Restorative validity and healing through inquiry: A visual ethnographic case study in Guatemala

This case study is an exploration of the potential restorative and healing qualities of inquiry. The co-authors—a university-affiliated researcher, a Kaqchikel Maya community leader, and forensic anthropologists—document their stories navigating a participatory action research project as co-researchers. Using visual ethnography, we illustrate how we approached inquiry from a place of restorative validity, which challenges inquirers to reclaim and restore the humanity of researcher, researched, and the research process itself. Through a culturally sustaining frame, we grounded our interpretations in the Maya cultural elements of land, community, and attachment to place. We demonstrate how we intertwined our various ways of knowing and methods, from Indigenous oral tradition to interactive techniques such as ripples of change, to co-create a form of inquiry rooted in relationships, justice, and liberation. As peace, conflict, and justice researchers and practitioners work with those who have been subjected to and witnessed atrocities, we problematize whether our methodological practices are in line with our values as a community of care. In moving toward restorative validity, we ask: If the outside world robs people of their humanity, identities, and memories, do we simply observe and document these injustices; or can our inquiry work toward reclamation and restoration?