The Politics of Research Ethics: Examining Institutional Consent as an Extractivist Practice within Research in Rural Northern Communities

University Research Ethics Boards (REBs) in Canada are intended to protect research participants, but standardized ethics procedures can be poorly suited to relational, community‐led, action‐oriented, and Indigenous research. This article examines how institutional consent practices can reproduce extractive paradigms when they are applied to research contexts where consent, accountability, and data governance are negotiated relationally and collectively rather than through one‐time transactions. Drawing on two research stories from rural and northern Ontario, we show how REB requirements disrupted relationships, repositioned community partners as research subjects, and challenged community self‐determination. We are not arguing that all REBs operate uniformly or that REB review is inherently incompatible with ethical community‐based research. Rather, we examine tensions that arise when standardized consent models are imposed on research relationships based on trust, reciprocity, Indigenous protocols, and community ownership. Ethics should be approached as an emergent and ongoing process negotiated through everyday interactions. We describe strategies that seek to maintain accountability to communities while working within institutional constraints, practices that are not simply workarounds but alternative accountability practices grounded in reciprocity, collective ownership, and ongoing consent.