Putting Words into Action: Negotiating Collaborative Research in Gitxaala

• Main Author: Charles R. Menzies
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.485.2257; http://www.ecoknow.ca/journal/menzies.pdf

This article is written from the vantage point of an Indigenous scholar located in a major research institution (UBC) about the process of negotiating and carrying out respectful research relationships with a First Nations community. The actual process of consultation, accommodation, and negotiation important in establishing and growing a respectful research relationship between the University of British Columbia and Gitxaala Nation (north coastal British Columbia), is described. Ethical issues and procedures, methodological innovations, and considerations about Indigenous knowledge demonstrate transformative action for research. The last decades of the 20th century were tumultuous ones for anthropol-ogy. The traditional fields of anthropological research—the external and internal colonials of imperial powers such as Britain, France, and the United States—began a process of decolonisation which challenged past research practices. During the 1960s and 1970s essential aspects of anthro-pology and related social science and humanities disciplines were sub-jected to intense scrutiny. By the 1980s a generalized sense of crisis and