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Indigenous communities have long experienced exploitation by researchers and increasingly require participatory and decolonizing research processes. We present a case study of an intervention research project to exemplify a clash between Western research methodologies and Indigenous methodologies and how we attempted reconciliation. We then provide implications for future research based on lessons learned from Native American community partners who voiced concern over methods of Western deductive qualitative analysis. Decolonizing research requires constant reflective attention and action, and there is an absence of published guidance for this process. Continued exploration is needed for implementing Indigenous methods alone or in conjunction with appropriate Western methods when conducting research in Indigenous communities. Currently, examples of Indigenous methods and theories are not widely available in academic texts or published articles, and are often not perceived as valid. (Am J Public Health. 2013;103:2185-2192. doi:10.2105/AJPH. 2012.301157)
To change health inequities, researchers have recognized die need to build true partnerships with communities.1 Indigenous communities and researchers have voiced a variety of concerns with "research as usual" and emphasized the value of true partnerships, including decolonizing research to instill a balance be- tween Indigenous and Western frameworks and methods.2"4 We use a case study of an intervention research project to exemplify a clash between Western research methodolo- gies and Indigenous methodologies and how we attempted to reach reconciliation. We pro- vide implications for future research based on the lessons we learned through this process. The authors of this article are a Native Amer- ican junior researcher (V. W. S.) and a white researcher with more than 15 years of experi- ence conducting research in Native American communities (S. C.).
For this article, we use the term Indigenous knowledge to describe local, culturally specific knowledge unique to a certain population. Indigenous knowledge is often depicted as being alive, in current use, and transmitted orally.5"7 Indigenous knowledge of one popu- lation may be useful to another group; or in other words. Indigenous knowledge may be generalizable.6,8 There is a rich body of liter- ature on Indigenous knowledge written mostly from the perspective of Indigenous people.7,9"11 There is another literature on Indigenous knowledge that comes from the development field to describe, for example, agricultural methods or uses for botanicals that come from local knowledge.8 The...