Search

Historical views about individuals and communities shape the ways that researchers interact with people and their communities. The European settlers thought of Native Americans as savages in need of socialization. Accordingly, the first researchers had little concern for the needs of Native people and their communities and sought to impose Western scientific values to solve Native communities' problems. From the communities' perspective, forced acculturation, exploitation, and other injustices contributed to feelings of inferiority and mistrust of investigators and the research process. More recently, significant strides have been made in involving American Indians and Alaska Natives as partners in research. Participatory research methods and tribal research codes of ethics have helped transform the research process into one that is beneficial to both the communities and the researchers. This paper provides an historical overview of research practices on Native communities (paternalism) with Native Americans, in true collaboration with Native communities, and describes best practices in participatory action research. Three formal and one informal tribal codes of research ethics are briefly described, and principles of "cultural case formulation" from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) are presented. (Contains 31 references.) (Author/SV)