‘Balancing the books’: Research paradigms, funding, ethics and accountability in research with Indigenous people.

Abstract

Strongly emerging Indigenous methodologies have attracted researchers to employ diverse research paradigms within a moral commitment to undertaking research grounded in ethical sensitivities and appropriate research protocols, as informed by research work with marginalised and unfamiliar groups that include Indigenous communities. However, undertaking Indigenous methodological approaches may raise additional ethical considerations that require a nuanced examination of what these may entail and competing ethical claims in respect of research funding, research processes, outcomes and output. In this paper, we draw sociological insights from Bourdieusian theorisation, as well as feminist epistemology, to explore the ethical implications arising from the authors’ recently completed qualitative research with Indigenous communities in equatorial Malaysia and Costa Rica, where indigenous land rights and access issues form the contextualising and comparative backdrop to the study, with reference to relevant international UN policies such as the Sustainable Development Goals.