Rural Qualitative Field Research
Its Practice, Abuse and Redemption in Native Studies
Ethical field research in the Native community depends on a foundation of long-term commitment and good collaborative decision-making by researchers.
Major elements of conducting meaningful qualitative field research are best viewed holistically. Elements ought to relate to a complete system or whole. Researchers must begin preparing for a field project by asking a number of questions and making several important decisions. Good decisions will include identifying the research question, determining the role of the observer, and defining researcher relations with subject groups.
Field researchers need to be concerned with ethics in developing their research design. Research should represent all those involved with a project and be accessible to all. The research cycle demands the outcome contributes towards future research and extends knowledge.
Concerns towards qualitative research can be broken into several areas. People have a concern for the effort committed by a researcher, they fear the loss and exploitation of native ways of knowing and worry of research being used as a controlling mechanism of dominant society.
Long-term commitment – Sharing of knowledge has been compared to making a commitment. People discount those who claim God-like knowledge of a culture through limited contact with it. “Seduction and abandonment” is a key phrase for this experience. Researchers are quick in interest of those studied and quicker to leave after the final report. Some of this stems from the bias presented by many researchers. They can wrongly assume that those involved in a study are unable to comprehend the nature of the science involved. Western cultural bias discounts the value of oral history and its validity. This denial of the validity of Native knowledge is quite destructive. Native people have often derived little or no benefit from research grants intended to benefit their community. Scientific professionals gain prestige, funding, scholarships, degrees, awards, honors and other personal benefits at the expensive of the study group.
Exploitation of Aboriginal Knowledge – Other private gains can be had from exploitation of Native ways of knowing. Researchers are accused of a desire to take and use the cultural knowledge of people. It also seems more painful when the hospitality and generosity of those studied is so easily abused. The exploitation of Native ways of knowing ranges from the spiritual to the physical.
Margo Thunderbird makes a statement about this in Natives and Academics, “They came for our land, for what grew or could be grown on it, for the resources in it, and for our clean air and pure water. They stole these things from us…and now…they’ve come for the very last of our possessions; now they want our pride, our history, our spiritual traditions. They want to rewrite and remake these things, to claim them for themselves.”
Oppression in Dominant Society – Native people have seen knowledge obtained through them distorted. Outcomes are fitted to the prevailing paradigm and reinforce bias present from the beginning. A disparate cycle ensues. Research based on Native ways of knowing can deny those studied the legal right to exist. Western bias has often had an element of assimilation and the need to “civilize” aboriginal people. Dominant cultures often try to rationalize the oppression of cultural minorities through abuse of knowledge. The focus of society on one portion of Native custom diverts attention from oppression of Natives as a whole. Dominant society has power over written records and histories of minorities.
Successful field research is best represented as a series of events, linked in an endless cycle. Native ways of knowing are a vital to the research cycle and this knowledge represents the basis of responsible study of indigenous culture. Solutions to abuse of qualitative field research includes sharing of knowledge, ethical review, scientific debate, and allowance of an indigenous intellectual voice within project reviews.
