Peer-led workshops teach early-career researchers how to collaborate with Indigenous communities
This paper highlights the potential of peer-led workshops in training early-career researchers (ECRs) for conducting collaborative research with Indigenous communities. Based on our experience conducting fieldwork in northern Canada, we identified an interest and need for community-collaborative research training among our peers in the natural sciences.
As a result, we organized two peer-led workshops called the “Intercultural Indigenous Workshops” which were held in 2016 and 2017 in Montréal, Canada. This paper describes and discusses the workshop experiences of participants, facilitators, and organizers.
Read this open access paper on the FACETS website.
The goals of the workshops were to: (i) cultivate awareness about Indigenous cultures, histories, and languages; (ii) promote sharing of Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing; and (iii) foster approaches and explore tools for conducting community-collaborative research. Both workshops were well attended by participants from many research disciplines and attendees demonstrated a high degree of satisfaction with workshop activities.
Our evaluation of feedback from the workshop showed that a successful formula for meeting the workshop objectives was to: (i) have a specific target audience (e.g., ECRs in similar fields), (ii) ensure a diversity of facilitators (Indigenous and non-Indigenous, academic and non-academic), and (iii) focus on relationship building with one or a few Indigenous groups. Achieving a safe and inclusive environment where participants felt comfortable sharing perspectives was also integral to the positive learning experience of participants and facilitators at these workshops.
Even though the workshops featured cross-cultural elements, future workshops could be improved by increasing Indigenous representation, opting for a venue located in an Indigenous community, setting-up rooms in a more culturally appropriate way, and incorporating more Indigenous teaching methods such as storytelling.
We found that these workshops were an effective way for ECRs to learn about tools and approaches for community-collaborative research, while building cultural awareness and sharing Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives.
Although some of the deepest learning often arises from working directly with Indigenous communities, peer-led training can help ECRs prepare for their collaborative work and build a community of practice.
Peer-led workshops are an important but insufficient step towards more collaborative research practices in Canada. Having ongoing, accessible, and academically recognized training for all researchers that brings Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants together can help make fundamental changes to how we conduct research in Canada.
Read the full paper — Highlighting the potential of peer-led workshops in training early-career researchers for conducting research with Indigenous communities by Gwyneth A. MacMillan, Marianne Falardeau, Catherine Girard, Sophie Dufour-Beauséjour, Justine Lacombe-Bergeron, Allyson K. Menzies and Dominique A. Henri.
