120 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
men, such as teaching them about pregnancy and how to use condoms, which is
information that is often unavailable to young and “uneducated” deaf people.
Without explicitly introducing this concept as a deaf indigenous notion, the
diverse meanings of the sign serious were food for a lively discussion during the
presentation of the research findings in the deaf community meeting in Douala.
The discussion con cluded with a feeling of a sense of “ownership” when a leader
recognized the concept as a “true” Cameroonian deaf concept that has the po-
tential to inspire the country’s deaf community to work toward the common goal
of further development and action and to motivate individual members to take
responsibility for their own lives. Whether the concept is actually Cameroonian
or is also used by deaf communities in neighbor ing countries (with which there is
transnational interaction) will need to be determined through empirical research
in the region.
This description of the practices and philosophy of life of the Cameroonian deaf
community illustrates the relevance of a plural concept of deaf epistemologies, and
opens up Western perspectives and explorations of this concept (also see Chapter 2).
Miller coined the concept of “culture of common experience” (cited in Miller, 2010,
p. 483) to describe commonalities in deaf people’s individual epistemologies before
coming into contact with other deaf people. Then they receive culturally situated
group epistemologies. This culture “may be a major force in Deaf epistemology”
(p. 483); the mixture of the experiences of deaf children growing up in deaf schools
and mainstream environments and deaf children of deaf parents in Western soci-
eties “creates the continuing epistemology of social and linguistic culture creation,
maintenance, and survival—a Deaf epistemology” (p. 484).
The Cameroonian case study, which describes the development of a young deaf
community, provides a different yet complementary view to this perspective. Appar-
ently, the intergenerational transmission of sign language and deaf culture within
deaf families has been limited so far. Deaf people share a sense of linguistic and
social marginalization and exclusion—although in a different context of a widely
distributed gestural communication and multilingualism and with some form of
communicative and social inclusion in some rural areas. Also, the moral net that
is being created through informal deaf education of the concept of being serious,
which seems to be a vital force for the maintenance and survival of the Cameroo-
nian deaf commu nity, is illustrative of a deaf indigenous worldview.VALUING DEAF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE IN RESEARCH
THROUGH PARTNERSHIPS
Reflecting on my own position in my study, I have realized that the concept of
researcher is nonexistent in the semantic framework of the setting. I filled the roles
of coach/counselor, deaf sister, and missionary—someone who was able to listen,
guaran tee privacy, not judge, and solve problems. Each person had his or her own
question or concern, such as how to set up a business or build a bigger store, whether
I could explain how one gets pregnant, if it was still possible to have children when
one was HIV positive, and so on.