“The Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy (NNI), housed at The University of Arizona’s Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, serves as a self-determination, governance, and development resource for Indigenous nations in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere.”   This is the short description on their homepage of who they are.  Most of the content on the website is organized into the following three pages.

• “What We Do” includes their programs such as policy analysis and research, executive education and curriculum development.
• “Resources” included publications, curricular resources, their own TV/Radio program, research reports, etc.  These resources would be very useful for research of Indigenous issues.
• “Who We Are” includes an overview of the organization, staff, international advisory council, collaborators, their logo, etc.

Finally, on their links page, they categorize many helpful links into three sections: academic departments and research centers, nonprofit organizations and other resources.

Indigenous Researchers and Research on Colonization

The push by researchers to decolonize research methodologies is truly a global phenomenon. On such researcher leading the charge is Linda Tuhiwai Smith. An Associate Professor in Education and Director of the International Research Institute for Maori and Indigenous Education at the University of Auckland, her 1999 book, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, explains how previous research on indigenous peoples was biased towards European colonialism. Smith then offers some suggestions as to how this research should be conducted.

Other suggested readings include:

• John Dougherty’s review on Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Review)
• Kü Kahakalau’s Indigenous Heuristic Action Research: Bridging Western and Indigenous Research Methodologies, Hawaii, 2004 (pdf file)
• Elizabeth Tchacos’s Research in Aboriginal Communities: Cultural Sensitivity as a Prerequisite Australia, 2004 (pdf file)

The BC ministry of education has assembled a page summarizing some of the research conducted in BC related to Aboriginal youth and Education.  The page can be found here:

http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/abed/research.htm

The site contains numerous relevant research reports relating to career transitions, student performance, Aboriginal education policy, behavious disorders among aboriginal students and  information on partnership projects.  Here are some of the more applicable research articles found on the site.

• Learning and Career Pathways
• Sharing Our Success: Ten Case Studies in Aboriginal Schooling
• Student Performance Data and Research Tools to Ensure Aboriginal Student Success
• Over-Representation of Aboriginal Students Reported with Behaviour Disorders
• The Current Position of Aboriginal Support Workers in the BC Education System
• Readings and Research from BC

I think these resources contain a great deal of information related to current research in Aboriginal Education.  These links would be a great starting point for any student still search for a topic to research in this course.

FNEHIN

First Nations Environmental Health Innovations Network

Research Ethics Protocols and Guidelines (Page)

Description & Relevancy

This page is part of the broader website of the First Nations Environmental Health Innovations Network that endevours to:

“…have a central role in knowledge transfer, facilitating research partnerships, and showcasing best practices in environmental health research with First Nations.”

The page highlights the existing major concerns related to research practice in First Nations communities and frames the idea that each community is unique and a variety of research methods and protocols are being developed to address the sorry past of research in First Nations communities.  As well, this page includes a great number of links to Aboriginal groups and organizations that have developed research protocols and guidelines for conducting research with indigenous populations.

Links

http://www.fnehin.ca/site.php/research_guidelines/

Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession (OCAP) or Self-Determination Applied to Research:

Description & Relevancy

This paper explores the themes and questions we are examining related to research ethics and indigenous communities. The paper highlights where past research practices have been conducted from a colonial perspective and is critical of the research relations with Aboriginal people in the past that has, among other things, violated community cultural expectations. Following this review of past practice the paper then chronicles improvements in the ethics of First Nations research and how OCAP offers some options for improving the relationship between indigenous communities and academic research.

Interestingly, throughout the paper,  there are a number of excellent artistic representations of the dilemmas that have plagued research into First Nations Communities. I found these to be quite helpful in synthesizing some of the big issues in this field.

Links

http://www.research.utoronto.ca/ethics/pdf/human/nonspecific/OCAP%20principles.pdf