An Indigenous Ethics of Visual Research

Although reflection on the ethics of visual research has moved beyond the 'big four' principles of autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence and justice to embrace a situated and relational ethics that acknowledges institutional, social and cultural expectations about research and aims to involve research participants as fully as possible in research, the ethics of visual research does not yet fully recognise Indigenous concepts and practices.To indigenise the ethics of visual research in Aotearoa|New Zealand would entail not only the inclusion of tikanga and kawa Mori (Mori practices and protocols) in formal ethical decision-making processes but also the enactment of a generous and generative ethics, an ethics of 'response-ability' grounded in manaakitanga (care), which can be defined, according to Te Ahukaram Charles Royal, as the fostering (aki) of the 'nonordinary power' (mana) of the people and other beings who compose the research situation.Such an ontological ethics will ensure that research is not only culturally sustaining for Mori researchers and participants but also prefigurative of new ways of being Mori and, for non-Mori researchers and participants, of new ways of being-with Mori.