It Is Time to Reclaim Our Lands and Data: Steps for Ethically Engaged Environmental Research with Indigenous Communities

Abstract

Indigenous communities have shaped the health of landscapes through reciprocal and relational stewardship of their lands and resources since time immemorial. Colonization has caused harm to Indigenous-shaped lands and the hands that have tended them. Indigenous communities must be recentered as experts through a pathway that embraces justice, equity, and sovereignty to address today’s pressing environmental problems. Scientific research, in particular, is a critical component of this pathway forward. In this article, we provide a practical guide to conducting ethically engaged environmental research with Indigenous communities. These steps include operationalizing the Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, and Ethics principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty, engaging ethically and reciprocally with communities, appropriately acknowledging and citing Indigenous Knowledges, and continually engaging with communities once the research project is completed. We also discuss enduring challenges in ethically engaged Indigenous environmental studies research related to institutional timelines, the hegemony of positivist or Western research traditions, and benefit sharing between researchers and Indigenous communities. By incorporating these steps and lessons into the research being done to approach today’s most pressing environmental issues, we can weave together a better approach to this type of work.