Research Ethics for Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: Institutional and Researcher Responsibilities

It matters who you are: Indigenous knowledge research and researchers

“…Mutua & Swadener 2004). Battiste (2008) too acknowledges the need to include the researcher's position as she outlines the ethical responsibilities of the researcher. When the researcher positions herself or himself through story, this gives the reader and research community a shared understanding of the researcher's motivation and perspectives.…”

Rethinking Contemporary Sub-Saharan African School Knowledge: Restoring the Indigenous African Cultures

“…Reflectively, African indigenous education entails a process of learning, participation, sharing histories and identities expressed through social, economic and political life. While IKs have no universal definition because of fluidity and multiple meanings, Battiste and Henderson describe them as "the expression of the vibrant relationship between the people, their ecosystems, and the other living beings and spirits that share their lands" [10]. An important aspect of life in Africa is the extent to which IKs are an attribute of a whole range of holistic human cultural experience [11].…”

“…African indigenous thought seeks interpretation, expression, understanding, moral and social harmony [7], rather than positivist verification and prediction reified through Western scientific paradigms [6]. However, as Battiste and Henderson have noted IKs are both empirical (based on experience) and normative (based on social values) [10]. As a system, IKs constantly adapt to the dynamism of empirical knowledge as well as changing social values.…”

How to Read Aboriginal Legal Texts From Upper Canada

“…25 In this respect, however, it is important to emphasize that indigenist theory rejects the assumption held, at least at one time, by Euro-centric anthropologists that so-called primitive and tribal cultures were unchanging and homogenous and that any evidence of change was therefore the result of European contact and represented the "demise of Indigenous consciousness." 26 Indigenist interpretation considers history in a forward-looking and political way, but it also claims that non-native histories are forward-looking and political in their own way as well.…”

“…Second, to acquire the "Indigenous perspective" that is necessary for indigenist analysis one must not only engage in "extended conversations" with elders from the relevant group, but one must accept their teachings and accept the responsibility of "knowing" the traditions by living according to those traditions; one must, for example, accept peoples' kinship with other living creatures and with the spirit world. 24 Third, indigenist constructions of history are acts of resistance against the legacies of colonialism, and, as such, usually involve the recovery and reinvigoration of oral traditions that have been suppressed or devalued. 25 In this respect, however, it is important to emphasize that indigenist theory rejects the assumption held, at least at one time, by Euro-centric anthropologists that so-called primitive and tribal cultures were unchanging and homogenous and that any evidence of change was therefore the result of European contact and represented the "demise of Indigenous consciousness."…”