Decolonizing Health Research: Community-Based Participatory Research and Postcolonial Feminist Theory

Within Canada, community-based participatory research (CBPR) has become the dominant methodology for scholars who conduct health research with Aboriginal communities. While CBPR has become understood as a methodology that can lead to more equitable relations of power between Aboriginal community members and researchers, it is not a panacea. In this article, we examine CBPR’s decolonizing potential and challenges to meeting this potential. Specifically, we argue that those who use CBPR need to recognize and expose the ways in which power inequities are perpetrated if decolonization is to result from CBPR. Further, we argue that one of the ways to meet CBPR’s decolonizing potential is to utilize a postcolonial feminist approach.