What Contributions, if Any, Can Non-Indigenous Researchers Offer Toward Decolonizing Health Research?

Abstract

Four non-Indigenous academics share lessons learned through our reflective processes while working with Indigenous Australian partners on a health research project. We foregrounded reflexivity in our work to raise consciousness regarding how colonizing mindsets—that do not privilege Indigenous ways of knowing or recognize Indigenous land and sovereignty—exist within ourselves and the institutions within which we operate. We share our self-analyses and invite non-Indigenous colleagues to also consider socialized, unquestioned, and possibly unconscious assumptions about the dominance of Western paradigms, asking what contributions, if any, non-Indigenous researchers can offer toward decolonizing health research. Our processes comprise of three iterative features—prioritizing attempts to decolonize ourselves, acknowledging the necessary role of discomfort in doing so, and moving through nonbinary and toward nondualistic thinking. With a nondual lens, working to decolonize ourselves may itself be seen as one contribution non-Indigenous researchers may offer to the collective project of decolonizing health research.

Moving Beyond Text-and-Talk in Qualitative Health Research: Methodological Considerations of Using Multiple Media for Data Collection

“…In doing so, the method arguably helped to address the inaccessibility of the participant–researcher relationship present in other more traditional methods, creating a space for the evocation of vulnerable emotions and yielding data that might otherwise not have surfaced. We therefore encourage researchers engaging multiple methods to evaluate their chosen methods in terms of how some might exclude other forms of knowledge by virtue of their Eurocentrism (Krusz et al, 2020) and to use approaches that recognize and appreciate indigenous knowledge systems (Bell et al, 2020; Keikelame & Swartz, 2019; Schwartz et al, 2020).…”

Yarning as an Interview Method for Non-Indigenous Clinicians and Health Researchers

“…Narrative accounts, however, capture the richness of individuals in their lives and within their lived experience and are a reflection of the commitment of the participants. This article does not aim to make a judgment on which analysis method has more rigor; however, we believe it demonstrates that validity lies in both methods of Yarning analysis, even if this has not traditionally been the case, a notion recently raised by Krusz et al (2020).…”

A Dialogical Approach to Understand Perspectives of an Aboriginal Wellbeing Program: An Extension of Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action

“…We do not discount that there is a divergence of opinions among Indigenous scholars as to whether or not non-Indigenous people should be involved in research with and for Indigenous people (Kovach, 2018;Nicholls, 2009;Rigney, 1999). Instead, we hope to provide a respectful way forward via a communicative relationality, with a critical consciousness and shared purpose, which privileges Aboriginal knowledges (Krusz et al, 2019). We see a communicative relationality as an interweaving of communicative practice (Habermas, 1984), reflexivity (Nicholls, 2009) and researcher actions (Bassendowski et al, 2006;Kendall et al, 2011), underpinned by trust and shared decision making, which are achieved through communication.…”

“…When applying a critical theory research framework within Indigenous health research context, a researcher's reflexivity process needs to acknowledge, grapple, unsettle and interrogate the tensions that are implicit when undertaking research with Aboriginal people (Crotty, 1998;Krusz et al, 2019;Scotland, 2012). We acknowledge that there are inherent tensions within this article.…”

“…We continue to grapple with tensions around authentic representations of inclusivity and equal voice in our research, as well as the expectations of how we fulfill our role in the research relationship. We have ongoing trepidations regarding the unconscious and normalized oppression of Aboriginal people due to colonialism, for which any attempt to disrupt must be made through conscious awareness (Krusz et al, 2019). We persevere in our interrogation of colonizing discourses toward understanding each other's reality through collective dialogues of our research methodologies.…”