Conclusion

Abstract

Ermine et al write of an ‘ethical space’. This conceptual space ‘between the Indigenous and Western worlds’ (Ermine et al, 2004: 19) ‘provides a venue within which to articulate the possibilities and challenges of bringing together different ways of coming to knowledge and applying this theory to the practice of research’ (Ermine et al, 2004: 16). Chilisa, too, writes of a ‘space in between’ the Euro-Western and Indigenous paradigms. This space: involves a culture-integrative research framework. This is a tapestry, a mosaic of balanced borrowing of less hegemonic Euro-Western knowledge and its democratic and social justice elements and combining it with the best of the democratic, liberatory, and social justice essentialized indigenous knowledge and subgroups’ knowledges. (Chilisa, 2012: 25) This book has attempted to work within that ethical space in between by balancing the Euro-Western and Indigenous paradigms alongside each other, with the aim of finding out what may be learned from their differing approaches to research ethics. It is ethical to question ‘the hegemonic role of colonialism ... in the construction of knowledge’ (Chilisa, 2012: 123). This hegemony is evident in academia in so many ways: the colonised curriculum, in which no Indigenous scholars are represented (le Grange, 2016: 6); the colonisation of methodology, such that Indigenous research methods are judged by Euro-Western standards (Wilson, 2008: 30); the colonisation of process, such that Indigenous researchers are forced to justify their long-established approach to research in more recent Euro-Western terms (Wilson, 2008: 30–1); research still being done by Euro-Western researchers, using Euro-Western methods, on Indigenous peoples, communities and lands (Kovach, 2009: 28; Rix et al, 2018: 7); and so on. This is massively unethical, so another aim of this book has been to question, and perhaps make a small contribution to dismantling, that hegemony. Most Indigenous researchers do not separate ethics from research as a whole (Kovach, 2009: 142). Yet the Euro-Western system of research ethics regulation is not going to go away any time soon. Some would argue that it should not. But it does need to change, to become more flexible and accessible, to be more aware of