Abstract
The 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) sets minimum standards for Indigenous rights that include self-determination and free, prior, and informed consent for activities in territories. Despite its relevance to research conducted on Indigenous lands and research affecting Indigenous people, scholars lack practical tools to align projects with UNDRIP’s mandates. We introduce UNDRIP, Indigenous critiques of research, anti-colonial approaches to research and research project evaluation, arguing for moving beyond methods for project evaluation towards an orientation of anti-colonial, place-based research. We propose a series of guiding questions rooted in UNDRIP articles and co-created research practices that together form an orientation for aligning the research process with UNDRIP. The orientation can guide research project inception, design, execution, and evaluation by settler and Indigenous researchers, communities, partners, and academic institutions. These guiding questions are directions for how researchers can tangibly align the research process with UNDRIP, which, most importantly, begins by seeking a preliminary understanding of Indigenous communities’ priorities. Our goal is to improve research outcomes for Indigenous peoples and their territories by aligning research with Indigenous rights.
Introduction
The 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) articulates minimum standards for rights to self-determination, territory, and free, prior, and informed consent for Indigenous Nations (United Nations General Assembly 2007a). Despite broad state endorsement—including Canada’s 2021 UNDRIP Act—evolving critiques highlight how international human rights structures can perpetuate power imbalances by relying on state priorities (Carpenter and Riley 2014; Bayot 2015). At the same time, research in partnership with or in relation to Indigenous communities, knowledge, and priorities is growing across many disciplines, supported by emerging research funding, strategic plans, and other priority-setting activities (for example, see Australian Government 2017; New Zealand Government 2017; Government of Canada 2019). Indigenous research sovereignty movements are reshaping how studies are conceived and governed (Walter et al. 2021; Hudson et al. 2023). Communities are asserting control over priorities, methodologies, and knowledge sharing through Indigenous research processes (Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami 2018; Cowichan Tribes 2021) to national data-sovereignty frameworks such as Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession (OCAP® principles) (First Nations Information Governance Centre n.d.) and even global CARE principles for Indigenous data governance (Carroll et al. 2021, 2022).
In the past 10 years, some universities and academic associations have rushed to Indigenize their programs and curriculum, as well as make institutional processes and funding opportunities more accessible for Indigenous people (University of Toronto 2017; University of Victoria 2017, 2023; University of Sydney 2021). University-affiliated organizations such as field stations have also made more of an effort to interact with the Indigenous communities on whose territory they operate. For example, Hotıì ts'eeda is an Indigenous-led research support centre for community members, organizations, and researchers involved in Northwest Territories (Canada) health and health research that has developed EŁET'ÀNIT̀S'EɁAH, a tool that helps ensure that individuals and organizations who apply for funding are complying with UNDRIP (Hotıì ts'eeda n.d.). Internationally, notable Indigenous-defined research programs that use UNDRIP in research funding programs include the Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, Aotearoa New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence hosted by Waipapa Taumata Rau—The University of Auckland (Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga n.d-a) and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies’ Code of Ethics (2020) that is explicitly informed by UNDRIP.
Given this scale of activity, in particular with nonacademic funders developing criteria or frameworks related to UNDRIP through which to evaluate research (International Funders for Indigenous Peoples 2014; Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada 2022; Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia 2023), it is notable that the federal research councils and academic funders have lagged behind. In some colonized states with significant Indigenous populations—such as Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand—national funding bodies have not adopted research evaluation or mandatory criteria that centres Indigenous rights, such as those set out in UNDRIP. The focus has been on providing better funding to Indigenous research and peoples with little attention to transforming existing research approaches to uphold Indigenous authority. In Canada, for example, the strategic plan of the three primary granting agencies in science, health, and social science, “Setting new directions to support Indigenous research and research training in Canada” includes the principle, as identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015), that UNDRIP is the framework for reconciliation at all levels and across all sectors of Canadian society (Government of Canada 2019). Yet there is no other reference to UNDRIP throughout the rest of the strategic plan, with mention of “consent” only referring to dialogue participants and as a feature of data management and adherence to Indigenous ethics. Other international initiatives prioritize Indigenous-led research and co-creation of knowledge as key strategies but do not use the language of UNDRIP (e.g., Health Research Council 2017; Commonwealth of Australia and New Zealand Government 2019; Declaration on Research Assessment 2021).