A systematic literature review of Indigenous Peoples and accounting research: critical Indigenous theory as a step toward relationship and reconciliation

ABSTRACT

Research exploring the intersection of accounting and Indigenous Peoples took off in the 1990s. We introduce principles of critical Indigenous theory into this field. We suggest that Indigenous understandings of ontology, epistemology, axiology, and methodology should form the basis of more future research into accounting and Indigenous Peoples. Before this can be done, however, a clear understanding of recent research on accounting and Indigenous Peoples is needed. We synthesise research in this area through a systematic literature review that identifies 72 relevant articles from 1979–2020. We undertake both content and thematic analysis of these articles. We find existing literature is largely grounded in Western understandings of ontology, epistemology, axiology, and methodology. We identify opportunities for insights from CIT to inform future accounting research with Indigenous Peoples as a step towards building relationships, respect, and reconciliation.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical Indigenous theory
• accounting
• Indigenous Peoples
• systematic literature review
• thematic analysis
• content analysis

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the feedback provided by the journal’s Editor, Giovanna Michelon, and anonymous referees during the review process. We also acknowledge the financial support provided by the CPA Canada – Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA) Special Education Research Grant Program and the research grant committee for providing helpful comments on the proposal for this study. We are grateful for the feedback provided on earlier version of this paper by the participants in Research Session 6.4 at the 2020 CAAA Annual Conference.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We adopt the term “Indigenous Peoples” as the term “indigenous” is widely accepted internationally. In addition, we follow Buhr (2011) and use the plural “Peoples” to “acknowledge the diversity of history, culture and language” (p. 153). We aim to avoid using the term “Indian”; however, it is used in certain contexts due to its use in a research article or legal definitions.

2 This research is inspired by the work of Buhr (2011). As a result, we rely upon Buhr’s (2011) understanding of post-colonialism as “what follows colonialism” (pg. 47), which is based upon Young (2003).

3 Buhr’s call was the most recent and direct, albeit not the first. Gallhofer and Chew’s (2000) editorial for AAAJ’s 2000 special issue on Indigenous Peoples also highlighted the potential of a post-colonial approach.

4 We thank an anonymous reviewer for directing us to critical Indigenous theory.

5 We follow Davie and McLean (2017) and Osterhammel (1997) in interpreting the terms colonialism as “a relationship of domination between an indigenous majority and a minority of foreign invaders” and imperialism as “the ability of an imperial centre to define its own national interests and enforce them worldwide […]”.

6 Social work is a field well-ahead of accounting in relation to the adoption of CIT research approaches. Our discussion of ontology, epistemology, axiology, and methodology as it relates to CIT is based on the work of Rowe et al. (2015).

7 We selected a 40-year period to capture as many articles as possible. Regardless, the first article we identified was from 1995, which is more than 15 years later than our search start date (i.e., 1979). We reviewed the references from our earliest article to explore whether or not any research had been conducted prior to 1995 and did not find any prior studies. Therefore, we conclude that it is unlikely that any additional research exists prior to our start date of 1979.

8 We note that Neu and Heincke (2004) focuses on both Canada and Mexico. Although Mexico is generally not considered part of North America, we included this study in our review because of its focus on Canada.

9 We are limited to English as it is the primary language of the authorship team. To overcome the current Anglocentric bias in research, we encourage researchers to conduct research on Accounting and Indigenous Peoples across a broader set of languages.

10 The one exception for the peer-reviewed journal requirement is Greer and Neu’s (2009) book chapter in The Routledge Companion to Accounting History. We included this chapter in Step 4 of our review because it is one of the few literature reviews in this domain.

11 Specifically, we exclude Jayasinghe and Thomas (2009) which is related to Asia and Degos et al. (2019), Power and Brennan (2021), and Miley and Read (2021) which are related to Africa.

12 The 11 keyword strings included “Accounting &” the following titles: “Aboriginal” which is commonly used across the globe; “First Nation” “Metis” and “Inuit” which are commonly used in Canadian context; “Indian” and “Native American” which are commonly used in the USA context; “Torres Strait Islanders” and “South Sea Islanders” which are commonly used in Australia; “Maori” which is commonly used in the New Zealand Context; “I-Kiribati” which is commonly used in Kiribati; and “Melanesian” which is commonly used in Fiji and the remaining countries in Oceania.

13 We appreciate that the coding methodology we adopted is based on the epistemological offspring of the SLR approach. Future studies may wish to create a new approach to SLR, based on respectful consultation with Indigenous rights holders.

14 Hooper and Pratt (1995) is the first article identified through our SLR methodology; however, it is difficult to make a general conclusion that this was the first in this domain as articles are known to exist outside of peer reviewed academic journals. For example, Mataira (1994) and Winiata (1988) are examples of articles in the New Zealand context which may have influenced and motivated the academic research captured by our SLR search criteria.

15 For example, Keith Hooper and Kate Kearins collaborated on three articles, while Ron Baker and Bettina Schneider, Dean Neu and Cameron Graham, and Patty McNicholas and Sonja Gallhofer all collaborated on two articles.

16 Two other editorials of special issues are included in our relevant articles (i.e., Graham (2009) and Baskerville et al. (2016)). In 2009, AAAJ had a special issue aimed to explore innovative insights from accounting research related to Indigenous Peoples and developing countries. Nevertheless, this special issue only had one article related to Indigenous Peoples in Asia (Jayasinghe & Thomas, 2009) and therefore has no impact on the thematic analysis. In 2016, AAAJ had a special issue related to operationalising ethnicity in accounting research. This special issue had minimal impact on our thematic analysis as it only had one study related to our thematic analysis (Lombardi, 2016).

17 We use the term governmentality broadly, as discussed by Greer and Neu (2009), as research based upon Foucault’s works and includes “government as ‘action at a distance’; the discursive character of governmentality; accounting as a ‘technology of government’; and the optimistic but failing nature of technologies” (p. 475).

18 Note that the theme of culture is not discussed individually; instead, it is discussed as part of the other themes.

19 These studies were summarised in the prior reviews (i.e., Hammond, 2003; Greer & Neu, 2009) discussed in Section 2.

20 In addition to our search outlined in the methodology, we searched the following journals’ websites: i) Auditing – A Journal of Practice and Theory; ii) Current Issues in Auditing; iii) International Journal of Auditing; iv) Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance; v) Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation; and vi) Managerial Auditing Journal. We found no studies related to auditing and Indigenous Peoples in these journals.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Canadian Academic Accounting Association [Grant Number CPA-4-2019-004].