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Towards Haudenosaunee research sovereignty: Investing in local research and training to support community developmentThe article emphasizes the importance of Indigenous Research Governance in Six Nations of the Grand River, addressing the harmful historical effects of academic research on Indigenous Peoples and advocating for structural changes that promote Indigenous data sovereignty and community ownership of research. In both Canada and the United States, academic research has long been part of the colonial project (Hodge, 2012; Williams et al., 2020). The impact research has had on Indigenous Peoples has resulted in a legacy of deep mistrust and negative perception of research by many Indigenous communities (Garrison et al., 2023). Indigenous scholars and leaders who have advocated for repairing this relationship have led major transformations away from the way in which research has traditionally been approached and administered. Most recent paradigm and policy shifts seek to support the establishment of self-determined Indigenous Research Governance (Garba et al., 2023; Morton et al., 2017), which encapsulates many interconnected key concepts, including Indigenous data sovereignty (Schnarch, 2004; Kukutai & Taylor, 2016; Cannon et al., 2024), Indigenous research ethics (Castellano, 2004; Kuhn et al., 2020; Fournier et al., 2023), Indigenous/ decolonizing methodologies (Kovach, 2009; Smith, 2021), and Indigenous epistemologies (McGregor et al., 2010; Karanja, 2019).
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Immeasurable sovereignty: Indigenous well-being, fishery science, and sustainable governance
ABSTRACT. Well-being and equity are increasingly identified as integral to environmental governance and improved sustainability outcomes. Greater consideration of these dimensions has generated calls for more data and new methodologies capable of collecting, evaluating, and converting social and cultural data into formats deemed more useful to decision makers. These efforts expose gaps and challenges related to an over reliance on quantitative data, especially when it comes to adequately accounting for the well-being of Indigenous communities. Located along the western shore of Nanvarpak (Lake Iliamna) in southwest Alaska, this paper examines Indigenous conceptions of well-being and provides insights on how to better account for the well-being of Indigenous communities in sustainable governance. Carried out in partnership with the Tribal Nation of Igyaraq (Igiugig), we draw on ethnographic and interview data to identify and examine three foundational elements of Indigenous well-being: (1) land relations or nunaka (my land, my birthplace), inclusive of one’s responsibility to ensure continuation of a way of life defined by connections to ancestral lands; (2) sovereignty; and (3) effective governance. We pay special attention to the implications of Indigenous well-being as primarily expressed and achieved through enactments of sovereignty and nation-building. We draw attention to the need for greater investment in diverse scientific expertise and data but caution against assuming that more science will lead to better governance. There is a need to acknowledge the ways in which dominant Western science-policy structures do not serve Indigenous communities. Our research suggests that you cannot adequately account for Indigenous well-being without explicit consideration of governance, and the often taken for granted value assumptions and political conditions that quietly frame policy debates and scientific understandings of what data are considered useful and what impacts are considered acceptable. This paper demonstrates the fundamental importance of centering sovereignty in not only well-being and equity considerations, but as a central tenet of ethical scientific inquiry and environmental governance more broadly.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2022190
- PAR ID:
- 10658091
- Publisher / Repository:
- Ecology and Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Ecology and Society
- Volume:
- 30
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1708-3087
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-16492-300401
