Weaving Knowledge Systems Resource Materials

The ACHH Initiative’s ultimate goal is to gather and combine traditional and Western knowledge to better understand how Indigenous children’s pain is experienced, expressed, interpreted, assessed and treated. What began in one Indigenous community (Eskasoni First Nation) expanded to three maritime communities and will now be expanding to additional communities across the country and internationally in the coming years.

Early research findings suggest that a complex mix of factors have led to a cultural divide for First Nations children in pain and non-Indigenous health care providers. We want to help bridge that gap.

Western-based health care professionals use pain measurements like facial expressions and numeric scales which may not be accurate tools for diagnosis and treatment of Indigenous children’s pain. Issues of discrimination and intergenerational trauma (including residential school experiences), as well as a lack of understanding of cultural traditions by health professionals, have added to the problem. [From Website]

In this article, the author, establishes a knowledge set for Indigenous social work practice based on Indigenous wholistic theory. An overall framework using the circle is proposed and introduced followed by a more detailed and elaborated illustration using the four directions. The article identifies the need to articulate Indigenous wholistic theory and does so by employing a wholistic framework of the four directional circle. It then systematically moves around each direction, beginning in the east where a discussion of Spirit and Vision occurs. In the south a discussion of relationships, community and heart emerge. The western direction brings forth a discussion of the spirit of the ancestors and importance of Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous knowledge production. The northern direction articulates ideas surrounding healing and movements and actions that guide practice. Finally, the article begins with a discussion on all four directions together with a final examination of the center fire where all elements interconnect and intersect. Lastly, the article proclaims the existence of Indigenous wholistic theory as a necessary knowledge set for practice. [From Author]

Children and youth comprise 40% of the Canadian Indigenous population. These young people face significant health inequities compared to their peers, especially those living on-reserve. Data on health and well-being is needed to guide community policies, health services planning and evaluation, that supports Indigenous communities on their path to health and well-being. This evidence to promote better health outcomes is lacking. Part of the reason is the shortage of outcome measures that are appropriate for use with First Nation, Métis and Inuit children and youth. It is important to have self-report measures that are both culturally relevant to original Canadians while meeting the requirements of scientific rigor. The ACHWM is proposed as one mechanism to bridge this gap, inform and support action. [From Website]

This edition of the ALAR "Action learning action research" journal aims to capture some of the current dilemmas, solutions and actions researchers experience in the decolonising space. This collection of papers demonstrates that researchers are not only undertaking action research with and within Indigenous and non-Indigenous contexts, but that they are doing so in exciting and dynamic ways across a diversity of situations. First we will address some of the literature on decolonisation. Then we will explain how this specific edition of the Journal came to fruition and aspects of action research. [From Author]

This study, undertaken in the Northwest USA, explores how graduate students in an interdisciplinary social–ecological systems research course engaged with concepts of epistemic difference and Indigenous knowledge as part of a required module titled “Ways of Knowing” to engage social and ecological change in climate science. We describe how graduate students engaged with Indigenous ways of knowing and discussion of interdisciplinary equity across knowledge systems and methodologies. Analysis of student perspectives drawn from fieldnotes, student course work, and post-course interviews illuminates tensions in preparing interdisciplinary science researchers to navigate epistemic difference. Students embraced Indigenous ways of knowing as useful for conceptualizing complex tensions in social–ecological systems research, while simultaneously sidestepping deeply rooted issues of power and coloniality in research. We trace two primary ways Indigenous ways of knowing informed interdisciplinary processes in students’ conceptualizations of social–ecological challenges: Science as more expansive: Reflexivity and interpersonal dilemmas; and Grappling with power and settler colonial discomfort. We argue that continued engagement in epistemic difference, particularly Indigenous knowledges, is necessary for cultivating scientific engagement in complex notions of knowledge equity in climate sciences involving Indigenous peoples/lands. Finding underscore how changes in graduate research training can expand research imaginaries, however, such expansions need to be systematic and multi-stranded to interrupt the deep-rooted marginalization of non-Western knowledges in scientific research. [From Author]

Indigenous oral narratives are an important source for, and component of, Coast Salish knowledge systems. Stories are not only to be recounted and passed down; they are also intended as tools for teaching.

Jo-ann Archibald worked closely with Elders and storytellers, who shared both traditional and personal life-experience stories, in order to develop ways of bringing storytelling into educational contexts. Indigenous Storywork is the result of this research and it demonstrates how stories have the power to educate and heal the heart, mind, body, and spirit. It builds on the seven principles of respect, responsibility, reciprocity, reverence, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy that form a framework for understanding the characteristics of stories, appreciating the process of storytelling, establishing a receptive learning context, and engaging in holistic meaning-making. [From Publisher]

This chapter highlights how Indigenous storywork is used with different communities. Hands Back, Hands Forward is an Indigenous teaching from the late First Nation Elder, Dr. Vincent Stogan, Tsimilano, from Musqueam, who was an exemplary mentor and teacher to many at the University of British Columbia and elsewhere. Kirkness and Barnhardt introduced the 4Rs in higher education: respect for the Indigenous student, relevance to the Indigenous student’s culture, responsibility for making the university more responsive to Indigenous students, and reciprocity where those involved with the university and the student share or benefit from each other’s knowledges. Through the reciprocal act of mentorship and learning we enact Elder Vincent Stogan’s Hands Back, Hands Forward teachings and Sidaxgigat’inimhl Gagoodim. The seven Indigenous storywork (ISW) principles include: respect, responsibility, reverence, reciprocity, holism, inter-relatedness, and synergy. All of the ISW principles exemplify relevance to Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous stories. [From Publisher]

This article raises the recurrent question whether non-indigenous researchers should attempt to research with/in Indigenous communities. If research is indeed a metaphor of colonization, then we have two choices: we have to learn to conduct research in ways that meet the needs of Indigenous communities and are non-exploitative, culturally appropriate and inclusive, or we need to relinquish our roles as researchers within Indigenous contexts and make way for Indigenous researchers. Both of these alternatives are complex. Hence in this article I trace my learning journey; a journey that has culminated in the realization that it is not my place to conduct research within Indigenous contexts, but that I can use ‘what I know’ – rather than imagining that I know about Indigenous epistemologies or Indigenous experiences under colonialism – to work as an ally with Indigenous researchers. Coming as I do, from a position of relative power, I can also contribute in some small way to the project of decolonizing methodologies by speaking ‘to my own mob’. [From Author]

Last year, at the International Society for Education through Art conference at the University of British Columbia (UBC), discussions of Indigenous Research Methodologies were ample, which does not often happen at art education conferences. UBC is keenly aware of its occupation of Indigenous lands and the realization of such a relationship brought forward such conversations naturally. These dialogues were stimulating and timely, perhaps the result of a growing global awareness of Indigenous Research Methodologies. Still, such dialogues are not always included in the United States in the discussion of research methodologies. When Kryssi Staikidis and I edited our book, Transforming Our Practices: Indigenous Art, Pedagogies, and Philosophies (2017), we found that although our work was presented in some academic settings—an international qualitative inquiry conference, the Art Education Research Institute, the American Educational Research Association, NAEA, university seminars and symposia, university art education departments—where we were asked to share our findings, the conversation needed to advance beyond ourselves for sustainability. [From Author]

This is a process article for weaving indigenous and mainstream knowledges within science educational curricula and other science arenas, assuming participants include recognized holders of traditional ecological knowledge (we prefer “Indigenous Knowledge” or “Traditional Knowledge”) and others with expertise in mainstream science. It is based on the “Integrative Science” undergraduate program created at Cape Breton University to bring together indigenous and mainstream sciences and ways of knowing, as well as related Integrative Science endeavors in science research, application, and outreach. A brief historical outline for that experiential journey is provided and eight “Lessons Learned” listed. The first, namely “acknowledge that we need each other and must engage in a co-learning journey” is explained as key for the success of weaving efforts. The second, namely “be guided by Two-Eyed Seeing”, is considered the most profound because it is central to the whole of a co-learning journey and the article’s discussion is focussed through it. The eighth lesson, “develop an advisory council of willing, knowledgeable stakeholders”, is considered critical for sustaining success over the long-term given that institutional and community politics profoundly influence the resourcing and recruitment of any academic program and thus can help foster success, or sabotage it. The scope of relevance for Two-Eyed Seeing is broad and its uptake across Canada is sketched; the article also places it in the context of emerging theory for transdisciplinary research. The article concludes with thoughts on why “Two-Eyed Seeing” may seem to be desired or resisted as a label in different settings. [From Author]

The essays in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision spring from an International Summer Institute on the cultural restoration of oppressed Indigenous peoples. The contributors, primarily Indigenous, unravel the processes of colonization that enfolded modern society and resulted in the oppression of Indigenous peoples." "In moving and inspiring ways, Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision elaborates a new inclusive vision of a global and national order and articulates new approaches for protecting, healing, and restoring long-oppressed peoples, and for respecting their cultures and languages. [From Publisher]

Decolonization requires critical attention to settler logics that reinforce settler-colonialism, yet settler communities, as a rule, operate without a collective sense of identity and history. This article, provoked by Māori protocols of encounter, explores the necessity of developing a sense of collective identity as precursor to meeting in settler-Indigenous politics. It argues that the ability, desire, and experience of being unmarked as a social group—apparent in paradigmatic approaches to engaging social difference in settler communities—is at the heart of the particularity of settler group identity and also stands at the heart of countless failures to meet in settler-Indigenous politics. This essay thus seeks to mark the particular ground of this unmarkedness of settler identity in Western philosophies that set being unmarked as both ontology and ideal; the dominance of settler communities in places of settlement; and the willful forgetting of the colonial histories brought about by such dominance. [From Author]

Photovoice is a community-based participatory visual research method often described as accessible to vulnerable or marginalized groups and culturally appropriate for research with Indigenous peoples. Academic researchers report adapting the photovoice method to the sociocultural context of Indigenous participants and communities with whom they are working. However, detailed descriptions on cultural frameworks for transforming photovoice in order for it to better reflect Indigenous methodologies are lacking, and descriptions of outcomes that occur as a result of photovoice are rare. We address the paucity of published methodological details on the participant-directed Indigenization of photovoice. We conducted 13 visual research group sessions with participants from three First Nations communities in Northern Ontario, Canada. Our intent was to privilege the voice of participants in a mindful exploration aimed at cocreating a transformation of the photovoice method, in order to meet participants’ cultural values. Gaataa’aabing is the Indigenized, culturally safe visual research method created through this process. Gaataa’aabing represents an Indigenous approach to visual research methods and a renewed commitment to engage Indigenous participants in meaningful and productive ways, from the design of research questions and the Indigenization of research methods, to knowledge translation and relevant policy change. Although Gaataa’aabing was developed in collaboration with Anishinaabek people in Ontario, Canada, its principles will, we hope, resonate with many Indigenous groups due to the method’s focus on (1) integration of cultural values of the respective Indigenous community(ies) with whom researchers are collaborating and (2) placing focus on concrete community outcomes as a requirement of the research process. [From Author]

This study aimed to identify the differences in the beliefs and educational practices related to language acquisition of Dene and non-Aboriginal mothers. A survey of 30 Dene mothers in a Northern community was carried out using research methodology that was culturally adjusted to the Dene culture and language. The 30 non-Aboriginal mothers completed a conventional survey form. The survey evaluated the mothers’ beliefs about language acquisition and their current practices of supporting their children’s language learning. The study revealed subtle differences between the Dene and the non-Aboriginal mothers with regards to both their beliefs and practices. The Dene mothers valued spirituality and their child’s connection to traditional faith and beliefs more highly than the non-Aboriginal mothers. They also supported the use of child-directed speech to facilitate their children’s language development. They felt that Elders and grandparents had an important role to play in their children’s lives, and they favoured teaching by providing a combination of verbal and hands-on instruction. The Dene mothers reported frequent use of language facilitation strategies. By adjusting the survey in a culturally appropriate way, the participation in the research was facilitated for the Dene mothers. [From Author]

This article demonstrates the credibility and rigor of yarning, an Indigenous cultural form of conversation, through its use as a data gathering tool with two different Indigenous groups, one in Australia and the second in Botswana. Yarning was employed not only to collect information during the research interview but to establish a relationship with Indigenous participants prior to gathering their stories through storytelling, also known as narrative. In exploring the concept of yarning in research, this article discusses the different types of yarning that emerged during the research project, how these differences were identified and their applicability in the research process. The influence of gender during the interview is also included in the discussion. [From Author]

Solutions to complex health and environmental issues experienced by First Nations communities in Canada require the adoption of collaborative modes of research. The traditional “helicopter” approach to research applied in communities has led to disenchantment on the part of First Nations people and has impeded their willingness to participate in research. University researchers have tended to develop projects without community input and to adopt short term approaches to the entire process, perhaps a reflection of granting and publication cycles and other realities of academia. Researchers often enter communities, collect data without respect for local culture, and then exit, having had little or no community interaction or consideration of how results generated could benefit communities or lead to sustainable solutions. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has emerged as an alternative to the helicopter approach and is promoted here as a method to research that will meet the objectives of both First Nations and research communities. CBPR is a collaborative approach that equitably involves all partners in the research process. Although the benefits of CBPR have been recognized by segments of the University research community, there exists a need for comprehensive changes in approaches to First Nations centered research, and additional guidance to researchers on how to establish respectful and productive partnerships with First Nations communities beyond a single funded research project. This article provides a brief overview of ethical guidelines developed for researchers planning studies involving Aboriginal people as well as the historical context and principles of CBPR. A framework for building research partnerships with First Nations communities that incorporates and builds upon the guidelines and principles of CBPR is then presented. The framework was based on 10 years’ experience working with First Nations communities in Saskatchewan. The framework for research partnership is composed of five phases. They are categorized as the pre-research, community consultation, community entry, research and research dissemination phases. These phases are cyclical, non-linear and interconnected. Elements of, and opportunities for, exploration, discussion, engagement, consultation, relationship building, partnership development, community involvement, and information sharing are key components of the five phases within the framework. The phases and elements within this proposed framework have been utilized to build and implement sustainable collaborative environmental health research projects with Saskatchewan First Nations communities. [From Author]

Background: The use of storytelling in qualitative research involving Inuit compliments the oral tradition of Inuit culture. The objective of the research was to explore the use of qualitative methods to gain understanding of the experience of living with diabetes, with the ultimate goal of better formulating health care delivery and health promotion among Inuit. Methods : In-depth interviews were analyzed and interpreted using thematic analysis, open coding, and structured narrative analysis. Inuit community members acted as partners through all stages of the research. Results: ‘‘Because the more we understand, the more we’re gonna do a prevention on it … What I want is use my, use my diabetes, what I have … so that it can be used by other people for prevention because they’ll have understanding about it’’ — an Inuk storyteller speaks to the value of education in health promotion. Key methodological issues found relevant to improving qualitative research with Indigenous Peoples include: (i) participatory research methods, grounded in principals of equity, through all phases of research; (ii) the presentation of narratives rather than only interpretations of narratives; (iii) understanding of culture, language, and place to frame the interpretation of the stories in the context within which storytellers experience living with their diabetes, and (iv) the value of multiple methods of analyses. Interpretation: This article comments on the challenges of conducting rigorous research in a cross-cultural setting and outlines methodologies that can improve qualitative narrative analyses research. The research highlighted experiences of living with diabetes and the ways in which storytellers coped and negotiated social support. (Global Health Promotion, 2009; 16 (4): pp. 16—26) [From Author]

All research, by its very nature, is political. Crossing borders from the academic to the real lives of people is fraught with tensions and misunderstandings. Qualitative researchers must continually be aware of how those we study view us as well as how we view them. Qualitative research, and especially ethnography, relies on what we, as observers, see and what we are told by the participants in our research studies. This is not always a seamless path. [From Author]

"Intended as a senior undergraduate and graduate text, Research As Resistance brings together the theory and practice of critical, Indigenous, and anti-oppressive approaches to social science research. The book pursues some of the ontological and epistemological considerations involved in such research, including theorizing the self of the researcher, and offers exemplars across a range of methodologies, including institutional ethnography, narrative autobiography, storytelling, and participatory action research. This is a unique text in that it describes both theoretical foundations and practical applications, and because all of the featured researchers occupy marginalized locations. It is also firmly anchored in the Canadian context." [From Publisher]

In Labrador, the NunatuKavut (formerly Labrador Inuit Métis) have begun to introduce a rigorous community-based research review process. We conducted a study with leaders and health care workers in and beyond the NunatuKavut community of Labrador, asking them what should be emphasised in a community review. We also sought to identify whether and how community review should be distinct from the centralised, “institutional” research ethics review that would be the mandate of Newfoundland and Labrador’s impending provincial health research authority. In this article we report on our findings with the aim of providing strategies and direction for researchers, research ethics boards, and Aboriginal communities dealing with dual-level ethics review. We argue for the adoption and use of a consistent label for community review of research (“Community Research Review Committee”) as distinct from research ethics boards. We provide suggestions for the development of separate roles and responsibilities for community review of research to ensure that its tasks are clearly understood and delineated. Our objective is to promote a form of community research review, distinct from the “ethics” review of research ethics boards, that explicitly attends to research in the context of ongoing colonialism, assimilation, and exoticism. [From Author]

The paradigm is shifting in research involving Indigenous Peoples: research with Indigenous Peoples at a meeting place of multiple worldviews—the ethical space – instead of research on or about them. The emergent paradigm is an invitation for researchers to think, know and act differently – to do research with Indigenous Peoples leading. This story is just one example of doing differently while answering the question, “What are the perspectives and practices of Research Ethics Boards (REB) members, chairs, and administrators regarding the review and approval of protocols for research with Indigenous Peoples?” The conceptual framework of this study integrates disciplines, theoretical models, methods, and complementary story-generating and story gathering methods to support decolonizing and Indigenizing of the research simultaneously. An interdisciplinary methodological framework informed by decolonizing methodologies, autoethnography, and narrative inquiry guided this research process with 18 participant contributors (including myself) from nine provinces and territories in Canada. Data were collected and re/assembled through digital stories, interviews, and artifacts to share stories and insights about practical innovations with participants’ REBs. They suggested ways to improve the theory, application, and practice of ethics for research with Indigenous Peoples including office hours dedicated to Indigenous research ethics, asking the ‘right’ questions in protocols and forms, and having Indigenous Peoples sit on the institutional REB. All participant contributors called on researchers, REBs, institutions, and funding agencies to improve how we do research/review with Indigenous Peoples. [From Author]

Recent ethics guidelines and policies are changing the way health research is understood, governed, and practiced among Aboriginal communities in Canada. This provides a unique opportunity to examine the meanings and uses of such guidelines by Aboriginal communities themselves. This qualitative study, conducted in Labrador, Canada, with the Innu, Inuit, and Inuit-Metis, examined how communities and researchers collaborate in a co-learning environment whereby mutual interests and agendas are discussed and enacted throughout the entire research process—a process referred to an authentic research relationship. The purpose of this study was to answer the following questions: (1) Why are authentic research relationships important? (2) What is authenticity in research? (3) How do we achieve authenticity in research with Aboriginal peoples? This shift to more wholistic methodologies can be used in various contexts in Canada and internationally. This is the first study by an Aboriginal person to examine the perspectives of Aboriginal people, in an Aboriginal context, using Aboriginal methodologies. [From Author]

For many Indigenous nations globally, ethics is a conversation. The purpose of this paper is to share and mobilize knowledge to build relationships and capacities regarding the ethics review and approval of research with Indigenous peoples throughout Atlantic Canada. The authors share key principles that emerged for shifting practices that recognize Indigenous rights holders through ethical research review practice. [From Author]

Scientific research occurs within a set of socio-political conditions, and in Canada research involving Indigenous communities has a historical association with colonialism. Consequently, Indigenous peoples have been justifiably sceptical and reluctant to become the subjects of academic research. Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is an attempt to develop culturally relevant research models that address issues of injustice, inequality, and exploitation. The work reported here evaluates the use of Photovoice, a CBPR method that uses participant-employed photography and dialogue to create social change, which was employed in a research partnership with a First Nation in Western Canada. Content analysis of semi-structured interviews (n = 45) evaluated participants' perspectives of the Photovoice process as part of a larger study on health and environment issues. The analysis revealed that Photovoice effectively balanced power, created a sense of ownership, fostered trust, built capacity, and responded to cultural preferences. The authors discuss the necessity of modifying Photovoice, by building in an iterative process, as being key to the methodological success of the project. [From Author]

Chapters cover the history of research methods, ethical conduct, colonial and postcolonial epistemologies, relational epistemologies, emergent and indigenous methodologies, Afrocentric research, feminist research, narrative frameworks, interviewing, and participatory methods. New to the second edition are three new chapters covering evaluation, mixed methods, and mixed methods evaluation. These chapters focusing on decolonizing, indigenizing, and integrating these methods and applications to enhance participation of indigenous peoples as knowers and foster collaborative relationships. [From Publisher]

A growing number of geographers seek to communicate their research to audiences beyond the academy. Community-based and participatory action research models have been developed, in part, with this goal in mind. Yet despite many promising developments in the way research is conducted and disseminated, researchers continue to seek methods to better reflect the “culture and context” of the communities with whom they work. During my doctoral research on homelessness in the Northwest Territories, I encountered a significant disconnect between the emotive, personal narratives of homelessness that I was collecting and more conventional approaches to research dissemination. In search of a method of dissemination to engage more meaningfully with research collaborators as well as the broader public, I turned to my creative writing work. In this article, I draw from “The komatik lesson” to discuss my first effort at research storytelling. I suggest that research storytelling is particularly well suited to community-based participatory research, as we explore methods to present findings in ways that are more culturally appropriate to the communities in which the research takes place. This is especially so in collaborative research with Indigenous communities, where storytelling and knowledge sharing are often one and the same. However, I also discuss the ways in which combining my creative writing interests with my doctoral research has been an uneasy fit, forcing me to question how to tell a good story while giving due diligence to the role that academic research has played in its development. Drawing on the outcomes and challenges I encountered, I offer an understanding of what research storytelling is, and how it might be used to advance community-based participatory research with Indigenous communities. [From Author]

Aboriginal peoples historically know the social sciences as a form of violence, part of the naming and claiming of Aboriginal peoples, their lands and histories for the colonizers. From the 1800s to 1958, tens of thousands of Aboriginal individuals were taken from their homes and families and exhibited, while craniometry was used to ‘scientifically’ prove the inferiority of Aboriginal peoples, so justifying genocide and forcible assimilation. Today, Aboriginal knowledge is tolerated at the university insofar as it conforms to colonial standards of science and increasingly, insofar as it can demonstrate its profitability. Against such colonial science, however, Aboriginal peoples are undertaking research on their own terms and for their own communities, drawing on Aboriginal ontologies and epistemologies. Distinct relations to the natural world and ancestors, and responsibilities to future generations shape Aboriginal research as unique practices that have as their ultimate aim the explicitly political goals of decolonization and liberation. [From Author]

This narrative begins in 1950, a conversation between Sam Jim, an Indigenous Elder in British Columbia (BC), and a university professor researching Sam’s community. Sam troubles the privileging of Western thinking, knowledge, values, and practices. The story fast-forwards to a contemporary research partnership between an Indigenous researcher, the same BC Indigenous community and an Indigenous community in Peru. Each community faces different struggles in protecting their lands from resource extraction and in regenerating traditional ecological knowledges for future generations. They meet these challenges by reviving their traditional knowledges and practices, including human and more-than-human interrelationships and interdependencies. The communities have different cosmologies, histories, geographies, languages, economies, and socio-political contexts. This requires research methodologies and methods that acknowledge the challenges and opportunities of working across different contexts toward more complex, culturally inclusive possibilities for living together on a shared planet. [From Author]

Over the past forty years, recognition has become the dominant mode of negotiation and decolonization between the nation-state and Indigenous nations in North America. The term "recognition" shapes debates over Indigenous cultural distinctiveness, Indigenous rights to land and self-government, and Indigenous peoples' right to benefit from the development of their lands and resources. In a work of critically engaged political theory, Glen Sean Coulthard challenges recognition as a method of organizing difference and identity in liberal politics, questioning the assumption that contemporary difference and past histories of destructive colonialism between the state and indigenous peoples can be reconciled through a process of acknowledgment. [From Publisher]

This article outlines the methodological process of a transdisciplinary team of indigenous and nonindigenous individuals, who came together in early 2009 to develop a digital narrative method to engage a remote community in northern Labrador in a research project examining the linkages between climate change and physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being. Desiring to find a method that was locally appropriate and resonant with the narrative wisdom of the community, yet cognizant of the limitations of interview-based narrative research, our team sought to discover an indigenous method that united the digital media with storytelling. Using a case study that illustrates the usage of digital storytelling within an indigenous community, this article will share how digital storytelling can stand as a community-driven methodological strategy that addresses, and moves beyond, the limitations of narrative research and the issues of colonization of research and the Western analytic project. In so doing, this emerging method can preserve and promote indigenous oral wisdom, while engaging community members, developing capacities, and celebrating myriad stories, lived experiences, and lifeworlds. [From Author]

Table of Contents:
Indians today, the real and the unreal
Laws and treaties
Disastrous policy of termination
Anthropologists and other friends
Missionaries and the religious vacuum
Government agencies
Indian humor
Red and the black
Problem of Indian leadership
Indians and modern society
Redefinition of Indian affairs

In Life of the Indigenous Mind David Martínez examines the early activism, life, and writings of Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005), the most influential indigenous activist and writer of the twentieth century and one of the intellectual architects of the Red Power movement. An experienced activist, administrator, and political analyst, Deloria was motivated to activism and writing by his work as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, and he came to view discourse on tribal self-determination as the most important objective for making a viable future for tribes. In this work of both intellectual and activist history, Martínez assesses the early life and legacy of Deloria's “Red Power Tetralogy,” his most powerful and polemical works: Custer Died for Your Sins (1969), We Talk, You Listen (1970), God Is Red (1973), and Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties (1974). Deloria's gift for combining sharp political analysis with a cutting sense of humor rattled his adversaries as much as it delighted his growing readership. Life of the Indigenous Mind reveals how Deloria's writings addressed Indians and non-Indians alike. It was in the spirit of protest that Deloria famously and infamously confronted the tenets of Christianity, the policies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the theories of anthropology. The concept of tribal self-determination that he initiated both overturned the presumptions of the dominant society, including various “Indian experts,” and asserted that tribes were entitled to the rights of independent sovereign nations in their relationship with the United States, be it legally, politically, culturally, historically, or religiously. [From Publisher]

I want to read the controversies and scandals surrounding Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) within a critical pedagogical, discourse. Ethics are pedagogies of practice. IRBs are institutional apparatuses that regulate a particular form of ethical conduct, a form that may be no longer workable in a transdisciplinary, global, and postcolonial world. I seek a progressive performative cultural politics that enacts a performance ethics based on feminist, communitarian assumptions. I will attempt to align these assumptions with the call by First and Fourth World scholars for an indigenous research ethic (Smith, 1999; Bishop, 1998; Rains, Archibald, & Deyhle, 2000). This allows me to criticize the dominant biomedical and ethical model that operates in many North American universities today. I conclude with a preliminary outline of an indigenous, feminist, communitarian research ethic. This ethic has two implications. It would replace the current utilitarian ethical model that IRBs utilize. It argues for a two-track, or three-track IRB model within the contemporary university setting. [From Author]

The Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies is the only handbook to make connections regarding many of the perspectives of the “new” critical theorists and emerging indigenous methodologies.

Built on the foundation of the landmark SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, the Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies extends beyond the investigation of qualitative inquiry itself to explore the indigenous and nonindigenous voices that inform research, policy, politics, and social justice. Editors Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith explore in depth some of the newer formulations of critical theories and many indigenous perspectives, and seek to make transparent the linkages between the two.[From Publisher]

To consider more fully the contextual complexities of living ethically as curriculum scholars, we wish to attend to the various discursive regimes that effectively delimit and circumscribe research projects initiated in partnership with Indigenous peoples and their communities. The habitual disregard of Indigenous peoples stems from the colonial frontier experience. The overriding assumption at work in these colonial frontier logics is that Indigenous peoples and Canadians inhabit separate realities. The inherent intention is to deny relationality. Within the research community there is an increased awareness of the importance of including Indigenous people in the development of research programs related to their communities. We were invited by an Indigenous community to work with the community and school leadership to develop a research program related to student performance in mathematics. Through our work, we have come to wonder about the authority of researchers, the authority of mathematics, and the authority of culture. We have come to understand how easy it is to replicate colonial logics as authoritative and have encountered conflicts when resisting these stances. In this paper, we offer some reflections and insights regarding how, and in what ways, we attempted to disrupt colonial logics. Through our listening to the teachings of children and teachers, we have come to conceptualize cultural relationality as an ethic guiding our participation in a research project with an Indigenous community. [From Author]

Indigenous communities and federal funding agencies in Canada have developed policy for ethical research with Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous scholars and communities have begun to expand the body of research regarding their peoples, and novel and innovative methods have begun to appear in the published literature. This review attempts to catalogue the wide array of Indigenous research methods in the peer-reviewed literature and describe commonalities among methods in order to guide researchers and communities in future method development. A total of 64 articles met inclusionary criteria and five themes emerged: General Indigenous Frameworks, Western Methods in an Indigenous Context, Community-Based Participatory Research, Storytelling, and Culture-Specific Methods. [From Author]

As a First Nations student, educator, and researcher, I articulate my journey that has taken me from a Western academic perspective to a Tahltan world view. This article is based on the process I went through while writing the methodology paper for my doctoral candidacy exams. The Tahltan research paradigm that I have developed-grounded in Tahltan epistemology, methodology, and pedagogy-is based on the connection that Tahltan people have with our Ancestors, our traditional territory, and our language. It involves receiving the teachings of our Ancestors, learning and knowing these teachings, and sharing these teachings with our people. By using a Tahltan research process, I hope that my research will be transformative and positive, respectful and honorable, and will be relevant and useful not only for my people, but for the larger Indigenous community as well. [From Author]

Talanoa has been defined as ‘talking about nothing in particular’, ‘chat’ or ‘gossip’. It is within the cultural milieu of talanoa that knowledge and emotions are shared and new knowledge is generated. Talanoa has recently been taken up by development researchers and others as a culturally appropriate research method in Pacific contexts. However, talanoa is often treated as synonymous with ‘informal open-ended interviews’ and tends to gloss over the deep empathic understanding required in such exchanges. Highlighting the connection between talanoa and empathy is vital in ensuring that development practitioners and researchers are implicitly aware of the political dimensions, cultural appropriacy and socio-ecological impact of their research methods. This connection is also critical in illuminating how talanoa as a method may decolonise research in the Pacific, inform the decolonisation of research in other cultural contexts, and contribute to ethical and empowering development policy and practice. We will argue for the merits of what we refer to here as ‘empathic apprenticeship’: an intentional, embodied, emotional, and intersubjective methodology and process between the researcher and the participant. An empathic apprenticeship has the potential to enhance shared understandings between all human beings and is essential if talanoa is intended as a decolonising research methodology. [From Author]

Indigenous knowledge and approaches to health research have historically been marginalized by Western traditions. Efforts to overcome this marginalization by recognizing Indigenous methodologies as a distinctive form of inquiry are gathering momentum. Health research that seeks to establish levels of agreement about disputed or conceptually unclear subjects frequently relies on consensus methods. Aajiiqatigiingniq is a principle of cultural knowledge and a consensus decision-making approach among Inuit in the Canadian Arctic. We used group meetings and individual interviews involving Inuit elders and other senior community members in Arviat, Nunavut, to explore and describe aajiiqatigiingniq as an appropriate and ethical methodology in qualitative health research. Findings reveal a systematic but apparently informal approach focused on sustained individual and community well-being. Consensus is achieved through the successive addition of group members, respectful communication, mainly narrative discourse, subjective personal engagement, and an unhurried meeting style. While previous research has used Western consensus methods to embed Inuit knowledge in health research, this study provides a first descriptive account of a wholly Inuit consensus methodology. [From Author]

The First Nations principles of OCAP establish how First Nations’ data and information will be collected, protected, used, or shared. OCAP is a tool to support strong information governance on the path to First Nations data sovereignty. [From Website]

Research with Indigenous populations is not always designed with cultural sensitivity. Few publications evaluate or describe in detail seeking consent for research with Indigenous participants. When potential participants are not engaged in a culturally respectful manner, participation rates and research quality can be adversely affected. It is unethical to proceed with research without truly informed consent. [From Author]

The consent and community engagement process for research with Indigenous communities is rarely evaluated. Research protocols are not always collaborative, inclusive or culturally respectful. If participants do not trust or understand the research, selection bias may occur in recruitment, affecting study results potentially denying participants the opportunity to provide more knowledge and greater understanding about their community. Poorly informed consent can also harm the individual participant and the community as a whole. [From Author]

Basically, the Community Story Framework is a tool for helping communities to explore what is really happening and what is needed to make life better for everyone. The Community Story Framework has proven to be a very powerful tool for getting community members involved in thinking about and taking action on their own for the improvement of the quality of life for all. [From Author]

There is increasing recognition of Indigenous perspectives from various parts of the world in relation to storytelling, research and its effects on practice. The recent emergence of storytelling or yarning as a research method in Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island studies and other Indigenous peoples of the world is gaining momentum. Narratives, stories, storytelling and yarning are emerging methods in research and has wide ranging potential to shape conventional research discourse making research more meaningful and accessible for researchers. In this paper we argue for the importance of Indigenous research methods and Indigenous method(ology), within collaborative respectful partnerships with non- Indigenous researchers. It is imperative to take these challenging steps together towards better outcomes for Indigenous people and their communities. In the Australian context we as researchers cannot afford to allow the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and mainstream Australia health outcomes to grow even wider. One such pathway is the inclusion of Aboriginal storytelling or yarning from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait perspective within Indigenous and non-Indigenous research paradigms. Utilising Aboriginal storytelling or yarning will provide deeper understanding; complementing a twoway research paradigm for collaborative research. Furthermore, it has significant social implications for research and clinical practice amongst Indigenous populations; thus complementing the biomedical medical paradigm. [From Author]

Given the extreme variety of research issues under investigation today and the multi-million-dollar industry surrounding research, it becomes extremely important that we ensure that research involving Indigenous peoples is ethically as well as methodologically relevant, according to the needs and desires of Indigenous peoples themselves. This distinctive volume presents Indigenous research as strong and self-determined with theories, ethics and methodologies arising from within unique cultural contexts. Yet the volume makes clear that challenges remain, such as working in mainstream institutions that may not regard the work of Indigenous researchers as legitimate 'science'. In addition, it explores a twenty-first-century challenge for Indigenous people researching with their own people, namely the ethical questions that must be addressed when dealing with Indigenous organisations and tribal corporations that have fought for - and won - power and money. The volume also analyses Indigenous/non-Indigenous research partnerships, outlining how they developed respectful and reciprocal relationships of benefit for all, and argues that these kinds of best practice research guidelines are of value to all research communities. [From Publisher]

The relationship between intellectual property (IP) and the protection of Indigenous knowledge and cultural expressions is complex and challenging. The following is intended to provide an overview to stimulate and inform broader policy discussions in Canada. [From Website]

Ever since I received the invitation to write this chapter, I've been thinking (read: obsessing) about methodology, asking everyone I know how they define it and trying to determine whether I do it or not. Ironically, through these discussions, I discovered that the social engagement of ideas is my method. Specifically, I learned that my research is about ideas in motion. That is, ideas as they come alive within and through people(s), communities, events, texts, practices, policies, institutions, artistic expression, ceremonies, and rituals. I engage them “in motion” through a process of active and close observation wherein I live with, try on, and wrestle with ideas in a manner akin to Geertz's (1998) notion of “deep hanging out” but without the distinction between participant/observer. Instead, the gaze is always shifting inward, outward, and throughout the spaces-in-between, with the idea itself holding ground as the independent variable. As I engage this process, I survey viewpoints on the genealogy of ideas, their representation and potential power to speak across boundaries, borders, and margins, and filter the gathered data through an indigenous perspective. When I say “indigenous perspective,” what I mean is my perspective as an indigenous scholar. And when I say “my perspective,” I mean from a consciousness shaped not only by my own experiences but also those of my peoples and ancestors. It is through this process that Red pedagogy—my indigenous methodology—emerged. [From Author]

This article explores the application of two-eyed seeing in the first year of a three-year study about the effectiveness of cultural interventions in First Nations alcohol and drug treatment in Canada. Two-eyed seeing is recognized by Canada’s major health research funder as a starting point for bringing together the strengths of Indigenous and Western ways of knowing. With the aim of developing a culture-based measurement tool, our team carried out an Indigenous-centred research process with our interpretation of two-eyed seeing as a guiding principle. This enabled us to engage in a decolonizing project that prioritized Indigenous methodologies and ways of knowing and knowledge alongside those of Western science. By concentrating on Indigenous governance in the research process, our project supported efforts at Indigenous cultural renewal. Two illustrations are offered, our team’s reconceptualization of Western derived understandings of data collection through Indigenous storytelling and our research grant timeframe with Indigenous knowledge gardening. This article contributes to the Indigenous research and policy literature which is lacking documentation about how Indigenous communities and research teams are benefitting from two-eyed seeing. [From Author]

This article presents the initial development of one Indigenous research paradigm. The article begins with an overview of worldviews and Indigenous knowledge before addressing how these perspectives have been blinded by Eurocentric thought and practices. These sections set the background for the focus of the article, namely the development of an Indigenous research paradigm. This paradigm is based upon the framework shared by Wilson (2001), who suggested that a research paradigm consists of an ontology, epistemology, methodology, and axiology. By presenting Indigenous perspectives on each of the framework components, an Indigenous research paradigm that was used for research with Indigenous Elders and Indigenous social workers who are based within Indigenous worldviews and ways of being is presented. [From Author]

Kaupapa Māori is thoroughly theorised in academia in Aotearoa and those wishing to use it as their research methodology can find support through the writing of a number of Māori academics. What is not so well articulated, is the experiential voice of those who have used Kaupapa Māori as research methodology. My identity as a Māori woman researching with Māori women became integral to my methodology and approach to the research. The highs and lows of my research experiences with Kaupapa Māori methodology are examined in this article. The discussion contends that Kaupapa Māori research methodology can be a framework, guide and support for research within a Māori context and adds an experiential aspect to understanding the wider field of Indigenous research methodology. My hope is that through my experience with Kaupapa Māori methodology other Māori and Indigenous researchers will be eager to embrace their own research methodologies. [From Author]

The development of Indigenous frameworks for research ethics has been a key component of progressing Indigenous aspirations for research around the world. They have provided a focal point for challenging approaches to research that prioritise non-Indigenous methods and values, and allow non-Indigenous researchers to claim expert status over Indigenous peoples, places and knowledges. The theme of self-determination underpins contemporary approaches to Indigenous development and the repositioning of state-Indigenous nation relationships. This paper describes the background, development, and implementation by Māori communities and researchers of an Indigenous ethical framework in Aotearoa/New Zealand. [From Author]

This fact sheet provides a brief overview of existing
guidelines for research involving Inuit, and lists several relevant documents for further information. [From Author]

The term research invokes strong reactions among Inuit because researchers have historically been and continue to be the primary beneficiaries of research involving our people, wildlife, and environment. While we recognize the important role research can play in informing actions that create safer, healthier, and more resilient communities, Inuit from across Inuit Nunangat have long insisted that researchers and research institutions respect Inuit self determination in research through partnerships that enhance the efficacy, impact, and usefulness of research. [From Author]

This guide is about research relationships. It looks at ways you and your community can decide how research is done in your area, and how you can be involved. This guide will explain your legal rights when it comes to research, and suggest ways you can work with researchers to make sure your individual rights are protected and that you and your community’s concerns are respected by researchers. The guide will help you to:

Understand what research is.
Understand what your rights are when someone wants to involve you in research.
Learn the rules and ethics researchers should follow.
Get ideas on how you can participate in and influence research.
Work with your community to set up research contracts outlining how research should be done. [From Website]

Story is a practice in Indigenous cultures that sustains communities, validates experiences and epistemologies, expresses experiences of Indigenous peoples, and nurtures relationships and the sharing of knowledge. Storytelling is also a central focus of Indigenous epistemologies, pedagogies, and research approaches. Excerpts from discussions by Métis Elders, whose stories and histories are shared, suggest a complex mindfulness and require “deep respect” in research (Iseke & Brennus, 2011, p. 247). Elders’ stories inform discussions of (a) storytelling types (mythical, personal, and sacred), (b) storytelling as pedagogical tools for learning about life, (c) storytelling as witnessing and remembering, and (d) sharing stories of spirituality as sources of strength. Discussions follow. [From Author]

The indigenous development research agenda is centred on understanding and affecting social change. Kaupapa Māori theory (research theory and methodology that is uniquely Māori) and critical discourse analysis are two theoretical and methodological frameworks that can contribute to this broad agenda. The two frameworks are connected through critical theory, transdisciplinary approaches to research, tino rangatiratanga (chieftainship) and, most significantly, actualizing social change. As a Māori researcher I work alongside Māori communities and the process is non-linear and “messy”, which is the reality of working with communities. Kaupapa Māori theory provides me with the space for Māori-focused research within the academy, and critical discourse analysis is another tool I utilize to further the aspirations of the Māori communities I work alongside. In this paper I draw from an example of my research in Māori fisheries management to argue that critical discourse analysis offers researchers a framework that complements and strengthens the analysis within kaupapa Māori theory and methodology. [From Author]

The way that we as researchers view and interpret our social worlds is impacted by where, when, and how we are socially located and in what society. The position from which we see the world around us impacts our research interests, how we approach the research and participants, the questions we ask, and how we interpret the data. In this article, we argue that it is not a straightforward or easy task to conceptualize and practice positionality. We have developed a Social Identity Map that researchers can use to explicitly identify and reflect on their social identity to address the difficulty that many novice critical qualitative researchers experience when trying to conceptualize their social identities and positionality. The Social Identity Map is not meant to be used as a rigid tool but rather as a flexible starting point to guide researchers to reflect and be reflexive about their social location. The map involves three tiers: the identification of social identities (Tier 1), how these positions impact our life (Tier 2), and details that may be tied to the particularities of our social identity (Tier 3). With the use of this map as a guide, we aim for researchers to be able to better identify and understand their social locations and how they may pose challenges and aspects of ease within the qualitative research process. Being explicit about our social identities allows us (as researchers) to produce reflexive research and give our readers the tools to recognize how we produced the data. Being reflexive about our social identities, particularly in comparison to the social position of our participants, helps us better understand the power relations imbued in our research, further providing an opportunity to be reflexive about how to address this in a responsible and respectful way. [From Author]

Indigenous individuals and communities have experienced historic and ongoing negative interactions with Western health care and biomedical research. To rebuild trust and mitigate power structures between researchers and Indigenous peoples, researchers can adopt Indigenous epistemologies in methodologies, such as nonhierarchical approaches to relationship. This article shares models developed to bridge Indigenous epistemologies with Western qualitative and quantitative research methods and demonstrates how these epistemologies can be used to guide the authors' development of a pilot study on traumatic spinal cord injury. [From Author]

Institutional review boards (IRBs) function to regulate research for the protection of human participants. We share lessons learned from the development of an intertribal IRB in the Rocky Mountain/Great Plains Tribal region of the United States.

We describe the process through which a consortium of Tribes collaboratively developed an intertribal board to promote community-level protection and participation in the research process. In addition, we examine the challenges of research regulation from a Tribal perspective and explore the future of Tribally regulated research that honors indigenous knowledge and promotes community accountability and transparency.

We offer recommendations for researchers, funding agencies, and Tribal communities to consider in the review and regulation of research. [From Author]

Battlefields are noisy places. First, there is the slow rumble of logging trucks on busy roads. Then there is the drone of aeroplanes passing overhead. In summer, there are cicadas and birds. In winter, the hiss of wind in the trees. In these fields, the tūpuna lie where they fell in the swamps or in unmarked graves hastily dug by survivors, with the dead piled up around them. I swear I can sometimes hear their voices.[From Author]

Research projects conducted on Indigenous communities have largely been developed within a dominant Western research paradigm that values the researcher as knowledge holder and the community members as passive subjects. The consequences of such research have been marginalizing for Indigenous people globally, leading to calls for the decolonization of research through the development of Indigenous research paradigms. Based on a reflexive analysis of a five‐year partnership focused on developing capacity for tourism development in Lake Helen First Nation (Red Rock Indian Band), we offer a way of understanding the connection between Indigenous research paradigms and the western construct of community‐based participatory research as a philosophical and methodological approach to geography. Our analysis shows that researchers should continue to move away from methods that perpetuate the traditional ways of working ON Indigenous communities to methods that allow us to work WITH and FOR them, based on an ethic that respects and values the community as a full partner in the co‐creation of the research question and process, and shares in the acquisition, analysis, and dissemination of knowledge. Our reflection also shows that when research is conducted on a community, the main beneficiary is the researcher, when conducted with, both parties receive benefit, while research for the community may result in benefits mainly for the community. We further contend that any research conducted within a community, regardless of its purpose and methodology, should follow the general principles of Indigenous paradigms, and respect the community by engaging in active communication with them, seeking their permission not only to conduct and publish the research but also with respect to giving results of the research back in ways that adhere to community protocols and practices. [From Author]

"Indigenous methodologies flow from tribal knowledge, and while they are allied with several Western qualitative approaches, there are key distinctions. In this work, These are the focal considerations of Margaret Kovach's study, which offers guidance to those conducting research in the academy using Indigenous methodologies. Kovach includes topics such as Indigenous epistemologies, decolonizing theory, story as method, situating self and culture, Indigenous methods, protocol, meaning-making, and ethics. In exploring these elements, the book interweaves perspectives from six Indigenous researchers who share their stories, and also includes excerpts from the author's own journey into Indigenous methodologies." [From Publisher]

In reflecting upon two qualitative research projects incorporating an Indigenous methodology, this article focuses on the use of the conversational method as a means for gathering knowledge through story. The article first provides a theoretical discussion which illustrates that for the conversational method to be identified as an Indigenous research method it must flow from an Indigenous paradigm. The article then moves to an exploration of the conversational method in action and offers reflections on the significance of researcher-in-relation and the inter- relationship between this method, ethics and care. [From Author]

Tribal Institutional Review Boards (TIRBs) in the United States assert their rights within sovereign nations by developing ethical research processes that align with tribal values to protect indigenous knowledge systems and their community from cultural appropriation, exploitation, misuse, and harm. We reviewed six TIRB applications and processes to gain a better understanding about their requirements and research ethics. We located 48 activated and deactivated TIRBs in a database, mapped them in relation to tribal reservation lands, and then conducted in-depth content analysis. Our analysis demonstrates the importance of building relationships, becoming fully acquainted with the TIRB’s operating environment before seeking research approval, and issues related to tribal data management practices. [From Author]

In this article I draw on our Creation story as Haisla people to illustrate the multiple teachings I hold and carry that shape my knowledge, scholarship, research, and teaching methods. The keeper of the name then pays the name-giver (either in money or dry goods). Because I received my traditional name at this feast, the teachings say that I will always know where I come from and who I am. [From Author]

Using Indigenous methodologies to guide a doctoral study honouring cultural traditions and protocols was integral in working with the local community. Traditional talking circles were used to create a culturally safe environment for urban Aboriginal women to talk about their health care experiences and recommend strategies for change. The methodological research process was guided and shaped by Elders and community members sharing their knowledge and stories. This fluid non-linearity and unpredictability, common in Indigenous methodologies, challenged the researcher to stay true to the methodology while simultaneously respecting cultural protocols and traditions. The successes and challenges of embracing Indigenous methodologies in the midst of academia without losing sight of respect, commitment and accountability to Indigenous peoples and the institution are offered. [From Author]

This article is a contribution to the ongoing discussions on who should conduct indigenous research and problematizes the notion of insider/outsider discourse in indigenous research. Drawing on my personal experiences in the form of case studies, I argue that self-locating in indigenous research is complex given that researcher self-positioning is not normally done by the researcher but through a process of negotiation with the participants. I argue that insofar as indigenous peoples, communities and problems are not islands onto themselves, immune to the current global flows, processes and barriers, indigenous research cannot be reserved only for indigenous scholars and peoples. Instead, I propose a reflexive researching model as a research framework which should be incorporated into an indigenous research methodology which both indigenous and allied non-indigenous researchers could draw upon. This demands a reflexive practice that is guided by the philosophical underpinnings of the indigenous research paradigm. [From Author]

Kayla Lar-Son from the Xwi7xwa library discusses OER and Indigenous Knowledge and content.

Increasingly research involving Indigenous people is being undertaken by Indigenous researchers, who bring forward worldviews that shape the approach of the research, the theoretical and conceptual frameworks, and the epistemology, methodology, and ethics. Many times such research bridges Western practices and Indigenous knowledges; however, bringing together these two worldviews can also present challenges. In this paper the author explores the challenges and lessons learned in the practical application of an Indigenous research framework and qualitative inquiry. Two qualitative Indigenous research methods, sharing circles and Anishnaabe symbol-based reflection, will be discussed. [From Author]

As an Indigenous researcher, I have had many experiences with contemplating and negotiating access among Indigenous populations. Having Indigenous heritage does not provide automatic access to Indigenous people and communities for research. Instead, my role as both insider and outsider complicates the research process. This chapter first offers an historical framework for research issues of access, privacy, and intrusion among Indigenous communities, and then I discuss how Indigenous researchers are redefining the research process and its benefits for their own communities, including how one university academic department in Native American Studies is teaching issues of and methods for Indigenous research. [From Author]

Adoption into an Indigenous society can be thick with obligations and relations if the adoptee understands they are entering into a legal order that organizes and regulates their new kinship relations. Implicit within these kinship orders are limits to what inclusion into an Indigenous society provides. Conversely, adoption can be used as a thin line of extraction, aiming at social capital within Indigenous communities. Adoptions void of an understanding of the legal order they should be accountable to, may be used in a way that circumvents obligations towards Indigenous stories, knowledge systems, and law, and to continue to prop up the modes of extraction of Indigenous cultural knowledge. A turn towards Indigenous laws and legal orders provide an accountability against those who may use adoption into an Indigenous society as a means for extractive, unreciprocated, personal gain. [From Author]

Indigenous methodologies are an alternative way of thinking about research processes. Although these methodologies vary according to the ways in which different Indigenous communities express their own unique knowledge systems, they do have common traits. This article argues that research on Indigenous issues should be carried out in a manner which is respectful and ethically sound from an Indigenous perspective. This naturally challenges Western research paradigms, yet it also affords opportunities to contribute to the body of knowledge about Indigenous peoples. It is further argued that providing a mechanism for Indigenous peoples to participate in and direct these research agendas ensures that their communal needs are met, and that geographers then learn how to build ethical research relationships with them. Indigenous methodologies do not privilege Indigenous researchers because of their Indigeneity, since there are many ‘insider’ views, and these are thus suitable for both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous researchers. However, there is a difference between research done within an Indigenous context using Western methodologies and research done using Indigenous methodologies which integrates Indigenous voices. This paper will discuss those differences while presenting a historical context of research on Indigenous peoples, providing further insights into what Indigenous methodologies entail, and proposing ways in which the academy can create space for this discourse. [From Author]

In this article, we discuss Indigenous epistemology that ensures research is inclusive of Māori cultural values, such as collectivity and storytelling. We explain an adapted photovoice methodology used in research investigating Māori (the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa/New Zealand) patient's perspectives on rongoā Māori (traditional Māori healing) and primary health care. Traditional photovoice theoretical frameworks and methodology were modified to allow Māori participants to document and communicate their experiences of health and the health services they utilised. Moreover, we describe the necessity for cultural adaptation of the theoretical framework and methodology of photovoice to highlight culturally appropriate research practice for Māori. [From Author]

"Scholars understand what Indigenous research is, but how we practice Indigenous research ethically and respectfully in Canada is under exploration. This ground-breaking edited collection provides readers with concrete and in-depth examples of how to overcome the challenges of Indigenous research with respect to Indigenous worldviews, epistemologies, and ontology. In collaboration with their communities, and with guidance from Elders and other traditional knowledge keepers, each contributor links their personal narrative of Indigenous research to current discussions and debates. Accessible in nature, this interdisciplinary research tool is an essential read for all students and scholars in Indigenous Studies, as well as in the education, anthropology, sociology, and history research methodology classroom." [From Publisher]

A new generation of indigenous researchers is taking its place in the world of social research in increasing numbers. These scholars provide new insights into communities under the research gaze and offer new ways of knowing to traditional scholarly models. They also move the research community toward more sensitive and collaborative practices. But it comes at a cost. Many in this generation have met with resistance or indifference in their journeys through the academic system and in the halls of power. They also often face ethical quandaries or even strong opposition from their own communities. The life stories in this book present the journeys of over 30 indigenous researchers from six continents and many different disciplines. They show, in their own words, the challenges, paradoxes, and oppression they have faced, their strategies for overcoming them, and how their work has produced more meaningful research and a more just society. [From Publisher]

Indigenous students remain one of the least represented populations in higher education. They continue to account for only one percent of the total post-secondary student population, and this lack of representation is felt in multiple ways beyond enrollment. Less research money is spent studying Indigenous students, and their interests are often left out of projects that otherwise purport to address diversity in higher education. Recently, Native scholars have started to reclaim research through the development of their own research methodologies and paradigms that are based in tribal knowledge systems and values, and that allow inherent Indigenous knowledge and lived experiences to strengthen the research. Reclaiming Indigenous Research in Higher Education highlights the current scholarship emerging from these scholars of higher education. From understanding how Native American students make their way through school, to tracking tribal college and university transfer students, this book allows Native scholars to take center stage, and shines the light squarely on those least represented among us. [From Publisher]

The academy forms within settler societies as an apparatus of colonization. Indigenous researchers critically engage its colonial power by practicing Indigenous methodologies: an act that also implicates non-Indigenous people in challenging the settler academy. Indigenous methodologies do not merely model Indigenous research. By exposing normative knowledge production as being not only non-Indigenous but colonial, they denaturalize power within settler societies and ground knowledge production in decolonization. An activist impetus thus informs Indigenous methodologies, yet “activism” typically fails to invoke their full implications. Whereas “activism” in a settler society may invest social justice in state rule, decolonization anticipates that rule’s end. Decolonization is activist, but activism need not be decolonizing. Indigenous methodologies arise within the larger pursuit of Indigenous decolonization, a project that Indigenous critics theorize variously as ontological, psychic, governmental, and relational.1 Indigenous methodologies present what Dylan Rodríguez (referencing João Costas Vargas) calls an “urgency imperative,” which answers “the academy’s long historical complicities in racial/colonial genocide” by endeavoring “to denaturalize and ultimately dismantle the conditions in which these systems of massive violence are reproduced.” Such theories seek to fundamentally transform the institutional and epistemic conditions of life and thought for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people on lands where all live relationally, in ways that settler societies and their governance cannot contain. [From Author]

Indigenous research methodologies prioritize community voices, perspectives, and stories. In Australia, yarning has emerged as a promising Indigenous oral history research methodology. Taking many forms for different purposes, common features of yarning include un-structured or semi-structured research interviews and discussion, flexible time schedules and Indigenous facilitation. Yarning is valued as a culturally appropriate and safe research conversational methodology that has the potential to yield findings and conclusions that are not always possible via traditional archive-based research. In this paper, we introduce a case study of yarning used specifically in a sport history research project in Australia. The focus is on a group of teenage girls from the Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement in Queensland who competed in marching in the 1950s and 1960s and offer a rare example of female Indigenous participation in organized sport during the oppressive ‘protection era’. Urged to ‘tell our story’ by surviving marchers, who are now community elders, we approached this research methodologically in two ways: archival-based research and yarning. The results from these two approaches were vastly different, and highlight the value of this oral history methodology in producing rich insight and counter-narratives to those available from traditional empirical sources. [From Author]

In this time of reconciliation, Indigenous researchers-in-relation are sharing research paradigms and approaches that align with Indigenous worldviews. This article shares an interpretation of the Mi’kmaw concept of Two-Eyed Seeing as the synthesis of Indigenous methodology and participatory action research situated within an Indigenous paradigm of relevant, reciprocal, respectful, and responsible research. Two-Eyed Seeing is discussed as a guiding approach for researchers offering Indigenous voices and ways of knowing as a means to shift existing qualitative research paradigms. The author offers practical considerations for conducting research with Indigenous peoples in a “good and authentic way.” Through the co-creation of knowledge with Indigenous communities, a collective story was produced as a wellness teaching tool to foster the transfer of knowledge in a meaningful way. [From Author]

The relationship between the First Peoples of Canada and researchers is changing as processes of self-determination and reconciliation are increasingly implemented. We used storytelling and ceremony to describe a historic event, the Indigenous Women’s Data Transfer Ceremony, where quantitative data of 318 Indigenous women living with HIV were transferred to Indigenous academic and community leaders. Relationship building, working together with a common vision, the Ceremony, and the subsequent activities were summarized as a journey of two boats. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's Calls to Action and Indigenous ethical principles were central to the process. The article ends with team members’ reflections and the importance of shifting power to Indigenous Peoples in regard to data collection, their stories, and the resulting policies. [From Author]

The increasing participation of Aboriginal students in Canadian higher education had been attributed to the development of services for students in institutions of higher education. Pigeon (2001) studied the relationship between students and student services in the evolution and delivery of these services. This article reflects on an important facet of this original research used to conduct this project. It highlights the importance of developing a culturally sensitive research process when exploring Aboriginal issues. The research process of this study included the use of technology, the development of a Web site to enable such a process. Lessons learned from conducting this research are shared in relationship to research process, care principles and guiding values. [From Author]

The term Kaupapa Maori captures Maori desires to affirm Maori cultural philosophies and practices. In short Kaupapa Maori is about being "fully" Maori. These desires have only rarely been recognized by the mainstream education system that has at various times sought to "civilize," "assimilate," and "integrate" Maori. The struggle by Maori for control over how Maori children and young people are educated has led to the establishment of Kaupapa Maori education initiatives across all educational levels. These initiatives are exemplary in that they reflect Maori aspirations and continue to produce bicultural, bilingual, confident, and well-educated Maori. This article outlines the key elements underpinning these initiatives largely through an exploration of the writings that have emerged from Maori education staff and students at the University of Auckland. A self-determination, anti-colonial education agenda emerges that is firmly based in Maori language and cultural ways of being. [From Author]

Social scientists are increasingly attentive to the practical importance of research ethics and professional codes of conduct when undertaking studies with human participants, especially around sensitive topics. In New Zealand, the social and cultural context of research praxis is also shaped by institutional principles that ensure research participants feel safe, respected, and heard when participating in research, and that the knowledge outcomes of the research process will be disseminated and shared with relevant cultural groups. In this article, we present four case studies based on projects that discuss researcher positionality in relation to the ethical and emotional work involved in undertaking research on sensitive topics with individuals from vulnerable and marginal groups. In doing so, we foreground the importance of articulating and managing emotion in research on sensitive topics, and suggest measures to ensure the well-being of researchers engaged in studies of this kind. [From Author]

"To the colonized, the term 'research' is conflated with European colonialism; the ways in which academic research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory. This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth.' Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being. [From Publisher]

Research with Indigenous peoples is fraught with complexity and misunderstandings. The complexity of negotiating historical and current issues as well as the misunderstandings about what the issues really mean for individuals and communities can cause non-Indigenous researchers to shy away from working with Indigenous groups. In conducting research for my doctoral dissertation, I was a novice researcher faced with negotiating two very different sets of social contracts: the Western Canadian university’s and my Indigenous participants’. Through narrative inquiry of my experience, this article explores issues of ethics, institutional expectations, and community relationships. Guided by Kirkness and Barnhardt’s “Four R’s” framework of respect, relevance, reciprocity, and responsibility, I aimed to meet the needs of both the groups, but it was not without challenges. What do you do when needs collide? This article shares my process of negotiating the research, the decisions made, and how I came to understand my role in the process as a Settler Ally. It closes with some implications for other researchers who are considering their own roles as Settler Allies. [From Author]

I am still struggling to eliminate the schooled tension that I acquired in believing that every question has one right answer, so I am always waiting for the thinking to stop, for that one glorious, culminating second when I know the whole answer to one question. I have been relearning that moment will not come, at least not while I am in a thinking mode. I am also realizing that I must have learned to trust other thinkers or, at least, relearned to trust my own thinking.

I begin with this passage because it best describes one of the major dilemmas I struggled with as I attempted to write an article on Indigenous research methodologies. I spent several weeks going through books, articles, and journals trying to find one good definition of Indigenous research methodology, and in the end I realized that I would not find a specific answer. [From Author]

Ethical standards of conduct in research undertaken at Canadian universities involving humans has been guided by the three federal research funding agencies through the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (or TCPS for short) since 1998. The statement was revised for the first time in 2010 and is now commonly referred to as the TCPS2, which includes an entire chapter (Chapter 9) devoted to the subject of research involving First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples of Canada. While the establishment of TCPS2 is an important initial step on the long road towards decolonizing Indigenous research within the academy, our frustrations—which echo those of many colleagues struggling to do research “in a good way” (see, for example, Ball & Janyst 2008; Bull, 2008; Guta et al., 2010) within this framework—highlight the urgent work that remains to be done if university-based researchers are to be enabled by establishment channels to do “ethical” research with Aboriginal peoples. In our (and others’) experience to date, we seem to have been able to do research in a good way, despite, not because of the TCPS2 (see Castleden et al., 2012). The disconnect between the stated goals of TCPS2, and the challenges researchers face when attempting to navigate how individual, rotating members of REBs interpret the TPCS2 and operate within this framework, begs the question: Wherein lies the disconnect? A number of scholars are currently researching this divide (see for example see Guta et al. 2010; Flicker & Worthington, 2011; and Guta et al., 2013). In this editorial, we offer an anecdote to illustrate our experience regarding some of these tensions and then offer reflections about what might need to change for the next iteration of the TCPS. From Aurhor]

Many disciplines have used focus groups in research and the use has increased in the past 15 years ( Smith, 1995). Procedural concerns have been explored, such as the selection of the participants, the location, and the size of the group, but little attention has been given to the consideration of cultural influences. The purpose of this paper is to focus attention on the impact of culture in conducting focus groups. Experiences from 15 focus groups conducted in two qualitative research studies with two Washington state Indian tribes over a 5 year period are presented and illustrate the importance of culture in conducting focus groups. Communication patterns, roles, relationships, and traditions were found to be important elements that must be considered in conducting focus groups cross-culturally. While some strategies discovered were found to be helpful, additional research is needed. [From Author]

This article considers key methodological and ethical issues for qualitative research with Aboriginal sex workers based on the author's experiences conducting research with this diverse group of people. Issues gaining access to this group through Indigenous community organisations and sex worker community organisations are considered. The aim is to share critical reflections about some of the assumptions underpinning the research process, ethical engagement with Indigenous communities, and research participants and to outline researcher responsibilities. In navigating these factors, it was found that working with and for community‐based organisations requires considerable attention to power and the dynamics of representation. [From Author]

Recently, Indigenous commentators have begun to analyse the way in which institutional Research Ethics Boards (REBs) engage with Indigenous researchers and participants, respond to Indigenous peoples’ concerns with academic research activities, and scrutinise the ethics proposals of Indigenous scholars. Of particular concern for Indigenous commentators is that the work of REBs often results in the marginalisation of Indigenous approaches to knowledge construction and dissemination, especially in relation to the vexed issue of informed consent. Based on analysis of the results of research with Indigenous researchers and research participants, this paper argues that institutionalised REBs’ preference for ‘universal’ and ‘individualised’ approaches for determining ethical research conduct marginalises Indigenous approaches to ethical research conduct. The paper concludes by calling for a decolonisation of REB processes through recognition of the validity of communal processes for attaining the informed consent of Indigenous research participants. [From Author]

Recently, Indigenous scholars have raised a number of concerns with the activities of Research Ethics Boards (REBs) and their members, including the preference of REBs for Eurocentric conceptualizations of what does or does not constitute “ethical research conduct”, and the privilege accorded liberal notions of the “autonomous individual participant”. Informed by the author's reflections on the REB process, those of Indigenous Canadian and New Zealand research participants, and the extant literature, this paper begins by critiquing the processes employed by New Zealand REBs to assess Indigenous-focused or Indigenous-led research in the criminological realm. The paper ends with a call for Indigenous peoples to resist the condescending ethos of the academy's ethics processes by developing processes that focus on empowering their institutions and communities. [From Author]

Bridging environmental and Indigenous studies and drawing on critical geography, spatial theory, new materialist theory, and decolonizing theory, this dynamic volume examines the sometimes overlooked significance of place in social science research. There are often important divergences and even competing logics at work in these areas of research, some which may indeed be incommensurable. This volume explores how researchers around the globe are coming to terms - both theoretically and practically - with place in the context of settler colonialism, globalization, and environmental degradati. [From Publisher]

This summary report highlights some of the issues raised from a dialogue in the Indigenous Data, Information and Records Dialogue Series. The goal for these dialogues was to collaboratively develop a model of engagement for Indigenous data, information and records housed at UBC, the IRSHDC and beyond. This summary features key conversations and themes from the first dialogue in the series, which took place in January 2019. [From Website]

The Talanoa Research Methodology (TRM) is now arguably the most prominent research methodology applied across the Pacific. This article seeks to build on the TRM first described in 2002, examining some of the fundamental dimensions of TRM, highlighting its fluidity and broad utility in different research situations. It will also compare and contrast TRM to Phenomenology, Narrative, Kaupapa MĀori and the Feminist philosophies to clarify and differentiate its characteristics and allow more researchers to consider it for use as a research methodology. [From Author]

This project explores yarning as a methodology for understanding health and wellness from an indigenous woman's perspective. Previous research exploring indigenous Australian women's perspectives have used traditional Western methodologies and have often been felt by the women themselves to be inappropriate and ineffective in gathering information and promoting discussion. This research arose from the indigenous women themselves, and resulted in the exploration of using yarning as a methodology. Yarning is a conversational process that involves the sharing of stories and the development of knowledge. It prioritizes indigenous ways of communicating, in that it is culturally prescribed, cooperative, and respectful. The authors identify different types of yarning that are relevant throughout their research, and explain two types of yarning—family yarning and cross-cultural yarning—which have not been previously identified in research literature. This project found that yarning as a research method is appropriate for community-based health research with indigenous Australian women. This may be an important finding for health professionals and researchers to consider when working and researching with indigenous women from other countries. [From Author]

In the first book ever published on Indigenous quantitative methodologies, Maggie Walter and Chris Andersen open up a major new approach to research across the disciplines and applied fields. While qualitative methods have been rigorously critiqued and reformulated, the population statistics relied on by virtually all research on Indigenous peoples continue to be taken for granted as straightforward, transparent numbers. This book dismantles that persistent positivism with a forceful critique, then fills the void with a new paradigm for Indigenous quantitative methods, using concrete examples of research projects from First World Indigenous peoples in the United States, Australia, and Canada. Concise and accessible, it is an ideal supplementary text as well as a core component of the methodological toolkit for anyone conducting Indigenous research or using Indigenous population statistics. [From Publisher]

Challenging western research conventions has a strong documented history in Indigenous critical theory and Kaupapa Māori research discourse. This article will draw from the existing research in these fields and expand on some of the core critiques of the biomedical model in Māori research environments. Of interest are the tensions produced by an over-reliance on individual informed consent as the panacea of ethical research, particularly when the research concerns communities who prioritise collective autonomy. These tensions are further exacerbated in research environments where knowledge is commodified and issues of knowledge ownership are present. Continuing a critique of the informed consenting procedure, this article considers its role in emulating a capitalist exchange of goods and perpetuating a knowledge economy premised on the exploitation of Indigenous people, resources and knowledge. Finally, this article will consider emerging ethical concerns regarding secondary data use in an era of big data. [From Author]

Indigenous researchers are knowledge seekers who work to progress Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing in a modern and constantly evolving context. This book describes a research paradigm shared by Indigenous scholars in Canada and Australia, and demonstrates how this paradigm can be put into practice. Relationships don’t just shape Indigenous reality, they are our reality. Indigenous researchers develop relationships with ideas in order to achieve enlightenment in the ceremony that is Indigenous research. Indigenous research is the ceremony of maintaining accountability to these relationships. For researchers to be accountable to all our relations, we must make careful choices in our selection of topics, methods of data collection, forms of analysis and finally in the way we present information. I’m an Opaskwayak Cree from northern Manitoba currently living in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales, Australia. I’m also a father of three boys, a researcher, son, uncle, teacher, world traveller, knowledge keeper and knowledge seeker. As an educated Indian, I’ve spent much of my life straddling the Indigenous and academic worlds. Most of my time these days is spent teaching other Indigenous knowledge seekers (and my kids) how to accomplish this balancing act while still keeping both feet on the ground. [From Publisher]

Indigenous people's sense of self is planted and rooted in the land. The sacred bond with the land is more substantial than a propertied relationship and entails responsibility to all living forms that are sustained from the soil: grasses, medicinal plants, fruit bushes and trees, insects that live off the plants, birds that in turn eat the insects, four-leggeds that forage on the grasses and hedges, and animal hunters that prey on smaller animals. [From Author]

Finding ways to validate and encourage traditional Aboriginal values and customs into modern western (whitestream(f.1)) educational practices must become a priority for teachers who work with Aboriginal students. Circle work, sometimes referred to as "talking circles" (Four Worlds Development Project 1985) is one of many customs that can be adapted for classroom use, parenting (Bruyere 1984), healing (Hampton et al. 1995), and culturally relevant sentencing and justice treatment programs (Ross 1996). While serving as a useful tool for behaviour modelling and classroom management, the circle embraces and teaches the traditional values of respect, care, and noninterference (Ross 1992). [From Author]