Research and Collaboration
It is important to acknowledge that the history of mistreatment and destructive policies have done irreparable damage to tribal communities. Indigenous peoples have been experimented on and have been dehumanized within research. The land forests, plants, and other natural resources that hold spiritual, economic, and cultural importance to indigenous peoples in Minnesota have been exploited in several knowledge-grabs. Ancestors (burial remains) and burial items have been disturbed to be showcased in museums and private collections.
Researchers need to work with communities to support them and reconcile past wrongs. Part of this work involves exposing the unjust histories and shameful acts perpetrated by individuals and organizations in the name of science and research. Work with tribal nations requires thinking about ownership of research and knowledge not just as something that belongs to the researcher, the institution that researcher represents, or even the grant funder but something that belongs to the people contributing to the research and impacted by the outcomes of the research first and foremost. Research needs to become a truly collaborative endeavor. On this page, you will find resources about indigenous research methodologies and ways of knowing data sovereignty, codes of ethics, and tribal review boards.
Indigenous Methodologies
- Of Other Thoughts: Non-Traditional Ways to the Doctorate byISBN: 9789462093171Publication Date: 2013-11-19Of Other Thoughts offers a path-breaking critique of the traditions underpinning doctoral research. Working against the grain of traditional research orthodoxies, graduate researchers (almost all from Indigenous, transnational, diasporic, coloured, queer and ethnic minorities) AND their supervisors offer insights into non-traditional and emergent modes of research--transcultural, post-colonial, transdisciplinary and creative practice-led.
- Decolonizing Methodologies byISBN: 1848139500Publication Date: 2012-05-10'A landmark in the process of decolonizing imperial Western knowledge.' Walter Mignolo, Duke University 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. Now in its eagerly awaited second edition, this bestselling book has been substantially revised, with new case-studies and examples and important additions on new indigenous literature, the role of research in indigenous struggles for social justice, which brings this essential volume urgently up-to-date.
- Indigenous Methodologies byISBN: 9781442612112Publication Date: 2010-10-23What are Indigenous research methodologies, and how do they unfold? Indigenous methodologies flow from tribal knowledge, and while they are allied with several western qualitative approaches, they remain distinct. 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.
- Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies byISBN: 9781412918039Publication Date: 2008-05-07Key Features- Contains global examples including South African, Hawaiian, Maori, Central African and Islamic ones.. Includes a "Who's Who" of educators and researchers in critical methodologies. . Provides a comprehensive body of work that represents the state of the art for critical methodologies and indigenous discourses . Covers the history of critical and indigenous theory and how it came to inform and impact qualitative research . Offers an historical representation of critical theory, critical pedagogy, and indigenous discourse. . Explores critical theory and action theory, and their hybrid discourses: PAR, feminism, action research, social constructivism, ethnodrama, community action research, poetics.. Presents a candid conversation between indigenous and nonindigenous discourses. This Handbook serves as a guide to help Western researchers understand the new and reconfigured territories they might wish to explore.
- Research Is Ceremony byISBN: 1552662810Publication Date: 2008-09-01Indigenous 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.
Data Sovereignty
- Traditional Knowledge (TK)What is traditional knowledge and how is it defined? The World Intellectual Property Organization page on traditional knowledge and intellectual property.
- Traditional Cultural Expressions (TCEs)The World Intellectual property organizations website. What is traditional cultural expressions and how is it defined?
- United States Indigenous Data Sovereignty NetworkWhat does Indigenous data sovereignty mean? Learn about efforts to support and protect indigenous sovereignty.
- Engaging Respectfully with Indigenous Knowledges: Copyright, Customary Law, and Cultural Memory Institutions in Canada by Camille Callison, Ann Ludbrook, Victoria Owen, and Kim NayyerAbstract:
"This paper contributes to building respectful relationships between Indigenous (First Nations, M tis, and Inuit) peoples and Canada’s cultural memory institutions, such as libraries, archives and museums, and applies to knowledge repositories that hold tangible and intangible traditional knowledge. The central goal of the paper is to advance understandings to allow cultural memory institutions to respect, affirm, and recognize Indigenous ownership of their traditional and living Indigenous knowledges and to respect the protocols for their use. This paper honours the spirit of reconciliation through the joint authorship of people from Indigenous, immigrant, and Canadian heritages. The authors outline the traditional and living importance of Indigenous knowledges; describe the legal framework in Canada, both as it establishes a system of enforceable copyright and as it recognizes Indigenous rights, self-determination, and the constitutional protections accorded to Indigenous peoples; and recommend an approach for cultural memory institutions to adopt and recognize Indigenous ownership of their knowledges, languages, cultures, and histories by developing protocols with each unique Indigenous nation."
- Network Sovereignty: Building the Internet across Indian Country byISBN: 0295741821Publication Date: 2017-06-01In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly determined that affordable Internet access is a human right, critical to citizen participation in democratic governments. Given the significance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to social and political life, many U.S. tribes and Native organizations have created their own projects, from streaming radio to building networks to telecommunications advocacy. In Network Sovereignty, Marisa Duarte examines these ICT projects to explore the significance of information flows and information systems to Native sovereignty, and toward self-governance, self-determination, and decolonization. By reframing how tribes and Native organizations harness these technologies as a means to overcome colonial disconnections, Network Sovereignty shifts the discussion of information and communication technologies in Native communities from one of exploitation to one of Indigenous possibility.
Codes of Ethics
- Protocols for Native American Archival MaterialsThese are the protocols for handling Native American Archival items and materials.
- Code of Ethics Related to Native AmericansNational Endowment for the Humanities
- United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous PeoplesThis PDF has a list of resolutions by the United Nations.
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)
- Carrying Our Ancestors Home: What is NAGPRA?A collection of videos on information about NAGPRA to support native American groups in the return of their ancestors.
- NAGPRA ComplianceThe Association on American Indian Affairs page on what NAGPRA covers.
- Facilitating Respectful ReturnNational Park Service on respectfully return ancestors.
- NAGPRA and Culturally Sensitive Objects PolicyMinnesota Historical Society policy on NAGPRA and cultural objects.
- Weisman Art Museum faces criticism after delaying repatriation of Native American objects for 30 yearsThe Minnesota Daily on the Weisman Museum delaying the return of objects to Native American tibes in New Mexico.
- About the Mimbres cultural materials at WAMWeisman Art Musem page on the Mimbres cultural materials.
Tribal Intuitional Review Boards (IRB)
- Indian Health Service Institutional Review Boards (IRB)A directory of Indian Health Service Institutional Review Boards (IRB).
- Collaborative Research Center for American Indian Health Tribal IRB ToolkitThis toolkit explains what a tribal IRB looks like.