voices of the scholars who were invited to review the articles submitted for this special issue. Usually, reviewers are not named nor credited for their contributions in this way. The common practice would be to include the work as a line of service on their curricula vitae. The reviewing process requires knowledge of the subject matter and related texts. It necessitates reflection and thoughtful consideration of ways to strengthen the arguments and writing. The reviewers enter into conversation with the articles and provide suggestions that advance the scholarship available to the fields—Indigenous studies in particular. The dialogs build on Smith’s work in both direct and indirect means.