Prioritizing Indigenous Participation and Compensation in Research

Throughout history, the dynamic between colonial entities and indigenous groups has been characterized by exploitation and power imbalance. Indigenous knowledge has the potential to positively impact the world, through medicinal breakthroughs, radical approaches to sustainability, cultural heritage, systems of learning and adaptation, and more. Particularly in the context of research, fields like anthropology, botany and pharmacology serve to benefit from indigenous knowledge, but these interactions cannot continue to be based on extraction at the cost of indigenous communities. This work will discuss the future of relationships between researchers and indigenous communities; how this power dynamic must be transformed into an ethical partnership that prioritizes indigenous involvement and compensates contributions. Dr. Brij Kothari's concept of "Rights to the Benefits of Research" provides a framework to explore case studies that demonstrate both positive and negative precedents of relationships between researchers and indigenous stakeholders. The participation of indigenous community members should be facilitated and promoted throughout the design, execution, and analysis of research. This is an ethical necessity, as well as being crucial to contextualizing and understanding results. Furthermore, researchers should compensate indigenous contributions in a manner determined by both parties. Respect and empowerment are the core of these guidelines, and any external party interacting with an indigenous one should prioritize the adoption of these moral and ethical tenets.