Indigenous and non-indigenous research partnerships
A UKRI International Collaboration Initiative
In our blog, researchers share their experiences and understanding of Indigenous/ Non-Indigenous research partnerships, what has worked, what hasn’t worked and reflections on opportunities for fruitful partnerships in the future. If you would like to contribute a blog, feel free to email our editor, Ros Edwards r.s.edwards@southampton.ac.uk
Riadh Ghemmour and Carol Ann Dixon have launched the Decolonial Dialogues website as a shared space for exchanging and advancing ideas and information about the decolonisation of knowledge.Â
They cover blogs and information about resources on activism and campaigning, publications, research methods and ethics, and teaching and learning.Â
You can subscribe to receive updates. Riadh, Carol Ann and their colleagues welcome contributions to their dialogue pages.
ROS: Weâre giving a joint plenary at the CRFR international conference on âIntersectionality, families and relationshipsâ which has prompted me to think about the relationship between indigenous knowledges and intersectionality. Iâve learnt a lot from our discussions about decolonisation, kaupapa MÄori approaches to knowledge, and our indigenous/non-indigenous research partnership project, including the importance of knowing who you are and where you are located. So it seems to me that while we may see some overlaps between indigenous approaches and intersectionality, there also may be some tensions. I think that quite what constitutes the relationship between the two depends on where you are standing. If you are an intersectionality researcher then you may view indigenous approaches as one of the elements of a resistory and transformative intersectional endeavour. But if the ground that you stand on is indigenous, then maybe that could feel like indigenous knowledge becomes a handmaiden for intersectionality? Maybe intersectionality could serve to find a space for and welcoming of indigenous approaches in mainstream universalising western thought?
HELEN:Â Firstly, I have to confess that I have only a passing acquaintance with intersectionality. My relatively shallow understanding is that it is an implicit part of how we, as the âotherâ understand our lives. It might also provide a useful lens through which to understand colonial history and its interconnectedness with poverty, racism and gender, to name a few. While its origins lie in discrimination in relation to race and gender, the gaze can equally be turned on privilege, power and the maintenance of these. This means looking at the identity and positions of dominant cultures, how these are experienced, maintained and reproduced. As an indigenous woman, intersectionality is one way of naming what we, as the âotherâ, understand and work at every day. In Aotearoa (New Zealand) our naming and claiming of these spaces is more usually framed within our worldviews as MÄori.
ROS: Dialogue between various marginalised knowledge projects such as decolonialisation is a feature of intersectional methodology and the generation of a resistory transformative intersectionality. This takes me back to Patricia Hill Collinsâ ideas about dialogue and pivoting the centre in the Afrocentric call-and-response tradition, where we work towards challenging dominant power dynamics: everyone has a voice, but everyone must listen and respond to other voices. I was very struck by this idea when I first read about it two decades ago (eek!), and I hope that our partnership work has managed that. Iâm interested to know how you might see the notion of dialogue from a kaupapa MÄori point of view.Â
HELEN: Kaupapa Maori is one space where we can defend our right to centre our experiences and practice within our scholarly traditions and matauranga (knowledge systems). From here, many of us form alliances (or draw battle lines). My position then might be one of allegiance and dialogue with those located within intersectionality.
ROS: One issue that I find both fundamental and challenging about indigenous approaches and kaupapa MÄori specifically is the issue of accountability. And it seems to me that this might be a point of difference with intersectionality. As I understand it, as a MÄori researcher, you are accountable to your research subjects in a very different way to me. If you act in a way that harms your community, then it is not just your reputation that will suffer, but your extended family will be involved in that currently and into the future. While I can see that, like me, intersectionality researchers can be self-reflexive about their location and feel strongly accountable to marginalised peoples through research and activism, I am not sure that there is the deep sense of accountability investment, generationally and communally, in the same way.
HELEN:Â We are a small country and connections (whakapapa) are a central part of who we are as MÄori and how we see ourselves in relation to all things; not just people. I carry my whakapapa with me and my actions arenât just my own. If I go into a space that makes me uncomfortable or I need courage, I often tell myself beforehand that I canât let my tupuna (ancestors) down, that I stand with them and for them. This gives me strength, but it also makes me accountable. What my tupuna did they did for future generations. Our âintersectionalityâ covers time, space, place and relationships between all things and I take my place within that.
Ian Calliou, an Indigenous researcher, and our Project PI Ros Edwards, a non-Indigenous researcher, presented a complementary pair of papers at a QUEST (Qualitative Expertise at Southampton) seminar looking at decolonising and Indigenous approaches to generating knowledge through research.
Ian talked about his project on Canadian truth and reconciliation from an Indigenous perspective and using an Indigenous methodology as âgetting lost and finding your way homeâ. Ian was surrounded by members of the audience after his presentation, wanting to know more.
Ros discussed the Indigenous and non-Indigenous research partnerships project and its online resources, covering the context of the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund, epistemologies and decolonisation, and Indigenous and non-Indigenous collaborations.
Lead qualitative researchers from the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods were invited to run a panel session at the 4th World Conference on Qualitative Research, held at LusĂłfona University of Porto, Portugal, 16-18 October 2019. As part of the panel session on âMethodological Innovations and Resources: Forms of Data, Partnership and Pedagogyâ, Ros Edwards presented a paper on the Indigenous and non-Indigenous Research Partnerships project. Here she outlines the main issues that she covered and those raised by the audience.
With researchers from 30-odd countries attending, the WCQR 2019 was an excellent venue to present the why and what of our web, audio and visual resources to inform Indigenous and non-Indigenous research partnerships. Â
I explained the context for our project. On a pragmatic level, this was the UK Research and Innovation call for International Collaboration Network proposals, but on a more fundamental level, we sought to provide resources to support researchers who are embarking on Indigenous and non-Indigenous research partnerships to think about their methods, assumptions and behaviour.Â
I outlined the fundamental epistemological issues, where it is important to create and decolonise a space in which to value Indigenous knowledges, transform ways of understanding the world, and relate to Indigenous peoples and scholars that do not position them as deficit.
I showed conference participants the text, audio and visual resources that we had available on our website and those that were in development, to act as prompts to start thinking about the challenges and tensions in Indigenous and non-Indigenous research partnership working.
Researchers from the Philippines, Kenya, Columbia, New Zealand and Canada were especially interested in discussing the project and its resources. There were suggestions that the resources could be used not only for research partnerships and in teaching methods, but also to inform research funders, government and the general public.Â
Participants also wondered what the approach might mean for writing up research and disseminating it. Others asked knotty questions about the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous researcher partnerships and empowering Indigenous peoples, and raised the issue of the need to inform and decolonise the powerful elites in the Southern sphere so that they understand the value and significance of Indigenous knowledges.
In other words, I learnt as much from the audience in my presentation as they may have done from me.
This blog is a reflection on how I came to realise that the ethics of care offered a systematic framework for guiding non-oppressive and decolonising practices when I worked with MÄori in Aotearoa New Zealand. I was a senior lecturer in mental health at Massey University in Wellington from 2006 â 2015. My initial stance was that as MÄori are over represented in mental health services, I would need to learn more about why that was, including how the MÄori worldview sits with Western psychiatry, and I needed to understand more about impacts of colonisation and development of approaches that were sensitive to MÄori wellbeing.
Through partnerships, I came to understand the ethics of care as a guide for ethical practice. Whenever I worked with MÄori, I interpreted kaupapa (ways of doing) as an ethic of care in practice.
Amohia Boulton and I wrote about kaupapa and ethics of care (see further reading below).  Values such as care (manaakitanga), guardianship (kaitiakitanga) and relationality (whakawhanaungatanga) were evident through formal protocols such as welcomes on the marae (meeting place), in hui (meetings) and through students’ accounts of kaupapa mental health services.
I had previously used an ethic of care as a systematic framework to critique practices of care for people with dementia. In this new context it provided a way of thinking about ethical research practices that valued relationships, intellectual property ownership and care.Â
Joan Tronto’s  Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care, and Caring democracy ethic of care suggests a two-pronged approach â the first is to understand marginalisation where it exists, to take responsibility for addressing inequality. The second was the integrity of care that suggests five elements of practice that can review or guide care. They are:
One of the issues identified in our Footprints in the Sand podcast was the tendency for indigenous peoples to be positioned as ‘the problem’ without the ability to solve challenges. This signifies a Western-centric superiority that positions non-indigenous as having the answers, and thus negates indigenous knowledge and values. Understanding marginalisation through the ethics of care is relational, thereby requiring knowledge of experience, and understanding how people affected by marginalisation see what would work to overcome marginalisation. Taking responsibility takes account of this knowledge to design potential actions.
The integrity of care, in research terms, may be expressed as attentiveness to the researched community, the researchers and others involved in the research process. Particular attention needs to be paid to the person who is arranging access as they are often a person of the community that is vouching for the researcher to have sensitivity to the community.
The community may want to be part of the research, but not in the way the researcher has planned. In my experience, individual consent forms became meaningless as many whanau (family) members wanted to join in the interview. People may want to guide the research or add something that is not part of the research proposal, and whether this is included may have profound effects on the agreement or willingness to participate.Â
Responsibility can be shown in researchers being responsive to the requests of the community, including changes to the proposal or the addition of specific questions and reflexivity to include different perspectives. This would be usual in coproduced research, but maybe less accommodated in other approaches.
Competence can be tricky. How competent is competent when working with a different worldview than you are used to, with concepts that are not directly translatable to a Western worldview? In the podcast for this project Helen discussed stepping forward and stepping back, and I understand this as being able to step forward and show competence in what is expected of you â your research approach, the questions you are asking and the knowledge you are producing that is valid, well designed and justified.
Stepping back is acknowledging the deficits in your knowledge and being open to instruction and direction, and accepting that from others. I found that some language knowledge to understand some parts of discussion in te reo (Maori language) was helpful, particularly to learn pronunciation.Â
Responsiveness is shown by a willingness to revisit and check that what was agreed was achieved and whether any changes are required to how the research is progressing. This requires adequate time to inform people and get feedback, and a willingness to change course.
Solidarity is shown by centralising the position of the people affected as the start and end point of activity. Solidarity is shown in building trust with people, by understanding and acknowledging experience, by accommodating suggested ways of overcoming challenges and by evaluating outcomes according to the wishes of that community of people. (See The ethics of care and transformational research practices in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Central to care ethics are the tenets of relationships and responsibilities in an interdependent complex system. As a person who has benefitted from colonial power (as a UK citizen), it is my responsibility to consider the implications of research that is undertaken and the potential impacts on the communities it affects.
Before we meet, we are already in a relationship formed and shaped by previous connections. We also have the power to shape future connections, but only if the community feels some benefit of the research and sees a value in continuing such partnerships.Â
I would like to acknowledge the following people and organisations – particularly Amohia Boulton with whom I have written extensively;  Te Waka Whaiora and Te Roopu Pookai Taaniwhaniwha supported the education of nurses; and Te Rau Puawai was a Massey University workforce initiative so I had a role supporting undergraduate and postgraduate MÄori nurses through this programme.Â
The âresearch landscapeâ, internationally and within Canada, has shifted. Emergent Indigenous research approaches continue to shape broader research initiatives. Indigenous research is based on relationships and relationships require work, commitment, energy, communication and continuous engagement; they do not happen just because we want them to.
The importance of creating ethical space for discussion moves the consideration of Indigenous research forward, rather than perpetuating the binary notion of âWesternâ versus âIndigenousâ research. The binary model, while helpful and necessary in distinguishing the key differences, has limited applicability in terms of addressing the rapidly shifting contextual landscape that calls for innovative approaches to Indigenous research practice.
Indigenous research is often viewed as a novel and recently-conceived research paradigm with the aim of explicitly and actively supporting the self-determination goals of Indigenous peoples. While it may be ânewâ to academia, engaging in Indigenous inquiry, along with its resultant knowledge production and mobilization, is actually far from new. Indigenous societies, like any autonomous and sovereign nations, required regularly updated knowledge to meet existing and emerging challenges. Indigenous peoples have thus been seeking knowledge to support their existence as peoples and nations for millennia
Indigenous societies framed their research through their own ontological and epistemological foundations and methods. Protocols for seeking knowledge were about establishing relationships and have remained so.  In such a research paradigm, one shares knowledge and remains accountable to that knowledge, rather than extracting or owning it.  Knowledge is grounded in the richly diverse intellectual traditions of Indigenous peoples. This means that there will be a diversity of theoretical frameworks, methods and applications that will reflect the variety of Indigenous traditions.
Moreover, such theories, frameworks and methods are not static: they are continually being revised and continue to evolve.  One is not required to âseparateâ oneself from the research, but to approach it holistically, with the intellectual, emotional, spiritual and physical aspects of the whole self.
Indigenous modes of inquiry have been undermined, deemed inferior (if recognized at all), and even erased through imperial and colonial practices.Â
In her book, Research for Indigenous Survival: Indigenous Research Methodologies in the Behavioural Sciences, Abenaki scholar Lori Lambert observes that if one is not from the community or nation one is engaged with in research (Indigenous or non-), one can never truly understand the stories being told. Researchers in this sense must be open, honest and transparent about their own limitations with themselves and the communities with which they are working.
In this light, the researcherâs goal is not to tell the communityâs story, but to empower the community to tell their own story, on their own terms, their own purpose. Self-determination in research means that, ultimately, communities will determine who they participate with in research, and what methods will be employed. Indigenous scholars have advanced Indigenous research theories and methodologies based on their own cultural foundations, full acceptance of Indigenous research paradigms within the academy remains elusive.
One of the barriers to such acceptance is that âunlearningâ of Western modes of research seems to be a prerequisite for embracing Indigenous research.
The application of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in research contexts has yet to be fully explored, although it can be argued that any research involving Indigenous peoples should support Indigenous peoplesâ pursuit of self-determination. Article 31(1) of UNDRIP has specific implications for Indigenous research:
Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and tradition- al cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.Â
Article 31 (1) UNDRIP
Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect, and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports, traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions. (UNGA, 2007)
The concept of negotiating between different knowledge systems is an important aspect of Indigenous research. Indigenous peoples are not rejecting western knowledge systems outright, but are seeking equitable consideration and application of both systems when and where appropriate. There is no single Indigenous research paradigm approach. Indigenous research is as diverse at the peoples who engage in the process.
The Anishinabek have been actively seeking assistance and knowledge since time immemorial; research for us is therefore not a novel experience. University-based Anishinaabe researchers also seek Minobimaadizwin (good life) as an outcome of their research, although different methods may be used to achieve this goal. Anishinabek research is a form of reclaiming our stories and knowledge through personal transformation while in the pursuit of knowledge. As Anishinaabek, we have our own worldviews, philosophies, ways of being, and research traditions that account for our relationships and existence in the world. Anishinabek transforms and represents a diversity of ways in which Anishinabek are tackling the challenging, yet transformative, work involved in re-creating our knowledge on our own terms.
Anishinabek research is a form of reclaiming our stories and knowledge through personal transformation while in the pursuit of knowledge. As Anishinabek, we have our own worldviews, philosophies, ways of being, and research traditions that account for our relationships and existence in the world.
The Anishinabek researcherâs preoccupation is to learn to engage appropriately in a series of relationships with other beings in Creation to serve our nations now and into the future. Â
Ethical research protocol requires that respect be given to those who have shaped and contributed to our knowledge (community, familial, and personal knowledge) and have greatly influence the approach that we take to research. For the Anishinabek, cultural protocols require us to acknowledge our personal knowledge sources, just as we would cite sources from the scholarly literature.
Ethically, we work to recognize and livethese relationships. In an Indigenous research paradigm, our ethics or conduct always includes the environment (or all of Creation), as well as the spirit world, no matter what the research questions or topic. In Anishinabek research paradigms, our original sources of information are our ancestors, who were real people living their everyday lives, as well as the places that we come from.
Wendy Geniusz, Cree scholar refers to this view of Anishinabek research as biskaabiiyang,or âreturning to ourselvesâ. As Anishinabek, we must engage processes of decolonizing at many levels so as to reclaim, recover and revitalize Anishinabek intellectual, spiritual and ethical traditions, or Anishinaabek-gikendaasowin (knowledge). Â
Anishinabek people have always sought knowledge in systematic ways, engaging in protocols that included the proper ethics and conduct for doing so. This is not new. Knowledge is a gift to share for the well-being of the people and is acknowledged by other Anishinaabe scholars as the pursuit of Minobimaadizwin or âthe good lifeâ.
On 8th– 11thJune, the Global Carework Summit was held at University of Toronto, Canada. One of our project team, Tula Brannelly is part of the Care Ethics Research Consortium who organized two panels focusing on decolonization and care. Tula presented on the Care and Practices of Liberation and here she outlines the discussions that took place:
Inge van Nistelrooij & Rodante van der Waal (University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht, Netherlands): âLiberating the Pregnant Bodyâ: disempowerment and disembodiment in maternity care
Tula Brannelly (Bournemouth University): Decolonising research methodologies though indigenous and non-indigenous partnerships: care-based methodologies
Joan Tronto (University of Minnesota): Decolonizing Global Care Chains
Chair and discussant: Sophie Bourgault, University of Ottawa
The choice of topic had prompted some discussion between the panel members, with an overall approach of offering some solidarity with decolonization, and Maurice Hammington presented a position from which to question colonization of moral theory in the first panel.
Joan Tronto presented work in progress on decolonizing global care chains, which were a significant topic of discussion throughout the conference, calling into question the profiting from colonization while keep citizens of colonised countries in perpetual precarity through poor employment processes and conditions.
I presented on Indigenous and non-Indigenous research partnerships, highlighting that these are current and happening but there is little guidance; that research funders are calling for global northern researchers to impart knowledge to global southern researchers with a pre-colonised framing that ignores Indigenous knowledge; and that the ethics of care was my guide for my partnerships with Indigenous researchers when in Aotearoa New Zealand.
I outlined some of the issues identified by this project team in this area and played the last ten minutes of our podcast discussion, Footprint in the Sand.
Afterwards I discussed my paper An Ethics of Care Research Manifesto. The panel was well attended, and the presentation was well received, prompting debate and discussion.
Highlighting the need for research, as Deborah McGregor says in our podcast, “to show love for future generations” raised some questions about what this might mean, with much interest as this as a criteria for whether to go ahead with ideas for research as postgraduate and seasoned researchers.Â
In most disciplines in the Euro-Western paradigm, research collaboration is usually seen as a straightforwardly good thing. Perhaps this is why there is very little Euro-Western literature on the ethics of collaborative research.
In the Indigenous literature, by contrast, collaboration with Euro-Western researchers is seen as potentially dangerous, probably because Indigenous peoples around the world have experienced various abuses at the hands of researchers in so-called âcollaborationsâ. Given this, it is not surprising that the Indigenous literature has more to say about the ethical aspects of collaboration than the Euro-Western literature.
For instance, it is important to take the time to articulate, and learn to understand, each otherâs worldviews (Chilisa 2012). And the above examples suggest that research work and the benefits accruing from such work should be shared equally by Euro-Western and Indigenous researchers working together.
What about those Euro-Western researchers who would like to collaborate with Indigenous researchers but canât travel to work with them? Iâm in that position as an independent researcher with no budget for extended overseas assignments. However, occasionally Indigenous researchers come to the UK and give us the opportunity to work with or learn from them here.
I was lucky enough to be at the NCRM Research Methods Festival in Bath, England, in 2016 when there was a seminar on post-colonial and Indigenous research methods. The presenters were Professor Bagele Chilisa from Botswana, Professor Helen Moewaka Barnes from New Zealand, and Dr Deborah McGregor from Canada. They taught me that there is an Indigenous research paradigm which stands alone, predates the Euro-Western research paradigm by millennia, and encompasses decolonising methodologies rather than the other way around.
This one seminar has had a profound influence on my work. I was underway with writing a book on research ethics and my learning from the seminar led me to completely change the bookâs direction. I found and read as much literature on Indigenous research as I could, beginning with Professor Chilisaâs excellent book on Indigenous Research Methodologies.
I learned a great deal from this literature. I learned that opinions are divided within Indigenous communities about the rights and wrongs of sharing information in writing. Ila Bussidor, former chief of the Sayisi Dene community from Manitoba in Canada, researched and wrote a book called Night Spirits: the Story of the Relocation of the Sayisi Dene with her friend the journalist and broadcaster Ć°stƱn Bilgen-Reinard. This book tells the story of the Government-forced relocation of the Sayisi Dene in 1956, from their ancestral homelands at Duck Lake to the outskirts of the town of Churchill, and the communityâs subsequent disintegration.
From my Euro-Western perspective this is a crucial, hard-hitting, breath-taking book â yet some Sayisi Dene people did not want their story told in writing. Ida Bussidor spoke eloquently about her experience of this:
âWhen my book came out, there was a big fight and they threw chairs at me. They didnât want the information out. I never was able to take the pride and success of that book, never.’
(Lambert 2014:177)
As a fellow author, I felt so much sympathy for Bussidor. As a scholar, I found her story of community division interesting because it is a story rarely told in the literature to date. Yet despite this divided opinion, a growing number of Indigenous researchers and others are publishing writings about their ways of life.
Those of us who would like to collaborate with Indigenous researchers but are not currently able to travel can benefit from reading these writings. Of course texts canât teach us everything. Nor would we learn âeverythingâ by spending time with Indigenous peoples; many communities have sacred and/or secret knowledges that they would not share with outsiders (and nor should they be expected, or even asked, to do so) (Kovach 2009;McKemmish et al 2010; Koitsiwe 2013; Bowman, Francis and Tyndall 2015).
But texts can teach us a lot, and can enable us to collaborate on one level: by acknowledging and citing this literature in our own work, as I am doing here and have done throughout my book on research ethics.
Even at this level of collaboration there is ethical danger. For example, there is the danger of being extractive, i.e. using information provided by Indigenous people for our own benefit and giving nothing back, as countless Euro-Western researchers have already done (Denzin 2005[1]; Gaudry 2015). Then there is the danger of recolonising research ethics (Land 2015) by subsuming the Indigenous paradigm within a Euro-Western work (Wilson 2008).
I thought long and hard about the ethics of my writing. To me it also felt unethical to ignore this body of literature, as though by doing that I would be recolonising in a different way, i.e. contributing to the erasure of communities and peoples. I felt as though I could be recolonising whichever way I wrote.
I was glad to find calls in the Indigenous literature for Euro-Western researchers to share, rather than claim, the intellectual space (Smith 2012:202). Then I was helped by an online conversation with Erika Langham from Central Queensland University, a non-Indigenous researcher who works with Indigenous researchers in Australia, who suggested that part of my role in this work is not to replace but to amplify Indigenous voices. And I learned from the Indigenous literature about the need to work carefully and respectfully with that literature.
I was immensely fortunate to receive a review of the final draft of my book from the Indigenous researcher Deborah McGregor, who waived anonymity so that I could ask her questions (and thank her and credit her input in the book, which was not something she asked for but which felt important to do). Professor McGregor, as she now is, pointed out that I should clarify my relationship to Indigenous research. I thought hard about that, and concluded that
âMy relationship with Indigenous research is that of a student, with Indigenous researchers as my teachers; mostly through their writings and occasionally through their talk.â
(Kara 2018:17)
There are other ethical dimensions to this work. For example, since publication of my book, I have been asked several times to speak as an âexpertâ on Indigenous research. I have declined these invitations because I am not and never will be such an expert. Only an Indigenous researcher can take that position. I am working on finding Indigenous researchers to whom I can pass such invitations; I hope this blog post will help.
I will continue to do all I can to amplify Indigenous voices in my work and in my life. Iâm by no means sure Iâve got all of the answers on the ethical aspects of doing this, but I have at least made some progress in that direction. Iâd be delighted to read your reactions and thoughts in the comments.
| [1] Denzin, N. K. (2005). Emancipatory discourses and the ethics and politics of interpretation. The Sage handbook of qualitative research, 3, 933-958. |
I spent the UK winter-spring/ANZ summer-autumn of 2014 on a Leverhulme Trust International Academic Fellowship at the University of Otago, with the aims of learning about kaupapa MÄori research and carrying out a small project on fathersâ experiences of bringing up âmixedâ race children. This research was not about MÄori fathers of mixed children per se, but this is a common situation in Aotearoa New Zealand. I applied for ethical approval for the project from the ethics committee at my home university, the University of Southampton. No problems were raised with my application and it was approved as ethical research practice.
Once in Aotearoa New Zealand, having read more deeply and had discussions with MÄori and other colleagues about kaupapa MÄori research approaches, the ethics of my research became subject to question. I wondered about my University judging my research practice as ethical when â to my knowledge â none of my thoughtful reviewer colleagues know much about the ANZ context. I was faced with a strong response from some MÄori researchers I met that my project was not ethical; indeed some saw it as replicating colonialising practices. I am not out of sympathy with this viewpoint: I arrive from the UK, impose a model of (ethical) governance, grab resources (data) that belong to someone else (see later), use them for my own benefit, and then disappear off again.
There are several disjunctures raised in posing my research as colonising and questioning my practice as ethical, including between the nature of knowledge and notions of and bases for ethical practice.
Along with other institutions, my University operates with an assumption that a personâs knowledge and experiences are theirs â that they assess the pros and cons of disclosure and consent (or not) to participate in research as individuals (unless deemed âvulnerableâ). This is an individualistic notion of the nature of knowledge. In contrast, as I understand it, a broad MÄori understanding of the nature of knowledge is that it belongs to the collective â the wider family/sub-tribe/tribe. A researcher does not (just) get consent from the individual to participate in their research because their knowledge about MÄori life and experiences is not their individual possession.
I have not seen a UK University ethics form that asks whether or not the applicant for ethical approval has consulted with the population to be studied about carrying out the research and whether or not it is considered by them to be a useful piece of work. But as I understand it, that is a standard sort of question on ANZ ethics application forms. So on that governance count alone, while my research had been judged ethical in the UK, it may not be ethical from a governance point of view in ANZ, and it is unethical from a kaupapa MÄori sympathetic perspective.
Accountability is a strong element of ethical research practice. As it has been explained to me, the fact that MÄori will introduce themselves by elaborating their ancestry and land connections locates them in a web of interconnected relationships and responsibilities. This makes them accountable to their research subjects in a very different way. If they act in a way that harms the community, then it is not just their reputation that will suffer, but the whole of their extended family will be involved in that currently and into the future. In contrast, in âWesternâ models of ethical practice, primary accountability is to professional and institutional codes of practice. If a researcher acts badly then their University and professional association will see that as a breach of academic/disciplinary regulations, but it is the researcher as an individual who bears the damaged reputation. The researcherâs accountability to research subjects is limited to the relevant legislation about ownership and use of data. The âmessageâ of the research is not bad behaviour in itself.
So, I am not accountable in a MÄori sense. While I may be held accountable institutionally and professionally, my âpersonalâ connections are not involved. Thus I may behave ethically according to UK practice, but that does not mean I am behaving ethically in the kaupapa MÄori sense.