The ethics of research involving indigenous peoples : Report of the Indigenous Peoples' Health Research Centre to the Interagency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics

The content and orientation of this review represents the collective ideas and directions of focus of the authors and the review is intended to contribute a small piece toward the collective expression of Indigenous research ethics in Canada. [...] In the first section of this report, a survey of the concerns reveals the broad scope of critique that stands as a testimony to the ethical breaches in the history of research involving Indigenous Peoples in North America and many parts of the globe. [...] The shift to new paradigms of research is the result of the decolonization agenda that has as a principle goal, the amelioration of disease and the recovery of health and wellness for Indigenous populations. [...] Therefore, the intent of this section is to examine the space between the Indigenous and Western worlds, the separation betwixt cultures and worldviews, as the schism of understanding that contributes to the tension riddled enterprise of cross cultural research involving. [...] With the proposed identification of the contrasting perspectives, the intent is to reconnect the entities with the notion of a bridging concept called the ethical space. This review attempts this bridging exercise by first, identifying and explicating the elusive center, the notion of a dividing space, as the theoretical underpinning of a need for cross cultural linkage that is substantial and e