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For many Indigenous nations globally, ethics is a conversation. The purpose of this paper is to share and mobilize knowledge to build relationships and capacities regarding the ethics review and approval of research with Indigenous peoples throughout Atlantic Canada. The authors share key principles that emerged for shifting practices that recognize Indigenous rights holders through ethical research review practice.

The NunatuKavut Inuit hosted and led a two-day gathering on March 2019 in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, to promote a regional dialogue on Indigenous Research Governance. It brought together Indigenous Nations within the Atlantic Region and invited guests from institutional ethics review boards and researchers in the region to address the principles-to-policy-to-practice gap as it relates to the research ethics review process. Called “Naalak”, an Inuktitut word that means “to listen and to pay close attention”, the gathering created a dynamic moment of respect and understanding of how to work better together and support one another in research with Indigenous peoples on Indigenous lands.

Through this process of dialogue and reflection, emergent principles and practices for “good” research ethics were collectively identified. Open dialogue between institutional ethics boards and Indigenous research review committees acknowledged past and current research practices from Indigenous peoples’ perspectives; supported and encouraged community-led research; articulated and exemplified Indigenous ownership and control of data; promoted and practiced ethical and responsible research with Indigenous peoples; and supported and emphasized rights based approaches within the current research regulatory system. Key principles emerged for shifting paradigms to honour Indigenous rights holders through ethical research practice, including: recognizing Indigenous peoples as rights holders with sovereignty over research; accepting collective responsibility for research in a “good” way; enlarging the sphere of ethical consideration to include the land; acknowledging that “The stories are ours” through Indigenous-led (or co-led) research; articulating relationships between Indigenous and Research Ethics Board (REB) approvals; addressing justice and proportionate review of Indigenous research; and, means of identifying the Indigenous governing authority for approving research.

Future steps (including further research) include pursuing collective responsibilities towards empowering Indigenous communities to build their own consensus around research with/in their people and their lands. This entails pursuing further understanding of how to move forward in recognition and respect for Indigenous peoples as rights holders, and disrupting mainstream dialogue around Indigenous peoples as “stakeholders” in research.

The first step in moving forward in a way that embraces Indigenous principles is to deeply embed the respect of Indigenous peoples as rights holders across and within REBs. This shift in perspective changes our collective responsibilities in equitable ways, reflecting and respecting differing impetus and resources between the two parties: “equity” does imply “equality”. Several examples of practical changes to REB procedures and considerations are detailed.

What the authors have discovered is that it is not just about academic or institutional REB decolonization: there are broad systematic issues at play. However, pursuing the collective responsibilities outlined in our paper should work towards empowering communities to build their own consensus around research with/in their people and their lands. Indigenous peoples are rights holders, and have governance over research, including the autonomy to make decisions about themselves, their future, and their past.

The value is in its guidance around how authentic partnerships can develop that promote equity with regard to community and researcher and community/researcher voice and power throughout the research lifecycle, including through research ethics reviews that respect Indigenous rights, world views and ways of knowing. It helps to show how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous institutions can collectively honour Indigenous rights holders through ethical research practice.

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.

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.

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?

The oversight of ethical conduct of research is often placed on the university institution in partnership research. How institutions ensure the ethical conduct of research varies and for research being done with Indigenous communities, communities themselves are now conducting their own research ethics reviews. However, this chapter aims to place some onus of responsibility on the researcher themselves, to develop their own moral compass when working with Indigenous communities. (Borrowing from Toombs (2012). Ethical research for indigenous people by indigenous researchers. Aboriginal & Islander Health Worker Journal, 36(1), 24–26.) notion of the moral compass, the authors will discuss their own experiences as Indigenous researchers and how a moral compass is critical even in light of the best research ethics policies.

The authors focus on the Canadian and Australian context and provide examples from their own experiences as Indigenous people, researchers, and research ethics administrators. The focus of this chapter is to highlight some of the unethical research that has been conducted on Indigenous peoples and the policy and community response to that research. The authors explore how to build better relationships through research with Indigenous peoples.

This chapter does not aim to provide a thorough review of literature on research ethics with Indigenous peoples; however, some of this literature is cited. The focus of this chapter is to share the experiences related to policy from the perspective of two Indigenous researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to address some of the implications for methodology and ethics that arise when researchers in Indigenous territories locate their research projects as taking place within Indigenous countries. Centering the argument that ethical research with Indigenous communities must be rooted in upholding the primacy of Indigenous sovereignty, numerous considerations to improve qualitative research practices in Indigenous countries are discussed.

The author starts by introducing his relationship to Indigenous research as a mixed-Indigenous researcher. Moving onto discussing preliminary research considerations for working in Indigenous territories, the author argues that qualitative researchers must become familiarized with the historical and geographical contexts of the Indigenous countries they plan on working in. Using Canadian history as an example, the author argues that settler-colonial nationalisms continue to attempt to erase and replace Indigenous countries both in historical and geographical narratives. Building on Indigenous literature, the author then outlines the necessity of being aware of nation-specific protocols in law, culture, and knowledge production.

Drawing on this discussion, the author proposes a framework for preliminary research that can be used by qualitative researchers looking to ensure their projects are grounded in the best practices for the specific Indigenous countries they want to work with.

The author concludes that researchers should not expect Indigenous knowledge keepers to contribute large amounts of labour towards debunking colonial mythology and proving the existence of Indigenous countries. By doing this work as part of the preliminary research process, researchers create space for better collaborations with Indigenous communities.

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.

The purpose of this short paper is to comment on the powerful contribution researchers have made to the emerging field of Indigenous O&M scholarship.

The paper reviews the work in the field of Indigenous O&M.

Indigenous O&M research, first, has been driven by the effects of colonization and the attempts to reclaim traditional ways of researching, organizing and managing, second; has sought asylum in established critical and alternative fields of scholarship to create research legitimacy in the mainstream, and; third, produced novel methodological processes.

Several observations of the field will be made and some considerations are put forward to promote research within the tight – almost impenetrable – boundaries of the academy and its institutions.

This chapter outlines the successful community engagement process used by the authors for the Kinship Online project in the context of Indigenous methodological, epistemological, and ethical considerations. It juxtaposes Indigenous and western ways of teaching and research, exploring in greater detail the differences between them. The following chapter builds on and extends Riley, Howard-Wagner, Mooney & Kutay (2013, in press) to delve deeply into the importance of embedding Aboriginal cultural knowledge in curriculum at the university level.

The chapter gives an account of an Office for Learning and Teaching (OLTC) grant to develop Indigenous Online Cultural Teaching and Sharing Resources (the Kinship Online Project). The project is built on an existing face-to-face interactive presentation based on Australian Aboriginal Kinship systems created by Lynette Riley, which is being re-developed as an online cultural education workshop.

A key consideration of the researchers has been Aboriginal community engagement in relation to the design and development of the project. The chapter delves deeply into the importance of embedding Aboriginal cultural knowledge into curriculum at the university level. In doing so, the chapter sets out an Aboriginal community engagement model compared with a western research model which the authors hope will be useful to other researchers who wish to engage in research with Aboriginal people and/or communities.

The purpose of this paper is to share the story-net approach and to situate it as one that benefits from blending story as Indigenous methodology with non-corporeal actant theory (NCAT). The authors hope it will serve useful in building storytelling communities where Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars are working to heal together from colonial trauma, reveal the inner workings of historical and ongoing colonial projects, dismantle the agency of colonial projects, and welcome heartful dialogue into the centre of MOS discourse.

The authors employ a storytelling approach which includes mapping the story-net territory and identifying the plot points along the journey. The authors use the story-net approach to story the approach.

This approach served helpful when engaging within story archives and with storytelling collectives comprised of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous persons, peoples and knowledges. The authors found four key premises, which help to narrate the ontology, epistemology, methodology and axiology of the story-net approach and six plot points, which help in mapping the lessons learned from engaging with stories, storytellers, story listeners and the socio-discursive contexts surrounding story-net work.

The authors story an approach that can be useful to support emerging Indigenous scholars while engaging with their non-Indigenous colleagues to do story-net work. This approach may be useful to navigate the tensions to create safer, more humane, inclusive, relational, strengths-based and trauma-informed spaces for engaging with Indigenous stories, storytellers, story listeners and discourses, as well as, to plot the points of contention so as to set the stage for deepening respectful research relations.