Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Research Partnerships
Our project producing a set of visual, audio and textual resources to support Indigenous and non-indigenous researchers planning research collaborations to think about their methods, assumptions and behaviour .
The methods used to generate the focus of, and resources from, the project were participatory dialogue and response to Indigenous researchers' previous experiences of collaboration with non-Indigenous researchers. These dialogic methods are addressed in our 'footprints in the sand' audio conversation and accompanying transcript: https://www.indigenous.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/footprint-in-the-sand-a-dis…
International researcher initiatives that seek to address global challenges may reproduce colonial approaches to knowledge production and use, ignoring local relations and context, and with accompanying power imbalances. Our project produced resources to support Indigenous and non-indigenous researchers planning research collaborations to think about their methods, assumptions and behaviour. The project built on existing international networking between non-Indigenous and Indigenous researchers. Resources produced include:
A comic for use by researchers, students and teachers of methods interested in effective partnerships, exploring the challenges and opportunities that exist in the development of effective partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers.
A 40 minute audio conversation between the researchers who collaborated on our project accompanied by a transcript, and a 10 minute video including some of the key points from the longer audio discussion mixed with images from our comic.
Blog posts in which researchers share their experiences and tips.
The project did not require academic ethical approval since it was not a conventional research inquiry but focused on Indigenous and non-Indigenous research partnerships. An awareness of power relations, attention to Maori and Anishnabek ethical protocols, and an ethics of care approach, shaped the dialogue between the researchers and the focus of the collaborative resources they produced. Blogs posted about ethical frameworks include: https://www.indigenous.ncrm.ac.uk/2019/09/12/researching-and-educating-…, https://www.indigenous.ncrm.ac.uk/2019/07/28/in-pursuit-of-the-good-lif…, https://www.indigenous.ncrm.ac.uk/2019/06/18/amplifying-the-voices-of-i…, https://www.indigenous.ncrm.ac.uk/2019/02/12/a-uk-researcher-in-aotearo…
We acknowledge that some world views, methodologies and methods are accorded more legitimacy and privileged over others. Developing equitable Indigenous and non-Indigenous research partnerships means challenging perceptions of the relationship between Indigenous and Western knowledges, and what counts as knowledge and appropriate research practice. Decolonising research is about dismantling the distortions and erasures in global Northern epistemologies, methodologies and in positioning of selves, opening up to forms of knowing beyond western modes of research. Decolonising involves challenging our assumptions, ourselves and our position, and offering alternative ways of understanding the world and relating to Indigenous peoples. Western trained Indigenous researchers may need to work to define and redefine their knowledge and themselves, to free themselves from the underlying global Northern (academic) culture. Non-Indigenous researchers should ask hard questions about themselves, their own culture, privilege and accountabilities, and how they will engage with Indigenous knowledges, researchers and peoples. A shift of perspective is required of those who occupy the dominant space and work within dominant Northern paradigms, to value Indigenous researchers and peoples for their expertises as equal knowers, and to transform representations and knowledge of the world. Our project aims to contribute resources to support these shifts and transformations.
Our project produced visual, audio and textual resources to support Indigenous and non-indigenous researchers planning research collaborations to think about their methods, assumptions and behaviour. Resources produced include:
- A comic for use by researchers, students and teachers of methods interested in effective partnerships, exploring the challenges and opportunities that exist in the development of effective partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers.
- A 40 minute audio conversation between the researchers who collaborated on our project accompanied by a transcript, and a 10 minute video including some of the key points from the longer audio discussion mixed with images from our comic.
- Blog posts in which researchers share their experiences and tips.
The resources can be accessed at: https://www.indigenous.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/
Knowledge about the project and its resources was shared through
- the project website, which we promoted through social media: https://www.indigenous.ncrm.ac.uk/about/
- an open access academic journal piece: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4754&context=tqr
- talks at various venues, e.g.: https://www.indigenous.ncrm.ac.uk/2020/03/27/talking-indigenous-knowled…, https://www.indigenous.ncrm.ac.uk/2020/01/09/decolonising-and-indigenou…, https://www.indigenous.ncrm.ac.uk/2019/10/21/indigenous-and-non-indigen…
“Researchers don’t think that it’s part of their process to make themselves known the way that indigenous peoples are having to make themselves known, including researchers in a research process. And what I mean by that is they don’t know their own bias; they don’t know their own privilege.”
“We take big risks as indigenous people when we bring others into our research project, when we bring non-indigenous people in. Because basically what we’re saying is, “This person is to be trusted,” and that person comes in under our protection basically … it’s not just about whether a project works out or doesn’t work out, it’s all those accountabilities through people knowing who you are, where you’re connected and what it means when you are that face in that community and when you do say, 'Here’s a colleague that I want to bring into this project, or I think would be valuable in terms of what we’re doing'.”
“I think where people turn up and try to kind of present themselves as a naïve outsider who can wander in and kind of do their bit of research and go away again, really need to understand that there’s so much more that precedes their relationship in this way. That they need to raise some awareness around that, otherwise they do completely miss the point. I do think that researchers need to understand that they are going into a situation which holds this presence, this legacy that they are then going to be negotiating.”
Social research
Inequalities