Grant: Discovery Horizons

Despite calls to decolonize and Indigenize science, nearly all work on decolonizing methodology has been on qualitative research. At the same time, a record number of Indigenous people are earning PhDs in STEM fields. Our Indigenous research team will bring principles of decolonizing methodologies into quantitative methods used in STEM, from environmental monitoring to genetic research. The project team is characterized by researchers with an interdisciplinary fluency in Indigenous cosmologies and methodologies (research approaches, ethics, and values) as well as scientific quantitative research methods (research tools and techniques).Collaborating through regular virtual meetings and student lab exchanges, we will use a case-study approach to analyze, revise, and test methods that we use regularly in our existing research projects so they have tighter fits with Indigenous values (such as humility and reciprocity), ethics/axiologies (such as relations-first and Indigenous sovereignty) and Indigenous methodological principles (such as storytelling and remembering). We anticipate that some aspects of each method or tool will remain similar to how we have inherited it, while other aspects will change significantly. For example, Palawa researcher Maggie Walters has shown how aggregating data so they align with Indigenous geographies, rather than settler state borders, radically changes research findings. While many researchers, government employees, and members of the public are committed to truth and reconciliation, their question, and ours, is how? What does data collection, cleaning and management look like when it aligns with Indigenous cosmologies? What kind of data aggregation and which statistical models are best suited to Indigenous community needs and goals? What happens to citations, measurement, and analysis when it is part of a decolonial or Indigenous approach?Our collaboration across five Indigenous-led labs in Canada and the United States will not only change how our own research is done and create a strong cohort of students trained in innovative yet traditional methodologies, but will also result in an edited "Handbook of Indigenous and Decolonial Quantitative Methodologies," open-access protocols for conducting methods, teaching modules so others can use our innovations in their own work, and the movement of Indigenous methodologies into normal science through integration into our ongoing projects and publications.