Indigenous Research Ethics: Claiming Research Sovereignty Beyond Deficit and the Colonial Legacy: Volume 6

This chapter provides an overview of the volume, beginning with anecdotes from the editors. These anecdotes demonstrate the range of issues facing Indigenous scholars and researchers who choose to work with Indigenous participants and/or communities. Reference is made to Indigenous research sovereignty, honouring the immense work undertaken by previous Indigenous scholars, enabling many today to work effectively with their own people as well as other Indigenous groups. This is considered a courageous act, given the vulnerability this opens Indigenous peoples up to in terms of the change that is engendered and the criticism from external non-Indigenous researchers that has often arisen. The organisation of the volume into three parts is discussed, and this chapter ends with synopses of the following 16 chapters.

Over recent decades, research institutions have prescribed discrete ethics guidelines for human research with Indigenous people in Australia. Such guidelines respond to concerns about unethical and harmful processes in research, including that they entrench colonial relations and structures. This chapter sets out some of the limitations of these well-intentioned guidelines for the decolonisation of research. Namely, their underlying assumption of Indigenous vulnerability and deficit and, consequently, their function to minimise risk. It argues for a strengths-based approach to researching with and by Indigenous communities that recognises community members’ capacity to know what ethical research looks like and their ability to control research. It suggests that this approach provides genuine outcomes for their communities in ways that meet their communities’ needs. This means that communities must be partners in research who can demand reciprocation for their participation and sharing of their knowledge, time and experiences. This argument is not purely normative but supported by examples of Indigenous research models within our fields of health and criminology that are premised on self-determination.

Criminology and criminal justice research in Australia that involves Indigenous peoples or has an Indigenous focus currently needs to follow guidelines of the National Health and Medical Research Council National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (Updated 2018) and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Guidelines for Ethical Research in Australian Indigenous Studies (2012). However, neither of these documents specifically focus on research or evaluations in the criminology and criminal justice space, resulting in discipline-specific gaps. Drawing from both the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous and post-colonial literature on research ethics, our chapter focuses on three core questions: (a) What does ‘free, prior and informed consent’ to participate in research mean and how should it be obtained and operationalised in criminology and criminal justice research involving Indigenous peoples and communities? (b) What does the requirement that research be ‘for the benefit of Indigenous peoples’ mean in the context of criminal justice research? and (c) How can ethical guidelines ensure that Indigenous-focussed criminological and criminal justice research and evaluation enhance and support Indigenous peoples’ empowerment and self-determination?

In 2012, I wrote an article titled ‘Māori research collaborations, Mātauranga Māori science, and the appropriation of water in New Zealand’.¹ The article attempted to critique Vision Mātauranga (VM)² policy by examining the relationship between Ngā Pae ō te Māramatanga,³ Ngāi Tahu iwi (tribe) and scientists with interests in freshwater. Seven years on, I admit to having barely scratched the surface regarding the multiple ways the policy is used as a mechanism to advance and create relationships between scientists and Māori communities in the co-production of new knowledge. Back then my commentary was somewhat sceptical of the policy’s design which does not deal with the unequal power relationships created between science experts and flax-root communities. I argued that VM had been created to commodify and globalise Māori knowledge that belongs to Māori communities and had become the expected mechanism for all engagement between university researchers and Māori communities. Much of the risk associated with forming new collaborations rested with Māori communities, and even more so with the Māori researchers who act as intermediaries and brokers between the communities and research teams. Back then, as a scholar trained in social anthropology, the way I understood knowledge transmission and the research part of my world was disconnected from the rest of my life. The probing and critical perspectives I had developed by privileging anthropological ideas and theory overshadowed other ways of interacting and understanding people and place. Like many of my anthropological colleagues I had learnt to be an ‘objective’ participant observer. The aim of participant observation is to gain a close and intimate familiarity with a given group of individuals through intensive involvement with people in their cultural environment, usually over an extended period of time. This method is highly regarded by social and cultural anthropologists around the globe. Now as the Director of a Māori research centre, I am expected to participate in all manner of engagements with Māori and non-Māori groups, and I am constantly confronted by ethical questions when undertaking research projects. VM as a process forces me to ask questions that I never did when I was trying my hand at being a bona fide anthropologist. The questions that shape my scholarship now are as follows: Who will benefit from this research and what will my legacy be?

In the twenty-first century, data are the world’s most valuable resource. Technological capacities for the collection, storage, analysis and sharing of data are evolving rapidly, and as a result, so too are the possibilities for improving the day-to-day lives of people. However, data use can also result in exploitation and harm; nowhere is this more evident than for Indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, the rapid expansion of technology has not been matched by a sufficiently robust discussion of ethics nor the development of governance frameworks. Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS) has emerged as a key consideration for this cause. Beginning with the presumption of Indigenous rights to tribal/nation sovereignty, IDS weaves together Indigenous research ethics, cultural and intellectual property rights and Indigenous governance discourse, with the view to offer solutions to the challenges being presented in an open data environment. This chapter will expand on this existing literature base and consider Māori data sovereignty in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. More specifically, it provides the basis for a discussion around how kawa and tikanga drawn from Te Ao Māori might inform approaches to data ethics and data governance.

Paradigms are shifting in research involving Indigenous peoples: research with Indigenous peoples instead of research on them. To do this, we must acknowledge a shared and sacred space of multiple world views. Negotiating this meeting place – the ethical space – demands that researchers, Research Ethics Boards (REBs), and Indigenous peoples collaborate to find mutually agreeable solutions to research ethics tensions. This chapter addresses the principle-to-policy-to-practice gaps in the application of Canada’s research ethics policy (i.e. TCPS2) by demonstrating how one 2018 study navigated ethical engagement by practising Etuaptmumk: Two-eyed seeing (the Mi’kmaq concept of learning to see from and integrate multiple perspectives to find remedies to issues/challenges/questions that benefit everyone). Movements within both Indigenous and academic communities – in Canada and elsewhere – to develop policy on research ethics for research with Indigenous peoples present an opportunity and impetus for researchers to do differently and with the leadership of Indigenous peoples. This chapter shares reflections from one study that offers an example of doing differently and acknowledging self-in-science or examining self-as-science, which is not a common practice. The acceptance of creative research methods, like autoethnography through poetry and spoken word, demonstrates academic culture can change, too, and provides researchers methods and mediums to explore and examine the self without separation from the research. This chapter discusses these as relational and reflexive, a way to challenge conventional positions of ‘researcher’ and ‘participant’, and reimagines research innovation through relationship.

In this chapter, we draw upon our experiences as members of Victoria University of Wellington’s Human Ethics Committee (VUW-HEC) to discuss some of the issues that arise when researchers are asked to discuss the Treaty of Waitangi¹ in ethics applications. Victoria University of Wellington (VUW)’s Human Ethics Policy states that researchers have a responsibility to ensure that research conforms to the University’s Treaty of Waitangi Statute. This statute outlines the principle-based framework VUW has adopted to meet its obligations to the Treaty derived from the Education Act 1989 and other non-statutory sources. Accompanying the Human Ethics Policy is a Human Ethics Guidelines document providing researchers at VUW with information about how they can align their research with Treaty principles, such as those of partnership, protection, and participation. Researchers are encouraged to read these documents before completing the ethics application, which contains a mandatory question asking them to explain how their research conforms to the University’s Treaty of Waitangi Statute. During our time on VUW-HEC, we have observed that this question can be difficult for researchers to engage with in a meaningful way. In this chapter, we do not discuss the specifics of applications or VUW-HEC meetings; instead, we draw on our collective experiences to consider how well our university’s ethics application process creates space for researchers to engage with ‘that Treaty question’.

The Australian Government recognises an obligation to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (Australia’s First Peoples) are included in the integration of genomics into the healthcare system. First Peoples inclusion in this area requires going beyond general principles for First Peoples health research. This extra need exists for historical reasons as well as the need to maintain connections between patients, participants and communities and between the bio-specimens and data contributing to the resources underpinning genomics. The National Centre for Indigenous Genomics (NCIG) at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, has developed a framework that addresses these requirements through its dedicated First Peoples governance and enduring community engagement processes relating to stored heritage materials, data management and culturally agreed terms for collection preservation and potential use into the future. This chapter incorporates a First Peoples perspective on the NCIG by describing the practical application of ‘doing the right thing’, proceeding at ‘the pace of trust’, obtaining informed consent as part of enduring relationships, acknowledging cultural perspectives, understanding diversity of views and cultural practices within and between communities and respecting the need for community ownership and self-determined mobilisation of First Peoples involvement with research. This culturally appropriate methodology has been developed in partnership with individuals, family groups and community leaders, who are directly involved in genomic research. It provides a model for First Peoples to play an invested and sustaining role in the future development of genome science and precision medicine.

Ethics for Indigenous peoples come from ancestral knowledge, from the ways we exist in creation and the ways that we are urged to respond to the whole of creation. As people grown from ancestors who we believe are always with us, we look to our own teachings to strengthen our ethics of living, being and undertaking research. These teachings still speak to us through chants, songs, stories and many other forms of belief. This chapter outlines Māori beliefs and the power of Māori belief by examining how ancestors continue to inform and speak. Research ethics are assumed to reside within a living human world, but Māori ethics includes both the seen and unseen worlds. These beliefs create a powerful challenge to the notion of sovereignty and offer powerful counterhegemonic views to racism and exploitative regimes of power. They also inform the ways that we understand ethical approaches to all our relations in the world.

In partnership with the University of Western Australia (UWA), the strengths-based National Empowerment Project (NEP) brought together researchers from across Australia and began to address issues surrounding Aboriginal wellbeing and, in particular, the high rates of Aboriginal deaths by suicide. The NEP utilised participatory action research (PAR) and was concerned with promoting positive cultural, social, and emotional wellbeing (CSEWB) and building capacity and resilience within Aboriginal communities. Throughout the NEP, consultations with 11 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities led to the development of a CSEWB program. The program seeks to increase self-determination and empowerment, developing participants’ awareness of a variety of issues relevant to wellbeing. This enables participants to gain a greater understanding of the holistic nature of CSEWB and the complex influences on Aboriginal wellbeing at individual, family, and community levels. This chapter is concerned with the development and delivery of the CSEWB program within three community sites in Perth, Western Australia. Shared philosophical approaches of the CSEWB program, between UWA and Aboriginal communities were human rights and social justice, community ownership, community capacity building, a strong focus on resilience, empowerment and partnerships, respect for local knowledge, and the delivery of community consultations. Investigation into the impacts of the program are based in an anti-colonial space, employing Indigenous Standpoint Theory and PAR approaches. This chapter demonstrates the success of the CSEWB program, links this success to the vital importance of Indigenous research ethics, and positions the research within an empowering and capacity-building context.

Indigenous peoples have had a long and fraught relationship with the notion of ‘research’. Too often we have been the subjects of studies about us, examined as the novel ‘other’ and denied agency in a relationship which is about the powerful ‘making sense’ of a people who are powerless. As subjects of other peoples’ ‘science’, we have been harmed, exploited and traumatised.

In this new century, however, Indigenous scholars and researchers are taking greater control of the science system and research processes. As Māori, we are reclaiming our intellectual traditions, revitalising our ancient teachings and retrieving our ancient knowledges, knowledges held in our karakia (ritual chants), mōteatea (laments) and pūrākau (stories). Part of the reclamation process includes the establishment of our own research centres, entities guided by Te Ao Māori (the Māori world) and our values, ethics and practices. In reclaiming the research space, we seek to drive our own developmental goals and agenda, seeking the answers to questions that are important to us as Indigenous peoples and that can further enhance our way of life.

In this chapter, the author discusses a set of Indigenous research ethics which guide our work as an iwi-owned research organisation. This chapter canvasses the origins of these ethics, how we use them to guide our work as health researchers and the challenges we face as a tribally owned research centre in giving effect to these Indigenous research ethics at the interface between Te Ao Māori and what remains an essentially ‘mainstream’, Western research funding environment.

This chapter focuses on creating a Torres Strait Island perspective on the research ethics and cultural protocols of Islander dance. Previous research into Torres Strait Islander cultural dance has traditionally focussed on the music and songs and rarely on the movements themselves or the cultural protocols of dance. Specifically, we explore how Islander dance from the Island of Mer (Meriam Kab) is not only created and practised but also how that information is communicated. This chapter asks the questions – how should Meriam Kab be researched? What are the protocols and processes that need to be followed? What is the role of Elders and how important is their place in the practice of dance? These questions will be explored through the cultural dances performed by the Gerib Sik Torres Strait Islander Corporation as an inroad into the significance of Meriam Kab as expressions of Meriam identity. Gerib Sik has a long tradition of cultural consultation in the development of their dances, and this chapter is co-authored by the directors. Through this writing, we hope to shine a spotlight on Meriam Kab research by illustrating the importance of the specificity of Islander identity.

This chapter describes the pivotal shift occurring in our national research psyche whereby Indigenous epistemology is increasingly recognised as both valid and enriching. Two key contentions emerge from a description and discussion of this shift. First, ethics review bodies must evolve to incorporate a wider knowledge framework, one which conscientiously locates Indigenous knowledge and which empowers researchers to appropriately traverse Aotearoa New Zealand’s cultural terrain. The second contention argues that there are ethical responsibilities to address inequities, based on our shared Treaty partnership, and that ethics review bodies should instantiate consideration of inequities within their oversight roles. This chapter sets the scene by describing the current shift away from Western homogeneity to cultural diversity in education, noting the formal higher learning undertaken by Māori prior to colonisation, alongside current Māori educational achievement and the goal of success as Māori. The emerging recognition of mātauranga Māori (Indigenous epistemology) is exemplified by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga and Vision Mātauranga. However, this shift has not yet reached all parts of the New Zealand research community, and we argue particularly so for ethics review processes. Possible solutions are posed, and four cultural markers are offered as supporting foundations for professionals in the field as they traverse epistemological landscapes that are more attuned to Indigenous realities.

In this chapter, we explore the ethics of developing and maintaining meaningful and equitable relationships between Māori and Pākehā scholars and researchers. We begin by asking if it is even desirable, viable, or sustainable to pursue decolonising research in disciplines and relationships that are so deeply entrenched in settler-colonialism. We consider the challenges involved in managing an equitable distribution of decolonising labour in settings with few Indigenous scholars, particularly around the constant work of educating and pointing out ignorance, as well as the emotional labour of dealing with Pākehā vulnerability, inaction, and resistance to change. Building on the Kaupapa Māori principles of whanaungatanga and manaakitanga, we suggest a tangible set of seven strategies or ‘collaborative ethics’ to address these challenges in working together and in actively dismantling while privilege and white supremacy within the Academy and wider world of research.

When musicians collaborate, a conversation takes place. They may not necessarily come from the same background, or even speak the same language, but when they listen to each other play and musically engage with a mutual respect and openness, a true improvisational and conversational collaborative flow is created. No single person controls how the work develops: the direction of the flow of this musical output is collectively determined through all the participants’ contributions. This creative process sees the participants as sonic explorers navigating and traversing the contours of a cross-cultural landscape, allowing unique moments of sound to be the catalyst for the (re)creation of new fusions and possible future collaborations. Presented as a discussion between composer Dr Jeremy Mayall and renowned taonga puoro practitioner Horomona Horo, this chapter looks at how their collaborative creative practice-based research projects have developed and reveal the sorts of musical interactions that transpire when performer/composers from both Western contemporary and Indigenous music backgrounds are given the opportunity to spend time together and collaborate. In this chapter, Horo and Mayall reflect on the processes that have informed their collaborations since meeting in 2008, and how their ongoing practice has developed through a range of projects that serve as case studies and discussion points throughout. This chapter aims to explore the centrality of relationship building and the impact that this kind of cross-cultural engagement can have on the ways in which musicians from different backgrounds can thrive.

This chapter explores an Aboriginal theory of affect as it provides the basis for an intercultural ethics of relationship between the Yolŋu and balanda (European or non-Aboriginal) worlds. It features extracts adapted from the book, Phone & Spear: A Yuta Anthropology (Goldsmiths Press, 2019) co-authored by Miyarrka Media, a media an arts collective based in the Yolŋu Aboriginal community of Gapuwiyak in East Arnhem Land Australia’s Northern Territory. Three members of the collective, Paul Gurrumuruwy, Enid Guruŋulmiwuy and Jennifer Deger, lay out their approach to creating a new, or yuta, anthropology.

The invitation to write this chapter offers both Wiremu T. Puke (tangata whenua – person with Māori descent) and Sebastian J. Lowe (Pākehā – New Zealander with European ancestry) the opportunity to reflect on their friendship and research partnership, which they refer to as a takarangi, or an interlocking spiral, as seen in traditional Māori carving practice. This motif denotes the origin of all things: thoughts, ideas, concepts and genealogies, which are interconnected through a rich tapestry of history and tradition through a process of ongoing evolution, Te Ao Hurihuri (the ever-changing world) and Te Ao Mārama (the world of light).

They recognise the spaces that separate the two coils of the outward-radiating and interlocking spiral as their shared space. This space symbolises the unknowns as they move from them to tangible forms, through the written word, oral traditions, such as whakatauākī (sayings/proverbs), or through the many Māori visual arts such as whakairo (carving), or in film. Written as a dialogue between Puke, a tohunga whakairo (master-carver) with strong genealogical connections and tribal affiliations, and Lowe (anthropologist and musician) in recognition of their research partnership, this chapter discusses how their own cultural upbringings, personal and shared experiences, have contributed to the forming of their ever-expanding shared space. The ideas and themes they discuss have led to the formation of this chapter.

Many academics have, as of late, shown commitment to decolonising academic research and/or have (re-)educated themselves, at least to some extent, on Indigenous epistemologies, methodologies and methods. While these efforts seem commendable, they may lead to tenacious expectations by some senior academics that new and emerging Indigenous scholars must use Indigenous research tools when conducting decolonising research with their communities. However, such expectations can create ethical issues in instances where the use of Indigenous research tools may be inappropriate or even harmful due to the ongoing impact of deep colonisation in the community. Such counterproductive expectations also disempower emerging Indigenous researchers as they undermine the researcher’s knowledge of what is and is not appropriate in their communities. In this autoethnographic account, an Indigenous knowledgemaker and her non-Indigenous academic mentor jointly reflect on the tightrope walk between meeting academic expectations and contributing to the decolonisation of Indigenous communities in meaningful, non-harmful ways. Drawing on Edward Said (1979, 2004), we contemplate whether the increasing dissemination of Indigenous scholarship has generated a type of ‘academic neo-orientalism’ that is characterised by academic outsiders exoticising emerging Indigenous scholars in various research matters and thus re-colonise (perhaps contrary to their sincere intentions) Indigenous scholarship.

This chapter looks at what it means to set out to do anthropological research with tangata whenua (New Zealanders of Māori descent; literally, ‘people of the land’), from the particular perspective of a Pākehā (New Zealander of non-Māori descent – usually European) musical anthropologist with an interest in sound-made worlds. In late 2017, Lowe was awarded funding for a conjoint PhD scholarship in anthropology at James Cook University, Australia, and Aarhus University, Denmark. However, following advice from several colleagues in Aotearoa New Zealand, Lowe decided to assess the viability of the project with his prospective Māori and non-Māori collaborators prior to officially starting his PhD candidature. Throughout this process of pre-ethics (Barrett, 2016), Lowe met with both Māori and non-Māori to discuss the proposed PhD project; a ‘listening in’ to his own socio-historical positioning as a Pākehā anthropologist within contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand. This approach to anthropological research is in response to George (2017), who argues for a new politically and ethnically aware mode of anthropology that aims to (re)establish relationships of true meaning between anthropology and Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand.