Presentation at the Ottawa symposium of Community-Based Research Canada, May 2009.

1. Responsibilities to Indigenous
Peoples, Knowledge and Heritage:
Research and Ethics
Dr. Marie Battiste

2. World’s Indigenous Peoples
• 300-500 million Indigenous people
• Over 1 million in Canada
• Represent 4% of world’s population
• Indigenous peoples recognized as intimately
connected to the world’s biodiversity
– 95% of world’s cultural diversity with over 50% living
in areas of high biodiversity
– 80% of world’s population depend on Indigenous
knowledge for health and security

3. Indigenous Knowledge • Intimately connected
to place/land,
languages, customs,
traditions ceremonies;
• Contains linguistic
categories, rules, and
relationships unique to
each knowledge
system
• Has localized content
and meaning
• Has customs with
respect to acquiring
and sharing of
knowledge

4. “The term ‘research’ is inextricably
linked to European imperialism and
colonialism. The word itself, ‘research’,
is probably one of the dirtiest words in
the indigenous world’s vocabulary.”
(Linda Smith, Decolonizing
Methodologies 1999, 1)

5. Colonial Research Foundations
• Domain of researchers
• Privilege and power given to individual researcher
for study, question, method, discourse, analysis,
etc.
• Insulated research monologue among
researchers
• Built on unreflective intrusive data collection,
examining the parts, ignoring whole.
• ‘Power’ in luggage of values, discourses,
systems, rules, institutional processes unpacked
and imposed on First Nations people

6. Effects of Unreflective
Research Practices
• Outsiders provide interpretations and apply
solutions and marginalize and exploit Indigenous
Peoples
• Peoples pathologized and problematized based
on culture, language, community and solutions
given to them without resources to fix them
• Marginalizing location continues in research,
biotechnology, tourism, green revolution and
ecology.
• Creates wounded space

7. Limitations on Intellectual
Property Regimes
• Copyright protects individual
expression of ideas, but only for the
lifetime plus additional 50 years.
• Patents & trademarks protect
inventions but only for 20 years from
the date of issuance.
• Enforcing rights of copyright and
patents require expensive litigation.

8. Transforming Context
Indigenous researchers leading a
discourse on respect and decolonization
Growing body of postcolonial-
indigenous/feminists/qualitative research
changing ‘langscape’ of research process
Courts defining new limitations on use of
Indigenous knowledge.

9. Sites of Transformation
 F ir s t N a t io n s s e e k in g
c o m p e n s a t io n a n d r e d r e s s
in C o u r t s - A b o r R t s / D u t y t o
C o n s u lt
( D e lg a m u k w / H a id a / T a k u )
 U n a n im it y g r o w in g a m o n g
d iv e r s e In d ig e n o u s
p e o p le s o n r e s e a r c h
is s u e s a n d p r in c ip le s
( R C A P , A F N , F S IN , N A H O ,
C IH R , S S H R C , M i ’ k m a w
E t h ic s W a t c h )

10. Researchers…
• Respect need for approval in multiple
jurisdictions (double door:
university/community)
• Engage appropriate participatory gendered
frameworks and Indigenous methodologies
• Recognize need for translation across cultures
• Employ Indigenous theory and methods, when
appropriate
• Consider widest community interest, impact
and benefit of research
• Explore further conceptual development in
area of research ethics involving IP

11. Indigenous Researchers
Working in Indigenous Ethics/
Consultation
• Linda Smith (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies
• Willie Ermine (2000);
• Ermine, Sinclair & Browne (2005)
• Marlene Brant Castellano
• Margaret Kovach (In press)
• Sean Wilson (2007) Research as Ceremony
• Marie Battiste and Sakej Henderson (2000) Protecting
Indigenous Knowledge
• Richard Atleo (2004)
• Brian Brayboy

12. Dr. Marie Battiste, Director
Aboriginal Education Research Centre
marie.battiste@usask.ca
http://www.usask.ca/education/people/battistem.htm

13. References
Battiste, Marie & Henderson, J. Youngblood (Sa’ke’j). (2000). Protecting Indigenous
knowledge and heritage. Saskatoon, SK: Purich Press.
Brant Castellano, M. (2004). Ethics of Aboriginal research. Journal of Aboriginal
Health, 98-114.
Denzin, N. & Lincoln, Y. (2000). Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks:
Sage.
Ermine, W., Sinclair, R., & Jeffrey, B. (2004). The ethics of research
involving
Indigenous peoples. Report of the Indigenous Peoples Research Centre to
the Intra-agency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics. Saskatoon, SK:
Indigenous Peoples Research Centre.
Mi’kmaw Ethics Watch (2000). Principles and guidelines for researchers conducting
research with and or among Mi’kmaq people.
Smith, Linda. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples.
London & New York: Zed Books.