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

Qual Health Res. 2020 Jan;30(2):205-216. doi: 10.1177/1049732319861932. Epub 2019 Jul 17.

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.

Keywords: Aboriginal peoples; Australia; Australians; Indigenous health; decolonizing methodologies; participatory action research (PAR); partnerships; qualitative; reflexivity; research strategies.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Australia
  • Community-Based Participatory Research / methods*
  • Health Services, Indigenous
  • Humans
  • Indigenous Peoples / psychology*
  • Interpersonal Relations*
  • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander*
  • Prejudice
  • Research Personnel / psychology*