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An Indigenous Research Narrative: Ethics and Protocols Over Time and Space

Qualitative Inquiry

Published online on

Abstract

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.